Chapter 2
ROWAN
I check my watch for the time and notice the teal faux-leather wristband is starting to peel. Have to replace it soon. “Let’s hurry this up, I’m supposed to get Elisa in half an hour,” I call across the hood of the Jeep to Ben.
“Hold up, you’re picking up El and meeting Juliet? That’s cold.”
“Did I ask for your input, Benjamin?”
Merrick snorts. He always does when I break out “Benjamin.” I don’t know what’s funny about it, but he’s a pretty simple guy. “You sound like his mom.”
As I come around the car, I knock my shoulder into his. “My child would be much more handsome than this ugly motherfucker.”
“Douchebag!” Ben says, but it’s with a smile.
“Hey, Gallagher’s right there.” Merrick hitches his chin at a tall, gangly man in a Red Sox cap, standing at the top of an alleyway between two dilapidated brick buildings. Fucking Dorchester. What a cesspool.
“Stay here,” I tell him. This could get messy and it’s not his job to clean it up. Ben’s the one on my payroll. I yell out, “Yo, Gallagher! Just the man I was coming to find.” The instant he clocks me, he takes off running down the alley. He’s really going to make me do cardio right now? Fine. I kick it into high gear. Ben takes his cue from me and overtakes me almost instantly.
“Where you think you’re going?” he asks. He reaches out, grabs a fistful of Gallagher’s t-shirt, and yanks him backward—hard. I catch up to them in time to hear Gallagher making a choking sound, then move around him so I can look him in the eye.
I flick the brim of his grimy-ass cap and it rides up his forehead. “I’m only going to ask this once: Where’s my money?” He doesn’t have it. I know because he’s terrified. I know he’s terrified because his pupils are dilated to the size of quarters; he’s a smackhead, his pupils are pinpricks most of the time.
“I have some but not all of it.”
That’s fair. Five grand is a lot to ask for from a middleman who uses more dope than he sells. “How much do you have?”
“Fif—fifteen hundred, maybe.”
“Oh, Gallagher. My dad isn’t going to be happy about this. You’ve owed him for too long.” I take a glance around the alley. Propped against the building beside me, I find a rusty pipe with an elbow socket threaded to its end. I pick it up, give it a solid swing. It splits the air, sounding like a breath blown across the mouth of a glass bottle. “You like your kneecaps, right?”
The fear in his eyes spreads to the rest of his features. “Yeah.”
“That’s what I thought. So, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to give me fifteen hundred dollars right now, and I’m going to give you until next week to come up with the other thirty-five hundred. If you don’t, this pipe is going to become very well acquainted with the kneecaps you like so much. Do you understand me?”
If he were to piss his pants, I wouldn’t be surprised. “Yes, I understand.”
That’s enough intimidation for one night. I don’t like the taste of it. I drop the pipe. It clangs against the concrete, rolling across the alleyway until it meets the foundation of an apartment building. I give his shoulder a light punch. “Good man. Hand over the cash.”
He digs into his left pocket, then his right, and produces two fat wads of crumpled bills. I should count it, but I have more important shit to do. “Let him go, Ben.”
Ben releases his hold on his shirt. “Better run and find yourself a job.”
He bolts with such speed, it’s as if he sprouted wings out of his ass. When he’s gone, Ben turns to me. “You can be really fucking terrifying sometimes.”
Ha. “Thanks.”
“So… Rapunzel’s letting her hair down for you tonight?” he wonders as we head back to the car.
That’s an inaccurate description of Jules. Essentially, she is a captive. But she wasn’t kidnapped by a wicked witch; she’s the seed of Voldemort. “If Calloway lets her out, yeah.”
“Didn’t her ‘bodyguard’ almost bust you two at the bar last week?”
“That was last week.”
“You like living dangerously. Too dangerously.”
He’s not wrong there.
“Shotgun!” Merrick calls to Ben as we hit the top of the alley.
“Until we get El. Then your ass is in the backseat,” I reply. “Manners.”
“Right. Manners. Of course, manners.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Get in the car, wiseass, or forget riding shotgun, I’ll strap you to the roof.”