Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
Release Date: March 5, 2024
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Mystery
From New York Times bestseller and Edgar-Award nominee Elle Cosimano, comes Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice—the fiercely anticipated next installment in the beloved Finlay Donovan series.
But when they sneak into the loan shark’s suite to search for clues, they find more than they bargained for―Marco's already dead, and there's also another body as well. They don’t have a clue who murdered him, only that they themselves have a very convincing motive thanks to one Feliks Zhirov. Then things get complicated when Detective Nick Anthony, Finlay's sister Georgia, Detective Becker, and FBI Agent Garret Stokes show up after receiving a tip that Feliks is in Atlantic City.
Finlay Donovan and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero are in sore need of a girls’ weekend away. They plan a trip to Atlantic City, but odds are—seeing as it’s actually a cover story to negotiate a deal with a dangerous loan shark, save Vero’s childhood crush Javi, and hunt down a stolen car—it won’t be all fun and games. When Finlay’s ex-husband Steven and her mother insist on tagging along too, Finlay and Vero suddenly have a few too many meddlesome passengers along for the ride.
Within hours of arriving in their seedy casino hotel, it becomes clear their rescue mission is going to be a bust. Javi’s kidnapper, Marco, refuses to negotiate, demanding payment in full in exchange for Javi’s life. But that’s not all—he insists on knowing the whereabouts of his missing nephew, Ike, who mysteriously disappeared. Unable to confess what really happened to Ike, Finlay and Vero are forced to come up with a new plan: sleuth out the location of Javi and the Aston Martin, then steal them both back.
If Finlay can juggle a jealous ex-husband, two precocious kids, her mother’s marital issues, a decomposing loan shark, and find Vero’s missing boyfriend, she might get out of Atlantic City in one piece. But will she fold under the pressure and come clean about the things she’s done, or be forced to double down?
Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice is the fourth installment in author Elle Cosimano's Finlay Donovan Series. 9 hours ago, Finlay and Vero Ramirez escaped a fire at the Citizens’ Police Academy where they were trying to out a compromised cop working for Feliks Zhirov. In a wicked turn of events, it's not who they thought, and he fled with a suitcase filled with money. Money Vero, who is Finlay's partner-in-crime, needs to pay off Marco Toscano. Now with Vero's friend Ike missing, and 72 to hours to payback Marco, it's time for a new plan.
With the money gone, and Vero needing to clear her debts, Finlay Donovan and Vero plan a trip to Atlantic City which they tell everyone else it's a girls away vacation. It's actually a cover story to negotiate a deal with a dangerous loan shark, save Vero’s childhood crush Javi, and hunt down a stolen car―it won’t be all fun and games. When Finlay’s ex-husband Steven decides she can't leave town with the kids, he joins. If that wasn't enough, Finlay's mom appears to be having martial issues, and needs to get away.
Finlay and Vero suddenly have a few too many meddlesome passengers along for the ride. Within hours of arriving in their seedy casino hotel, it becomes clear their rescue mission is going to be a bust. Javi’s kidnapper, Marco Toscano, refuses to negotiate, demanding payment in full in exchange for Javi’s life. But that’s not all―he insists on knowing the whereabouts of his missing nephew, Ike, who mysteriously disappeared. Unable to confess what really happened to Ike, since he might implicate her in another death, Finlay and Vero are forced to come up with a new plan: sleuth out the location of Javi and the Aston Martin, then steal them both back.
But when they sneak into the loan shark’s suite to search for clues, they find more than they bargained for―Marco's already dead, and there's also another body as well. They don’t have a clue who murdered him, only that they themselves have a very convincing motive thanks to one Feliks Zhirov. Then things get complicated when Detective Nick Anthony, Finlay's sister Georgia, Detective Becker, and FBI Agent Garret Stokes show up after receiving a tip that Feliks is in Atlantic City.
Experiencing roadblock after roadblock from family, friends, lovers, and bad guys, Finlay and Vero are doubling down on this crapshoot with every gimmick and wild card they can line up. This isn't Penny ante poker they're playing and the stakes are high. If Finlay can juggle a jealous ex-husband, two precocious kids, her mother’s marital issues, a decomposing loan shark, and find Vero’s missing boyfriend, she might get out of Atlantic City in one piece. But will she fold under the pressure and come clean about the things she’s done, or be forced to double down?
While this book ends right where Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun, this book is the opening for the next book in the series where readers may finally learn the truth about Finlay's noisy next door neighbor. We are also hopefully seeing another aspect of Finlay's life with not only Nick, but with her romantic suspense novel she's been working on over the course of this series. It would be nice if things wrapped up for Finlay, and she got a happy ending.
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CHAPTER 1
NINE HOURS EARLIER
Vero hadn’t so much as glanced up from the ransom note in her hand since we’d left her cousin’s garage, when she’d handed me the keys to one of Ramón’s loaner cars and slumped down in the passenger seat, reading and rereading the single sentence on the sheet of paper like it was a puzzle that might solve itself if she stared at it long enough. I turned down the long gravel drive, checking the number on the rusted mailbox against the address printed on the custody agreement my ex’s attorney had sent me before the holidays. As I rounded the last bend, I breathed a sigh of relief when Steven’s F-150 came into view.
I pulled the loaner car beside it and cut off the engine, ducking in my seat to get a better look at the two-story farmhouse as I took a moment to collect myself. It was eight thirty A.M. on a Friday in late January, but it felt like an entire year had passed since I’d seen my children yesterday.
“We should figure out exactly what we’re going to tell him before we go in,” I said, raking my soot-stained hair from my face, “to make sure we’re on the same page so he doesn’t suspect anything.” I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. A pair of raccoon eyes stared back at me, and I wiped them with my smoke-blackened fingers. “Vero?” When she didn’t answer, I snatched the ransom note from her hand, folded it up, and stuffed it in the glove box. “Dwelling on that note isn’t helping.”
“They’re going to kill him, Finn,” she said in a small voice. A voice that should not, under any circumstances, come out of a mouth as big as Vero’s. An hour ago, she’d been cussing up a bilingual storm of expletives, threatening murder in two languages, ready to roll up to Atlantic City in body armor on the back of a white horse, rescue her childhood crush, and kick someone’s ass.
But then we’d found the ransom note tucked under the windshield wiper of Javi’s van:
You have seventy-two hours to pay back what you owe.
There had been no phone number on the note. No name. Vero hadn’t needed one.
She’d paled upon reading it, as if Javi were already dead. But she was moving through the five stages of grief way too fast, and she was skipping the most important one: bargaining.
“They’re not going to kill him. It’s not a condolence card, Vero. It’s a ransom note, which means Javi is alive and they want to negotiate.”
“We don’t have anything to negotiate with! If it was just about the two hundred grand, we could borrow it. Or steal it. Or come up with some kind of an installment plan using my inessential body parts for payment. But that’s not what Marco wants.”
“He’s a loan shark and you’re in debt to him. Of course that’s what he wants.”
“Marco got every penny I owed him and more when his goons stole the Aston Martin from us.”
The Aston Martin Superleggera that had been “gifted” to me by a Russian mob boss felt more like a stone around our necks. If it hadn’t been purchased by the mobster and registered in my name, I probably would have let Marco keep the damn thing. But since our names were on the title and Vero’s boyfriend was in the trunk, we had two very compelling reasons to find it.
“This isn’t about money, Finlay. This is about an eye for an eye. Marco obviously took Javi because he thinks we have Ike. And since what’s left of Ike could probably fit in a ketchup bottle, I don’t think those negotiations are going to go very well.” I grimaced at the memory of Ike—or rather, Ike’s shoes—sticking out from under a pile of cars in Vero’s cousin’s salvage yard. It hadn’t been our fault he’d tried to kill us and accidentally ended up squishing himself. What I did regret, however, was asking the Russian mob to dispose of his body for us. In our defense, at the time, we hadn’t had much of a choice.
Vero turned to the window, drumming the passenger door with her soot-blackened fingernails as she gathered a breath. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t asked Javi to fence the car, he never would have been there when Marco’s people came to steal it.”
“All that matters now is that Javi is alive,” I reminded her.
“What are we going to tell Marco when he asks about Ike?”
“I don’t know. I’ll make something up.” As a romantic suspense novelist, I got paid to make up stories. I’d come up with something. “The police only found Ike’s car burned in that field. They didn’t say anything about finding any remains inside it. For all Marco knows, Ike is alive. All we have to do is convince him we had nothing to do with his disappearance.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“We’ll figure it out once we get to Atlantic City.”
“You really think bringing the kids along is a good idea?”
“You really think we should leave them with Steven?” Steven had recently been the target of a contract killer called EasyClean. And EasyClean had seemed pretty convinced that Steven deserved it. “We have no idea what kind of shady business Steven was involved in. Delia and Zach will be safer with us. Besides, we’re not going to Atlantic City to start a war with Marco. We’re going to handle this using our words, like civilized adults.”
“I’m voting for a more violent approach. Maybe we should take the children to your mom’s.”
“My mother has enough on her plate.” My father had just passed a kidney stone that Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck could have blown up with less drama, and my mother had spent the last two days in the hospital enduring it with him. I hadn’t wanted to burden her, so I hadn’t bothered to call.
“What are you going to tell Steven?”
“The truth. That we’re exhausted, stressed out, and in desperate need of a vacation, and we’re taking the kids with us.” I opened my door, fighting my damp, stiff jeans as I climbed out of the loaner car. Vero followed, slamming her door a little too hard.
A curtain parted in one of the first-floor windows as I hauled our single piece of surviving luggage from the trunk. The front door swung open before I reached the porch. My ex-husband, Steven, stood in the frame, wearing his favorite threadbare plaid pajama bottoms with mismatched socks and a sleep-wrinkled undershirt. His eyes raked over my soot-smeared clothes, down the singed sleeve of my coat to the suitcase in my hand. Water seeped from my shoes as I dragged it up the porch steps.
“Jesus, Finn! I’ve been worried sick.” He ignored Vero’s snort of disgust as he grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me into a suffocating hug. “I’ve been trying to call you since I woke up and saw the news. That citizen’s police academy was all over the TV this morning.” He held me at arm’s length, wrinkling his nose. “You smell like a chimney. What the hell happened to you?” I could only imagine what Vero and I must have looked like. Neither one of us had slept more than a wink the last two nights, and we’d narrowly avoided being burned alive less than four hours ago.
“I’ll explain everything after coffee.” Or at least, almost everything. Now was not the time to tell him that the local head of the Russian mob had tried to barbecue us because I had pissed him off. And it definitely wasn’t the time to tell him that Vero and I were heading to Atlantic City on a rescue mission because of a gambling debt to a loan shark she couldn’t pay back. Steven disliked my children’s nanny enough already. I saw no reason to add fuel to his fire.
I looked past him into the house as I came inside and set down my suitcase. Toy trucks and Barbie clothes and crayons littered the floor. My children sat amidst the mess, fighting over a Fruit Roll-Up.
“Give it to me!” Delia snapped. “I had it first!”
“No! It mine!” Zach grabbed a fistful of her short hair and pulled. Delia shrieked and started crying.
Vero reached for Delia and I reached for Zach, prying his grape-jelly fingers from his sister’s bangs and pulling the two children several feet apart. I commenced with my usual lecture, about how we use our manners and our words to get what we want. That violence isn’t the answer and it isn’t kind to hit. But the children had stopped listening, their attention turned to the TV.
“Look, Mommy,” Delia said through a sniffle, wiping her eyes. “It’s Nick.”
Vero angled for a better look at the flat-screen on Steven’s wall. “I didn’t think it was possible, Finn, but your boyfriend’s even hotter in high definition.”
Delia looked up sharply, the Cupid’s bow of her mouth turning down when Steven stormed into the living room and turned off the TV.
It had been the same clip of the same news broadcast we’d heard three times on three different news channels on the drive here: Detective Nicholas Anthony of the Fairfax County Police Department fielding rapid-fire questions from a gaggle of reporters about the shooting at the citizen’s police academy yesterday. About the wounded officer’s condition. About the mysterious fire at the academy earlier that morning. About Feliks Zhirov’s escape from jail two nights ago, and if Nick suspected the Russian mobster had anything to do with any of it. Nick had danced around their questions like a pro, distracting them with an Oscar-worthy smile and throwing out the occasional “no comment” when misdirection hadn’t worked.
I touched my lips as his face disappeared from the TV screen. They were still chapped and swollen from our tryst in his room last night and our handful of hurried kisses as I’d departed the academy grounds that morning. I hated that I missed him already. That we were less than twenty-four hours into a relationship and I was already regretting the lies I would have to tell him when he finally managed to break free of the media circus to call me.
Vero smirked at Steven. “That particular shade of jealousy really suits you. It complements your pajamas and the bloodshot color of your eyes.”
Steven flipped her the bird behind the children’s backs.
Delia wrinkled her nose at Vero. “You and Mommy need a bath.”
Vero planted a sooty kiss on her cheek. “We most certainly do.”
“But first, caffeine,” I said, setting Zach down and kicking off my damp shoes.
“You heard the woman,” Vero said, snapping her free fingers at Steven. “She wants coffee, and I don’t smell any brewing in here, so why don’t you go make yourself useful while I get the kids dressed and pack up their things?”
A vein bulged in his temple as Vero took the children upstairs. He dragged me into the kitchen while she herded them into their rooms. “You mind telling me what the hell is going on? And what’s she doing here?”
“The police academy shut down a day early, so we came straight here to pick up the kids.”
“I know that, Finn. It’s been all over the news. Does this have anything to do with Zhirov?”
“Yes,” I said frankly, removing his hand from my arm and searching his cabinets for coffee filters. “Feliks showed up at the training center last night looking for someone. He shot Nick’s partner and started a fire. Don’t worry,” I said before Steven could ask, “he wasn’t there looking for me.” That was only partly true.
Steven slunk to the window and peered between the curtains as if he expected to see Feliks lurking in his shrubbery. “Whose car is that?”
I poured a carafe of water into the pot and switched it on. “It’s a loaner. Vero borrowed it from her cousin’s garage. I’ll take the kids’ car seats from your truck. What?” I asked at his indignant look. “You’re not going to need them.”
“Where’s the minivan?”
“At my place.”
“Why didn’t you bring it?”
“Because the garage was closer to your house and it made more sense to come straight here,” I said, pulling two mugs down from a cabinet.
“Or because Zhirov’s loose and you didn’t want to go home?” Steven pushed the cabinet shut when I didn’t answer. He leaned in to my space. “You’re scared of him, aren’t you?” he asked, hovering over my shoulder as I turned to the fridge. “That’s what all this is about? You’re scared Zhirov will come after you.”
“I have no reason to think that.” I hid my face from him as I rummaged for the milk. “Feliks isn’t even in the country anymore. The FBI says he was spotted in Brazil. We have nothing to worry about.” I weaved around him, carrying the carton back to the coffeepot. “As soon as the kids are dressed and ready, Vero and I will take them and go.”
“The hell you will! You’re not going anywhere as long as that psycho is out there! You and the kids can stay here with me. And she,” he said, stabbing a finger at the ceiling, presumably toward the children’s bedrooms, where Vero was hopefully packing their bags, “can drive that car back to her cousin’s garage and stay with him.”
“I’m not staying here,” I said, pouring two cups of coffee and splashing a heavy pour of milk into both. “And Vero’s not staying at her cousin’s.” I dumped a spoonful of sugar into the second mug as Steven reached for it.
“What are you doing?” he asked, pulling a face. “You know I don’t take sugar in my coffee.”
“It’s Vero’s,” I said, snatching it away from him. “And we’re not staying at home. It’s been a stressful week and we both need a getaway.”
“Getaway where?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking the Jersey Shore. Maybe Atlantic City.”
“In the middle of the winter? Isn’t it a little cold for the beach?”
I shrugged.
“Fine,” he said, reaching over my shoulder and pulling a travel mug from the cabinet, “then I’m coming with you.”
“You can’t come with us. It’s a girls’ trip.”
“And you can’t take our kids out of state without my permission.”
“Says who?”
“Says my attorney.”
“When did he say that?”
“In the fine print of our custody agreement. Which you signed, by the way, so don’t get any ideas about sneaking off to New Jersey without me.”
NINE HOURS EARLIER
Vero hadn’t so much as glanced up from the ransom note in her hand since we’d left her cousin’s garage, when she’d handed me the keys to one of Ramón’s loaner cars and slumped down in the passenger seat, reading and rereading the single sentence on the sheet of paper like it was a puzzle that might solve itself if she stared at it long enough. I turned down the long gravel drive, checking the number on the rusted mailbox against the address printed on the custody agreement my ex’s attorney had sent me before the holidays. As I rounded the last bend, I breathed a sigh of relief when Steven’s F-150 came into view.
I pulled the loaner car beside it and cut off the engine, ducking in my seat to get a better look at the two-story farmhouse as I took a moment to collect myself. It was eight thirty A.M. on a Friday in late January, but it felt like an entire year had passed since I’d seen my children yesterday.
“We should figure out exactly what we’re going to tell him before we go in,” I said, raking my soot-stained hair from my face, “to make sure we’re on the same page so he doesn’t suspect anything.” I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. A pair of raccoon eyes stared back at me, and I wiped them with my smoke-blackened fingers. “Vero?” When she didn’t answer, I snatched the ransom note from her hand, folded it up, and stuffed it in the glove box. “Dwelling on that note isn’t helping.”
“They’re going to kill him, Finn,” she said in a small voice. A voice that should not, under any circumstances, come out of a mouth as big as Vero’s. An hour ago, she’d been cussing up a bilingual storm of expletives, threatening murder in two languages, ready to roll up to Atlantic City in body armor on the back of a white horse, rescue her childhood crush, and kick someone’s ass.
But then we’d found the ransom note tucked under the windshield wiper of Javi’s van:
You have seventy-two hours to pay back what you owe.
There had been no phone number on the note. No name. Vero hadn’t needed one.
She’d paled upon reading it, as if Javi were already dead. But she was moving through the five stages of grief way too fast, and she was skipping the most important one: bargaining.
“They’re not going to kill him. It’s not a condolence card, Vero. It’s a ransom note, which means Javi is alive and they want to negotiate.”
“We don’t have anything to negotiate with! If it was just about the two hundred grand, we could borrow it. Or steal it. Or come up with some kind of an installment plan using my inessential body parts for payment. But that’s not what Marco wants.”
“He’s a loan shark and you’re in debt to him. Of course that’s what he wants.”
“Marco got every penny I owed him and more when his goons stole the Aston Martin from us.”
The Aston Martin Superleggera that had been “gifted” to me by a Russian mob boss felt more like a stone around our necks. If it hadn’t been purchased by the mobster and registered in my name, I probably would have let Marco keep the damn thing. But since our names were on the title and Vero’s boyfriend was in the trunk, we had two very compelling reasons to find it.
“This isn’t about money, Finlay. This is about an eye for an eye. Marco obviously took Javi because he thinks we have Ike. And since what’s left of Ike could probably fit in a ketchup bottle, I don’t think those negotiations are going to go very well.” I grimaced at the memory of Ike—or rather, Ike’s shoes—sticking out from under a pile of cars in Vero’s cousin’s salvage yard. It hadn’t been our fault he’d tried to kill us and accidentally ended up squishing himself. What I did regret, however, was asking the Russian mob to dispose of his body for us. In our defense, at the time, we hadn’t had much of a choice.
Vero turned to the window, drumming the passenger door with her soot-blackened fingernails as she gathered a breath. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t asked Javi to fence the car, he never would have been there when Marco’s people came to steal it.”
“All that matters now is that Javi is alive,” I reminded her.
“What are we going to tell Marco when he asks about Ike?”
“I don’t know. I’ll make something up.” As a romantic suspense novelist, I got paid to make up stories. I’d come up with something. “The police only found Ike’s car burned in that field. They didn’t say anything about finding any remains inside it. For all Marco knows, Ike is alive. All we have to do is convince him we had nothing to do with his disappearance.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“We’ll figure it out once we get to Atlantic City.”
“You really think bringing the kids along is a good idea?”
“You really think we should leave them with Steven?” Steven had recently been the target of a contract killer called EasyClean. And EasyClean had seemed pretty convinced that Steven deserved it. “We have no idea what kind of shady business Steven was involved in. Delia and Zach will be safer with us. Besides, we’re not going to Atlantic City to start a war with Marco. We’re going to handle this using our words, like civilized adults.”
“I’m voting for a more violent approach. Maybe we should take the children to your mom’s.”
“My mother has enough on her plate.” My father had just passed a kidney stone that Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck could have blown up with less drama, and my mother had spent the last two days in the hospital enduring it with him. I hadn’t wanted to burden her, so I hadn’t bothered to call.
“What are you going to tell Steven?”
“The truth. That we’re exhausted, stressed out, and in desperate need of a vacation, and we’re taking the kids with us.” I opened my door, fighting my damp, stiff jeans as I climbed out of the loaner car. Vero followed, slamming her door a little too hard.
A curtain parted in one of the first-floor windows as I hauled our single piece of surviving luggage from the trunk. The front door swung open before I reached the porch. My ex-husband, Steven, stood in the frame, wearing his favorite threadbare plaid pajama bottoms with mismatched socks and a sleep-wrinkled undershirt. His eyes raked over my soot-smeared clothes, down the singed sleeve of my coat to the suitcase in my hand. Water seeped from my shoes as I dragged it up the porch steps.
“Jesus, Finn! I’ve been worried sick.” He ignored Vero’s snort of disgust as he grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me into a suffocating hug. “I’ve been trying to call you since I woke up and saw the news. That citizen’s police academy was all over the TV this morning.” He held me at arm’s length, wrinkling his nose. “You smell like a chimney. What the hell happened to you?” I could only imagine what Vero and I must have looked like. Neither one of us had slept more than a wink the last two nights, and we’d narrowly avoided being burned alive less than four hours ago.
“I’ll explain everything after coffee.” Or at least, almost everything. Now was not the time to tell him that the local head of the Russian mob had tried to barbecue us because I had pissed him off. And it definitely wasn’t the time to tell him that Vero and I were heading to Atlantic City on a rescue mission because of a gambling debt to a loan shark she couldn’t pay back. Steven disliked my children’s nanny enough already. I saw no reason to add fuel to his fire.
I looked past him into the house as I came inside and set down my suitcase. Toy trucks and Barbie clothes and crayons littered the floor. My children sat amidst the mess, fighting over a Fruit Roll-Up.
“Give it to me!” Delia snapped. “I had it first!”
“No! It mine!” Zach grabbed a fistful of her short hair and pulled. Delia shrieked and started crying.
Vero reached for Delia and I reached for Zach, prying his grape-jelly fingers from his sister’s bangs and pulling the two children several feet apart. I commenced with my usual lecture, about how we use our manners and our words to get what we want. That violence isn’t the answer and it isn’t kind to hit. But the children had stopped listening, their attention turned to the TV.
“Look, Mommy,” Delia said through a sniffle, wiping her eyes. “It’s Nick.”
Vero angled for a better look at the flat-screen on Steven’s wall. “I didn’t think it was possible, Finn, but your boyfriend’s even hotter in high definition.”
Delia looked up sharply, the Cupid’s bow of her mouth turning down when Steven stormed into the living room and turned off the TV.
It had been the same clip of the same news broadcast we’d heard three times on three different news channels on the drive here: Detective Nicholas Anthony of the Fairfax County Police Department fielding rapid-fire questions from a gaggle of reporters about the shooting at the citizen’s police academy yesterday. About the wounded officer’s condition. About the mysterious fire at the academy earlier that morning. About Feliks Zhirov’s escape from jail two nights ago, and if Nick suspected the Russian mobster had anything to do with any of it. Nick had danced around their questions like a pro, distracting them with an Oscar-worthy smile and throwing out the occasional “no comment” when misdirection hadn’t worked.
I touched my lips as his face disappeared from the TV screen. They were still chapped and swollen from our tryst in his room last night and our handful of hurried kisses as I’d departed the academy grounds that morning. I hated that I missed him already. That we were less than twenty-four hours into a relationship and I was already regretting the lies I would have to tell him when he finally managed to break free of the media circus to call me.
Vero smirked at Steven. “That particular shade of jealousy really suits you. It complements your pajamas and the bloodshot color of your eyes.”
Steven flipped her the bird behind the children’s backs.
Delia wrinkled her nose at Vero. “You and Mommy need a bath.”
Vero planted a sooty kiss on her cheek. “We most certainly do.”
“But first, caffeine,” I said, setting Zach down and kicking off my damp shoes.
“You heard the woman,” Vero said, snapping her free fingers at Steven. “She wants coffee, and I don’t smell any brewing in here, so why don’t you go make yourself useful while I get the kids dressed and pack up their things?”
A vein bulged in his temple as Vero took the children upstairs. He dragged me into the kitchen while she herded them into their rooms. “You mind telling me what the hell is going on? And what’s she doing here?”
“The police academy shut down a day early, so we came straight here to pick up the kids.”
“I know that, Finn. It’s been all over the news. Does this have anything to do with Zhirov?”
“Yes,” I said frankly, removing his hand from my arm and searching his cabinets for coffee filters. “Feliks showed up at the training center last night looking for someone. He shot Nick’s partner and started a fire. Don’t worry,” I said before Steven could ask, “he wasn’t there looking for me.” That was only partly true.
Steven slunk to the window and peered between the curtains as if he expected to see Feliks lurking in his shrubbery. “Whose car is that?”
I poured a carafe of water into the pot and switched it on. “It’s a loaner. Vero borrowed it from her cousin’s garage. I’ll take the kids’ car seats from your truck. What?” I asked at his indignant look. “You’re not going to need them.”
“Where’s the minivan?”
“At my place.”
“Why didn’t you bring it?”
“Because the garage was closer to your house and it made more sense to come straight here,” I said, pulling two mugs down from a cabinet.
“Or because Zhirov’s loose and you didn’t want to go home?” Steven pushed the cabinet shut when I didn’t answer. He leaned in to my space. “You’re scared of him, aren’t you?” he asked, hovering over my shoulder as I turned to the fridge. “That’s what all this is about? You’re scared Zhirov will come after you.”
“I have no reason to think that.” I hid my face from him as I rummaged for the milk. “Feliks isn’t even in the country anymore. The FBI says he was spotted in Brazil. We have nothing to worry about.” I weaved around him, carrying the carton back to the coffeepot. “As soon as the kids are dressed and ready, Vero and I will take them and go.”
“The hell you will! You’re not going anywhere as long as that psycho is out there! You and the kids can stay here with me. And she,” he said, stabbing a finger at the ceiling, presumably toward the children’s bedrooms, where Vero was hopefully packing their bags, “can drive that car back to her cousin’s garage and stay with him.”
“I’m not staying here,” I said, pouring two cups of coffee and splashing a heavy pour of milk into both. “And Vero’s not staying at her cousin’s.” I dumped a spoonful of sugar into the second mug as Steven reached for it.
“What are you doing?” he asked, pulling a face. “You know I don’t take sugar in my coffee.”
“It’s Vero’s,” I said, snatching it away from him. “And we’re not staying at home. It’s been a stressful week and we both need a getaway.”
“Getaway where?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking the Jersey Shore. Maybe Atlantic City.”
“In the middle of the winter? Isn’t it a little cold for the beach?”
I shrugged.
“Fine,” he said, reaching over my shoulder and pulling a travel mug from the cabinet, “then I’m coming with you.”
“You can’t come with us. It’s a girls’ trip.”
“And you can’t take our kids out of state without my permission.”
“Says who?”
“Says my attorney.”
“When did he say that?”
“In the fine print of our custody agreement. Which you signed, by the way, so don’t get any ideas about sneaking off to New Jersey without me.”
