Chapter 28 Zeth
Zeth
Me and Ultimatums? yeah, We don’t mix. Give me two options and tell me I need to pick between them, and I’ll find a third just to throw up a middle finger.
Sloane’s friend has thrown me a curveball, though.
Try as I might, I can’t seem to find a fucking third option here.
Newan wants me to stay away from her friend, which I can’t do.
And so the alternative would be to go to fucking therapy sessions with her myself. Which I also can’t do.
The old me would have just said screw it. I’d have agreed to stay away from Sloane, fully intending on seeing her anyway, but if I do that and the shrink finds out, then it’s Lacey paying the price, not me. The girl needs help more than I need Sloane Romera in my life.
At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
Who the hell does this woman think she is, anyway?
Normally, I’d solve this problem by coldcocking the person responsible for making me see red like this.
But I can’t. Because she’s smug, in an I-have-a-PhD-in-psychology-and-you’re-one-hundred-different-kinds-of-fucked-up kind of way.
I’ll only be proving her right if I do that.
Plus, she’s a woman. She is trying to control Sloane, though.
Bitch is probably jealous that her friend is getting laid.
I laugh, immediately retracting that thought.
The woman oozed sexuality. Not a brand I’d ever be interested in, but still.
If she wants sex, I’m sure she gets it. She’s probably just looking out for Sloane.
Does that mean I’ll comply with her demands? Nope. Not in the fucking slightest.
I drive the Camaro across the city, headed for Charlie’s mansion in Hunt’s Point, at the other end of the peninsula.
This is one of the most salubrious areas in Seattle.
Bankers, golf pros, business owners. Respectable types live here.
They wave at Charlie when they’re walking their dogs, mowing the lawn.
They smile at him as he drives his Lexus down the leafy, suburban streets.
They have no idea that he’s a fucking serial killer.
He’s lived there for twenty-five years. The place is sacred to him.
He definitely doesn’t shit where he eats, and he sure as hell doesn’t appreciate when his boys trail their shit to his doorstep on their shoes, either.
That means no dealing, no weapons, no grudges, and no shop talk when you step through his front door.
Follow those rules, and the man will treat you like a king.
Break them, and he’ll make you wish you’d never been fucking born.
Shop talk is the reason why Charlie has called me over here tonight, though.
The man never married. He has a longtime girlfriend, Sophie, but she’s out of town visiting her mother, so the place is empty.
No curious ears around to overhear something they shouldn’t.
I pull the Camaro into the long driveway leading up to Charlie’s estate and wait for the gates to buzz open.
A burst of static crackles two seconds later.
The security guards are well used to my ride. Know not to keep me waiting.
I park and let myself in, not bothering to knock before I enter.
Knocking is for people like Karl, and Rick, and O’Shannessy—lower-grade soldiers who’ve only been with Charlie a couple of years.
I have my own key. I fucking grew up in this house.
I lost my virginity to one of the housemaids who used to clean up after me when I was a snot-nosed teenager.
I broke three of my ribs sparring with a martial arts instructor out on the back tennis court.
My current digs are humble compared to this monstrosity, but I never felt at home here.
I never felt I deserved this. I could never shake the feeling that I still belonged back in the stinking shithole where my uncle lived.
Dirt poor, lowest of the low. That kind of poor works its way inside your psyche.
No matter how big the roof over your head may grow to be, how many maids you fuck, or how many hundred-thousand-dollar cars are parked in the driveway, you can never really escape it.
The lights are on inside Charlie’s place, blazing away, lighting up the whole house. Crystal chandeliers, Persian rugs, antique furniture—the works. The boss may have lived in this country for more than half his life, but the guy still seems to believe he’s stuck in nineteenth-century England.
“Charlie!” I make my way through the sprawling ground floor, headed straight to the one place I can always count on finding the man: his study.
Just as I predicted, when I push the door back the gray-haired bastard is bent double over his ostentatious desk, snorting a line of blow.
He sits up, eyes the size of silver dollars, holding his fingers to his powder-rimmed nostril.
“Well, if it ain’t my most entrusted employee.” He leans back, wiping his hands on the front of his pinstripe waistcoat, leaving smudges of white behind. “So glad you could join me. Did you lock the door behind you?”
“Of course I did.” The very first thing I learned about Charlie was that security was his number one priority, especially in his own home. Woe betides the person who leaves a fucking window cracked. Ever.
Charlie shrugs a shoulder, nodding. He gestures to the chair waiting for me on the opposite side of his desk. I sit in it like I’m supposed to, making myself comfortable. “Got a job for you, son.”
“Uh-huh.” There’s no other reason for me to be here.
Charlie makes nice, pretends that we’re family, but the truth of the matter is that I’m his dark and sometimes slightly evil secret weapon.
Would he have kept me around if I had been more business minded, utilized me to launder his money or work his contacts like he said he would have last time we talked?
Maybe. But even I know I’m more useful to him like this. His savage monster.
“It’s Rick.” He picks up a razor blade from the desktop and starts cutting another bump of coke for himself.
The man is a professional and makes short work of it.
Surprised the fucker has any septum left.
Once he’s done, he points the tip of the razor at me, leaning across the desk.
“The little shit’s been selling to the bike gangs. ”
Selling to the bike gangs? I can’t help but laugh at that. “His father’s president of an MC. What did you expect? I told you your stock would end up in their warehouses if you let Rick anywhere near it.”
“Drugs, guns—I don’t give a shit about that.” He waves his hand in the air. “He can sell those to whoever the fuck he wants to.”
“Then what the hell is he selling?”
Charlie slumps back in his chair, eyes wider than they have any right to be.
He’s gripped by a level ten paranoia. The coke always does this to him.
“Information, Zeth.” He still hasn’t blinked.
“Information! The bastard’s been selling information to some small charter in SoCal.
Some nobody fucking gang no one cares about.
Telling them what we got in our warehouses.
When we receive shipments. Valuable information, Zeth. ”
“And have the warehouses been hit?”
Charlie shakes his head. “That’s just it. Not a peep.”
I’m probably risking my balls by saying this, but the question has to be asked. “Then are you sure the kid’s not just talking to family? You know how it goes. One charter and the next, they’re all interrelated. All messed up in each other’s business, screwing each other’s women.”
“No! I heard ’im. I heard ’im telling them about the girls from the shipping container. This ain’t no family matter. This is about cold, hard cash.”
If Charlie wants to ingratiate me to his cause, then he probably shouldn’t have brought up that godforsaken shipping container.
It’s been a sore point between us since I found out the old man was responsible for moving young girls in the skin trade.
I still haven’t decided if I can overlook it yet without taking some sort of action.
The old man probably wouldn’t have mentioned it if he wasn’t so messed up.
“How did you hear him?”
“On his phone, fuckhead. You think any of my staff ain’t monitored? I didn’t come down in the last shower. I gotta make sure my interests are protected.”
On his phone? What the hell does that mean? A listening device? A bug in Rick’s phone? And not only in Rick’s phone. Charlie just said it himself: You think any of my staff ain’t monitored?
Any.
My blood suddenly runs hot. I get that hazy blur to my vision that never bodes well.
I’m going to flip if he has done what I think he’s done.
“You got a bug on my phone, Charlie?” I ask him quietly.
Carefully. The old man has a temper like a lion, but then so do I.
I don’t want to set him off, especially in the state he’s in, without knowing the facts, but it’s almost fucking impossible to keep myself in check.
Charlie’s angry expression fades a little, like he’s suddenly realized what he just told me.
Like he’s just realized what a major fuckup admitting something like that to me would be.
“No, no, not you. Of course not you. You’re family, ain’t yer.
” There we go again with the family bullshit.
As if to prove the point, Charlie offers me a small white bump of the coke still scattered all over his desk.
“I need you to watch Rick. He’s supposed to meet them tomorrow night down on the wharf.
They’re exchanging something. I wanna know what.
You’re gonna take back whatever it is, and then you’re gonna kill that little shit. You ’ear me?”
I wave off the coke, shaking my head. I’m not buying his vague dismissal of my question.
If anything, it’s confirmed the worst. Motherfucker.
The girls were bad enough, but if he has been spying on me?
I try to loosen the muscles in my body. Enough so that I won’t shake with the rage building inside me. “What time’s the meet?” I grind out.
“Seven thirty. And you make sure you make that little weasel suffer before you dispose of him, all right?” Charlie doesn’t seem bothered that I rejected his offer of the drugs.
He cuts the bump for himself and then inhales in a sharp blast. God knows how many lines he did before I got here, but that’s three in the last five minutes.
The old man slumps back in his chair, head tipped back, chest rising and falling slowly as he makes a euphoric moaning sound.
I stand up and make my exit, still warring with my need to curl my fingers into a fist and smash it repeatedly into his face.
“I’ll let you know what happens,” I throw over my shoulder as I leave.
Except I probably won’t have to. Charlie will probably be monitoring me somehow.
Maybe he’ll watch the whole thing via fucking satellite feed.
From outer fucking space. I tear out of the house before I can do something rash.
He still has his security detail on site.
If I even so much as lift a finger here, break a vase, scratch the wingback chairs, breathe in the wrong direction, I’m a dead man.
Instead, I jump into the Camaro and lose an inch of rubber off the tires as I scramble to get the hell out of there.
Through the gates, out of the suburban head-fuck Charlie likes to call home.
I’m almost through the other side of Clyde Hill before I pull over the Camaro and get my phone out of my pocket.
It’s a smartphone, not the kind of phone you can remove the back from.
How Charlie would have gotten a bug inside, I don’t know, but if anyone was going to do it, then it would definitely be him.
I open the security lock and then have the forethought to hit the contacts button to retrieve the one, single most important number I haven’t memorized just yet: Sloane’s.
I scrawl the digits onto the back of my hand, and then I take the thing and smash it against the dashboard.
Small shards of glass explode everywhere, into the footwell and all over the leather bench seat.
I pry apart the metal casing and catch my breath.
There it is—a small, square chip, soldered into place on the main processor.
It obviously doesn’t belong. The other circuitry is a work of art, neat and meticulously created.
This alien chip, this listening device, this act of betrayal, was probably put in place by a very talented hacker indeed.
They couldn’t replicate the precision of something machine made, though.
I open the window on the driver’s side of the car and hurl the phone out of it, roaring.
I can’t believe he’s done this.
Actually, I can totally believe he’s fucking done this. I just can’t believe I was stupid enough not to expect it from him. Who’s the fool here, me or him?
God knows what the old man has heard me talking about on that cell. It doesn’t even bear thinking about. The car engine screams as I gun it, charging in the direction of home.
I’ll do this one last thing for Charlie, but not to help him. I’ll do it to find out what’s going on with Rick. I’ll do it to find out what the hell is going on in general. Then, I’m gonna start making some arrangements.