Jackson Stiles, Road to Redemption (13 page)

Details.

“Is there a point to this conversation?” I can’t take it anymore. I have to say, though, this sucks.

If I tell him to fuck off and Ma has to drive all the way over here just for me to say no, she’s gonna be pissed. If I say yes, she’ll still be pissed because I shoulda just said yes in the first fucking place.

I’m screwed.

Again, “Fuck.”

“You just realized you’re screwed here, didn’t you?”

The sigh I let out tells him all he needs to know.

“Okay then. I’ll pick you up at─”

“I’ll drive myself.” What am I, ten?

“Sorry, bro, I promised Ma you’d be there. It’s my ass if you turn out to be a no-show. I’ll be here around five. Be ready.”

Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and… fuck me. I kick the railing and throw a hand up. I give.

“Fine.”

“Sweet.” He claps his hands like he’s a used car salesman who just signed his last deal of the day.

The only problem is, he’s still expecting to come inside.

“Uh, look, Nick. The place is a mess.”

“So?” He laughs and tries to push past me. I stop his ass.

“Fine. I’ve got someone inside, and I don’t want it to get awkward, so…” It’s all I’ve got. Not exactly a lie. Just an insinuated one.

With Nick being the gentleman he is, it’s all I need.

He holds his hands up and backs off.
Thank you, God.

“Say no more.” He leans toward me and whispers. “But, dude, I wouldn’t let Emma find out. That one’s a firecracker.”

He winks and punches my arm. First of all, ow. But secondly, “She’s not─”

“Just bring someone, Jackie. You know how Ma gets,” he tells me on his way back down the stairs. His steps are triumphant. And I’m
this
close to throwing a pen at the back of his head.

“Why’d you bring a cop here, man?” Jimmy asks in a panicked voice from behind a cracked doorway. Nick gets into his cruiser and waves a hand as he pulls out into the road.

I wave back and answer Stix out of the side of my mouth.

“I didn’t.”

He opens the door wider and steps out onto the platform next to me as the cruiser pulls out. Then he lets out a sigh of relief.

“I thought you set me up, sent ’em to come get me.”

This kid is almost as paranoid as I am.

Almost.

“Not gonna happen, Jimmy.”

“Promise?”

“Yep.”

I start inside and click my teeth, looking for Frodo. And my cigarette. Jimmy’s right behind me. I may as well have two cats.

“So who was that?”

“Just a guy.” I open the bedroom door. Frodo’s not on the bed.

“Why was he here?”

“None of your business.” I check the pantry. Sometimes he gets himself stuck in there trying to get at the treats.

“You in trouble?”

“You know what, kid? I think I liked you better when you weren’t talking so much. Where’s my cat?”

“He was meowing a bunch so I fed him, and he took off out the bathroom window. That was like, ten-fifteen minutes ago.”

Damn cat.

“Okay, well, what about you? You eat?”

I do a visual sweep of the apartment to see if anything looks, I don’t know, out of place.

Jimmy’s face scrunches up. “That bread is stale and the peanut butter looked gross.”

“What?” I walk over to the kitchen counter and open up the jar. I sniff it, then I proceed to gag.

It definitely smells like sweaty balls. What’s the expiration date on this shit, anyway?

“Okay.” I toss the jar into the trash and head back for the door. “How do you feel about subs?”

“I like subs,” he tells me, excited and bouncy like a fifteen-year-old girl about to get her first kiss.

Yay me.

THERE ONCE WAS A STREET PUNK NAMED THOMAS

“I THOUGHT WE WERE getting subs.”

The kid, otherwise most recently known as the royal pain in my proverbial ass, is apparently very observant.

“Side stop.”

“Where?”

I ignore him. If I tell him I’m going to check out a hunch I have regarding multiple murders that may or may not be linked to his brother’s, he might freak the fuck out. The last thing I need right now is a panicked teenager.

This way, all I get is emo, which I’m willing to overlook. I’m not, however, willing to ignore the fact that his feet are about to scuff up my dash after I just cleaned this bitch.

“I don’t fucking think so.” I push his leg off and eyeball him, hard. To which he gives me a standard issue annoyed teenage glance as his feet move to the floorboard. After a few more minutes, he reaches for my stereo, and I nix him again.

“Driver picks the channel.”

“Tunes.”

“What?” Was that not implied?

“It’s driver picks the… never mind. There’s nothing playing, anyway.” He thinks he’s smart, pointing out the obvious like that. He should hang out with Nick sometime.

“Exactly.” I need silence. If I’m gonna visit one of the worst parts of the city, I have to think it through.

A blind reach across my chest finds my shirt pocket. I nab the cig inside that I slipped back into its home when I stopped at the apartment earlier. When Stix sees it, his face scrunches up like he’s never seen a fucking cigarette before.

“What?”

“You know those things’ll kill you, right?”

Seriously? “That’s rich, coming from the kid whose brother used to be a gang member and most recently was dealing with the highly illegal activity known as street racing.”

“You were racing, too.”

“For my job.”

“You still did it.”

“For the love of…” Ya know what? Not important. I slip the damn thing back into my pocket and call it a draw.

The kid blows out a long, slobbery raspberry in my direction. A few minutes later, he throws out one last “Hail Mary” in an attempt to make this ride enjoyable. For him, anyway.

“Can I at least drive?” He lifts an eyebrow, expectantly. Mine’s bigger though. Plus, really? He’s barely old enough to make his own decisions much less get behind the wheel of a machine like this.

“Fine.” He drops the game of twenty fucking questions and instead finds a stray thread on his shoe to play with for the remainder of the ride. When we pull up to our destination, about half an hour later, he instinctively sinks down into his seat.

“Get in the back.” He does as he’s told without hesitation, and I’m grateful for the lack of wise-assery.

I’m also wondering if this case is doomed.

“What the mother of hell is
she
doing here?”

“Who?” He strains to see before I answer.

“Nobody.” I watch Green carefully because, seriously, what in the hell is she doing here?

“That your girlfriend?” He’s pissing me off with this shit.

“She’s most definitely
not
my girlfriend. Now get down and lie low.”

It looks to me like Green’s interviewing a gang member. He’s all up in her personal space. But that’s not the odd thing about this whole situation. The really disturbing thing is, the guy is smiling at her.

Fucking smiling.

What the fuck is it with all these guys being nice to this woman?

The way she throws her hair over her shoulder and tucks some of it away behind her ear reminds me of the other day when she teased Nick with that flirtatious grin of hers.

Fake
.

Clearly, she’s trying to get some information out of this one. The way she clicks her pen, like she’s going for a world record for speed, tells me she’s nervous.

Not fake
. She most likely can’t wait to get back into the safety of her car and get the hell outta here. Not that I blame her.

While I’m busy spying on Green, someone else is spying on me, apparently, and very aggressively approaches the car. I reach behind me and throw a blanket I have back there over the kid as one of Flint’s people taps on the window. Before I make any sudden moves, I confirm I can feel my Smith & Wesson against my hip.

Check.

As I roll the window down, he raises his gun. Not pointed
at
me, exactly. He simply wants me to know it’s there.

I give him a half-nod.

“How’s it goin’?”

“What you doin’ here, hoss?”

Seriously?

“That the cool word going around these days? Hoss?”

He cocks his gun.

I raise my hands in pacification. “No offense.”

“You should leave.” His warning isn’t taken lightly. I know this part of town. Been there. Done that. Not interested in revisiting that chapter again. But this is kinda, sorta fucking important.

“I need a word with Thomas.” He gives me a good inspection up and down.

“You don’t look like the kinda guy who’d know Thomas.” His even stare tells me he doesn’t necessarily want to shoot me right here in the street, but he will.

I roll my eyes anyway because, if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a pussy.

And I am not a fucking pussy.

“I know the guy. And like I said, I need a
fucking
word.” The Smith & Wesson is out in full view now. I point it at his stupid-looking head before he’s able to get his pointed at yours truly.

Do I know Thomas?

More like
knew
him. Once. Like in middle school. When kids were still semi-innocent from their elementary school days but getting ready to grow into mutants their parents barely recognize.

There was a group of us who decided to stretch our inner rebels and practice pissing our parents off by trespassing on the local recreational facilities one night after dark. We weren’t very good at it back then.

Long story short, the police came,
my dad included;
I got off easy because of my family connections. Thomas didn’t.

He pretty much hated my guts, and every other part of me, after that. His disdain for me grew throughout middle school and into high school when I took some ROTC classes with Nick, and Thomas leaned more toward the natural herb growing business.

Otherwise known as pot.

Typical kid stuff.

“I don’t want any trouble.” I’m calm. Collected. That’s how I roll. And he backs off slowly, then heads toward the building behind him.

I let some air out that got caught in the back of my throat there for a minute and pray to whoever the hell is listening that this guy actually gets me Tom and not his right-hand man, Dice. Otherwise, this could turn ugly.

He might still be pissed at me for the finger he lost about two years ago.

Long story.

Not my fault.

Honest.

Okay, maybe it was a little my fault.

“What the hell are you doing, dude?” Jimmy whisper-shouts from under his blanket in the back seat. I’d nearly forgotten he was even there. “Have you lost your mind? Pointing a gun at Flint’s peeps is like suicide.”

To say the least.

“Stay low, stay quiet, and we’ll be outta here before you can say─”

“Who’s this?”

SHIT.

I turn, aim, and cock my gun at our new visitor before I can register who it is. Who
she
is. Green. Standing at my fucking window. Air rushes out of me, thankful it’s not Thomas or anyone else who might be coming out of the abandoned warehouse I’ve parked near.

Green’s face drains of the color she painted on this morning, and I pull back on the shooting instinct. A little bit.

“I’m…” I put a hand up to silence Jimmy and his big mouth. The less she knows, the better.

“This is none of your business, Green. And what in the hell are you doing here?”

She looks back over her shoulder to see if her contact is still there. He is. And he’s watching us, closely.

“Investigating,” she says simply when she turns back to me.

“This is a stupid place to start.”

She cocks her head toward me. “
You’re
here.”

“Yeah, well, I’m an idiot.”

She lets out a small laugh and lifts a shoulder. “
You
wouldn’t help me. What’s a girl supposed to do?”

“Go back to her day job. Live a little longer?”

“That’s no fun.” She thinks playing advocate to gang bangers is a game. This woman. Swear to fucking God.

“You really should go.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Stiles.” She’s serious now. Like I’ve offended her by trying to be chivalrous and shit.

Won’t make that mistake again.

“Or maybe I will.”

“What?”

I swing the door open and push Green to the side as Thomas
and
Dice approach us. And man, they do
not
look happy to see me.

“I will cut you, motherfucker!” Dice always has been a bit on the dramatic side. He makes his way past Thomas, but lucky for me, the big guy isn’t in a playful kinda mood today. He puts a hand on Dice to stop him but doesn’t take his eyes off yours truly.

My stare shifts to Dice, who’s now interested in Green, which is why I told her to fucking leave in the first place. You don’t wanna catch the attention of these guys. Trust me.

“Good to see you, Dice,” I tell him in an effort to pull his glare away from her and, hopefully, from the back of my car, too.

“What do you need, Jack?” Thomas is ready to get to the point. I can’t blame the guy. He’s got a lot on his plate.

Selling drugs. Killing enemies.

Tough life.

It’s not my first choice, doing this with Green here. Who knows what information she’ll twist into a front page story for
The Chronicle
. I don’t exactly have any other options though. It’s now or never.

“I wanted to ask you about Donnie Leary.” I throw his name out there because a) I need to see how he reacts to it, and b) I don’t wanna be here any longer than I have to. The problem is, when Green’s previous interviewee hears that name, he starts heading over to join the powwow.

Not good.

That’s three against two. Well, one and a half really.

Dice pulls out his smartphone and texts somebody. It’s official. I don’t have much time.

“What about him?” Thomas looks intrigued enough to
not
blow my brains out. Which is a good thing. I think.

“Your guys kill him?”

No sense beating around the bush, right?

He laughs and takes a glance over toward the empty road he calls home. Like he’s thinking, he grabs his bottom lip with his teeth. When he looks back at me, straight in the eyes, he tells me without another word of explanation, “No.”

“Can I trust you on that?”

Dice grabs me by the collar and shoves me up against the car door as guy number three snuggles up to Green.  Who, by the way, looks like she wishes she’d taken me up on that whole leaving thing. Only she can’t because her car is more than twenty yards away, and there’s no way she’s outrunning these guys in those heels.

At least, I’m assuming that’s her car. It’s the only one I see that doesn’t have spinning wheels and tinted windows.

“You questioning Thomas, asshole?” Dice double dares me to answer. I steel my temper and my focus.

“Sure fucking sounds that way,
Hoss
.”

He pulls his gun out and points it directly at me while I push him off me and retrieve mine, pointing it at Thomas.

Green stomps on the third man’s toe with her heel. He hunches over and lets out one hell of a wail in pain, as she pulls her hand pistol out to point at that guy.