Page 19 of Ruin Me With Lies
Stefano’s voice drops to a deceptively calm level.Deadly.“Do you have a goddamn death wish?Who the hell do you think you are, speaking to me like this?”
“Your brother already threatened me plenty.”I take a sip of coffee.“You can follow through on them later.But until then...were there bullets?”
A beat of silence.Then, “Lo,what the fuck?”
Lorenzo doesn’t answer.Instead, he nudges me and nods once to confirm there are bullets, then gestures for me to continue.
“If it’s known that you scan for trackers after a deal, then the Russians would’ve taken precautions to foil detection.Using either a burst signal timer on the tracker, or a stealthy non-contact radio frequency jammer,” I explain.“My guess?There’s at least one decoy bullet.Either a single round with a burst signal tracker inside, or multiple decoys if they went the RF jammer route.
“If it’s the latter, then the tracker is sandwiched among at least four decoy rounds, each embedded with electromagnetic interference microchips to block detection.You need to search for the decoys.Depending on how much ammo you have, it will be painstaking.But if wadcutters are in the mix, start there.Those are the most commonly decoyed.”
A stretch of silence, nothing but the sound of traffic in the background.
Lorenzo just stares at me.
I shrug.
Finally, Stefano growls low, “You better be fucking right about this.Or I’m putting a bullet through your mouth for being a smart-ass when I get back.”
“Righty-oh.”
“Lo, stay on the line.”
In the background, he barks orders, muffled voices shifting into action.
Sipping my coffee, I sit back.
For a solid eighteen minutes, there’s nothing but rustling, shuffling, distant rumbles and murmurs, the occasional clang.
Until… “Motherfuckers!”
Boom.
I hold up a hand to Lorenzo for a high-five.
He just stares at it.
“No?”I shrug.“Eh.”
Lorenzo’s eyes narrow.“How do you know all that?”
“My dad was one of those ‘in-the-gray’ types,” I answer.“As a bored little girl, I used to crawl into hidden spaces in forbidden rooms, and would overhear a lot of things I shouldn’t have.Now, useful or not, I know a lot of random shit.”
“Do you—”
Stefano’s voice cuts in over the line.“Those Russians aren’t making it out of Vegas alive.”
At the risk of another death threat, I interject, “You could make a big stink about it.Send a message, start an unnecessary war with the Russians…Oryou could be quiet about it.Set a trap for whoever paid them to do this.”
“How do you want to die, little girl?”
Little girl?How old does he think I am?
“Over a dish of sickly-sweet blueberry bread pudding,” I say smoothly.“With a shot of Beluga vodka on the side.”
Lorenzo nudges me in warning, even as one corner of his mouth twitches.“Stop pushing him.”
I settle back, elbows on the armrests.“From what I hear, your relationship with these Russians is new.If they came in believingyourun this city, only to be intercepted by an enemy offering them three times the pricejustto plant a tracker,andwere fed inside intel by someone from your own organization…then that tells them one thing.”
