Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
“ I ris Milner?” Surprised, I let go of Leonard’s arm, and he shook out his hand, opening and closing his fingers. “What happened to Silas Milner?”
“I don’t know. He’s been gone years now. Some people said he’s dead, some just said he retired.” Leonard tried to shrug, but Cassander’s arm pressed down on his shoulder, and he couldn’t manage it. “Florida or something.”
Cassander’s gaze was heavy; I could feel it over Leonard’s head. Cassander asked his questions like silence was its own language and my Duolingo subscription had lapsed.
“Silas Milner runs most of the crime in this town. He ran all the gangs and motorcycle clubs that don’t answer to him out of the city.” Which left him with two separate MCs that answered to him, as well as his own gang of petty criminals. It was rare that they operated anything in town, preferring the more lucrative cities of Palm Springs and Indian Wells.
“Yeah, well, now Iris runs everything. If you were in the arcade, I would have to call her, and then she’d be in the arcade, and I just didn’t want to deal with that.” Leonard jerked forward, but Cassander pulled him back. “I want to go. Can I go? I gave you what you wanted.”
“What do you mean she’ll take the people around me?” I demanded. “How did she even know I was back in town?”
Someone at Betty’s last night must have told her I was back. Or… or someone had told her I was back in town.
Someone like a lawyer who probably dealt with a lot of the criminals in town.
“How would I know how she does anything? I’m not her smartphone.” At my incredulous look, Leonard gave me a raised eyebrow look of his own. “Are you kidding me? Your smartphone knows everything. It tracks you everywhere. It probably knows when you have to take a deuce before you do.”
“Keep talking,” I said sharply.
“Well, all those apps—they track you,” Leonard started.
“About Iris Milner,” I said. “Are you in with her?”
“You remember my little side venture in herbal remedies in high school?” Leonard asked.
“You dealt pot.” I waited before asking, “What about it?”
“Well, where do you think I got the dope?” Leonard pulled his shoulders back, his spine straightening as he smirked at me. “I’ve been working with the Milners since high school.”
“I bet your mother’s real proud,” I said dryly. “Does she have your Milner’s Employee of the Month award up on the refrigerator?”
But my mouth was running as my thoughts spun out. If Iris Milner was gunning for me, we needed to get the kids back to the house, which was a much more defensible position. I needed to see if Mom had kept any of Dad’s guns, and I needed to let Candy know that she needed to come pick up her kids.
“Come on.” I stood, bending low and getting right in Leonard’s face when he hesitated. “Come with me now, or we find out how Iris reacts when I tell her that Mr. Employee of the Month ratted her out.”
“You wouldn’t—you said—” Leonard looked to Cassander for help, but Cassander simply tightened his arm around Leonard’s shoulders.
“The terms of the deal are still the same.” When he smiled, it sweetened the threat. “Shall we go? Or should we see what happens when I—” Cassander leaned close, whispering something in Leonard’s ear like a lover.
Leonard’s eyes went wide, and he leapt out of the chair, following behind me as I led the way back to the arcade.
At my prompt, Leonard opened the employees’ entrance at the back of the arcade, and we went through a narrow hall with employee lockers and storage racks packed tightly together. Entering the main room of the arcade, I scanned for the kids.
If what Leonard said was true, we needed to get out quickly. We needed to move before someone else told Iris Milner we were at the arcade. If it came down to it, I could send Cassander back with the kids and leave myself as the peanut butter in the rat trap.
The problem being, right now, I was all peanut butter, no trap.
Before I even finished checking the arcade, I knew something was wrong. The girl behind the counter, a bored teenager, buzzed with anxiety. The arguing couple was gone, their kids with them. Suddenly, the too-loud noises from unused arcades seemed threatening.
“The children are gone,” Cassander said simply. His face was blank, a chalkboard wiped clean.
Over the past few days, I had learned to read his subtleties, the purse of his lips, the flare of his nostrils. Now, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
I strode over to the counter, slamming both my hands down on the chipped wood veneer. Underneath, the particleboard was showing in spots.
The teenager’s eyes went wide, her breath hitching.
“Who took them?” I demanded.
She shook her head. “I—I?—”
“Why didn’t you call the cops?”
“They said you kidnapped them. That they were there to take them back to their mother.” Her mouth was opening and closing, and she glanced at Leonard over my shoulder, her eyes going wide when she realized her mistake.
“Who?” I demanded, even though it didn’t matter. Who wasn’t important. We knew who.
The girl blinked, her eyes wide, surrounded by black eyeliner. “I don’t know. They looked real. They looked like PIs. They had badges. He left me his card.”
She reached into the trash can, pulling out the small piece of paper. I snatched it from her, searching it for clues.
The name was unimportant. It would be fake. But the address, the agency, that was the message.
Robert Nichols
Come and Find Me, Inc.
I didn’t recognize the PI’s address but turned, grabbing Leonard’s elbow and spinning him to face me.
“Where’s your car?”
At my directions, Leonard drove us to Betty’s. It was too early to be open, but when I pounded on the door, I wasn’t surprised that she unlocked it, opening it with both eyebrows raised.
“Twice in one week. I should buy a lottery ticket.” But Betty was frowning, looking between me, Leonard, and the stone-faced Cassander.
“Trust me, Bets, the last thing you want right now is my luck,” I growled.
She stared at my face, nodding slowly before stepping back and letting us all in. As soon as the door closed behind us, I handed over the card.
“Can you look at this address?”
“What’s going on, Damian?” she asked slowly, rubbing her thumb over the corner of the card.
“Iris Milner took Candace’s kids. We need to get them back.” I began pacing back and forth, trying to think of what we needed. “Who’s still in town? Is Hudson still working at the garage? Would anyone other than the Milners have the weapons we need if we have to fight our way in?”
“Iris Milner took Candace’s kids?” Betty looked between the three of us before turning on Leonard, her teeth pulled back in a growl. “Leonard, you turned in Candy’s kids?”
Leonard wiped moisture from his brow, and Cassander stood behind him, arms crossed, glaring at the back of his neck.
“I—I—it wasn’t me. I ran so I wouldn’t have to. I didn’t take the kids.” Leonard swallowed. “I wouldn’t do something like that.”
“No, you would just get in bed with a snake and wonder how your dick got bit off.” Betty shook her head. “I’ll look up the address and make some calls.”
“The address is a front. That’s where she wants to meet. That’s not where she would have the kids held.” I considered the situation, trying for objectivity, but my heart was beating too fast for that.
I remembered Riley’s excitement, the fierce way she threw herself into everything. I should have been watching her. I should have been paying attention to her, not running after Leonard like I was a greyhound dog at the track.
I’d been working for the agency too long. If I was on a job, Leonard running away from me could have been the difference between my life and death. But here, my distraction let someone kidnap my niece and nephew.
Irritated, I stuck my hands in my pockets, the fingers of my right hand finding the coin, rubbing along the smooth edge, my thumb pressed against one of the faces. My other hand found the cell phone.
Twenty-one would have the resources I needed. She could call in a strike team the way someone else could order a latte at Starbucks. If I could get in contact with her…
“It’s a warehouse at the edge of town. That old industrial area that got abandoned when the paper manufacturing plant moved out? It’s one of those buildings.” Betty was looking down at her phone. She glanced up. “Hudson does work at the garage, and he still thinks he owes you because of the college application thing. No one else in town would be able to get you actual weapons. I have a shotgun here, and I might be able to get a handgun, but if you can handle this without weapons, that would probably be better.”
I nodded, taking two deep breaths before letting them both out in a long stream of air through my lips. This was what I did. This was who I was, who I had shaped myself to be.
“That’s where Iris Milner wants us to meet. Where would she be keeping the kids?” I turned to Leonard.
He looked at me with wide eyes, backing up until he hit the bar. “I, uh, why would I know that? I don’t know her business.”
“Funny thing about loyalty that can be bought and sold with money.” I looked at him significantly. “When it comes down to it, people aren’t really that loyal to someone who only owns their wallet.”
I dug the magic coin out of my pocket, showing it to Leonard. “So, let’s try it this way. Heads, I show you exactly how they taught us to interrogate in the military. Tails, you find out how effective that interrogation gets.” I twisted the coin between my fingers. “Do you want to call it?”
Before he could answer, I flipped the coin, catching it and slapping it to the back of my other hand.
“She has a pool hall!” Leonard squealed before I could reveal whether it was dragon or raven side up. I waited expectantly, glaring at him. “She has a pool hall that she does most of her business out of. She runs backroom gambling there, and it has some rooms for people who can’t pay their debts. If she’s holding someone who doesn’t want to be held, it’s going to be there.”
I would need details, but at least I knew what I was getting into now. As I reached past Leonard, he flinched, but I grabbed an order pad from the bar and a pen from the cup of them next to the till. Then I began scribbling down a list.
Turning, I handed it to Betty. “I’m going to need all of this. Most of it should be at his garage, but let me know if he doesn’t have any of it.”
“Since when do you find makeup and fireworks at a car repair shop?” Betty asked.
“Since Hudson became a fence for anything stolen from the Target and Walmart in Palm Springs.” I raised an eyebrow, and Betty huffed, tilting her head.
“He wasn’t doing that in high school,” she said.
“He was . Because I was one of the guys who helped him lift the three cases of beer he brought to the graduation party.” I looked at her, and she still seemed unconvinced. “Tell him if he can get this for me before tonight, he doesn’t owe me anything for the college admissions thing, and I’ll forget what happened before I left for boot camp.”
“What happened before you left for boot camp?” Leonard asked, leaning forward.
I gave him a dead-eyed stare and pulled out my phone. It would still be easier to call Twenty-one, so much easier, so much faster. If I called Twenty-one, though, there was a chance that either I would be arrested and the kids would be ignored, or whoever was after me would find me, meaning I would have to fight Iris Milner and the entire SPA.
In the meantime, I walked around the back of the bar, finding the recycle bin under the counter where Betty kept empty bottles.
She was on the phone. “No, it’s for Damian Reyes. You remember him? Yeah. Yeah. I’m going to text you a list.” She pulled the phone away from her ear, snapping a picture and sending it with a whooshing sound before bringing it back to her ear. “You got it?”
There was a pause, and Betty glanced at me significantly. “Yeah, I told him. Yeah. Oh. Okay. Sounds good.”
I focused on tearing one of the bar rags into strips, keeping my hands busy as I thought through the problem.
“How many people usually work at the pool hall?” I asked Leonard.
He hesitated, so I reached back into my pocket and slammed the coin on the bar top. Dragon side up.
Leonard swallowed, looking between the coin and me. I took a slow breath, realizing I needed to calm down. My mother would be ashamed of me, not just because I lost the kids but because I was losing my temper.
According to Mamá Reyes, “Nothing good in life comes out of anger. Nothing. The only thing that happens when you get mad is you lose a mark.” I could practically hear her in my ear, snapping the words like a drill sergeant.
Leonard was scared. Iris Milner was his bottom line. She provided the drugs that he sold on the side. But if he was making enough from his side hustle, he shouldn’t need a job at the arcade. Which meant one of two things.
One: he was trying to get out. He was trying to go straight.
Two: business wasn’t good. Either he didn’t have the clientele, or he didn’t have the sales skills to keep enough customers coming in to make dealing worth his while.
Both of those were openings for me, but I needed to figure out which one.
“Must be hard, still being small-time even if you’ve been dealing since high school. Twelve years is a lot to invest into a job and still not be making enough to live on.” I waited. “It’s enough to make someone want to get out, go legit, see if a 9-to-5 gets you the sort of cash that gives you room to breathe.”
Leonard was nodding, his head bobbing up and down as though I was the Horse Whisperer and he was a stallion that had been broken one too many times.
“And she just keeps raising her rates. The margins are so thin they’re practically paper.” Leonard shook his head in anger.
“I bet when you go in there, see her living large, all the guys in her pool hall, you realize that you’re nothing but a guppy, and she’s the octopus that’s going to eat you whole.” I looked at him. “I mean, she has, what? Five? Ten guys on staff?”
“There’s always four out in front. One at the bar, one at the door, one at the back door, and one guy she just pays to sit there and drink beer and handle anything that comes up!” Leonard leaned over the bar, gazing at me, his scraggly beard showing signs of gray. “I could drink beer and handle anything that came up! I could do that and get paid! But she makes me work for every penny I own. And then if I have too many pennies, she ups her rates again!”
I shook my head, pursing my lips. “That’s no good. Four guys out front, and how many does she have sitting in the back, doing nothing? You could be one of those guys that monitor product.”
“There’s always another ten guys back there. I don’t even know what they do. Play cards? I can play cards.” Leonard was getting heated now. His voice rose, and I saw Betty behind him, one of her eyebrows raised in amusement as she crossed her arms, pushing up her breasts. Her expression said, You’ve still got it, D.
“Ten guys guarding her stuff? What is she? The president?” I leaned forward, mirroring Leonard’s body language, and he nodded emphatically.
“Two guys guarding the back, one guy guarding the front, and the rest just spread out. I don’t know what they do. Count product? Count money? They sure as hell count every dollar I bring in. How long have I been working for the Milners? Since I was what? Sixteen? And still, she has them check my count every single time. Like I’m going to try and stiff her.”
I nodded, managing to dip my chin at the same time as Leonard did, creating more of a sense of camaraderie so that he began listing all the weapons they always had in the back.
By the time he had spilled every secret he knew, he was feeling better, shaking his head and saying, “So you see why I have to move on. Why I have to go legit.”
“Absolutely. And this is the best way to show her who’s boss,” I said.
“Yeah. Stealing something she stole? Now she’ll know who I am. When she hears the word ‘Leonard,’ she’s going to say, ‘That guy pulled one over on me.’”
“Exactly,” I said.
There was a knock at the front door of Betty’s, and she looked down at her phone, shrugging. “It must be Hudson. He’s a little early, but he said he would be here…”
She flipped the lock, pulling open the door. On the other side, Candace stood, both arms crossed.
She was wearing dark sunglasses and pulled them off slowly. Stepping into the bar, she scanned the room before focusing on me.
“Damian, where are my children?”