So he stopped by the store for three raspberry vodka minis and two energy drinks. He downed the whole mixed potion fast, like medicine. The polluted buzz would be just near enough to not giving a rat’s ass anymore. It would let him get things done.

He took out his stopwatch and got what he’d say down to sixteen seconds, even with a lot of pleases and thank-yous. He nudged his finger through the loose change in the cup holder to see if he had any quarters. He’d leave one for John so he’d know they needed to talk.

CHAPTER SIX

John had firsthand experience with the run-and-hide reflex. He knew what it took. Everyone thought it was the go-to move when things fell apart, but that was only for people who’d never actually had anything truly fall apart. It wasn’t just a response. It was a commitment. Evaporating out of the twenty-first century wasn’t easy.

Jonathan Spera had found an old painting. That bit of good luck met three things: a gap in his knowledge, a gorgeous art dealer, and an idiot called Roy Dorring. These ingredients, when blended together too fast, made a disaster that, at first, looked like easy money.

Jonathan Spera’s mistake had been in thinking he could unmix the batter and rethink the recipe after the oven door was closed.

He’d offered Roy $5,000 to scuttle the sale. Five thousand dollars was ten times more money than that witless weed had ever had to his name at any given time. If Roy had just shown up and disrupted the meeting, just enough for Jonathan to back out so he could rethink and renegotiate without Marcelline, he would’ve gotten paid.

But that’s not what Roy did. Roy had shot two men in a panicked sort of on purpose—and Marcelline entirely by accident.

That night, after the gunfire, Jonathan had escaped with more than he’d intended to. The cash was a lucky stroke, but no one was supposed to get hurt except maybe Roy.

No one giving chase knew who Jonathan was. They didn’t know where he lived or worked. They didn’t know how to contact him. They didn’t know his last name.

So he could use his credit cards. He did use his credit cards. He’d used them to get off the street and watch from a hotel room’s television all that next day to see if anything would rise to the level of the local news from the mess he’d left.

But there was nothing. It was as if it hadn’t happened. And it wasn’t even a little bit reassuring. All it made him know for certain was that the people he was dealing with could make a bloody, noisy open-air firefight vanish, and a parking lot littered with dead bodies somehow unnewsworthy.