Chapter Thirty-Seven
TIG
I knew she didn’t get it.
She had settled in, whether she realized it or not.
Her shit was all through my apartment. Her clothes were in my closet, her sketch pads on my coffee table, her favorite foods in my cabinets.
There was even a giant crock pot on my counter because it was apparently un-fucking-acceptable for a working professional not to have one.
For the first two or three days, she worked day and night to try to tie up any loose ends that could have been found by Cassie.
There were endless calls and trips to the hardware store and lists that she meticulously crossed off.
It was equal parts impressive and upsetting.
Impressive because I got to see Kenzi in full work mode, and that shit was relentless, high-energy, diligent, hardass, and confident.
In my opinion, there was nothing sexier than a woman in her zone, doing her thing, being passionate about something.
But it was upsetting because she should never have needed to do all those things, because that backstabbing ex-friend of hers shouldn’t have been breathing free to fuck with her life any more than she already had.
Cassie and Santi had abandoned their apartment, which the lease was conveniently up on that very month. There was nothing left behind, no forwarding address, no change of address on their DMV records. They were ghosts.
And because I knew enough about Cass and Santi to know that they weren’t exactly geniuses, I figured that they had help disappearing. That help must have been the same help that allowed them to pull off a fake kidnapping and ransom deal without a trace.
If he knew where they were, then I needed to find him and get that information out of him by any means necessary.
Kenz didn’t get it.
And I really didn’t expect her to.
I guess it came down to protectiveness and pride.
I needed to know I could take care of my woman, that she could always sleep easy, that nothing could touch her.
And being who I was, doing what I did, I had a lot of pull in town to make sure everyone knew she was my woman and that even ruffling her goddamn hair or scuffing her nice shoes would have my ass darkening your door.
So I knew she was good ninety-nine percent of the time, even when I wasn’t by her side.
But that one percent, that one possible unforeseen circumstance of her greedy friend making more trouble, it had been keeping me up at night.
Did I think she or her man meant Kenz any physical harm? No. But they had the power to fuck with her store which was her heart and soul. It was almost as bad.
So it had to be handled.
“Anything I need to know about this Joshua guy?”
“Aside from the fact that he’s an arrogant prick?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, Al, aside from that.”
“He’s a fantastic liar, a greedy asshole, and he thinks nothing can touch him.”
“No actual skills, though? No training?”
To that, her lips tipped up. “That would mean scuffing his nice shoes.”
“Got it,” I agreed as we finally turned into Chicago.
His official records led to a small apartment over a bodega that was definitely not his residence, as evidenced by the fact that the inside had nothing but a desk and a trash bin. Which was empty because he was smart like that.
“Alright, Al, you know him best; where might he be?”
“Well, I don’t know anything about Chicago, but he’s likely in some pretentious hipster café, using their free Wi-Fi, hitting on girls, and pretending he’s a lot more important than he is.”
“Well, that narrows it down to about… every coffee shop in the city. But let’s assume it is either in this neighborhood or one near his affiliations,” Janie suggested.
So then we spent the next two hours in and out of coffee shops.
“Wait,” Alex said, slamming a hand into my chest as we rounded the last coffee shop on one particular street, one that was both in the neighborhood of his fake apartment and on the border of his boss’ territory.
“That’s him,” she said, nodding her chin to a corner in the back where a guy was sitting at one of the reclaimed wood tables, tapping on a giant laptop with a half-gone cold coffee concoction, a cell, and a notebook.
He was a good-looking guy who happened to have a scar through his eyebrow that cut down his upper eyelid and stopped right above his cheekbone.
From what I understood, it was from the basement at Lex Keith’s place that Janie had blown up.
He had bright green eyes and classically handsome bone structure.
Dressed in a suit, too. In the middle of the day when he wasn’t a businessman at all.
There was a cane leaning against the table.
“Okay, let’s…” I started, but Alex, being Alex, was already moving in.
Janie gave me a shrug and followed, leaving me to go or stand like an idiot on the sidewalk. So then we all crowded him at once, so fast that he didn’t even see us coming. Janie and Alex slid in on each side of him, and I moved across, blocking any chance of escape.
His head shot up, brows drawn together, confused. His eyes found me first before he turned to Janie.
“Told you that leg was fucked up,” she told him, giving him a saccharine smile.
Then his face fell, likely with dread filling his system because he, no doubt, had found out who Janie was after he came across her that night, after she saved his life.
Janie AKA Jstorm AKA one of the baddest bitches in the whole of the United States.
Mixed martial arts instructor. Bomb maker.
Hailstorm’s favorite daughter. Biker old lady.
He took a deep breath as his head turned much more slowly to his left to see Alex.
“Josh!” she said, a fake smile in place, using a name she knew he hated. “Long time no see! Though, not nearly long enough for my taste.”
“Alex,” he said, his brows furrowing further. “What are you doing here?”
“So, you know how Navesink Bank is, right? Of course you do,” she rushed on, waving a hand to hold his attention while Janie grabbed his cell and started working on it.
“It’s one great clusterfuck of criminal activity.
And all us criminals know each other. So that means my man is best friends with this guy named Paine.
Paine, well, he has a little sister. Know what her name is? ”
“I’m assuming you are going to tell me,” he said, attempting to sound bored but failing.
“Kenzi,” she said, her smile turning wicked when she saw the realization dawn on him. “And Kenzi had this selfish, lying bitch as a business partner and best friend who suddenly went missing and then got fake killed on camera.”
“Crazy shit,” Joshua muttered, his eyes slanting toward me for a second.
“Oh, don’t mind him. He’s just an ex-contract killer and current private investigator. Oh, and Kenzi’s boyfriend.”
“Look, I don’t know what you think…”
“See, Josh. Here’s the difference between you and me.
Back when I first started out, you were probably the best I knew.
Maybe one of the best out there. And you treated me like shit because of that.
But the problem with once being the best is, you don’t really think you need to keep trying, keep learning.
Which, eventually, means someone is going to surpass you.
In this case, me. You fucked up, Josh. Let your pride rule what was, otherwise, a perfect job.
Absolutely flawless. We couldn’t trace shit.
I mean the Tor, the anonymous upload site, the fake email addresses, the public Wi-Fi, the Bitcoin angle, the washer.
Beautiful, really, congratulations on that. ”
“And yet you’re here.”
“You fucking signed the code!” she accused, scoffing and reaching up to run a hand through her shoulder-length brown hair.
“How amateur is that? I mean on any other job, fine. But a job in Navesink Bank? With me, Janie, L, and Barrett all living there, all likely brought in on the case? That was completely careless.”
“You’ve gotten good if you found that,” he said, tilting his head to the side, looking reasonably impressed.
“I was always good. Now, I’m just top of my game.”
“And now what?” Joshua asked, looking around for the first time and finding Janie rifling through his phone. “How did you…”
“You use your dark web signature as your passcode,” Janie said, not looking up. “Idiot,” she added, scrolling through something.
Finding no answers with them, his gaze fell on me.
“You are going to give up those shitheads in the video. I don’t want to hear that you don’t know where they are. Smart guy like you has those kinds of details.”
“So you’re going to get them arrested? Seriously?” he asked, turning to Alex, then Janie. “Don’t think I don’t know all the illegal shit you guys do. Al… Jstorm… come the fuck on. You’re going to put them away?”
“They hurt my friend,” Alex said. “And since I don’t kill people, and Breaker won’t put his hands on a woman, the next best option is to have them behind bars. Why don’t you ask what you really want to know?”
His chin lifted slightly. And I could see the cockiness Alex had mentioned. “Fine. What do you plan to do about me?”
Alex looked at me, seeking answers. She seemed to find them too. “Turn you in too. This case eventually went through the NBPD. They’re not exactly happy about being chickens with their heads chopped off either.”
“So this hulking guy isn’t going to snap my neck if I come with you?” he asked, waving a hand at me.
He wasn’t worried about being brought in to the cops.
Which made sense. I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when we turned him over.
He was too skilled to sit in a cell. Cops were always on the lookout for talent in computers.
They would take him, turn him, have him working for them.
Granted, he wouldn’t like it in the least. He didn’t strike me as the kind who liked to work with others, let alone take orders on a daily basis at some bullshit nine to five.
But that was better than dead.
And, I imagined, he would eventually get himself out of it anyway.
But I tried, as much as possible, to do things by the book. I didn’t kill unless it was in self-defense. I wanted the situation handled, for Kenz, for our future, but I wanted to do it legally.
“I mean, I wouldn’t piss him off,” Alex shrugged. “But if you keep your mouth shut from here to the NBPD station, you should be able to keep all your appendages.”
With that, Alex took his laptop, Janie kept his phone, and I put an arm around his shoulders as he grabbed his cane and headed out with us.
It was a long fucking drive back to Jersey, with Alex and Joshua taking jabs at each other, obviously having a lot of history and a lot of hurt feelings.
There was a long, hour-long dragged-out fight over some guy they both used to know.
The gist of it was that Joshua got him killed.
And that was the real root of Alex’s hatred of him.
When we pulled up out front of the NBPD, I was never so happy to hand over a perp to them before in my life, along with his electronics that would implicate him in the whole thing and the addresses for Cassie and Santi.
They had, stupidly, not even had the brains to skip clear across the country.
No, they were holed up in some place in Brooklyn so Cass could work on her acting career and Santi could try to work his way up in the mob. Of all things.
They weren’t trying to live large. They were trying to make a life that had their own dreams, as weird as they may have seemed in Santi’s case.
The sad thing was, they didn’t have to dick over Kenzi to have that.
Hell, with her level of loyalty, Kenz might have given her the money to start over if she had asked.
She was a woman who understood the importance of dreams and goals.
She also felt she owed a lot to Cass for helping her get Luxe on its feet.
But they chose to go about their transitions in life by fucking over good people, people who loved them.
For that, they wouldn’t get the chance to do that. At least not for five to fifteen years, depending on how much the jury disliked them.
Cassie, well, she would get less. She was a good actress, and she had no problems screwing people over. She would throw Santi under the bus and get five, getting out on three with good behavior.
Three years, and I would have to start watching her again, making sure her moves were on the straight and narrow.
But a lot could change in three years.
So I wasn’t going to worry about that until it came to pass.
I was going to go home and finally get to enjoy my woman with nothing in between us anymore.