Lethal Love novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Bluff

The door shut behind me.

Somebody turned the lock.

"Where is she?" I said.

"Sit down. Have a coffee. You look like you've been up three days."

"I know. Seventy-two hours." He shook his head admiringly. "My cousin told me."

Gennaro slid off the stool and walked to the beaded curtain.

He held it open for me.

Oakley was in the back room, tied to the chair.

Her head came up, and her eyes went huge.

"No," she said. "No, no, Jemma, why did you come?"

"You've got my sketchbook," I said.

Two men stood against the paneled wall.

One of them had Oakley's shoe box under his arm.

Gennaro took it from him and set it on a card table and lifted the lid.

Twenty-eight thousand dollars in hem money, still in Gran's rubber bands.

"She had this on her," he said. "And this."

He picked my sketchbook up off the floor and brushed the dust off its cover with his big hand.

He held it out to me.

I took it.

"Now," Gennaro said. "Here's my problem, kid."

He sat down on the edge of the card table.

"This girl walked my baby cousin into a garage. You know that. She told you that."

"She told me a man her father knew paid her."

"Did she say a name?"

"No," Oakley said, too fast. "I didn't. I swear to God I didn't."

Gennaro didn't look at her.

"Did she say a name, Jemma?"

There it was.

That was why the photo had come to me and not to Dom.

He needed to know what was in my head, so he'd know whether he needed two chairs.

"She said a lot," I said. "I recorded it."

The room went still.

"On my phone. Friday night, in my kitchen, every word."

I made my chin stay down. "It's not on the phone anymore. Somebody has it. If I don't call them by midnight, it posts."

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