Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
FINN
I don’t expect this conversation to be a particularly smooth one, but there’s no other way to tell my brothers about Ace and his crew being tied up.
Right after Dutch left the garage, Ren and Hayato called asking me what to do with the men they’d dragged out of the hospital.
“We can dispose of them for you,” Hayato said, as if he was referring to taking out the recyclables.
I told them not to do anything until I came.
“We will wait,” Ren told me, “but if you cannot find a solution, we will have to inform your father.”
It’s not like Kurosaki will give me a D on my mafia boss report card for not cutting the Grave City Crew into pieces when I had the chance.
But while he won’t do anything to me, Ace and his friends are another matter. Kurosaki won’t think twice about ending them. And while, normally, I don’t take any responsibility for his actions, this time, I’m the one who delivered Ace right into the yakuza’s hands.
His blood would be red lettering in my books, not Kurosaki’s.
“What happens if you let them go?” Dutch asks quietly.
“They know our faces. It won’t take them long to find out where we live.”
“And then?” Zane asks me.
“Then they come after us with everything they have.”
Sol rubs a finger over the smooth side of his lighter. “The Grave City Crew. I’ve heard of them. They were recruiting hard in my old neighborhood.”
“Were they getting any interest?” Zane asks.
“Dude, it’s the hood. Of course they were. Their leader is supposed to be this young, Robin Hood type guy who robs the rich and gives to the poor.”
“How do you know so much? I’ve never heard of the Grave City Crew in my life,” Zane says.
Sol snorts. “Yeah, I’m sure the latest street gang news travels all the way to this gated community, Zane.”
Zane flips Sol off.
Sol just laughs.
“We don’t need one more reason Cadence and Grey would be unsafe to come home,” Dutch says firmly.
J springs to attention. Her little Jinx brain must be whirring to know what the other reasons are.
Dutch must have noticed how excited she got too because he scowls at her. “You got something to say, J?”
J opens her mouth, closes it, and then shrinks back into the over-sized chair.
“That’s what I thought,” Dutch snarls.
“Dutch,” I snap.
My voice isn’t that loud, but everyone reacts like thunder cracked around the room.
Zane and Sol stop joking around.
Dutch’s eyes zip to me like a pointed sword about to impale.
“Like it or not”—I try to speak more calmly since they all seem so spooked—“J found the girls with her computer skills alone. When I thought I was being followed, she broke into the hospital’s surveillance system and helped me get the advantage in a fight.”
“Cool,” Sol says, giving J a nod of respect.
She smiles in discomfort.
“She also scraped Ace’s phone and gave me his address. I could have stopped this from escalating long ago, but I didn’t prioritize it, and now we’re here.”
“That’s not on you, Finn,” Zane hisses.
Sol stops playing with the lighter. “Yeah, a lot’s been going on.”
“J is needed here.” I jut my finger down. “I don’t know anyone else with her skills.”
Dutch backs off with a grunt.
I’m not stupid. It’s a risk bringing Jinx into this matter, but right now, I need my enemies closer than my secrets.
And when she betrays us…
Dutch can say “I told you so” then.
Zane raises a hand like we’re in class. “What do you need from us?”
“I have twelve hours to decide what to do with them.”
Zane taps his chin. “How about we find some kind of drug to give them? Something that induces amnesia?”
“Don’t think that exists,” I mutter.
Sol flicks his lighter on, and the orange flame glitters against his face. “We can burn them. Nobody will know.”
J’s mouth slackens.
Dutch growls, “Really, Sol?”
“Hey, Zane had a stupid suggestion. I just offered my own.”
Zane flips everyone off, making sure to skip J to be respectful.
“How about we keep them locked up indefinitely?” Dutch asks, scooting to the edge of his chair. “If we have more time, a better solution might come.”
“That’s just putting off the inevitable,” I say. My attention shifts to J who’s been very quiet. “J?”
She chews on her bottom lip in thought, making my pulse quicken. It feels good having her here, even though Dutch doesn’t approve and I half agree with him.
“Why don’t we turn them over to the police?” she suggests.
Sol groans. “Boo!”
“No police,” I warn her, looking straight into her eyes. “That’s not an option.”
She doesn’t ask me why, and I realize I just gave her another clue about who I am and what I have ties to. But at this point, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
“Any more ideas?” I ask my brothers and Sol.
Dutch sighs heavily. “No.”
“So the only option is to quiet them permanently?” Zane asks the obvious.
Dutch scratches his scalp back and forth. “Are we going to cross that line?”
“What’s the alternative? He lets them go, they come back with their crew and attack us at home?
Even worse, what if they bide their time?
We’d have to keep looking over our shoulders, waiting for them to bring the fight to us.
What if Grey and Cadence are back when they make their move? What if our babies—”
Dutch lifts a hand, and his eyes flash up to me. “Get rid of them.”
Sol nods. The lighter lid clicks faster and faster, betraying his nerves. “You don’t have to get your hands dirty. I’m sure there’s a convenient way to do it.”
He’s right. The easiest thing in the world would be to “dispose” of them, as Hayato suggested. All I’d have to say is yes, and Ren and Hayato will take care of the rest, just like they did to Grey’s best friend who threatened to expose The Grateful Project.
With Ace and his friends gone, the Grave City Crew wouldn’t know J’s face either. The problem would disappear as if it never existed.
I look at J who’s sitting with her hands clasped on her lap and her shoulders rigid. She’s pretty much listening to a discussion about murder. Technically, her presence here makes her an accomplice.
“Just once,” Sol coaches. “It’s just one time, Finn. You don’t have any other choice.”
While that’s tempting as hell, killing Ace and the other two feels like something Kurosaki and Jarod Cross would do.
Which means it’s something that I absolutely shouldn’t.
J looks up at that moment. Her blue-green eyes find mine, and my breath catches at the determination in her gaze. “We can tag them.”
“Tag?” Sol tilts his head.
“Give me access to their phones, and I can create a connection that sends information straight from their mikes and cameras to my algorithm.”
Dutch’s brow wrinkles in confusion. “How does that help?”
J’s still too small for that chair, but as she shares her plan, her body straightens to its full height, and she looks like a queen. “Everyone they meet, everything they say, whatever their plans are, we’ll know.”
“Okay. So we off them and take their phones,” Sol says, rubbing his hands together.
“No,” J snaps.
“We need them alive and interacting with people if their phones are going to be any use.” Zane’s words are thoughtful. He looks at J with a half-smile. “Can you do that?”
Her eyes slide away. “I can…”
“In less than twelve hours?” Dutch grunts.
She chews on her bottom lip and shrinks into the chair again.
Dutch raises his chin. “Finn, is something like that even possible?”
“It is.”
“Then maybe you can do it,” Dutch grinds out. From his tone, it’s clear that he wants J nowhere near this.
I shake my head. “I know that it can be done, but I have no idea how to do it. Besides, we’d need a team to create an infrastructure that can handle an influx of continuous data.
Even then, we’d need more than a week before they’d create anything worth risking our lives and Cadence and Grey’s. Twelve hours isn’t possible.”
J looks down at her watch. My first thought is that it must be beeping or flashing yellow, but I don’t hear anything at all. So why is she staring at it?
“Okay.” Dutch blows out a breath. “Then I guess we have to make the hard choice.”
“I’ll do it,” J says. She’s speaking so softly that, at first, no one even registers that she spoke.
But I do.
I watch her dig her teeth into her bottom lip, wring her hands together, and squeeze her eyes shut. With a deep breath, she tries again. More loudly this time.
“I’ll do it.”
Everyone in the room stops to look at her.
“Give me eight hours. I’ll have it ready by midnight.”