Chapter 20 #2
“I was thinking our wedding,” Jackson says as he gives me a look.
“Oh… right… yes… that.” I grimace a little at my mix-up then pat his leg and decide that maybe I shouldn’t mention anything else lest I get reminded that I’m in the wrong.
As we prepare to land about four hours later, Tavish hands me something. “For Waylon. A gift for having to put up with you.”
I look at the small keychain of a round cat with three legs instead of four.
“That’s… disgustingly nice of you,” I say as I take it. “You don’t want to hold on to it and give it to him when you see him?”
“I have enough trouble holding on to all of my own stuff,” he responds, but I’m confident he’s just too embarrassed to give it to Waylon himself.
I clip it onto my bag. “He’ll love it.”
Jackson is smiling at me in a “Look, you can make friends” way, and I really want to tell him that making friends with Tavish is so far out of my wheelhouse that we’re not even going to pretend that’s going to happen.
The moment we land, I check my phone and see that the only thing Waylon knows how to send me is pictures of his cat. His cat yawning, his cat stretching, his cat staring…
“I wish he liked The Fence this much,” I murmur.
“I’m glad he doesn’t,” Jackson says while he examines the pictures that were sent in a group text between us.
Me: Did you name him yet? We’ve landed.
Waylon: I can’t decide.
Me: I can name him for you.
Waylon: I’d rather not. You didn’t mention Tucker was bringing his daughter.
Me: Oh yeah, she’s about your age, isn’t she? Whatever you do, please… Waylon, please don’t teach her how to make drugs.
Waylon: Not where I thought that sentence was going, and somehow, it’s so much worse.
Me: Say it with me. “I will not show off to my new friends how wickedly awesome I am with chemistry.”
Waylon: I’m just going to keep sending you cat pictures.
Me: Name the thing. Hopefully we’ll be home by tomorrow. And Waylon… if you ever do start an underground operation… please ask me to be your first member. I just really hate being left out.
Henry: Why the hell am I a part of this? And do not encourage him!
Me: So that when I’m arrested, I can take you to prison with me as my accomplice. I really think it’d be fun if we were prison mates.
Henry’s head snaps around and the expression on his face tells me that he’s envisioning every moment of being in prison with me… and it’s weirdly not going well. Like… is he over there living out our entire prison sentence? And what’s that look for? Did one of us get shivved?
“Henry, stay with me,” I beg.
He quickly exits the plane.
We follow after Henry who is on a mission to walk fast enough that he can lose the rest of us. I think he’s now planning on having a vacation and enjoying life until we need to head back home.
Right before we get to the rental cars, my phone rings.
I stare at it in dread when I see that it’s from the prison.
Lucas rarely calls, likely because he knows I hate him with a passion.
But I can’t even say he’d only call if it’s an emergency, because out of all of the times he’s called, most were him being a nosy dick.
I’m sure he’s heard of my sudden popularity and would like to add his two cents or gloat about it.
I accept the call and listen to the recording. “This is a prepaid call from Lucas Phillips. To accept this call, press one. To block this number—”
I click one, and with a, “Fuck yourself,” I hang up.
“Not sure what that was about, but I have a feeling Lucas was involved?” Jackson asks.
“Sure was.”
“Do you want to block him?”
“You know the moment I do, he’s going to have some vital information about something or whatever, and instead of telling me, he’s going to be all, ‘Oh, but you blocked me, so how dare I tell you shit?’”
“I… have no idea how any of you lived with him,” Jackson says.
“Who?” Cassel asks before getting an odd look on his face. “Was that call from Lucas?”
“Yes.”
“Leland is his favorite,” Micah says for some strange reason.
“Do you want to be his favorite?” I growl.
He merely laughs. “Let me just say, if I was in your shoes, he would have been dead.”
“It was because Jackson tried influencing me to be a good person! I regret it! I have since reverted back to being a bad person!” I declare.
Jackson shakes his head. “You’re not a bad person. And look at it this way, we’ve actually gotten a lot of use out of Lucas. And if you’d shot and killed him, that would have been the end. Now he gets to live his life stuck in prison while the rest of you get to enjoy your lives.”
“Everly… about that rat poison?” I ask.
Everly doesn’t even waste time thinking about it. “Not doing it.”
“Just a sprinkle. You don’t even need to kill him. Just enough to make him hurt.”
“I like that idea,” Micah says. “What do I need to do to get you to do that?”
Everly raises an eyebrow, probably questioning what Micah thinks he could possibly do to persuade him to risk his life by poisoning a man. Micah seems to think that look means that Everly is interested and throws him a smolder.
Everly looks disgruntled instead, which seems to confuse Micah.
Getting the rental vehicle and heading out is the easy part.
The hard part comes after we pull up outside of the building that Raul owns and spend some time scoping it out.
It’s part of the same tech company that Teo worked for, but as we sit in the three-row SUV not far from the building itself, Cassel just “Hmmms” and “Ehhhs.”
“I don’t even know if I want to know what’s going on,” I realize as I use binoculars to see what I can. Supposedly, Raul’s office is on the sixth floor. I see some movement up there, but I haven’t seen him walk by, which isn’t overly surprising depending on the location of his office.
“Well… do you want the bad news or equally bad news first?” Cassel asks.
“Answer me this… which one can I shoot?” I ask while I pet my baby. “Maple here is hungry for revenge.”
“Technically, you can shoot all of the choices if you’d like. Would that solve anything? Probably not, but you only asked if you could do it.”
“Just… lay it out there for us,” Jackson says.
“So the cameras inside this place all look fine. Everything is going as normal. But something felt off and… according to the neighboring security system that I lovingly ripped into, Raul is not in this building… he’s just made it seem like he is.
All of his online information states that he should be in the building at this time, and the security footage from the building shows him in his office, but I noticed that the sky in his background showed different kinds of clouds compared to what I can see right now.
So I started nosing a bit, and I think it’s a setup.
I think he wants us to go in that building where he’s likely cleared everyone else out and left his people inside to ambush us. ”
“I mean… sounds like a party to me,” Micah comments, and he winks at Everly again. The poor man doesn’t seem to know what to do with all of the winks and looks at the rest of us, like he’s trying to figure out if we’re all getting the privilege of being winked at or if it’s reserved just for him.
“Everly, I can remove his eyes as a step toward your forgiveness,” I say.
Micah’s eyes snap over to me. “Excuse me, whose eyes?”
“Yours. They keep doing some weird twitching thing that’s very unsettling,” I explain.
“I was winking.”
“Very unsettling,” Everly adds, and I have to hand it to Micah, he does a fantastic job of pretending that he doesn’t hear any of this.
“Okay, so… where is Raul then?” Jackson asks.
“Hold on…” I say as my phone beeps. “Looks like Tucker’s informant has come through.
She said he’s throwing his grandchild’s birthday party at his estate.
” I glance up from my phone and look at Cassel to see what he thinks of this information but he doesn’t seem surprised by it, telling me he was probably getting to that next.
Tavish shrugs. “And the problem with that? We’ll just go in, fuck shit up, and leave. The kid doesn’t even need to know.”
“It’s on his estate which is heavily guarded,” Cassel says. “I’m sure people are on high alert with the party going on.”
“Should we wait until tonight or tomorrow, then?” Tavish asks.
“If we wait, then he’ll have even more guards on his ass,” I realize. “Right now, half of them are in this building waiting for us.”
“That is correct,” Cassel says.
“So how do we make him think we’re still showing up here while heading right to his house?” I ask.
“I mean… we can pretend to show our faces here. You’re hoping to make them drop their guard?” Cassel asks.
“Yeah.”
“What… what if you stay here and the rest of us deal with Raul?” Tavish asks. “Perfect job for a weasel. Weasels doing what weasels were made to do.”
“I think this job is much better meant for a bear,” I growl.
“I could be wrong, but you see that guy there?” I point to a man sitting at a bus stop.
“He’s skipped getting on every bus that’s stopped.
When I looked at the bus schedule, it’s already repeated once, telling me that he’s not waiting for a specific bus. He’s probably waiting for us.”
“So we show ourselves just enough to make him think we’re scouting out this area before leaving,” Jackson says.
“I’m going to walk his direction and into that shop right there,” I explain. “Once I leave the shop, I’ll head around back, so pick me up in the alley there, alright?”
“Got it,” Jeremy, who is driving, says.
I get out of the SUV and walk with purpose. I don’t want him to find me too suspicious or he might suspect something’s off. I want him to see me doing what I normally did in these cases before I had Cassel’s brain to do a deep dive into security systems I don’t even know how to touch.