“It was a few weeks before your father died. Sure you don’t remember?”

Seriously, I wanted to tear my hair out chunk by chunk. Scratch that. I wanted to tear her hair out.

“At the risk of repeating myself”—clenched teeth again—“I do not remember, Nieves.”

She smiled sweetly. “Good thing I transcribed it, then.” She fished a small piece of paper out of her purse. “Here you go.”

I snatched the paper from her with more force than necessary and unfolded it.

Hey, Rock, it’s Reid. A hit’s been put out on Dad. We’re looking into it. Thought you might want to know. Call me.

My eyes popped into circles. The hell?

“You fucking made this up, didn’t you?” I darted knives at Nieves with my eyes.

“No, I didn’t. I swear to God. Look.” She pointed to the paper. “I even wrote down the date and time.”

She had. It was a little over three weeks before the murder.

“Interesting. Except I swear to God I never said any of this, and I’ll be able to prove it easily.”

“Oh? How do you think you’ll do that?”

“Ever heard of phone records? I’ll be able to prove I didn’t call Rock’s landline on that date and time.”

Her lips curved downward slightly, but I wasn’t buying. Nieves Romero wasn’t stupid. Any good mercenary was never stupid. She knew about phone records, so she didn’t invent this little scenario. She actually intercepted the message, which meant someone had impersonated me.

“Too bad you didn’t save the message,” I said. “Then we could easily prove it wasn’t me with voice identification.”

“I’ve heard your voice. It sure sounded like you.”

“You hadn’t heard my voice three weeks ago,” I said. “It’s doubtful you’d recognize the difference between a recorded message that you heard three weeks ago and talking to me in person now.”

She didn’t reply. I was right, and she knew it.

“Why didn’t you tell Rock?” I demanded. “Don’t you think he had the right to know about the message?”

“I was going to tell him,” she said, “but then…”

“Then what?”

“I talked to Leta. And we decided that…”

“For fuck’s sake. You decided to try to make some money off the deal. Am I right?”

She looked down at her place setting. Yeah, I was right.

One thing about a mercenary, you always knew where to find him.

Just follow the money.

“Time to ’fess up,” I said to her. “We know you received a phone call about the murder an hour before it actually happened, so there’s something you’re not telling me.”

She sighed. “How much more is this information worth to you?”

I stood and pulled out my wallet. “You’re seriously trying to get more than the extra nine grand? This meeting is over.”