Chapter Four
“So, you really up for this?” Gabe asked as he pulled out an assortment of guns.
“Please stop asking that question. Between you and Meghan, I think I’ve been asked enough about my feelings on the matter.”
“Hey, you should go easy on Meghan.”
“I know,” Reyna said with a sigh. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I know what she’s lost. I know what it all feels like, but I can’t stand being babied. I’m not the same person I was when I joined Visage or the person Meghan met when she broke me out.”
“I can see that. But Megs can’t help but look out for you. It’s in her nature.”
Reyna shrugged. “You’re right. Just trying to keep the train on the rails. I don’t want us to get so lost in our feelings that we stop doing shit.”
Gabe chambered a bullet in his weapon and then smiled at her. “Don’t worry. I’m all for doing shit.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she said with a laugh.
Gabe collected all the guns and loaded most into a duffle bag. He stuffed one into his waistband and attached several others to holsters on his body. Then he handed one to Reyna. “Hope you don’t need this.”
“Me too.” She took it reluctantly, checked the safety, and then strapped it to her side. She pulled her jacket over it, and they headed out the door.
“Can you believe that Washington has had this place since 1805?” Gabe said with a shake of his head. “Fucking vampires, man. How fucking old is he?”
“Old.”
When they reached the garage, Reyna’s eyes doubled in size at the amazing selection of vehicles that Washington had.
From flashy sports cars to SUVs to a fucking Hummer.
The guy was a collector. This must’ve been where the groundskeeper spent most of his time.
Thank God, he kept the garage outfitted with up-to-date tech.
Reyna and Gabe hopped in the passenger seat of one of the more inconspicuous cars.
“Why the hell would he work as a doctor with this loot?” The car revved to life and then Gabe peeled away.
“It clearly didn’t start as an Elle establishment,” she said, voicing the thought she’d had all along. “Fifteen years ago, he would have been helping Harrington start Visage.”
“It’s a little poetic that the rebel organization that’s going to take Harrington’s ass down is working out of a base he started all this shit in.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Reyna said with a vicious smile.
They drove for over an hour in companionable conversation. Gabe was a carefree, flirtatious sort. When she’d first met him, she’d immediately pegged him as trouble. That much was still true. Except now it was one of her favorite qualities about the quick-witted Irish mobster.
As they moved through more decrepit streets, their conversation slowed until it lapsed into silence.
The neighborhood was decrepit to say the least. Waste and refuse littered the street.
Most of the streetlights were out and left an eerie glow on everything.
Graffiti littered the buildings and only a handful of people walked around, none of them looked particularly friendly.
Her heart sank. She sure hoped Jodie had already left this place.
“I’m not sure what to do about the car,” Gabe said. “I thought it would blend. I greatly underestimated how shitty this neighborhood is.”
“Yeah. I think we need to find a place to stash it.”
“You okay with a bit of a walk?” Gabe grimaced.
“Whatever we need to do.”
It was probably a mile away from their destination before Gabe found a place to leave the car that didn’t look as if it would be stripped down for parts before they returned.
The weather was brisk, but it was nice to be out actually doing something.
She hardly noticed the walk or the cold as anticipation fluttered through her stomach.
“Try not to get your hopes up,” Gabe muttered. “This isn’t the kind of place people linger if they don’t have to.”
Reyna ducked her head and tried not to make eye contact with anyone on the streets. She’d grown up in the Warehouse District. She’d thought she’d known hardship but that was nothing compared to what she saw now.
A few guys approached Gabe, who bucked up to twice his size at their approach.
“You got some cash?” the first guy asked.
“No.”
“What, you’re too good for us?” the second guy asked.
“How about your little girly, then?” The last guy took a step toward Reyna. She sidestepped closer to Gabe.
Gabe shot them a menacing glare and then pulled back the front of his jacket. The handguns he’d secured there earlier were clearly visible. “You’re making a terrible mistake. Just keep walking.”
One guy showed off his own gun, but his friends looked warier.
“Promise I’m faster on the draw,” Gabe snarled.
“Come on, Dom.”
“Yeah, Dom,” Gabe spat. “Listen to your buddies.”
Dom offered some choice expletives before being dragged away by his friends. Reyna only took a breath when they were a block away from them. She sure hoped that they didn’t run into them again. That encounter wouldn’t go as well.
“Fucking cocky bastards. Thinking only with their dicks,” Gabe growled relentlessly as they walked the last few blocks. “Think they’re so bad. They wouldn’t survive a night on my fucking streets.”
Reyna smiled at him. She liked seeing Gabe be all big bad tough guy. No wonder Meghan was into him.
“Well, here we are,” Gabe said.
They stared up at the dilapidated apartment building. Most of the windows were boarded up. A group of kids played with a kickball in the street, and a few elderly men played backgammon on the stoop. It didn’t seem as bad, until she spotted a drug deal happening on the corner.
“Great place,” Reyna muttered.
They approached the entrance, which had an electric gate that had long been deactivated.
One of the elderly men called out to them, but they both ignored him and hurried up the steps.
They checked the registry for Jodie’s cousin’s name, June Gardner.
There was no one by that name, but they’d been expecting that.
They buzzed the apartment number. No one answered.
Gabe shrugged and took to the stairs. They went up five flights before finding the apartment off the landing.
Gabe knocked on the front door long enough for someone to finally crack it open.
It was a large woman in nothing on but a bra and underwear.
Her hair was in curlers, and she wore a permanent sneer.
“What?” she spat. “I don’t need nothing. Don’t need you banging on my door. Fuck off.”
Reyna jumped forward. “So sorry to bother you, ma’am. We were wondering if June Gardner lived here.”
“Don’t know no one by that name.”
“Or Jodie. Tall, Black woman, curly hair?”
“Yeah, she came by. So what?”
Reyna’s heart leaped. “When?”
“Don’t fucking know. But I sent her on her way like I’m about to send you on yours.”
“Do you know where she went?” Gabe interjected.
“Do I look like someone’s fucking keeper?” the woman said and then slammed the door in their faces.
Gabe looked like he wanted to barrel through the door. She put her hand on his arm and shook her head.
“She’s not going to be any more help. I think if she was this nice to us then she wouldn’t have been any kinder to Jodie.”
“True.”
“Come on. Let’s find someone more willing to give information.”
They headed back downstairs and walked over to the elderly man who had tried to flag them down. He at least had wanted to talk to them.
“Hello,” she said with a smile.
“Well, hello there,” he said with a toothless grin. “I’m Harold.”
“Nice to meet you. We are looking for our friend June. She used to live here, and we haven’t heard from her in a while.”
“June, June, June,” the man said as if looking deep into the recesses of his mind.
“Our other friend, Jodie, came looking for her last week.” Reyna gave him the same description she’d given the woman upstairs.
“Oh, I remember her,” the man said. He moved a backgammon piece before turning back to them. “She came around asking the same questions as you.”
“Yes, we’re worried about our friend June.”
“Oh, June?” another man asked, glancing up. “She worked at the pie place. I go every week. Best pie in the city. Try the cherry cobbler.”
Reyna sagged with relief. A lead.
They got instructions from the men, relieved to find it was only a few blocks away, and then hurried from the horrid apartment complex.
She and Gabe didn’t speak as the anticipation coursed through them.
After botched mission following botched mission, they needed this win.
They needed to prove that they could get one person back.
Because if they could get Jodie, then maybe they could save everyone else too.
This joint would have answers. She was sure of it.
The pie place was actually named Pie Place. It was a simple diner. Not exactly clean, but it had waitresses in vintage yellow dresses with white aprons over them. None of them looked too pleased to be there.
She and Gabe pulled out red-cushioned stools and sat at the bar. A woman roller-skated up to them from behind the bar, holding a pen and notepad.
“Welcome to Pie Place, where we have the best pie in the city. Can I recommend the cherry cobbler?” she said with little enthusiasm.
The backgammon guys must come all the time. They even had the spiel down.
“Cherry cobbler would be great,” Gabe said. Reyna shot him a look. He shrugged. “Who turns down pie?”
Gabe waited until he had his pie in front of him before grinning wickedly at the waitress.
Reyna watched with admiration and disgust as he charmed his way into conversation with this woman who clearly hated her job.
She giggled and flirted, came back twice for drink refills, and ignored her other tables to talk to Gabe.
“Be right back,” he said with a wink and then followed the waitress through to the kitchen.
Reyna huffed in frustration, finishing off the rest of his helping of cherry cobbler. She had to admit it was really good. Damn. She’d been hoping it was an exaggeration.
After five long minutes, Reyna was ready to head back into that kitchen herself and bust up whatever was going on. She couldn’t believe that he’d basically abandoned her for some waitress.
Then Gabe appeared, looking grim.
“What?” she asked, glancing around to check her surroundings. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re not going to like this.”
“Well, I didn’t like you abandoning me out here either.”
He glanced at the bar. “You ate my pie.”
“You were gone forever.”
Gabe sighed and threw down a twenty. “Come on. I know where Jodie went next.”
“How the hell…?”
“Sometimes interrogations happen with a smile.”
“You really are trouble.”
“No worries, nothing too wild.” He flicked her a devious grin. “But I am.”
“So, where did she go?” The bell chimed overhead as they exited.
Gabe pointed across the street. “Meredith told me that girls who get fired from Pie Place ‘go across the street.’ Apparently, it’s quite literal, because girls who get fired from a mediocre diner can’t get a job anywhere else.”
Reyna glanced across the street and saw a nondescript brick building with a neon sign that read Bottoms, a gentleman’s club.
“Ugh,” Reyna groaned. “A strip club?”
“Yeah. And they don’t open for a couple more hours so we’re going to have to kill time until we can get inside.”
“Great.”
“The stakeout. My least favorite part of a job,” Gabe muttered.
They hiked back to the car to make sure it was still in one piece and then whittled away the next couple hours until Bottoms opened for business. Gabe phoned Meghan to let her know that they’d be later than anticipated.
They made their way back to Bottoms right before it opened and watched the line of regulars file in the front door. When Gabe gave her the okay, they trotted across the street and inside.
It was the first strip club Reyna had ever been in, and it was even seedier than she could have imagined.
There was a small stage that jutted through the middle of the room, with shiny chrome poles spaced across it.
Seats ringed the stage and tables took up dark, secluded corners.
She could see a few marked doors that she assumed were for private dances.
A bar ran along a whole wall and waitresses in lingerie strutted around offering drinks to patrons.
A busty blonde was onstage in nothing but a G-string and black thigh-high leather boots.
“Let’s get a table,” Gabe said.
“Are you out of your mind? Let’s talk to the manager and get out of here like we agreed.”
“Change of plans.”
Reyna groaned. “Why? What the hell could have changed it?”
Gabe pointed his finger at the stage. Reyna whipped around. Striding onto the stage in a ruby-red negligee and clear, mile-high heels was Jodie.