Chapter 26
Emile: He didn’t follow you, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t see you. I wouldn’t put anything past these scumbags. Maybe you should get out of town for a few days. Go lay low at the lake house or something.
Emile: You still there, bud?
Emile: Let’s touch base tomorrow.
His messages stopped there. Rage burned through every pore on my skin.
That creepy fucker was right across the fucking street, and I didn’t even notice.
I would have killed him right there if I had seen him.
Then again, it was probably better he was alive.
What I had planned for him made what I did to Marty look like a trip to the day spa.
I picked up my phone and dialed Clay’s number. It was barely after seven in the morning, and I didn’t care. He answered on the first ring.
“What?” His gravelly tone was always to-the-point. I liked that about him. No facade, no fluff. Just pure, unadulterated straight talk with a hint of threat.
“Are you still at Lucy’s apartment?”
“Yes, because I have nothing better to do than sit around at some college girl’s apartment.” Sarcasm dripped through Clay’s baritone.
“Evidently not, otherwise I would have thought paying you to watch over her would’ve included noticing someone taking photos of her inside her home,” I bit back at him.
He let out a gruff noise. It was a low blow, attacking his work ethic, but I didn’t care. “I have two guys stationed there. I left a couple hours ago.”
“Good. Because I need a favor.”
“You’ve been needing an awful lot of those lately,” Clay huffed. “What now?”
“Can you meet me in Oakland in an hour?” I clicked on the video of Teddy Griffin sitting in his car again and zoomed as far in as I could. The image was grainy, but I seared it into my brain.
Crack house was a polite way to describe the absolute dump of a shack that barely seemed to be holding itself up in front of us.
Clay and I sat in the Pagani, surveying the assortment of rusting vehicles that littered the front yard.
Along with actual litter, and lots of it.
Crushed beer cans and broken glass shined through the thick, tall weeds, and the place looked like it had been all but abandoned except for a dim light glowing through the boarded-up window.
“You want to take the front door or back?” Clay’s rough voice jolted my stare from the crumbling house to the man sitting next to me.
He would probably be what women described as conventionally handsome, if not for the rugged scar that tarnished his jawline down his neck and disappeared down his shirt.
I remembered the night he received the wound that created the scar, but now wasn’t the time to think about that.
“Front,” I decided, clicking a fresh magazine into the chamber of my pistol. Clay nodded. “Emile said his car was picked up by cameras near here just after eleven last night.” I eyed the dinged up gray sedan parked in the yard among the other junk cars. “With any luck, he’ll still be here.”
“With any luck, we will get this over with quickly,” Clay retorted.
“Really? You usually relish in a little bloodshed and torture. You have a hot date planned or something?” I could tell I was prickling his nerves when his lips thinned, and he stared straight ahead without another word.
This was Clay’s typical stoic demeanor, but something felt a little off about him.
I decided to let it rest. He was right, the faster we got in and out of there, the better.
Lucy was still asleep at my house, alone.
Well, the house was empty, but Clay’s men were stationed outside to make sure it stayed that way until I returned home.
They had been there all night, but I hadn’t had the time to tell her that yet.
She had no idea the length I would go to keep her safe, though I had a feeling she was starting to get an inkling after last night.
Regardless, I wanted to be there when she woke up.
“Are you ready to move this thing along?” Clay finally mumbled after strapping a Glock to his chest underneath his shirt.
That was just for backup, he always liked to carry bigger guns.
Like the military-style rifle that hung from his knee.
Clay was in the special forces before he started his security empire, and he knew how to use that piece of machinery with the kind of precision most people would only ever see in movies. I wasn’t one of those people.
“Yep.” I opened the door to my car and he followed suit.
He gave me a swift nod and headed around the crooked, rotting fence that wrapped around the back of the shack.
I made my way toward the front door, gripping my gun low.
When I climbed up the rickety front steps to the door, I considered knocking but then remembered Teddy might not be the only one in there.
I reached for the handle of the dented front door and jiggled it.
To my pleasant surprise, it was unlocked, and I tried to mask the squeak of the knob with my hand as I turned it slowly.
As I pushed the door open, the stench of garbage and weed assaulted my nostrils.
My mouth turned downward as I stepped into the dimly lit shack.
Trash and dirt were spread across the floor, and filthy furniture coming apart at the seams was scattered throughout the room.
I inched my way further in, my gun drawn in front of me, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of movement.
I entered what I thought was supposed to be a dining room but was so overtaken by clutter I barely noticed.
A card table sat in the center, piled with heaps of dusty-looking weed, needles, a tall glass bong, and a few different pipes meant for smoking god knows what.
We had a drone image of what the house looked like from overhead, but it was up to me to find where the back entrance might be.
I crept through the dingy kitchen and found a door.
I took its knob and opened it to find Clay waiting patiently outside.
By patiently, I mean his arms were crossed and he was looking so bored one would think he’d been waiting there for an hour.
I held the door out, and he stepped inside ahead of me.
Together, we began to case the place. He walked ahead of me, and I took in the piles of mess around me.
I spotted a few more dirty-looking needles among the mountains of empty liquor bottles and cigarette butts.
Fucking repulsive. I was going to burn this shithole to the ground the moment I had the chance.
Clay walked a few feet ahead of me, shining a flashlight into the hallway opposite the kitchen.
He turned to me over his shoulder and gave me an over here wave with a gloved hand, his rifle poised across his arm in the other.
I made my way to him, stepping over a pile of laundry and food wrappers.
He pointed to a closed door to the right, and I gave him a nod.
We had no idea who could be on the other side, but we needed to be prepared for whatever we might find.
He grasped the doorknob and pushed it open.
The squeal that came from the hinges was louder than I had hoped, and I peered over Clay’s shoulder to see what awaited inside.
Disappointment and intrigue weighed on my shoulders when I saw it was only a coat closet.
Clay shut the door and gave me a signal to keep following him.
There were only two more doors left in the hallway.
One was a few feet away from the closet on the other side of the narrow space, and the other was positioned straight at the end.
Clay opened the next door closest to us first, and a strong, putrid stench filled the air around us.
I nearly gagged, and Clay pulled up a mask around his nose.
He pointed his gun straight ahead and turned the corner through the doorframe.
As I trailed behind him, I could see it was a bathroom, and the stench became nearly unbearable.
It was one of the filthiest bathrooms I had ever seen, thick layers of hair, more trash, and god knows what else stacked so tall and wide I couldn’t see a square inch of the countertop.
I tried to ignore the decaying toilet as Clay neared the bathtub.
He gave me a look. I knew what he was thinking, and I gave him another nod.
We both knew based on the smell there was a good chance a corpse was sitting on the other side of that curtain.
I had only been in a few situations similar to this, but Clay had been in many.
I had hoped today wouldn’t add another to my resume, but it was always a risk in places like this.
It had been a long time, but the unmistakable reek of death wasn’t something I could forget.
Clay peeled back the yellowed plastic shower curtain in a steady swoop.
I nearly let out a breath of relief when I saw the tub was empty.
Well, not completely empty. There were several beer cans mixed in what looked like vomit or some other bodily fluid.
It had clearly been that way for days, and I became nauseous as the smell permeated my nostrils.
I backed out of the bathroom and Clay followed suit, shutting the door behind him.
I took a deep breath of air.
One door left. Clay pointed between the two of us, asking me silently if I wanted to go first. Fuck it.
I took a few steps until I reached the last door at the end of the hallway and gripped the handle.
I’d stayed calm until now, but the hot rage inside my body crawled up my throat and poured through my ringing ears. I shoved the door open.
The room was dark, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the scene in front of me.
Broken furniture was placed haphazardly around the bedroom just like the rest of the shack.
It reeked of cigarettes and body odor, and in the center of the floor lay a dirty mattress.
On top of it was a man in his boxers with a black hoodie pulled up over his forehead, a half-drank beer bottle tilted from his unconscious grip.
I reached into my back pocket and retrieved a pair of handcuffs.
At the same time, Clay worked his way around to the top of the mattress near the man’s shoulders, pointing the gun at his face through the material of the hoodie.
I crouched beside the mattress, my hand hovering above the man’s.
In a fluid movement, I grabbed his wrist intending to bind it to his other one.
The skin was cold and limp as my fingers wrapped around it.
I recoiled. Clay watched me curiously and used the tip of his rifle to peel back the hoodie from the man’s head.
A pale gray face with lifeless eyes stared up at us.
“Great. He’s fucking dead. How?” I muttered, refraining the urge to kick Teddy Griffin’s dead corpse.
“Based on the foam around his mouth, I’d guess he either OD’d or was poisoned,” Clay replied diplomatically.
“From the state of this place, my bet would be on the former.” Dryness coated my tongue.
Clay nodded. “What now?”
“I don’t fucking know. I guess let’s have a look around and see if there’s anything here that could be useful.
” Clay started shining his flashlight around the room and I peered around.
There wasn’t much, besides more festering debris.
I reached into the pocket of Teddy’s hoodie and retrieved a smartphone and a crack pipe.
I tossed the pipe onto the mattress next to his body and slid the phone into my jacket.
“What about this?” Clay picked up a camera from a cluttered dresser. I stood up and inspected it myself, turning it on. My pulse raced as I flicked through the photos saved.
Lucy at the laundromat, perched on a chair with her nose in a book.
Another of her at Crissy Field, sketching something in the notebook she took from her apartment to mine last night.
Lucy, in her apartment, in nothing but a T-shirt and her underwear, looking blissfully unaware of the fact she was being watched.
Long, curvy legs, and a pint of ice cream in her hand.
Yeah, I was absolutely gonna burn this place and Teddy’s corpse to the ground. I wanted to bring him back to life just so I could kill him again, more painfully this time, just for fucking laying his eyes on her like that. Then again, for taking those photos.
I shuffled through the dresser and pocketed some memory cards I found buried in the litter of junk.
Then something else caught my attention.
A folded piece of receipt paper seemed like it was placed there with intent, not mixed in with the other bouts of clutter.
I picked it up, shining the light from my phone.
It was a receipt from The Wire, a bar tab paid in cash.
I flipped it over. Loopy scrawl was inked across the back.
I’m leaving tonight. I hope you do too. –P.
P. The Wire. It took a moment for me to put two and two together. Could that be short for Phoebe? Lucy said Bianca told her she’d been missing for a couple weeks.
Damn it. I needed to have a chat with Bianca.
Had Phoebe met Teddy at the Wire? Why would she have told him she was going to leave?
Teddy was clearly involved with Wrangler; he was the one who stalked Lucy and took those fucking photos of her.
I glared down at his stiff corpse in disgust, then up to Clay who was rummaging through a pile of Teddy’s crap on the floor.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”