Chapter Four
Griffin
Tiny’s Bronco rolled to a stop at the curb outside Veda’s building, the headlights catching on peeling paint and the metal railings of the fire escape.
I’d managed about three hours of sleep after talking with Knuckles.
He also told me, once we’d gotten some rest, we were to go to her place, get her shit, and bring her straight back to the fucking compound.
Our president had been on edge when we left, saying he had a bad feeling.
Which meant, everyone was on edge and being careful.
“Keep the engine running,” I told Tiny. He nodded once, understanding. We’d grabbed a cage and driver rather than the bikes. Less noise in the late night.
Veda sat in the back, wedged between me and Diesel, with Inferno in the front.
Diesel had gained his patch a couple months ago and proved to be a solid addition to Kiss of Death thus far.
As for Veda, she’d slept maybe twenty minutes during the drive, her head lolling against my shoulder until we hit a pothole and she jolted awake again.
She’d insisted on going back for the rest of her evidence.
The pen camera had been enough to get Knuckles’ attention, but the ledgers and the laptop she’d mentioned were apparently what she considered the proof tying everything together.
I hadn’t argued, though I’d pointed out the obvious.
If Iron knew she was in that office, he’d send someone to check her place.
“I’m not an idiot,” she’d said, her voice flat. “I knew the kind of danger I walked into when I started this. I keep my stuff well hidden.”
Veda’s place was on the third floor, a walk-up with a stairwell that smelled like cigarettes and cheap air freshener.
The walls were industrial beige, scuffed at shoulder height.
I let Veda lead, keeping her between me and the wall, Diesel a step behind her left shoulder and Inferno on my right.
At two thirty in the morning, the lights were dim, most of the illumination coming from safety lights near the floor several feet apart down the hall.
The first sign something was wrong came on the second floor.
We’d cleared the landing, heading for the final flight of stairs, when we noticed a dark smear on the wall.
Inferno took out a penlight, focusing the beam on the smudge.
Blood trailed down the hallway, ending at the open door of an apartment three doors down from the stairs.
The door hung open on splintered hinges, the frame around the deadbolt cracked. Just inside, an elderly man lay face down in a pool of congealing blood. From the looks of it, he’d been hit in the head and dragged to where he lay now. “That’s my apartment,” Veda whispered. “And my poor neighbor.”
Someone had kicked the door in. The place beyond the doorway was dark, but I could smell the copper reek of fresh blood. Diesel and Inferno moved silently, checking the hallway around the corner in front of us while I kept Veda behind me in the hallway.
Once we were sure no one could sneak up on us, I turned to Veda. “Stay behind me,” I said, my voice low enough she had to lean in to hear. “And if I tell you to run, you run. Understand?” She nodded once, her expression tight with tension.
“They’re waitin’ for us, Griffin,” Inferno whispered.
I nodded, easing my gun from its holster.
As a rule, none of us carried weapons. Given every single member of Kiss of Death had pulled a stint in prison, carrying a weapon was either a parole violation, or a felony by itself.
The last thing I intended to ever do was go back to prison.
Knuckles only made exceptions when he sent us into something hot.
Like tonight. Which told me the level of concern he had about us going into this.
I held the gun down along my leg, out of sight, and leaned close to the door.
I couldn’t hear anything inside, but that didn’t mean the place was empty.
“You said the ledger and the laptop are in the bedroom closet?”
“Yes.” Her voice was steady now. “Behind the shoe rack in a false bottom.”
I nodded again. “Stay behind me until I say otherwise.”
I went in first, gun up and at the ready, Veda half a step behind me.
The place had been torn apart. Drawers lay on the floor, their contents dumped and scattered.
Cushions had been slashed, the stuffing pulled out and tossed.
The kitchen table was overturned. The living room was in shambles.
The television lay shattered on the floor.
No doubt they’d made some noise, but not enough to warrant neighbors calling the cops.
Someone had been looking for something specific, and they’d been thorough.
I checked the apartment -- including her bedroom -- but found no one. Veda moved past me, heading straight for the closet she’d mentioned earlier. She made it to the door and reached for the handle.
I caught the movement from the corner of my eye a half-second too late.
The bathroom door flew open and a man lunged into the hall.
He had a gun at his hip but hadn’t drawn it.
He must have been as reluctant to draw attention as we were because, instead of using his gun, he came out swinging a length of PVC pipe at Veda’s head.
Which told me these weren’t low-level gang members.
I have no idea how I missed him when I gave the apartment the once over, but there was no help for it now.
I threw myself forward, catching the pipe on my forearm instead of letting it connect with her skull.
The impact drove a spike of pain up to my shoulder, but I kept moving, slamming the attacker back into the wall hard enough to put a hole in the drywall.
He grunted, the pipe clattering to the floor, and I wrenched his elbow backward until it popped.
He collapsed, screaming, his arm bent in a direction it shouldn’t bend.
A second man climbed through a window above the kitchen sink.
We were three floors up! How the fuck had he managed?
He picked up a knife from the small counter as he scrambled to the floor.
The guy came at me with the blade held low, aiming for my gut.
I sidestepped, but Diesel was faster. He caught the man from behind, grabbed him by the back of the skull, and slammed his face into the stove.
Once, twice, a third time. Teeth clattered across the linoleum.
The man went limp, blood spraying from his ruined mouth.
Diesel let him drop and stepped back, his face expressionless.
From the hallway came the sound of a short, brutal exchange. A thud, a crack, and then silence.
Inferno appeared in the doorway a moment later, his knuckles bloody, his expression grim. “One in the hall,” he said. “Three total?”
I nodded. “Veda?”
I turned to find her in the bedroom doorway, the laptop bag slung over her shoulder and the ledger pressed to her chest with her free hand.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice trembling slightly but she held her ground. “I got what I came for.”
Behind her, the one Diesel had relieved of his teeth stirred, reaching for something on the floor. A gun. The bastard had a piece tucked in the back of his waistband that must have fallen when I took him down.
I kicked the gun away, and Veda knelt to retrieve it. When she stood, Veda’s eyes went wide as her gaze focused over my shoulder.
I spun, raising my gun, just as a fourth man barged through the entry door from beside me, already lunging with a knife. I barely registered the threat before the bastard was close enough I could smell the cigarettes on his breath. He was going to stab me…
A shot rang out, deafening in the small apartment.
The man’s head snapped back, a spray of blood, bone, and brain painting the wall behind him.
He hit the floor face-first and didn’t move.
I whipped around to see Veda holding the gun in trembling hands, her gaze fixed on the man lying dead in a pool of his own blood in her living room.
“The room’s clear, honey. You can lower the gun.” I tried to project calm. The last thing I needed was her shooting again. There’d already been enough noise to wake the dead.
Inferno spoke softly from behind me. “Knight’s running interference with 9-1-1, but the police will likely be here soon.”
“You hear that, baby? We need to get the hell outta Dodge.”
Her hands shook, the gun barrel trembling.
She held it for a couple more seconds, before it finally clattered to the floor from her limp fingers.
Diesel bent to pick up the gun slowly as Veda spun away from me.
She staggered to the sink and vomited, her body heaving with each retch.
I followed, standing behind her, and pulled her hair aside.
I held it there without saying a word. She trembled under my touch as I rubbed her back up and down, trying to soothe her.
Inferno lingered in the doorway, took in the scene, then slid back into the hall.
I heard the creak of the fire escape as he climbed out, probably to check the street below and call in someone to clean the mess.
Diesel pulled a tarp from the backpack strapped to him and covered the guy Veda had shot.
The guy from the hall was clearly dead, his neck bent at an impossible angle, likely Inferno’s work.
Diesel pulled the body inside to lie with the first guy and covered him as well.
The man with the broken elbow had finally passed out, his head lolling against his chest.
When Veda straightened and wiped her mouth, she still gripped the ledger and wore the laptop bag over her shoulder. She hadn’t dropped either one, even when she threw up. Her hand was streaked with blood from the cut on her palm, the bandage I’d put on it at the compound now hanging loose.
“I killed him,” she said, her voice hollow.
I nodded. “He would’ve killed me if you hadn’t. Or you.”
“I’ve never…” She shook her head, then glanced at the body on the floor. “Is he really dead?”
“Yeah, honey.”
“Don’t you need to check or something?” She looked up at me with wide, glassy eyes. I wanted to agree with her, apologize, then go make a pretense of checking, but the fact was, we didn’t have time.
“No. You did exactly what you should have done when you realized you had to shoot someone.”
“What’s that?”
I leveled a look on her which I hoped conveyed my next words. “You shoot to kill. Never pull a gun unless you intend to use it. If you intend to use it, you should intend to kill what you’re trying to hit. Doesn’t mean you always manage to make the kill, but at least you’ll have a fighting chance.”
She closed her eyes, swayed slightly, and I caught her arm to steady her. “I need to get out of here.”
“We’ve got maybe ten minutes before someone else calls the cops,” Diesel said. “Maybe less.”
I nodded. “Get the one with the busted elbow into the Bronco. We’ll see what he knows, then decide what to do with him.”
“What about the others?”
“Leave them. Tell Knuckles so he can make sure to put cops he fully trusts in the area near her apartment until someone can clean it.”
Diesel nodded and hefted the man in a fireman’s carry then headed to the door.
I snagged Veda’s hand and we headed out. “Let’s go.”
The man she’d shot still lay where he’d fallen, the knife beside his outstretched hand. Veda’s eyes fixed on him for a long moment.
“He deserved it,” I said.
“I know.” She didn’t look away. “That doesn’t make it easier.”
“No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t.”
We took the stairs. Inferno waited at the exit, his gaze on the street.
Tiny kept the Bronco’s engine running, even as he helped Diesel with the bastard we intended to take back to the compound to question.
Diesel and Tiny secured him with zip ties.
The guy didn’t move or cry out which meant he was still unconscious.
We all loaded into the Bronco. I pulled Veda close, my arm tightly around her. She turned her face into my chest as Tiny pulled away from the curb without turning on the headlights.
Nobody spoke for several blocks. Veda still had her arms wrapped around the laptop bag. The cut on her palm had started bleeding again, a thin line of red trailing down her wrist.
“We’ll get Pain to look at your hand,” I said. “He can check the scrapes on your face too.”
She glanced down and seemed surprised to see the blood. “It’s nothing.”
“It’ll get infected.”
She shrugged. “I’ve had worse.” The Bronco hit a pothole, jolting all of us. Veda sat back, turning her head to look out the window.
“We’ll be at the compound in twenty,” I said. “Knuckles will want to see what you’ve got.”
She nodded, then turned to look at me. In the dim light from the dash, her eyes looked almost black. “What happens after that?”
“Depends on what you’ve got.”
She was quiet for a moment, her jaw working. Then, “If I give you everything, what happens to my sister? Because I’m not stupid enough to think I’m going to get anywhere with the cops, and I can’t help her by myself.”
I didn’t have an answer, not one she’d want to hear.
“I can’t promise you we’ll find her, Veda.
But I promise we will do everything in our power to find her.
I can’t speak for Knuckles, but I can speak for myself.
” I held her gaze, needing her to know I meant what I said.
“I will help you with every resource I have at my disposal.”
She held my gaze a moment longer, then nodded once and turned back to the window.
The city slid past outside, streetlights and storefronts and the occasional late-night pedestrian, all of them oblivious to the violence we’d left behind.
In the front seat, Tiny and Diesel talked in low voices, the radio turned down to a murmur.
Inferno, in the very back with our prisoner, had his eyes closed, his head tipped back against the side of the vehicle. I knew he wasn’t sleeping.
Veda’s hand found mine in the darkness between us, her fingers cold against my palm. She didn’t look at me, didn’t say anything, just held on as the Bronco carried us deeper into the night.