Page 75 of Dressed to Kill
He didn't reach for it.
It buzzed again.
"Ye not going to get that?"
"It can wait."
"It cannae wait. Ye've not let a phone go two rings since I've known ye."
He held my eyes a second longer. Then he reached inside the coat and pulled the phone out, and read the screen. Then he thumbed something back one-handed and tucked the phone away.
"Thursday?" I asked. “Did ye get confirmation Mr. K’s coming in?”
Something cold settled in my gut just speaking the bastard’s name.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry about it? Aleksi, that cunt kept me like a slave for six months. He shot my da, stole his tools, and killed all those innocent…” I paused to take a breath and collect myself. “You cannae tell me not to worry about my demons, Aleksi. It only makes me worry more.”
“I’m taking care of it,” he said firmly.
“Course ya are. On Thursday. And I’m comin’ with.”
Aleksi shot me a hard glare. “No. Absolutely not.”
“But—”
“I saidno, Fin.” He pulled his hand away. “You’re not going anywhere near that fucker. Not until he’s dead. Then, if you want to kick his corpse, you can kick all you want. But not until after.”
"Aye," I said. “Fine then. Ye want a trophy wife? Then I’ll be yer trophy wife. But I’ll warn ye. I’m expensive, so ye better bring me something nice."
He watched me for a long second before his hand came back to my thigh. “I’ll bring you his finger,” he promised. “The left ring finger, with a nice silk bow tied on it and those French truffles Niko got you hooked on.”
I sighed and leaned my head on his shoulder. “Ye really know how to treat a lad, Aleksi Laskin, don’t ye?”
Mid-Ohio Racetrack sat aboutan hour and a half out of the city, north up 71 and then off through a stretch of farm country. The track wasn't open to the public after seven, but the guy who ran the place owed Nikita a favor from about eight years back and had given me a gate code and a key to one of the bays a long time ago. I came out here when I wanted to be the only person on God's earth for a few hours. Gregori dropped us at the bay door without asking any questions, and I told him to take the car back into town and come pick us up in the morning.
The text I hadn't shown Fin sat in my pocket the whole drive up. One of Dmitri's spotters had made Renzo coming out of a shop on the west side that morning. It was the third sighting in a week, every one of them closer to the middle of my city. I'd sent back one word,watch, and brought my man to a racetrack anyway. K's people were circling. I wanted one good night before whatever came next.
Fin watched the car pull away. "We're staying out here all night?"
"I have a room upstairs."
"Of course ye do."
I worked the lock on the bay door. The big rolling door came up on its rails and I hit the lights one bank at a time. The bay was a big concrete box with four lifts in it and a workbench down the back wall and four cars under sheets, and Fin walked in behind me with his hands in his coat pockets and didn't say a word.
I went to the third sheet from the door.
"How many cars do ye have?" Fin asked, walking down the line.
"A couple." I walked up to the Viper and pulled the sheet off.
She sat low, matte black with a spoiler on the back the size of a coffee table and a splitter on the nose that scraped on every fucking speed bump. Some guy in Detroit named Carl had welded the cage in by hand two summers back and called her a real one and meant it. She was sleek, sexy, and fast and didn't have a scratch on her.
Fin whistled. "She's a nice one."
He went around the front slowly, the good hand coming up to the fender and stopping half an inch shy.
