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Monster Truck up onto the lift to work on the rattle in the driveshaft, but her cell phone rang. She grabbed it.
    “Yeah?”
    “Roxy?”
    She recognized the voice of Trey Hyde, slippery youngest brother of Julius. Although it was a surprise to hear from yet another Hyde in the same night, she said, “Long time, no see, Trey. You gonna steal from me again?”
    “I thought you made me a loan.” Trey laughed musically. “For cab fare to get to the airport. Didn’t I pay you back?”
    “You will,” she said. “One way or another.”
    “How about another?” he said just as playfully. “Can we get together? We could talk about economic Darwinism again. Or just—you know. Screw around. My place?”
    Roxy knew all she needed to know about Darwin and the strong devouring the weak. Hang up on a jerk? Or let him satisfy the urge that had been building inside her all day?
    She said, “I’ll see you in half an hour.”
    When she clipped the phone shut, Nooch was chewing on an already ragged fingernail. “I know that look on your face,” he said. “Are you going to do something that’ll send you to confession?”
    “I’ll take you home first.”
    Suddenly it was raining like hell. Typical for October—balmy one minute, then blowing sleet the next. Tonight, the rain pounded down hard, washing grit from the streets. Roxy drove Nooch home with the wipers clacking on the truck’s windshield.
    Fifteen minutes after Trey’s call, she arrived at a former riverside factory that had been converted into lofts for the city’s young elite. Thomas Xavier Hyde—Trey to those who associated with him—kept one of the lofts for when he returned to Pittsburgh.
    Trey spent most of his time in the Caribbean doing modern-day treasure hunting. With sonar, radar, and Inspector Gadget wizardry, his expedition team looked for sunken pirate ships and the Spanish gold they’d taken down with them in hurricanes. More accurately, Trey paid for the gadgets and stayed onshore with various American girls gone wild while others did the grunt work.
    Whenever Trey did give up the fun and sun to come home, it was for the purpose of wheedling more money from his mother to pay for the next expedition. Hunting for another long-lost man-of-war seemed to need so much cash up front, Roxy often wondered why Trey didn’t just take the dough from his family and forget about using the million-dollar vacuum cleaner to suck gold ingots and brass cannons from the ocean floor.
    But everybody, she supposed, needed a hobby—especially the loser third son of a powerful family.
    Roxy slipped past the doorman and rode the elevator to the fifth floor. Shaking the rainwater from her hair, she walked down a long hallway to the last unit.
    Trey must have been pacing inside the loft and checking the peephole, because the door suddenly opened and the Pirate of the Caribbean seized her arm to pull her inside. He snapped shut his cell phone and tried to kiss her.
    Roxy fended him off with a stiff-armed block to the shoulder that sent him glancing off the doorjamb. “Down, boy. Save the mushy stuff.”
    “Sorry. I forgot.” Grinning, he closed the door and dropped his cell phone on a pedestal by the door. “It’s always your rules. Great sex and no declarations of undying love.”
    “Just the way you like it, too.” She put out one hand, palm up. “Before we get to the main event, I want the hundred bucks you stole from me.”
    “There was less than twenty in the pocket of your jeans!”
    She wiggled her fingertips. “You owe me for pain and suffering. I’ll settle for an even C-note.”
    He dug out a gold money clip in the shape of a shark, peeled off a hundred-dollar bill, and slapped it into her hand. He added a few more bills with a flourish. “There. Forgive?”
    “Sucking crap off the bottom of the ocean must be more profitable than it used to be.” She gave back the tip and kept the hundred.
    “It could always be better.” Trey leaned back against