Chapter 24
HARLOW
"This is awkward." I stood between Boner and Archer, watching Cass and Jules look down at Fairfield.
"It's dangerous," Boner said. "What guaranteed do we have we can trust this asshat?"
"I don't think he'd betray his brother," I said.
Archer pulled out his phone and took a photo of them. "Right now he's an accessory. He'd be throwing himself under the bus too." Instead of putting his phone away, started scrolling through his social media feed like we weren't standing in a bathroom with a man being slowly deconstructed by acid.
"This is the fuck who destroyed our brother," Jules said, his voice devoid of expression.
"This is him." Cass put a hand on his older brother's shoulder. "Not for much longer."
"I can't decide if this is as messed up as shit or…" Jules shook his head.
Boner smirked. "Of course it's as messed up as shit. So was he." He pointed a beringed finger at Fairfield.
"You think he would have hesitated to do the same thing to you? To Harlow? It's only luck that what happened was to your siblings and not to you."
Jules looked at me like he couldn't have cared less if it was me. That if he could swap me with his youngest brother, he'd strongly consider it.
Honestly, I'd do the same, but I'd never wish what happened to Lettie on anyone else except the people who did it to her. They deserved to be covered in honey and tied out in the hot sun, beside an ant hill so the ants could slowly peel off their skin, then feast on their internal organs.
"This is still fucked up," he muttered.
"How did you know he was missing?" I asked.
His lips thinned, jaw squared. For a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer.
Only when Cass turned to him questioningly, he said, "I went over there to take care of him myself. Saw the gun on the floor. The doors were unlocked. Figured you got to him before I did.”
"You figured right." Boner looked suitably smug.
Jules smirked at him. "You forgot something." He pulled a phone out of the back pocket of his faded black jeans.
"I've got mine," Boner said, tapping his own pocket.
"It's not yours, dickhead." Jules rolled his eyes. "This belongs to him." He pointed the phone toward Fairfield. "It was lying on the floor near the back door."
I winced. "We must have missed it." No doubt it fell out when the men were carrying him out of the brownstone.
I wondered why he didn't have one on him, but not everyone was attached to their phones twenty-four seven.
He could just as easily have put it aside somewhere and we didn't see where.
We'd been too busy trying to leave before the cops came, to look for it.
If Jules was able to walk through the place, I guess Fairfield hadn't called them after all. That figured. We could have taken our time.
"No shit," Jules said with a derisive snort. "This could have all sorts of incriminating information on it."
Judging by the way Fairfield stared at him, his eyes wider than ever, he wasn't wrong.
He couldn't be worried about what they'd do to him for letting us get our hands on their information, could they?
What could they do to him that we weren't already doing?
The fact he was so scared spoke volumes about how powerful these men were. How dangerous.
My heart skipped. That phone might contain the details of the last three men I was hunting. One quick look and I could know their names. That was all I needed to track them down and end them.
"Have you looked at it?" Cass asked, eyeing the device like it was a gold nugget.
"It's locked," Jules said. He hesitated for a moment before handing it to his brother.
Cass tapped at the screen, swallowed hard and glanced up at me. "It needs…a thumbprint." He looked nauseous again.
To be honest, I was relieved. A thumbprint was easier than a passcode or facial recognition.
Trying to figure out the passcode could take forever, and we'd have to remove the gag from Fairfield to use his face.
He'd scream or cry the moment we did. Perhaps plead for his life. We couldn't risk the neighbors hearing.
Boner grinned. "That won't be a problem. We happen to have a couple of spare thumbs lying around." As if that was an everyday occurrence for regular people. Thumbs scattered throughout the house like phone chargers, or tissue boxes.
"I can do it if you want," I offered. If the idea of handling dismembered digits was too much for Cass, it wasn't for me. Besides, I really wanted a look at what was on that phone.
"I…" Cass took in a deep breath and let it out with the words, "I can do it."
"Cassius—" Jules started.
"I can do this," Cass said again, more firmly this time. "Harlow, you might want to see what's on here." Without another word, he turned and headed out to the other room.
I gave Jules a quick glance before following Cass over to the table.
"Lucky thumbs are shorter than the other fingers," I said.
"It makes it easier to find them." It didn't hurt that Boner lined them up in order, with the middle fingers sitting across the pointers as though Fairfield crossed his fingers for luck.
It hadn't worked too well for him, maybe it would work better for us.
"Right." Cass pinched the right thumb, grimacing as he picked it up and pressed the pad against the phone. "I guess it's the other one." He picked up the left thumb and tried again. The screen opened onto a generic screensaver that came with the phone.
"It figures he'd be unimaginative," I said. Of course, he wouldn't put anything incriminating on the lock screen or the home screen. If anyone saw, he would have gotten into trouble long before now. It also figured that the phone was almost fully charged. Fairfield was chaotic evil at best.
"I'll change it so we can get in with a passcode," Cass said, tapping on the settings icon. He changed it to one one three seven. "We won't forget that.”
"No, we won't," I agreed. It was the street number for my restaurant. I was surprised he noticed or remembered. The fact he did was touching. "Can we have a look at his contacts?"
"Yeah." Careful not to touch the photos icon, Cass brought up Fairfield's contacts and held the screen so we could both look.
"He knew some very rich, influential people," I said. I knew that already, but some of these names were surprising. Honestly, many would surprise the entire world.
Some were likely to be innocent business contacts, with absolutely no knowledge of Fairfield's activities. Others though… If we could prove they were involved, they were going to end the same way.
I wasn't surprised Fairfield knew Reuben Brantley.
From what I heard, he was a notorious mob boss from Australia.
I suspected he was one of the ones who didn't know what Fairfield was up to.
His interests lay elsewhere. Hopefully he wouldn't decide to track us down and retaliate.
The last thing I needed was a mob boss taking a hit out on me.
Although, he'd have to find me first.
"And a few pseudonyms." Cass pointed to someone referred to as Eros, and another who went by Hypnos. Right at the bottom of the list was Zeus.
"Coincidence?" I asked, not believing that for a moment. Three men, three Greek gods.
These were the last three men who murdered my sister. I was certain of it.
"I'll send the information to your phone." One by one, he sent the details to me, making my phone vibrate in my pocket. "It'll take a while to do the rest of them. I'll look into them and see if they need to be…"
"Dealt with?" I offered.
He swallowed. "Yeah, dealt with."
I put a hand on his bicep. "You don't have to take part in any of this. You and your brother, you could both walk out of here right now and not look back."
I'd be disappointed if I never saw Cass again, but Jules could get lost and I wouldn't lose any sleep.
"I'm staying," Cass said firmly. "I'm in this with you until the end. Whatever that may be."
I nodded slowly and squeezed his arm. "I'm glad you are. What about Jules? Do you think seeing Fairfield like that has given him what he needs?"
"What's that?" Jules asked from the doorway. "What do I need?"
"Closure," Cass said softly. "We can finally put Auggie to rest. Get on with our lives."
"Is that what you're doing, Cassius?" Jules stalked into the room. "Getting on with your life? Is that what this is?" He waved a hand toward the table containing ten dismembered fingers and ten dismembered toes. Not to mention a shit ton of blood.
"That's exactly what this is," Cass said. "I'm doing something meaningful."
Jules stared at him. "You're doing something twisted. Not to mention illegal."
"Like I said, you can walk out the door and never look back," I told him coldly. "You saw what you came to see."
I hadn't missed it when he said he tried to take care of Fairfield himself. What form would that have taken? I couldn't see evidence of a gun on him. Or a knife, for that matter. What was he planning to do, yell Fairfield to death? Perhaps glare at him until his heart stopped?
"Have I?" Jules looked at me sideways, dark eyes intense. "Do you seriously think seeing that asshole like that is going to make me feel better about what he did to our brother?" He gestured back towards the bathroom with his whole arm.
"No, because it doesn't take away the pain of what he did to my sister." I tried to keep my voice even, although my emotions threatened to spill over.
"All it does is make me feel better that he can't do it again. That lasts for a couple of days before I'm reminded he's only one person. There's so many more like him."
Jules dropped his hand to his side with a slap. He pressed his lips together and half closed his eyes.
"Exactly," he said, his voice gravelly with his own barely contained emotion. "That sack of shit dying isn't gonna bring Augustus back. It's not going to erase what I saw when I walked into his room and found him…" He screwed his eyes shut.
"Jules." Cass walked over and put his arms around his older brother. Jules stiffened for a moment before returning the embrace.
"It's so fucking fucked up," Jules whispered.
"It's extremely fucked up," I agreed. "I wish I got to him before he got to your brother. Then it wouldn't have happened at all."
Jules all but shoved Cass away. "You were looking for him?"
"For years," I said.
"You could have stopped this." His tone was all accusation.
"Julius—" Cass started.
Jules shook his head. "No. If she had found him, Augustus would be here right now."
"What Fairfield did wasn't her fault," Cass insisted. "You know that."
"Do I?" Jules rounded on him. His jaw set, he turned and stalked out the door, slamming it shut behind him.
"I'm sorry about him," Cass said softly. "He didn't mean it. He knows there's nothing you could have done." He didn't seem so sure.
Maybe I was projecting my thoughts on to him, because I blamed myself.
If I spent less time setting up my restaurant and more time hunting these monsters, I might have gotten to Fairfield first. I'd split my attention between two things, trying to hold onto some kind of normality.
How many people had hurt because I did that?
How many had died?
How many would still die while we tried to figure out who Eros, Hypnos and Zeus were?
We were in a race to find them before they destroyed more lives.
And before they found us.