31
“The news is rabid about this shit.” Rafe turns on the T.V. in the garage and throws the remote on the couch as it flickers on. “If torturing us was their plan, then that just turned into murder.”
A thirty-seven year old man by the name of Sione Mauga was found dead last night in a parking lot stairwell.
Mauga was brutally beaten before suffering a fatal shot to the head.
The police are releasing information on the shooting in hopes that a witness will come forward.
It’s believed that there was an illegal street racing meet-up last night in the parking garage.
They are working diligently to pull any footage from the CCTV cameras in the building, but are at a loss for any substantial leads.
Concerns around the nature of the murder are raising more questions within the community, as this is the third body to be found in the last two weeks. Does Phoenix have a serial killer?
“They’ll never find shit on those cameras,” Murphy scoffs, offended they’d even try. “I looped the footage back on itself so it was eating its tail for hours. They’ll chalk it up to technical faults and give up.”
“I’ve never been labeled a serial killer before.” Birdie hangs her head out of the back door of the Evo. She’s been in there for an hour, sprawled across the back seat reading one of her books, with half her attention on it and the other on us trying to work.
“No one is labeling you a serial killer,” I groan. They just think it’s one person.
“Yeah, we also didn’t have anything to do with the fish guy,” Murphy adds, pulling the sucker from his mouth and pointing at her. She opens hers and he slides his chair across the cement toward her to share.
“Imagine being a gangster and dying, only to be called Fish Guy the rest of your life.” Rafe laughs and the others join him.
“We could call him Barracuda John,” Murphy suggests, and Birdie snorts.
“Still lame.” She pops the sucker out of her mouth and hands it back to him.
“What’s lame?” Jesse appears in the garage doorway with lunch and sets it on the bench.
“Nothing.” I shut them up and grab my sandwich. “Hey, have you heard anything more from Jake about the race?”
“Things aren’t looking great. After last night people are making moves across the board and Jake got another text about keeping his mouth shut.” Jesse sighs, running his fingers through his hair. “They want this quiet and Jake’s worried that they’re going to overrun this race tomorrow.”
“Overrun?” Murphy scowls.
“They had one guy there yesterday, after you…” Jesse swallows tightly. “Y’know.” Murdered a dude, he mouths, like they’ve bugged the garage, and I roll my eyes at his dramatics.
“They’re going to beef up their numbers,” Rafe sighs. “If they’re going to do anything drastic, it’ll be tomorrow.”
“They’re using the race to trap us.” I nod, staring at them.
“There’s no way they play fair.” Birdie sits up and climbs from the back seat. “They’re going to out number us, use the race as a distraction, keep us split up.”
“We need help,” I admit, even though I hate the idea of it.
“Who can we even trust?” Rafe shrugs. I can see the words die on his lips. He can barely even extend trust to Cress, he has none to spare lately. Birdie chews her bottom lip and Murphy is no help because all his friends are in this room.
“My uncle,” Jesse offers.
“Liloa?” I ask, interested in what he has to say. He runs one of the dirtiest gangs in Arizona, he has his fingers in everything and even when you think he’s not involved. He is.
“He likes Cuckoo Bird. Thinks she’s a lunatic,” Jesse smiles at her and she giggles like it’s the best thing that’s ever been said to her.
“He keeps trying to get me to run jobs for him but I told him we don’t do that anymore,” Birdie adds to the conversation.
“What if we did?” I blurt without thinking.
“What?” Rafe stands from where he’s leaning on the back of the couch and narrows his eyes on me. “You said—”
“I know what I said.” After the last one ended up with Koa dead I swore we’d never do another run ever. But desperate times. “When was the last time he asked?”
Birdie pulls out her phone. "Two weeks ago. He does border swipes, Riggs, those are…”
“I know,” I stop her. We’d run a few back in the day.
The trucks she’s talking about are federal vehicles running back stolen property to the US.
They’re heavily guarded trucks with an escort, but they never bring in less than half a million.
Stealing it for ourselves crosses my mind for a split second, but it would bring too much heat down on us and I’d rather let Liloa deal with that. He’s equipped for it.
“Set up a meeting.”
“I always knew you’d come crawling to me, Monroe.” Liloa stands on his porch with Jesse standing behind him looking nervous. It doesn’t matter how badly Liloa wants Birdie to work for him, it’s still a risk to be here and he’s one of the most dangerous men in this state.
“I had to drag him,” Birdie quips, following me up the steps.
“You look a little round, Li. Nani must be feeding you well.” She pats him on the shoulder like they’re close friends and it rattles me how good she is at it.
For a second I can feel Koa’s presence all around me and it’s suffocating to know he’s still coursing through her with such potency.
“Too well, Bird.” He turns his head and kisses her hand.
“You gonna stand outside all evening?” He glares at me when I stop before coming up the steps.
“Thinking about it.” I say honestly and he laughs, it’s dark and hollow. When he smiles it brings me no comfort, instead I suddenly feel like a mouse caught in a trap.
Liloa shifts on his feet. He’s a big man, broad and thick-set, with a mean, swollen face that has seen the worst sides of life growing up. He crosses his arms when I don’t make a move to follow him and opens his mouth again.
“You came for help because you aren’t enough to protect them on your own.
I know because I stood where you’re standing, I refused to beg.
Thought I could handle my shit on my own.
” he says tightly, stepping down off the step to get in my face.
“We can’t be everything for everyone without losing pieces of ourselves,” he says.
“It doesn’t make you less of a man to admit defeat, Monroe. ”
“I’m not admitting defeat,” I keep my tone flat, curbing the anger and frustration that bubbles beneath.
“So what’s this then?” He looks me up and down.
“Knowing my strengths and weaknesses.” I tell him.
“And what is that weakness?” he asks, and I know I shouldn’t tell him but Liloa is a man that runs on violence and brutal honesty. He wants the truth in exchange for his help, and at this point I’m willing to give it to him to stop the game of cat and mouse.
“My family,” I admit. “Birdie, the boys…”
“Cress Taito.” Her name rolls off his tongue and I’m not surprised but I still flinch. “She’s causing quite a bit of trouble for your little family. Isn’t she?”
“She’s worth it,” I don’t hesitate to say.
“She must be, if you're the second man willing to die for her.” Liloa’s smile grows.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I cock my head to the side, suddenly realizing that he’s not playing cat and mouse, and I’m caught in another game I don’t have the rules for.
“Secrets destroy families faster than guns,” he laughs. “She wanted him to prove himself so he did, in a pretty spectacular fuckin’ way.”
“She had nothing to do with his death.” I shake my head. Now he’s just spouting nonsense to twist me up.
“Are you sure?” Liloa asks. “Because the conversation I had with him the day before he died would suggest otherwise, Monroe.”
I swallow tightly, desperately wanting to ask him what he could possibly have spoken to Koa about that would indicate Cress is the reason he did what he did.
But I don’t, because it’s just another game I can’t afford to play with an animal looking for blood.
“I didn’t come here to have the knife twisted, Liloa. You said you could help.”
His smile turns sick and it churns the contents of my stomach. “Ask for it.”
I grind my teeth together.
“Oh, come on,” he teases. “It’s as easy as that.”
“It’s never that simple and you know it. What do you need us to do?” I spit.
“There’s a transport coming in from Mexico that I have good information on. It’s a haul of cocaine; nine bags, uncut,” he explains. “I want you to take it off the detail transporting it.”
“You want us to rob the DEA?” I laugh. “In the city?”
“Six bags,” he repeats. “It’s two SUVs. I have their plates. They left yesterday morning, and should be in the city within the next three hours.”
“You want us to rob the cops with three hours notice?” I scoff. It was his job that night. Koa was running for Liloa on short notice. “You’re fucking insane.”
“And you’re desperate,” he reminds me.
I weigh the options back and forth: walk into an unknown job tonight with my family, risk it all for protection. Or walk away from him right now and take my chances with something much more sinister with way less information.
Fuck.
That leaves us an hour to prep, an hour to get in place, and an hour to pull off an impossible pick up without our best asset. Koa would already have a plan. I swallow tightly and nod, because I don’t have a single other option.
“Send the details to Murphy, everything you have,” I say to him. “No surprises.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Liloa grins, and I don’t trust it for a second. “And Riggs,” he says as I start to walk inside. “I want Cress to deliver the bags.”