Micah wove the BMW 840i through the traffic on the Philadelphia side streets until they merged onto the freeway, and then he sped like a loosed arrow toward Atlantic City.
Kylie was fidgeting in the passenger’s seat, finger-combing her long dark hair and tugging on the ends. “We should keep driving and not stop until we get to Ala-frickin’-bama or something. We can just leave everything at the hotel.”
Kylie Miller, who was actually Chiarina Merlino, dammit.
He should have known. He should have goddamn known. Sicilian girls weren’t named Kylie, and she was obviously Sicilian.
She said, “There’s nothing in that hotel room that can’t be replaced. We can just drive. Maybe Mississippi. Salvatore would never look for us in Mississippi. I’ll bet the pasta there is terrible, though.”
“I need my computer,” Micah muttered as he swung the wheel and slipped through a space in the traffic.
Kylie reached into her shirt and pulled stacks of cash out. “What’s on your laptop that’s so important? You weren’t writing an autobiography confessing to all your con jobs, were you?”
Worse. “Of course not. And I’m not a con artist. And it’s none of your business.”
“Yeah, right, you’re not a grifter. You just happen to be really, really good at scamming people.”
“I’m not,” he insisted.
Kylie said, “You don’t need that computer. You can buy another one. You’ve got money out the wazoo.”
He shook his head as he dodged an eighteen-wheeler changing lanes and nearly flattening them. “I need that computer.”
“Well, if you knew you were going to steal two paintings from the Mafia and jump out the window, maybe you should’ve brought the computer with you so we could flee.”
“Stealing the paintings wasn’t part of the plan,” he muttered.
“Really?” she asked. “Because you were wearing a rappelling harness. People don’t wear rappelling harnesses unless they plan to rappel down the side of a building or something.”
Micah said, “The plan was to lay some seeds of doubt in Salvatore Grande’s mind by telling him about how my other supposed client, Vincent Genovese, was collecting art by ripping off all the other Mafia Dons in the Northeast, thus violating the Agreement. I was also supposed to stick a thumb drive in his computer and clone it when he wasn’t looking.”
“Why didn’t you goddamn tell me that beforehand?”
“Because you didn’t need to know,” he growled through gritting teeth. “You can’t give away what you don’t know.”
“Because you thought I’d rat you out? I’m not a goddamn rat, Micah, or whatever the hell your name is.”
“You should talk,” he growled.
Kylie flipped her hands in the air, her raven curls bouncing around her face. “So even though it wasn’t the plan, now we’ve got two paintings by Old Masters that we stole from the goddamn Mafia,” she said, stabbing her finger in the general direction of the back seat. “What are we going to do with them? Toss them in the Schuylkill River? Sell them on a corner in NYC along with our own watercolors? I ask you, what the hell are we going to do with two red-hot famous paintings?”
“I know a guy who can take care of the situation,” Micah growled.
“You know a guy? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if that isn’t the most mobbed-up sentence I’ve ever heard in my life—”
“Stop saying that. I’m not in anyone’s books.”
“The fact that you know what in the books means is incriminating as hell.”
“I’m not,” he insisted.
“Then what the hell did you mean with that Marcu stuff in Salvatore’s office, anyway? That’s a Sicilian name. Marcus is an Italian name, but Marcu is Sicilian. I said you look Italian, but I never said you looked Sicilian. That’s pushing it too far, when you were lying to Salvatore. Why are you pretending to be Sicilian?”
Micah glanced at her but returned his gaze to the road ahead as he flipped the car through holes in the traffic. “Look closer.”
“Look at what? You’re not Sicilian. And trust me, rice cake, I should know. You’re far too blond and way too tall.”
“I take after my mother. She was Norwegian.”
She batted her eyelashes at him, indicating the most extreme form of skepticism he’d ever seen in his life. “Yeah, and my mother is one hundred percent Russian, but I don’t have blond hair or blue eyes. You do not look Sicilian.”
Micah drove like Mario Andretti through the traffic. “My father was Sicilian.”
“Well, that’s close enough for the Mob. But if your father is Sicilian, why is your last name Shine? That’s not a Sicilian name.”
“Neither is Miller. It took me a few minutes to figure out who you are after Don Grande called you Chiarina Merlino and who your father was.”
Kylie flopped back in her seat and crossed her arms, staring out the front windshield and not looking at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Joseph Merlino was executed twelve years ago by the Philly Mob. He was shot through the mouth. It was a message job. His body was dumped in the Schuylkill River, where it was fished out later by the police.”
“I goddamn know how my father died.”
“You didn’t tell me who you were.”
“You know everything else about me. Why didn’t you know about my father?”
“You said he was dead.”
“He is.”
“Then why the hell are you working for the man who murdered your father?”
“I didn’t have much choice, did I? My mom ran off and took my little sister four years ago, so I had to drop out of high school so I wouldn’t end up on the streets. When you support yourself like I do around here, you’re either in with Salvatore Grande or on the outs. My girls and I, we give Salvatore a cut, and then we don’t have to worry about him or the police or casino security making trouble for us.”
“Protection racket,” Micah grumbled.
“That’s how it’s done in AC.”
“That’s how it’s done everywhere.”
“You say things like that, and you say you’re Sicilian, and then you say you’re not a made man. I don’t know what to believe about you, Micah. Or Marcu. What did you say your last name was?”
Micah glared at the dark asphalt in the failing sunlight ahead of the car as he merged onto the highway that would take them to Atlantic City. “Yeah, I’m an enigma.”
“An enigma with two stolen paintings in the backseat.”
He nodded. “We’re going to have to do something about that.”
She gestured at the four bricks of hundred-dollar bills on her lap. “This is all the money I have in the world, and I need to get the hell out of Atlantic City and stay out. There’s nothing left for me here, anyway. He said he’d go after my sister, but I don’t know where she and my mother are, dammit. I have to tell my girls they need to scram, though.”
A scowl creased Micah’s forehead, and his jaw clenched. “You shouldn’t contact anyone in Atlantic City. We’ll be gone soon, anyway.”
“They’re my team. I absolutely will contact them, and then we’ll figure out what they’re going to do. We always knew that going in as a team might cause problems if one of us had a falling out with Salvatore Grande, but it was worth the risk. At least, it seemed like it was worth the risk then. They’re going to goddamn kill me. If they have to run, they’ll hate me, and they’ll have every reason to.”
“You don’t need them. You’ve got me,” Micah heard himself saying before he’d pondered the wisdom of it.
“I’m not sure I want to stick around you,” she said, a sharp bite in her voice.
If this shrimpy, mouthy con artist got out of his car and walked away, flipping him off as she did so, Micah’s chest would cave in, and his knees would collapse. He sensed his imminent destruction as much as he could feel the sunset’s warmth on the side of his face and its blinding rays on the horizon. His eyes cramped from squinting, and the road meandered southward for a few miles before it settled back to its southeastern route toward Atlantic City, putting the sunset behind them.
He said, “We can grab the things we need from the hotel room and hightail it to Boston. Logan has nonstop flights to San Francisco. I’ll buy you whatever else you need when we get to California. Don Grande won’t even think of looking for you there.”
“I can’t do that. Salvatore knows your name is Micah Shine because you used your real name in his office. He’ll call people at the airport because it’s the transportation business, and then his goons will be on the next plane to San Francisco to whack us. We need to drive and get out of town.”
“When we get to Cali, we’ll pick up a few things from my place in San Francisco, and we’ll keep going. We won’t stop until we’re in Paris or Monaco or London. He won’t know where to look for you.”
Kylie shook her head while she stared out the front windscreen. “I can’t do that, and you don’t know this guy. You think other Mob bosses can hold a grudge? Salvatore Grande can hold a goddamn grudge like no one else, and we’re going to end up dead somewhere. I don’t want Rita, Alma, and Priyanka to get whacked, too. It’s not fair to take them down with us.”
“He’s not going to go after your friends. I’ll put the word out on the street that I lied to you and used you.”
“And you can ‘put the word out on the street,’ but supposedly, you’re not connected with the Mafia. Something doesn’t add up with you, Marcu.”
“Grande will blame me,” Micah said, running over her line of conversation and turning it. “If he got conned by a bunch of small-time con artists, he’ll lose face. He won’t want people to think that four girls stole his paintings from under his nose and took him for millions of dollars like that. The Mafia is inherently misogynistic.”
Kylie snorted. “You’ve got that right.”
“He’s going to be looking for someone bigger than you to blame. He’s going to be looking for a man. I gave him the Genovese Family as a target. Salvatore Grande isn’t going to go after you and Alma and Priyanka. He’s going to go after Vincent Genovese, and he’s going to get his ass kicked.”
“Grande is smarter than that, and all those Mafia Dons talk to each other now. They don’t go to the mattresses over some rumor,” she said.
A chuckle bubbled up Micah’s throat at how Kylie—Chiarina Merlino—talked. He wasn’t the one who used Mafia vernacular in every sentence; she was. Going to the mattresses meant a Mafia war between families.
He said, “Vincent Genovese has wanted to take over the Philadelphia and Atlantic City territories for decades. Grande knows it.” Micah smiled as he aimed the car down the long highway and pressed the pedal to the metal floor to keep ahead of the goons that Salvatore was doubtless sending after them. “Grande absolutely will believe that Genovese would screw with him like that, and both of them will jump at the opportunity to launch an all-out war because they both think they can win.”
Kylie still had her arms wound tightly across her chest. “Was that your plan all along? Get a bunch of made men and their families murdered just for the hell of it?”
Micah’s stomach clenched, and a sour taste rose in his throat. “No. It’s just the beginning.”
“I don’t suppose I need to waste my goddamn breath again that you need to tell me what your damn plan is.”
“What you don’t know, you can’t divulge. And it’s better that you focus on your own goals, anyway. You don’t need to be distracted with details about stuff you don’t need to know.”
Kylie frowned. “Figures.”
“Don’t call them until we’re on our way out of town, then,” he said. “We need a head start.”
“I should—”
He lowered his voice. “Don’t.”
“Fine,” she said, tossing her raven-black curls and looking out the window. “Whatever you say.”
The snarl in her voice left no doubt that she would have whacked him if she could have.