Page 46 of The Best Trick

“Which is a problem,” Odin added. “What do we say about why we want to talk to Wilson? We can’t let on what we know about Don Pedro’s flight plans.”

“Right,” I said. “It’s not like we can go, ‘Hey, we ruled out Don Pedro. Don Pedro doesn’t give a shit about the ledger, considering that he’s headed to Brazil.’”

“Exactly,” Odin said. “We also can’t reveal that Don Galvano has an inside man.”

“Absolutely not.” Zeus was vehement. “These are big fucking secrets that we need to keep. We gave Don Galvano our word on that.”

“We have to pretend we don’t know,” I said. “We have to proceed with the investigation as if we don’t know this information. Maybe we’re having so much trouble finding Doris, we need to talk to Wilson the violin appraiser out of pure desperation. As though we’re desperately throwing mud at the wall.”

“Actfucking-ginept?” Odin growled.

I gave him a big fake frown. “Does it hurt your heart to have to act inept, baby?”

Odin sparkled at me. “You know it does.”

EIGHT

Agent Denko’s assistant, Agent Alfred, wanted to meet in person. My guys were annoyed about that.

“Why would he insist on meeting in person?” I asked.

“It's smart of him,” Zeus said. “The man wants to see our faces when we talk. You always want to see the faces. And not fucking Zoom, either.”

“Fucking-gZoom,” Odin grumbled.

My guys chose the vast, empty parking lot of an abandoned big-box store as the meeting place. They liked it because it had lots of escape routes—just in case Alfred brought company.

Before we even told Alfred about it, we walked all around the perimeter of it, trying to figure out where the sightlines were and where somebody might want to hide for an ambush. It was decided that Thor and Zeus would hide in spots where they could watch all of the other possible hiding spots, basically staking out the stakeout spots.

“You're not going to put me anywhere?” I asked, feeling a little unhappy. I might not have been the kind of person you wanted in a gun battle, but I was good at watching places.

“You’re meeting Agent Alfred with Odin,” Zeus said.

“You wantmeto be in on the meeting with Alfred?” I asked, not sure whether I was hearing him correctly. “Me and Odin?”

“Why is that so surprising?” Zeus said. “You're very good with people. You're very perceptive. You and Odin make a good team. I want to know what you think.”

I grinned. “Telling you what I think…I have skills in that area!”

“Oh, we know you have skills in that area, goddess,” he said.

“I'd need to rustle up my beauty mark and my police sketch wig,” I said excitedly. The beauty mark and blond wig was my look for most-wanted posters, stemming from the time I'd worn that particular getup to a bank robbery gone wrong where I had to kidnap a nurse from a Zip Clinic, though it was a humanitarian kidnapping.

Whenever we did anything that might get us seen by official people who knew who we were, we wore the disguises that matched the police sketches. Consistency was important when it came to choosing disguises.

The morning before the big meetup, Zeus popped the trunk where we kept our disguise essentials, and I grabbed the stuff I needed, did a quick change, and finished by tucking away stray hairs and donning the beauty mark.

You always wanted to count your blessings, especially when you were on the run. One blessing was that I didn’t have the Sarah Newsome chipmunk-cheeks persona for my police sketch, but our police sketches were still unflattering. My guys said not to worry about it, but seriously, police sketches were like theUS Magazineof our criminal set, and you wanted to be looking good.

Odin already had on his fake dead tooth, fake neck tattoos, and his wig of frizzy hair. Naturally, he looked amazing in spite of it all.

Odin and I drove to the spot a few minutes early, choosing a place in the middle of the mostly empty expanse of pavement, cross-hatched with faded white parking lines and littered with decrepit shopping carts.

We got up on the hood and sat there, waiting for Agent Alfred.

“Has Thor said anything about what's got him so twisted up?” Odin asked me.

“He hasn’t said much of anything, no.” I stared at the highway curlicue in the distance. “I’m wondering if he's just tiring of this on-the-run life. We all go through phases of that, you know?”

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