Chapter Six #2
My breath seized and for a long moment I just knew I was in serious trouble.
Twenty-five thousand dollars wasn’t exactly chump change.
I studied Griffin without daring to blink for fear I’d miss a subtle cue telling me to get the fuck outta Dodge.
I saw nothing in his expression change. Just the same flat attention he had before the prospect mentioned the money.
“How many?” Griffin asked.
“How many what?” The guy sounded strained but his tone was still belligerent.
“How many of you came over the wire tonight.”
“Just me.” The words tumbled from the guy as Griffin tilted his head as if studying him. The prospect tried again. “Just me on the fence,” he clarified. “There’s two more in a truck parked off the access road by the second warehouse on the West side. Waiting on my signal.”
“What signal?”
“Text. Just a fuckin’ text. That’s all. Something saying she’s here, come get her.”
“And if you don’t text?”
The kid’s voice dropped. “They leave. Go back. Tell Iron I fucked it up and got myself caught.”
“They’ll come looking for you.” Inferno shook his head, not buying it. Can’t say I did either.
“No, man. Prospects are disposable. We all know it.” He’d spoken like perhaps the notion of being expendable finally hit home and he realized the situation wasn’t going to end well for him.
Griffin nodded once, like that lined up with something he already knew. “Iron got eyes on the front gate?”
“I think so. I don’t know for sure. He don’t tell us where the eyes are, man. Just where to be.”
“Who else is huntin’ her tonight?”
The prospect’s mouth worked. “I don’t, I swear, I don’t know names. He put the bounty out wide. Said anyone in the city could collect, not just Serpents. There’s freelancers. Couple guys outta Memphis I heard about. That’s all I got. That’s all, I swear it on my mother.”
“Your mother know what you do for a livin’, son?”
The prospect gave a strangled sob, an ugly wet sound. “She’s dead.”
“Then I reckon she ain’t gonna mind.”
The prospect had given him a bounty number, two men in a truck, freelancers from Memphis. I had to wonder what would happen next. I think I knew, but I needed to see how Griffin handled this. More than anything, my next move would depend on what happened in the next few seconds.
“Tiny’s already movin’ on the truck. Knight pulled the pole cam two minutes ago.”
“Good.” Griffin glanced up the fence line, then back down. He looked at the prospect for a long, quiet moment. “Anything else you wanna tell me, son? Now would be the time.”
“That’s all I got.”
“You sure.”
“I swear to fuckin’ God, man!”
“All right then.”
Griffin straightened from his crouch and pulled his phone from his back pocket.
He sent off another text, this time staring at the screen for a long time before putting it back in his pocket.
Griffin pulled a serrated knife from the small of his back.
The motion was so plain and without ceremony, that I had a half-second of refusing to understand what I was watching.
The prospect understood. “Wait! Wait! I told you. I told you what I know, man! I told you everything! You said… Hey! Hey!”
Griffin crouched again. He set his free hand on the back of the prospect’s neck. He leaned in close enough to be heard at a whisper.
“You came over my wall for twenty-five grand.”
“I’ll tell you anything!” The prospect looked from Griffin to Inferno and back, a desperate, growing fear in his eyes. “Anything else! I got more! I got… I got the truck plate! I got stuff on the club! I got --”
“You came over my wall,” Griffin said again, “for a woman I swore would be safe here, for my woman. For twenty-five grand.”
Had Griffin slapped me, I doubt I’d have been more surprised. His woman? Maybe he was just trying to scare the prick. The prospect whimpered and tried to fight despite his hands being zip-tied behind his back.
Griffin sank the blade into the guy’s side before pulling the knife out and repeating the motion several times in quick succession.
The squishing and gurgling sounds were loud as blood squelched with each plunge of the knife into the prospect’s body.
I nearly gagged, but the fear and outrage I probably should have felt never came.
The prospect’s body didn’t move again and a darkening stain spread on the gravel beneath his body.
I had my hand pressed over my mouth. The gauze on my palm scraped my lips.
My pulse beat in my ears so loud I half expected Griffin and Inferno to hear it even though they were twenty yards out.
I waited for Griffin to do something else to the body, like kick it or spit on him or any number of other disrespectful things, but he didn’t.
He wiped the blade against the back of the prospect’s cut and slid it back into the sheath at his waist. He stood, rolled his shoulder, and looked at Inferno.
“Get a tarp,” Griffin said. His voice carried the same flat absence of inflection as before. “Tiny texted he’s got a couple prospects headed our way with a cage.”
“On it. Maybe the guys in the truck will have more info.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for.” Griffin stood over the body for a moment, head tilted.
Then he turned in a slow half circle, scanning the fence, the buildings, the dark spaces between the floods.
His gaze moved past my hiding spot and kept going and then came back.
He looked right at where I stood but didn’t say anything. I hardly dared to breathe.
Then Griffin turned away and walked toward the fence to look through the chain-link at the access road beyond, and I let myself breathe again.
I should have been horrified. I had watched a man die, and what sat in my chest was not horror.
The man on the ground had been climbing a fence to collect twenty-five thousand dollars for delivering me to Iron. Then Griffin had ended him.
That was what unsettled me. The lack of theater. A man who took no pleasure in killing but did it anyway because the fucker had needed to die. And I’d thrown my lot in with him.
I pressed my back harder against the wall and tried to find the part of me that wanted to be sick and repulsed.
It was in there somewhere. I had vomited in my own kitchen sink only hours ago over a man I shot to keep him from killing Griffin.
The same part should have been working overtime now.
Instead I held onto how I was desperately glad the prospect hadn’t made it back to whoever waited in that truck.
The shame of being relieved by the young man’s death would come later. Just now, though, I couldn’t give a good Goddamn.
I peeled myself away from the warehouse wall and slipped back along the path toward the inner ring of warehouses to the one with my room, keeping to the deepest part of the netting’s shadow, and I didn’t look back to see if Griffin had seen me and simply waited until I moved to follow me.
I made it back through the courtyard and into the building without anyone calling out behind me. Once inside, I stepped onto the lift and the doors slid shut on the empty cab and I let my weight fall against the back wall. I stayed there until the doors slid open.
The hall outside my door sat as quiet as I had left it. I keyed myself in, threw the deadbolt, and stood with my back sagged against the wood until I knew my knees wouldn’t give out.
The bandage on my palm had bled through at the center, a faint dark pink bloom against the white.
Honestly, I just wanted to cover up my head and hide.
Just for a little while. I also didn’t want an infection because my wound was dirty.
Shit was getting real and had no idea which way to go or what to do. Or, more importantly, who to trust.
I undressed and washed myself with a wet cloth, not wanting to get in the shower in case someone came for me and I didn’t hear.
Once I’d cleaned the dried blood and rebandaged my hand, I climbed into bed, sliding under the covers and pulling them to my chin. I lay flat on my back, watching the ceiling.
I thought about the prospect.
I thought about my sister.
In my opinion, one deserved death. The other didn’t.
And that was the crux of my moral dilemma.
I didn’t care that a man not much younger than me had been killed because the men he ran with had a hand in my sister’s disappearance.
I understand the probability of me seeing Tessa alive again wasn’t high.
So, the leap to say this man was responsible in some way for my sister’s death wasn’t far.
If that made me a bad person, I’d wear the label like a badge of honor.
And I knew in my heart I’d be forever grateful to Griffin for what he did tonight.
As to the whole me being his woman thing… Yeah. Wasn’t naive enough to think that meant anything, either.
I turned my face to the wall. The pillowcase had a light floral scent, clean and cool against my cheek. I closed my eyes. When sleep came for me this second time, it came quickly. And I didn’t fight it.