Lina

“Y ou guys didn’t grab me just to murder me, right?” I asked the van’s occupants. “Because you probably could have just let those guys back

there do your dirty work.”

The driver and the passenger who grabbed me exchanged a look through their ski mask eye holes.

“No one’s gettin’ murdered,” the driver assured me. The sirens were getting louder behind us.

“Might want to hang on,” the passenger suggested. Just then, the driver took a hard left turn that had me hitting the floor.

“Ow.”

“Sorry about that.”

For abductors, they were pretty polite.

“Heard you’ve been trying to get a meet with Grim,” the driver said.

“Is that a problem or are you the welcome wagon?” I asked, rolling into a sitting position and wedging myself against the wall.

The van veered hard to the right as the driver cut across two lanes of traffic to catch an on-ramp.

“We’re clear,” the passenger reported. They both pulled off their ski masks.

“Wait. Don’t you want to keep those on so I can’t identify you? Or were you lying before when you said you weren’t going to murder me?”

The driver was a woman with thick, natural hair that waved voluminously around her head. “Relax,” she said in the rearview mirror. “Those were for CCTV cameras, not you.”

The passenger, a lean, tattooed guy with a shaved head and a blond beard pulled out his phone and dialed. “Yo. Fifteen minutes out.”

He hung up, put his feet on the dash, and turned on the radio. Coldplay boomed through the vehicle.

They didn’t take me to a cool, abandoned warehouse or a seedy motorcycle club house. No. My friendly abductors drove me to a Burger King.

The driver pulled into a parking space and they both got out. A second later, the door slid open and the guy gestured for me to get out with a mock bow.

I followed them inside and was struck with an instant craving for onion rings.

We walked past the registers toward the restrooms.

There in the last booth was the one and only Grim. He was tattooed from knuckles to neck. The gray T-shirt he wore looked like it had been vacuum sealed to his torso. His silver hair was slicked back from his face, and he wore sunglasses despite the fact that it was an overcast day and he was indoors. He was picking at a salad with a plastic fork.

He pointed at the seat opposite him with the fork and I sat. With a jerk of his head, my friendly abductors were dismissed.

“What can I do for you, Investigator Solavita?” His voice was one of those sandpapery baritones.

“First of all, you can tell me how you found me.”

His lips curled in amusement. “My guys were just bringing up the tail end of the parade.”

“What parade?”

“We were watching you and the feds watching Hugo’s man. Gotta stay abreast of what goes down in my territory.”

“Where were the feds?”

“Set up in the empty storefront a block down.”

“And they were just going to let the Baker boys knife it out on the street?”

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I don’t waste my time trying to understand why the law does what the law does. I’m more interested in your interest in the matter.”

“I’m looking for something Duncan Hugo stole and probably stashed locally before he skipped town.”

“The Porsche. Sweet ride.” “You’re well-informed.”

“Pays to know what’s going on in my backyard.”

“I don’t suppose you could tell me where to find that car?” I ventured.

Grim speared a tomato with his fork and ate it. “It never made it to his shop before the bust, and it didn’t show at the warehouse prior to his little abduction spree either. Don’t know where he’s got it.”

I let out an irritated sigh. “Well, thanks for your time. Just so you know for future purposes, this abduction could have been a text or an email.”

He pushed the remains of his salad to the edge of the table. Within seconds, a biker appeared and cleared it. “What’s the fun in that?” Grim asked. “Besides, I’ve got something more important than info on a car.”

“What’s that?” “Rumors. Whispers.”

“I didn’t dip that guy in fryer oil. I don’t know what’s wrong with that town’s gossip phone tree, but things seriously get lost in translation,” I insisted.

His lips quirked again. “Not talkin’ about that. I’m talkin’ about Duncan Hugo still hangin’ around, plotting some pretty big moves.”

I blinked. “Hugo’s still here? But that would be…”

“Stupid?” Grim filled in. “Not necessarily. Not if everyone, including his father, thinks he skipped the country. Not if he’s so far underground no one’s seen him since he hightailed it out of that warehouse.”

“But why would he stay? Everyone from his father to the FBI are looking for him.”

“If you were him, why would you stick around?”

I chewed on my lip and ran through the scenarios. “Either I’m an idiot and I think this is all going to blow over or…”

“Or,” Grim repeated.

“Oh shit. Or I see this as my opportunity to take over the family business. If I can get rid of Daddy, I take his place on the throne.”

Grim nodded approvingly. “Smart girl. He doesn’t even have to go to war for it. He can just sit tight and wait for the feds to make their move. All he has to do is tie up a loose end here and there.”

I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What kind of loose ends?”

“Nash Morgan.”

Crappity crap. I looked down at my watch, then winced. “Can I borrow your phone?”