“Come on,” Frank snorted. “Neither of us could give a shit about Nate, and you know it. He hadn’t been bringing in anything but trouble for years.” Frank patted his pocket. “And I told you. I’m done talking.”

Frank slammed the door and started across the street. Rick watched him step up to one of the restaurant’s massive windows and press his face to the plate glass. Were it not for the expensive cut of his coat and the patent leather loafers on his feet, someone might think he was trying to rob the place.

He turned around and waved frantically for Rick to join him. A curse escaped Rick’s lips. It hung in the air, a cloud of hot breath carrying his bad language. Frank had seen something in that window—maybe the man himself.

Rick climbed out of the Porsche’s low bucket seat and onto the sidewalk. Before he slammed the door, he glanced inside for the key. It would be like his partner to jump out, leave it inside, and then blame him for getting an eighty-thousand-dollar sports car stolen and stripped for parts.

He didn’t see a fob in the console. Rick raised his hand and waved until he got Frank’s attention. He pressed his fingers together and jiggled his wrist, communicating his question without shouting.

Frank patted his other coat pocket and then tossed his hand in the air, perhaps telling him to forget it or, maybe, to kiss off. He started toward the alley.

Rick shut the door and hustled to catch up. “You saw him?” The question came out in a theatrical stage whisper. Though Rick didn’t want this confrontation to occur, he definitely didn’t want to tip anyone off that it might happen.

“I’m telling you, he couldn’t have gotten past us.” Frank rounded the building’s corner, disappearing into the alley.

Rick peered inside before following. The space was lit by the streetlamp and a floodlight over the restaurant’s side door. As Frank had said, there were dumpsters, though they were pressed against the other side of the alley, not against the back wall that turned the alley into a dead end.

Frank stood at the restaurant’s side door, gloved hand wrapped around the knob. He jostled it aggressively.

The door didn’t budge.

Rick felt his shoulders lower. “He locked up and went home.”

Frank paced back and forth beneath the light, a lion in a spot-lit pen. “What is he, a damn magician?” Frank pointed at the wall. “You think he scaled that thing?”

The barrier was only about six feet high. Rick imagined that an extremely fit man could reach the top and pull himself over. The easier way would be to push over the dumpster, climb on top, and then amble over the wall, but the dumpster’s position indicated that it hadn’t been commandeered as a stepstool.