Finlay Donovan Is Killing It(Finlay Donovan #1)(47)

“Your editor wants to know where you are with the book. I tried putting her off to give you more time, but she’s demanding to see what you have so far.”

“What? No!” I sputtered. “I can’t send anything.” All I had was Harris’s story. Even with the names changed, it teetered far too close to the truth. It’d be too risky to send it. “It’s a mess. I haven’t even proofread it. It’s nowhere near ready.”

“I’ll tell you what’s a mess! You are in breach of your contract. Do you understand what that means? They can cancel your next book and call back your advance. You have to send me something. Anything. How much do you have?”

“Not enough.”

“Finlay.” Jesus, she sounded like my mother.

“Okay, okay. I’ve got a few chapters I can send you.” She was going to hate it anyway. But at least she could tell my editor I’d tried. “It’s not the project we talked about, but it’s all I have.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know. Maybe twenty thousand words?”

“Get it to me now.”

“I’ll send it to you tonight.”

“No, Finlay. Now. I’m not hanging up this phone until I see it in my in-box.”

I tucked the cordless under my chin and carried it upstairs. All I wanted was to get Sylvia off the phone so I could figure out what to do about Andrei Borovkov, the cash in my kitchen, and the fifteen thousand dollars of mob money that was now parked in my garage.

Without bothering to fill in the subject line, I sent the file to Sylvia. “There, are you happy now?”

Sylvia’s nails clicked against her keyboard as she grumbled, “I’d be happy if you weren’t three months behind on your deadline. I’d be happy if I hadn’t spent the last two days leaving you unreturned voice mails. I’d be happy if Gordon Ramsay showed up in my apartment and insisted on making me dinner tonight. But this,” she said through a deflated sigh, “will have to do. Give me your new cell.”

I pulled the prepaid phone from my pocket and rattled off the number.

“I’ll give this a read and see if I can use it to buy you more time. Meanwhile, get your butt in that chair and start typing or you can kiss your advance good-bye.”

“Thanks, Sy—” There was an abrupt click as she disconnected.

I leaned on the desk, my hands planted on either side of the keyboard, my head hanging over it. I was going to be dropped by my agent. And then by my publisher. What I had sent to Sylvia was hardly intelligible. I wasn’t even sure it was a coherent story. Thankfully, Harris’s and Patricia’s disappearances hadn’t made national news. My agent and editor lived in New York. Still, I prayed like hell I had remembered to change all the names before sending it out.

Who was I kidding? My writing was terrible. Sylvia probably wouldn’t make it through chapter two before she kicked it back to me and told me to start over.

I drew in a slow breath. The entire house smelled like burned tuna and cheese and my stomach growled. Feeling hollow, I trudged back downstairs and found Vero sitting at the kitchen table, her head braced on her hands, a shot glass beside the open bottle of bourbon we’d started drinking the night we buried Harris. I wasn’t sure how much we’d have left by the end of the night.

She filled the shot glass and pushed it toward me. It burned going down. My eyes watered as I stared at the stack of money. At least if my editor dropped me, I’d have a way to pay back the advance I owed my publisher.

Three weeks … I had three weeks to finish a book and find a way out of this.

I peeled a fifty off the stack.

“Subs or Chinese?” I asked Vero. “Even killers have to eat, right?”





CHAPTER 22





The animal shelter parking lot was packed on Tuesday after school, so I grabbed the last available spot along the road, making sure to leave plenty of room between the front of my van and the car parked in front of me in case the van decided not to start and I had to call for a tow. Julian was right. I needed to get it looked at, but if I took it to a mechanic, they were going to find a laundry list of problems—the alignment was off, it was overdue for a tune-up (or two), the brake pads were shot, the transmission was rocky, I was late for a state-mandated emissions test, and I could probably use a few new tires. For now, I was throwing up a prayer and a swear every time I turned the key. It was cheaper.

“We could have taken your car,” I grumbled at Vero.

“Nu-uh. My car is a pet-free zone.” Vero hefted Zach from his car seat, I grabbed Delia’s hand, and we crossed the street to the shelter.

“We’re only looking. We’re not bringing one home.”

“Why not?” Delia huffed. “Daddy said we could have a dog when we go live with him.”

“Did he?” I muttered. Considering the shade of Theresa’s immaculate carpets, I guessed she hadn’t been around when Steven had dangled that little carrot in front of our daughter. “Then why don’t we make Daddy a list of the ones you like the best?”

A clamor of barks and whines assaulted us as we neared the high perimeter fence. Zach covered his ears and burrowed into Vero’s shoulder. I let go of Delia to swing open the heavy door. The reception area wasn’t much quieter. The plexiglass viewing window hardly muted the torrent of barking on the other side of the desk. A woman sat in front of her computer playing solitaire, and I peeked past her, through the window into the kennels, searching for familiar faces from Patricia’s photos.