Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun (Finlay Donovan, #3)(6)

I took the envelope and folded it into my pocket, hoping Javi hadn’t noticed the crimson wax seal. “You couldn’t have called?” I asked, glaring at Cam. I hadn’t seen him since he’d last come to deliver a message from Feliks, and while it hadn’t been a welcome surprise then either, at least he’d shown me the courtesy of knocking on my door rather than dragging me into the bushes.

Cam dared a glance over his shoulder at Javi. “Boss told me to make sure I delivered it with the appropriate amount of gravitas, whatever that means.”

“I’m pretty sure both Merriam and Webster would tell you it doesn’t mean abducting an unarmed woman while she’s taking out her trash!” At his puzzled look, I muttered, “Never mind.”

I rubbed the throbbing lump on the back of my head. “It’s okay, Javi. You can let him go. He’s just a kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” Cam argued, jerking against Javi’s grip. “I’ll be eighteen in a month.”

Javi’s grin was wry as he held stubbornly to the back of Cam’s collar. “Want to use my phone to call the cops? I can babysit him until they get here.”

“No!” Cam and I answered in unison.

I cleared my throat. “Thanks, but we’re fine,” I insisted. “Vero’s putting the kids to bed. There’s a pot of soup on the stove. Why don’t you let yourself in and have something to eat while you wait for her.”

Javi gave Cam one last searing look before letting him go. Cam and I waited to speak until Javi’s sneakers disappeared around the house.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” Cam insisted as he prodded his swollen lip. “That’s the god’s honest truth. I was only trying to get you someplace where no one would see me talking to you. That nosy old lady across the street’s always peeking out her window. She gives me the creeps.”

Mrs. Haggerty was the community busybody and the self-appointed head of the neighborhood watch, but I was pretty sure she was just bored, lonely, and wanted to feel important. I’d resented her for it after she’d told me (and everyone else on the street) that she’d spotted our real estate agent sneaking out of my house after a midday tryst with my then husband. But in the twenty months since Steven moved out (and our subsequent divorce), I’d come to realize it wasn’t always a terrible thing to have someone—even an annoying, opinionated someone—looking out for you. I just had to be cautious about the kinds of things Mrs. Haggerty saw, since every detail inevitably made it into the notebook she kept on the table beside her front door. An after-dark visit by a leather-clad teenager with a criminal record would definitely raise some eyebrows at a neighborhood watch meeting. Or worse, at the police station downtown.

“You think she heard us?” Cam asked.

“I doubt it.” If Vero hadn’t heard our scuffle then Mrs. Haggerty certainly hadn’t. “Pretty sure her hearing is going. What’s the message?” I shivered as I gestured for him to get on with it. I hadn’t worn a jacket, and our meeting had left me more shaken than I cared to admit.

“Mr. Z wants to know why you haven’t handled EasyClean yet. In case you haven’t noticed, he doesn’t like to be kept waiting, and believe me, I’m not the scariest person he could have sent to remind you.”

“I’m already acquainted with his goon squad, but thanks for the concern.”

“I was talking about his lawyer.” Cam shuddered. “That Rybakov chick is terrifying.”

A laugh escaped me despite my foul mood. Ekatarina Rybakov was indeed terrifying. And if I had to choose between Kat showing up on my front porch carrying a message with a wax seal or Cam’s clumsy attempt to deliver one with gravitas, the choice was easy.

I tore open Feliks’s envelope and held his letter under the security light.

Ms. Donovan,

My patience has limits. You have exactly two weeks.

—Z

“Great,” I muttered, mentally counting down the days to Feliks’s trial.

“We done? I told my grandma I’d swing by the pharmacy and pick up her meds before they close.”

“Yeah, we’re done. And, Cam,” I said as he turned to go, “next time, just ring the doorbell.”

He winced as a smile stretched his swollen lip. “Sure, Ms. Donovan. Sorry about the gravitas and all.”

I watched Cam limp across my lawn, his long legs disappearing into the hedge that separated my yard from my neighbor’s. On my way inside, I collected the broken glass and tossed it in the bin, waving toward Mrs. Haggerty’s house in case she was watching. Javi’s white panel van was parked in the street in front of my house, the same one he’d been driving the first time I met him, when he and Ramón had driven to West Virginia to help Vero and I break into a storage shed. Vero had been suspiciously tight-lipped about Javi since. All I knew was that he was Ramón’s best friend, he was good at picking locks, and he was the only person who could make Vero angry enough to blush.

When I opened the door to my kitchen, I found him sitting at my table, shoveling into a bowl of leftovers from the pot I’d left cooling on the stove.

“You want me to heat that up for you?” I offered.

He shook his head, his mouth too full to speak. His eyes rolled back, his face a mask of pure ecstasy. “Nah,” he managed between bites, “it’s perfect.”