The following day, Kylie dragged her slightly hungover butt out of bed.
Micah was sleeping like an angel—an enormous, muscle-bound, curly-headed angel wearing a plain black tee shirt and jammie pants and breathing so softly she almost held a mirror up to his nose until he sighed. One giant foot was sticking out from under the covers. His toenails were clean and trimmed, and none had toenail fungus.
Hygiene said a lot about a person in Kylie’s experience. Guys with blunt, filed fingernails bought the best jewelry, while guys who smelled like expensive cologne and cigarette smoke were more likely to lose track of how much gambling money they’d given her and keep pouring it on.
Guys wearing cheap suits and stinky cologne who didn’t think they were worth nice things wouldn’t think she was, either.
A girl had to know these things.
Kylie did the necessaries for her own hygiene because girls who don’t shower don’t attract many marks, and then she wandered out down the long hallway to the other side of the apartment and its spectacular view of Central Park.
Logan was sitting at the small dining table between the living room and the large-for-the-City galley kitchen, drinking coffee and reading on a tablet.
“Any more coffee?” she asked.
He gestured toward the kitchen. “Full pot. Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” She found a few more cups in an overhead cabinet and filled one.
Logan asked without looking up, “Micah up yet?”
“He’s still asleep. How many more shots did you guys do last night?”
“Not enough.” He laid the tablet on the table. In the sunshine slanting in the wall of windows, Kylie saw the masthead for the New York Times. Logan said, “We need to get him up. You two have to leave.”
His jocular spirit from the previous night must have evaporated in the cold fall morning and autumn colors of Central Park outside.
She sipped the bitter coffee. “Why, you got a woman coming over?”
He looked straight at her and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “I don’t know who is going to drop in today. Might be very interesting couple of days, considering the trouble you made in Philadelphia last night that you didn’t mention. Tell me, what is in big, boxy-looking backpack Micah has brought with you?”
How on Sweet Baby Jesus’s green Earth did Micah not hear the flatness of Logan’s menacing Russian accent?
Maybe Kylie was just oversensitive to accents, having grown up in a multilingual household.
She said, “Nothing in particular.”
Logan rolled his emerald-green eyes and stood, dropping his hands to hang loose at his sides like he might go for a weapon. By standing up from the small table, he’d boxed her in the kitchen, a cabinet-lined hallway with no other exit. He said, “Don’t tell lies like that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He was still staring straight at her. “What car you drive from AC last night?”
Kylie did not know how she’d thought his eyes were pretty the night before or like anything except dangerous shards of brittle green glass. “A dark blue BMW 840i. Micah said it’s a rental.”
He nodded. “Go make Micah ready to leave. I’ll have you driven to airport and get rid of car for you.”
Kylie’s head started to buzz, and her nose felt stuffed up like a sinus headache was beginning. “What’s going on?”
“Micah will take care of it. You get him up.”
Now that was the misogyny of the Sicilian Mafia showing through. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. Go to the kitchen and make me some veal scallopini, and maybe I’ll get you pregnant later. “I need to know what’s going on.”
“Nah, you don’t wanna know. Get Micah.”
Logan sat down at the café-sized table and pointedly picked up his tablet to read his paper again.
Kylie wanted to slug him because, dammit, this guy was obviously connected and chauvinistic as hell, but she also knew a losing battle when she saw it.
She also knew problems in the “garbage business” when she saw them, so she went back to the bedroom to wake Micah up so they could get the hell out before they ended up at the bottom of the East River.
Because dead people always ended up in a goddamn river.