Chapter 16

"Nicole? Are you still there?" Kent sounds like he's asked this a couple of times, and his voice sounds impatient. I shake myself from where I'm standing at my hotel window, staring through the dingy gray curtains out onto an even dingier gray street.

"Sorry," I say. "I'm here. I'm just – well, Kent, I'm really freaking terrified."

Kent's voice softens immediately.

"I know, Nick," he says. His tone becomes low, soothing, steady. I latch onto it, letting it ground me. "Trust me, this is big, and I'd be scared shitless if I were you, too."

"Gee, that makes me feel better," I say, trying to make a joke of it. Kent laughs, softly and kindly.

"It should," he says. "Look, Nicole, you'd be an idiot if you weren't scared. I'm scared. I'd feel a lot less confident in this plan if you weren't feeling scared."

"Really?" I ask, wrapping my worn wool cardigan more tightly around myself. The light in my hotel room is dim, the walls bleak and cheerless. Everything around me is colorless, just like my mood. My hope.

"Yes, really," he says. "If you're not afraid, that's when you fuck up. People who aren't scared are cocky, too full of themselves. Think it can't go wrong, so they aren't careful. And what we're gonna pull off requires a lot of care."

I take a deep breath, steadying myself.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay," Kent repeats. "Now, I'll be at your hotel in about half an hour. Close the curtains, sit tight, and don't answer your phone to anybody else. We don't want to give the game away."

True to his word, Kent knocks on my hotel room door exactly 30 minutes later. I peer through the peephole before opening the deadbolt and cracking the door. Kent slides inside after checking behind himself in the hallway.

"Good," he says, striding over to my battered table and pulling up a seat. "I wasn't followed here, I'd stake my life on it. They have no idea that we know."

"You know they're planting the drugs today, then?" I ask.

"Yep. They're doing it tonight. What we're going to do is order some takeout Chinese and hang tight here until my guy calls me to tell me the deed is done. Then we can get this plan in gear."

"I don't think I could possibly eat," I say. "I feel like I'm going to throw up, actually."

Kent stands, crosses the room toward me. He puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

"Nick, it's gonna be okay. We've got this planned down to the smallest detail, every contingency accounted for. Now, I'm gonna flick on this TV and order us some Chinese, and by the end of the night, you're gonna be free. Trust me."

Impulsively, I lean in and give Kent a hug. He huffs in surprise, but gives me a firm squeeze before leaning back and smiling at me.

"You're gonna be okay. We've got this."

"How did you get Andrea to agree to this plan, anyway?" I ask, scraping the last bites of sweet and sour chicken from a folded takeout carton. Kent laughs, wiping his hands on a towel from my bathroom.

"Called in a favor," he says. "And you're gonna owe me one after all this. I could've used that favor for a lot of things, but I spent it on you." He grins at me to show he's just kidding. I smile back – Kent is becoming a pretty good friend.

Andrea is one of Kent's contacts. I've only met her once, and she's terrifying. She's about my height, with a black bob and fierce, dark eyes. She dresses head to toe in leather and carries some kind of steel baton at her hip.

I wouldn't mess with her, and I bet nobody else would, either. Not if they have half a brain.

We were all standing in the parking lot behind my hotel, a few days ago, with Kent keeping an eye on our surroundings to make sure we weren't being watched.

Andrea had looked me up and down a few times with a grim look on her face, then nodded decisively, as if she'd been having an internal argument with herself and had abruptly settled it once and for all.

"It'll work," she said to Kent. "This the car?" She gestured toward my new – well, new to me – car, a little Volkswagon Beetle that I was pretty damn fond of. I'd be sorry to see it go. Kent promised me a brand-new one, after all this was over.

"Yep," he said. "We wanted something recognizable, so nobody can try to claim it isn't her car after the whole thing is said and done."

"Smart," Andrea said approvingly, like she was surprised that Kent would have such foresight. "Call me when it's time." She'd strode out of the parking lot into the night.

"Kent, can I ask you something?" I say now, setting my food aside. Kent looks up, curious.

"Is Andrea, um, human?" I ask. The question feels silly. I know werewolves exist, but I haven't thought to wonder if there were other non-human creatures out among us. Andrea's not a werewolf, but I doubt she's human, either.

Kent grins. "Honey, you really don't want me to answer that," he says. Just then, his phone chimes. He checks his messages.

"Damn," he says. "Okay, Nick, it's go time."

Charles's plan is simple: his people have planted the drugs in my car, and they're waiting until I next get into it to call the police and tip them off that the ex-con drug dealer is driving off with a huge stash stuffed in her trunk.

Our plan is to disrupt Charles's plan, without him knowing it.

Andrea gives me a once-over in my hotel room, having materialized outside my door mere minutes after Kent gave her the call. She takes my purse from me and double-checks that it has all the important identifying information in it: wallet, license, etc.

"Perfect," she says. She looks up and gives me a toothy grin. "Let's do this, babe."

I watch from the hotel window as Andrea takes off in my car, squealing the tires out of the parking lot like she's already being chased by the police. I swear I can see her laughing maniacally as she zooms off.

"Lunatic," Kent says fondly, coming up to stand beside me. "She gets off on this. Now we just have to wait."

A few hours later, the breaking news report comes in on the TV that Kent and I have left running in the background:

Former surgeon and ex-convict Nicole Hardy, who was recently released from prison following a drug conviction, was killed in a high-speed police chase this evening after a tip-off came that she was transporting a large amount of cocaine in her car.

Hardy's attempts to evade police led her to run a red light through an intersection, where her vehicle was struck by an oncoming car. The force pushed Hardy's vehicle over the edge of a steep bank, where it rolled several times before lighting on fire at the bottom.

Hardy's body was severely damaged in the fire, but identifying documents found in her purse indicate that she was the driver, and CCTV captured images of her face moments before the accident. No drugs have yet been discovered in the wrecked vehicle.

No one else was injured in the accident.