Free Sins of the Father by Christa Faust Page A

little sleep, up way too early and glowering at the noisy and seemingly pointless construction as he stood on the street and tried to get his head together. It wasn’t quite raining—more like a foggy drift of floating moisture that clung to his hair and shirt, and made him feel like he was inside a cold humidifier.
    When Micki Rose finally showed, she announced her presence by pretending to rabbit punch him in the back of the neck.
    “Walk with me,” she said, heading off down Princes Street without waiting to see if he would follow. Even though she was a foot shorter than he was, he still had to walk fast to catch up to her.
    She was a scrappy little spitfire, barely a hundred pounds and built like a twelve-year-old boy. She dressed like one, too, favoring expensive trainers, loose-fitting track pants, and video-game T-shirts that easily disguised whatever deadly weapons she inevitably was packing. At thirty, she still looked underage, and took full advantage of it. With her natural-blond ponytail, big, wide-set blue eyes, and upturned button nose decorated with a delicate spray of freckles, she was the dictionary definition of cute.
    On the outside, anyway.
    Micki had the words Schemie Girl tattooed in Old English lettering arching across her hollow belly, a local phrase Peter didn’t completely understand. At first he thought it might be slang for a con artist, but discovered that it meant something more like “hood rat” or “white trash.” She showed this tattoo often, with a kind of defiant pride. But trash or not, she was hands down one of the smartest operators Peter had ever met. Razor sharp and utterly fearless. Ballsy, but never reckless or impulsive.
    Her scams always paid off, and paid off big. But if someone crossed her or got in the way of her score, she’d take them out without a second thought.
    He would never act on it, or even admit it, but he had developed a serious crush on Micki. She certainly wasn’t his type, physically, but there was something about her cold, ruthless brilliance that attracted him like a cat to a laser pointer. He could never resist her games.
    “This is the setup, right,” she said as soon as Peter caught up with her. “Been working this politician, a real pillar of the community by the name of Stephen Keith. Word is he likes ’em young and flat as pavement, so I reckon I’d better investigate. Find out firsthand, like. I was thinking straight-up blackmail, but then I learn that he’s got a piece of a bantamweight champion called Lucky Munro. A big piece. So…”
    “So you snap some candid shots of Mr. Pillar-of-the-Community,” Peter said, swiftly catching on. “Use them to lean on him to have his boy throw the fight, and then clean up on an underdog bet.”
    “Close,” she said. “Only it’ll be video, not stills—and you’ll be the one doing the filming. I’ll be too busy being the star. Then, see, we each put down twenty-five thousand euros, and make it back times ten, easy. I take a ten-percent finder’s fee off the top, naturally, but the rest is yours to walk away with. Only no one else can know about this fix, and I mean no one . If word starts getting around, it’ll skew our odds, and then where will we be?”
    “Where indeed?” Peter agreed.
    “So.” She stopped short, looking up at him with a sharp, appraising gaze. “You in?”
    It sounded like a sweet setup. A sure thing. He knew it would be, too, because he’d known Micki for years and she’d never, ever laid a bet that hadn’t paid off. She was too careful. Too thorough. Every contingency planned for, and every angle covered.
    There was just one problem.
    Peter didn’t have twenty-five large in his hip pocket. It had been a real lean stretch, and it would be tough to scrape together twenty-five hundred on his own. But he knew a way to get it.
    Normally he wouldn’t even consider borrowing money from someone like Big Eddie Guthrie. But on a sure thing like this, he could turn the