Will she lie? Tell the truth? Her answer is essential to my plan, as are the cameras.
“No.” She shakes her head, swallows. “No, there aren’t any more cameras.”
I sigh. Give her a full five seconds to amend, confess, recant, but she stays quiet. She stares me straight in the face, and she doesn’t say a word. Daring me with those blue eyes, as if I don’t have full access to her phone, like it wouldn’t occur to me to pick it up right now and check.
I pick up her phone, hold it in the palm of a hand. She doesn’t so much as squirm on her chair. Impressive.
Game on.
I shift my focus to the lump on her lap. “Yo, Baxter, buddy, I need your help with something.”
His body gives a mighty jerk, almost launching himself off Jade’s lap, but her arm tightens around him like a safety bar, the kind on roller coaster cars so you don’t fly out of the corkscrew curve. She’s the type of mother who wouldn’t think twice about offering herself up for her children. The kind who would take a bullet for her kids, who would shove them onto the shoulder only to end up crushed by the oncoming truck herself. A lioness, her protectiveness as instinctive as breathing. It’s an admirable trait. Not every parent is built that way.
She stares at me, eyes wide over the top of her son’s head, and she doesn’t let him go.
“Come on, Baxter.” I toss the cell to the marble and gesture with my gun—a warning, a promise. He’s sucking hard on a thumb, his smooth cheeks puffing and pulling. I smile to calm his nerves. “Get on over here, son. I need you to do something for me.”
Jade’s gaze sticks to the gun like superglue. “At least let me come with him.”
“Sorry, but that’s a hard no.”
“But Baxter’s only six.”
“Exactly. Plenty old enough to help me out.”
She shakes her head hard enough that her hair whacks her in the face. “But he’s terrified. I’m terrified.” Her voice cracks, and she’s trying really hard not to cry.
“What do you think’s going to happen? What are you so scared of?”
She gives me an incredulous look, searching for words she can say out loud. Without turning her head, she darts a sidelong glance at her daughter, her expression sparkling with meaning. Little pitchers have big ears—and Beatrix’s are practically flapping off her head. This is a kid who knows when to listen.
“I just...” Jade’s voice is a soft squeak. She takes a big breath, swallows. “I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to him.”
She wavers, frozen like a kid on the high diving board. “How do I know that?”
“Because I just told you so. Everything’s going to be A-okay. I won’t harm a hair on Baxter’s head, you have my word. But only if you put him down and tell him to get over here.”
Her body remains perfectly frozen, but something breaks behind her eyes. Her arm loosens some, but she doesn’t let her son go. It’s almost comical how she thinks she still has a choice.
I load every bit of menace into the parts of me she can see. Hard mouth, squinty eyes, a look that says, I don’t want to hurt you, but I will. This damn mask isn’t making it any easier to get my point across.
“Do it, Jade. Now.” I point the gun at her head, then lower my arm just a tad so it’s a straight line from the muzzle to her son’s head. “Put Baxter down.”
Up to now she’s been holding it together fairly well, swallowing her tears for her kids’ sakes, but two fat ones spill from her eyes now, dragging a shiny line down each cheek. She swipes her face before the kids can see, then pulls herself together as best she can. She whispers in her son’s ear and holds him close, kissing him twice on the temple.
And then slowly, carefully, she pushes his bar stool away from the marble and slides him onto the floor.
Two seconds later, he peers around the end of the bar.
I slip the gun into my waistband at the small of my back and crouch down, putting us eye to masked eye. “Hey, buddy.”
Any other kid would be bawling right now, but not Baxter. He just stands there, fingers of one hand wrapped around his sister’s chair, going to town on the thumb of his other hand. Two round blue eyes watch me from behind a fist, but they don’t look scared. They look curious.
I tap him square in the belly. “I meant what I told your mother just now, you know. I’m not going to hurt you. In fact, I want the two of us to be friends, and you know what friends do? They help each other out. I’m going to help you, and then you’re going to help me. How do you think that sounds?”
Nothing. Not even a blink.
But he’s not freaking out, either, so I take it as a sign.
“Okay, so here’s the deal. If you go to the front door and tell me who’s down on the street, then I promise not to tell anyone you have a marshmallow sticking out of your ear.”
He frowns, and his thumb jerks out of his mouth with a loud pop. “I don’t got a marshmallow in my ear.”
“Yes, you do. Here. Hold still and I’ll get it for you.” I reach over his head and shake the thing out of my sleeve, catching it in a palm, pinching it between two gloved fingers, showing it to him with a flourish. I’m not the best magician, but I’m good enough to fool a six-year-old.
“That came outta my ear?” He sticks a finger in there and jiggles it around.
“It sure did. Next time your mama accuses you of not listening, tell her you couldn’t ’cause you had a marshmallow stuck in your ear.”
He gives me a knowing nod. “She does say that a lot.”
“See? Good thing I got it out of there, then, huh?” I grin and poke him in the bony chest. “Now it’s your turn to do me a favor. Do you think you can do that?”
He gives me an eager nod. I smile up at Jade.
See? So damn easy.
I hike a thumb over my shoulder, in the direction of the front door. “Go take a look out the front door, will you? I need you to tell me how many people are out there.”
I could pull up the footage on the Ring app, but it’s like looking through a fish eye, the scale distorted and blurry around the edges. I need the full, 180-degree view, which means I need actual eyes on the street.
The kid takes off so fast, he’s like a cartoon version of himself, running in place for a second or two before his rubber soles find traction on the floor. He disappears into the living room and I push to a stand.
“I’m not blind,” Beatrix says, glaring across the marble. “I saw you stick that stupid marshmallow up your sleeve.”
Of course Captain Obvious saw. From where she was sitting, she would have seen everything—me, pulling the marshmallow from the side pocket of my backpack and sliding it up my sleeve, the way I shook it out behind her brother’s ear.
But her anger is a little misdirected. If I cared enough to explain it to her, I’d tell her the person she’s really mad at is her little brother, for buddying up to the enemy.
Baxter returns in a flurry of footsteps, his cheeks bright with pride, with self-importance. “There’s two ladies down there talking, and a biker, and a big brown truck that almost ran into a mailbox.”
“Good job. Those talking ladies. Are they moving or standing still?”
Baxter gives an exaggerated bob of his shoulders. “I don’t know. Want me to go look?”
I nod, hold up a finger. “But this time, I want you to stay there. Tell me everybody who’s out front, and then when they’re all gone and nobody else is coming, I want to know that, too. When you tell us the coast is clear, we’ll meet you at the stairs. Got it?”
“Got it.” He whirls around and takes off.
I look up and Jade is staring at me. Back straight, cheeks red, perspiration shining up her perfect skin. Silent but for the steady dragon breaths firing up and out her nose. I’m going to need to watch her,
too. First chance she gets, this woman is going to come at me.
“The ladies are still talking,” Baxter hollers from the front door. “They’re laughing and talking and this is gonna take forever.”
“Tell me when they start to move, okay? And if anybody else comes by, I want to know.” I heave my backpack onto a shoulder, stepping to Jade’s side of the counter. “Get ready. When Baxter gives us the all clear, I need you two to move.”
From the other room, an update: “One of the ladies is turning around. Oh wait, now she’s going the other way.”
I gesture for Jade and Beatrix to get off their chairs, then nudge them with the gun until they’re flush against the edge of the dividing wall. One more step and they’ll be standing in the living room, for the ladies and the biker and the big brown truck to see.
“The ladies are crossing the street now,” Baxter announces, “but they’re walking real slow.”
“Are they gone?”
“Almost. Allllmost. Yep, now they’re gone. Everybody’s gone.”
I jam my gun into Jade’s spine and hustle them to the stairs.
C A M
3:41 p.m.
Last I knew, George lived in a brick-front town house, one of the overpriced ones that ballooned like mushrooms around a Whole Foods in a busy northern suburb. I don’t remember the exact address—after Flavio sent George packing, I blocked his number and deleted every trace of him from my phone—but I’ll recognize the place when I see it.
Waze detours me around the perimeter’s bumper-to-bumper traffic and dumps me onto Roswell Road, where I run up against a sea of brake lights in Sandy Springs proper. Nothing but gridlock, wall-to-wall cars in both directions.
My blood pressure, already flirting with the danger zone, spikes into dizzying territory. Especially once the light up ahead flips to green, but not a single tire moves because there’s nowhere for any of us to go. How the hell do people live in this town?
I stew in the gridlock, while George’s last words play on repeat in my mind, hurled over his shoulder on his way out the door.
You’ll pay for this, asshole. When you least expect it, I’m going to make you pay.
This was back in the spring, when the weather finally warmed up enough for us to haul the extra tables out of storage and line them up on the terrace—and thank God because the investor notes for two of my shops were coming due, and these are the type of people who don’t like to wait. I needed to fill every table and turn it multiple times because I was still plugging the hole from the last note and the ones before that, pulling profits from one shop to pay the debts on another like a demented game of Whac-a-Mole. Seventy-two cents of every dollar that I earn goes to my investors, which means (a) I’m an idiot; (b) at any given time, I don’t have more than a couple thousand bucks in the bank; and (c) I’m a damn idiot.
So there it is, ladies and gentlemen, the truth. Cam Lasky is broke. Despite five booming restaurants, despite the big Buckhead mansion and the custom cars and the hot wife dripping in diamonds, Atlanta’s Steak King is in hock up to his rent-a-crown. Lasky Steak is a house of cards. My success is a sham. I am literally and figuratively drowning in debt.
And no. I don’t miss the irony. Celebrity chef known for feeding Atlanta’s wealthiest bellies can barely feed his own family.
So back in March, when the evenings finally turned balmy, I couldn’t afford for George to throw a fit so epic it became known in Lasky kitchens as “pulling a George.” I couldn’t afford for him to break all those plates and glasses or destroy three crates of hundred-dollar wine, pitching bottle after bottle onto the concrete floor. And I definitely couldn’t afford for him to leave in the middle of the dinner rush and take three of the line cooks with him. After I deducted all the damages, his last paycheck was -$1.23.
So yeah. George has a couple of reasons for wanting to take a torch to my best performing restaurant. He would have known how to jig the alarm, too, working it so it didn’t trigger at the first sign of smoke. He would have known exactly where to toss the match.
And like Flavio reminded me, he still has a key.
Traffic loosens, and a few minutes later, I screech to a stop at the curb and eye the corner unit on a block-long stretch of townhomes. Three stories of boring brown brick and creamy siding above a monster garage door. Tall and angular, with concrete steps leading to a covered entrance so shallow, you could press yourself to the door and still get a backside soaked with rain. I take in the windows, dark glass obscured with plain white blinds, the leggy plants in the window boxes and on either side of the front door. This is it, all right. The place looks exactly the same.
On the doorstep, I ignore the Ring and rap the door with my knuckle—the kind of knock a friendly neighbor would use to borrow a cup of sugar, maybe, or a delivery person with a package. This is a moment that demands an element of surprise.
I wait, the seconds thumping in my chest like a drumline.
Then again, the Ring would have alerted him to my arrival, which means he probably knows I’m here. I step back and scan the upstairs windows, half expecting to see him grinning at me through the blinds, but there’s nothing.
I head back down the steps to the sidewalk, jogging past the truck and around the side of the house, where a six-foot wooden fence surrounds a backyard the size of a postage stamp. I follow it around to the back, stopping at the first gate I come to. Behind it, George’s town house looms in a leaden sky.
I push on the gate, but it holds. I’m guessing some kind of latch on the inside where the wood is thin and kind of soggy. I lean on it with a shoulder, and the latch releases with a pop.
Bingo.
I swing the door wide and step inside.
Except for a green trash can, the yard is completely bare, a scraggly patch of dirt and grass with not a stick of furniture. No table, no potted plant, not even a ratty lawn chair. The emptiness of it gives me pause, just a fleeting second where my conviction fades.
I haven’t seen or spoken to this guy in more than four months. It’s possible that George doesn’t live here, that he didn’t just storm out of Lasky but also this house, this city. What if I’m about to go storming through the backyard of some poor, unsuspecting sucker or worse—a homeowner running for their gun? This is Georgia, where most people have one.
The wooden door bangs shut behind me, followed by a dog starting up next door, muffled barks from a big dog. German shepherd big. I wait, trying to decide.
And then I spot a pair of kitchen Crocs, black and male-sized, just inside the sliding glass door.
I take off across the yard, and this time I’m not the least bit subtle about it. I bang on the doors, peer through unshaded windows onto furnishings I recognize, oversize furniture done up in leather, most of it brown. Not so much masculine as uninspired, plucked from the pages of a sales catalog.
The living room is a disaster—rumpled pillows and more discarded shoes, a coffee table piled with magazines and books, their spines cracked and the pages dog-eared. Definitely George, who reads more than a librarian. Sci-fi mostly, with an occasional mystery mixed in for fun.
The next window looks onto a spotless kitchen, further proof that George lives here. Chefs are obsessive about their workspace, and this one is uncluttered and gleaming, with a floor clean enough to lick. A digital clock blinks on the coffee maker, but otherwise no movement, no one home...though the beast next door is still going strong.
Above me, a whoosh of temperature-controlled air followed by a familiar voice: “Yo, asshole.”
George’s cheeks are a little fuller than the last time I saw him, his head a lot shinier on top. Looks like he finally gave up on that receding hairline and shaved the whole thing off.
He leans both forearms on the second-story windowsill, tipping his chin to the grass I just walked through. “You do know this backyard is private property, yeah?”
<
br /> “Yeah, but so’s my steak house.”
“So?”
“So there’s a detective looking at the security footage right now, and I gave him your picture.”
A double-barreled lie. There’s no detective, no picture, but it gets my point across. An accusation, bright and sparkling.
He tilts his head and frowns. “Why would my face be on your security feed? I haven’t set foot in the place for what—five? Six months?”
Four and a half almost to the day. George knows this as well as I do.
“Stop fucking around. If you did what Flavio and I think you did, then you’re going to jail. Arson’s a crime, and you better believe I’ll be sitting in the front row at your trial. I’ll be the one cheering when they cart you away.”
I try not to think about what suspected arson will mean, but it’s impossible. It means the insurance money will get tied up in subpoenas and courtroom drama. It means attorney fees I can’t afford to pay. It means long waits that end in jail time. My heart fires up, and my insides churn. I can’t afford any of this.
George’s frown digs in. “Mind telling me what the hell you’re talking about?”
“Oh come on. The fire. At the Bolling Way shop. The same shop you swore to burn to the ground.”
“There was a fire? For real?” His brow clears, and his lips spread into a smile. “How bad?”
“Why else would I come all the way up here?” I lift both hands, let them slap to my sides. “Bad.”
“How bad?”
I stare up at my former sous-chef, a crick tightening on the right side of my neck, the heat bleeding from my body in a single, bracing instant. When I drove here, I was operating on instinct and rage, but George was never that good of an actor.
The wind sends an icy blast up my back. “It’s torched, man. A total loss.”
He smacks the sill and whoops, a full-bellied laughter that drowns out the birds overhead, the cars on the street, the dog still going berserk next door.
“Dude. Dude. Are you serious right now? Are you kidding me?” He pauses to catch his breath, a long stretch of silence to enjoy the hell out of my expression. He laughs some more, all jolly hilarity. “Oh my God. This is too damn good.”
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