by Harley Stone
She nodded.
It didn’t surprise me at all that our parents were killed for taking the high road. Truly honorable people rarely lived to old age. Knowing they’d been betrayed by other cops did sting, though. “And Uncle Jay?” Our uncle was our hometown’s district attorney. He had the power to bring guilty people to justice, but he was an asshole who rarely used his power for good.
“He knew. I didn’t tell you about it, because I knew you’d confront him. You can’t talk to him about it, Ari. He made it clear that if this gets out, the cops who killed mom and dad would come after you and me. And you know Uncle Jay will rat us out in a second.”
My chest felt like it would burst. My parents had been murdered, and my big sister had kept it from me.
She hadn’t trusted me to keep my mouth closed.
Granted, I hated Uncle Jay already, and probably would have laid into him, so she’d probably been wise to keep the truth from me. The more I thought about it, the more I appreciated her wisdom. I hadn’t been mature enough to deal with it back then, but I was now. Nine years had passed since our parents’ death. The cops involved were probably either retired or transferred by now.
“Say something. You’re not plotting my murder, are you?” she asked.
“No.”
“Uncle Jay’s murder?”
“I’ve already plotted that one out.” I cracked a smile and she gave me one back.
“Hopefully you have plans to make it painful? Lots of suffering?”
“Sharks with frickin’ laser beams,” I said, quoting Dr. Evil.
We shared a conspiratorial grin. Then Markie rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “Thank you for coming to see me. And for talking about this stuff with me. The old Ari would have just gotten mad and avoided me.”
True. “And the old Markie would have dodged my questions, insisting I was too young for the truth.”
“We used to be such bitches,” she said, giggling as she reached for my hand. “I’m glad we’re not like that anymore.”
Holding her hand, I agreed, “Me too.”
“Now, tell me what’s up with you and Bones. Have you figured out how to get him in your pants yet?”
My face warmed and I shifted, collapsing on my back to stare at the ceiling as well. While Markie was drugged out of her mind, I’d poured out my feelings and intentions for Bones to her, thinking she wouldn’t remember any of it. Turns out she remembered everything, and she’d been bugging me to come clean with Bones about my feelings ever since.
“We’re keeping it casual,” I said.
Propping herself up on an elbow, she stared at me. “You and Bones did…”
“Everything.”
A grin stretched across her face. “I need details.”
I groaned in protest.
“Look, Angel hasn’t touched me since we’ve been home from the hospital. He’s giving me time to heal and I hate it. I need details. I need to live vicariously through you right now. I need stories of hot romance and wild sex.”
“Do you want me to go buy you some books?” I asked.
“No! I want you to tell me your story. You can embellish a little if you want, though.”
“Oh, trust me, nothing needs to be embellished.”
She gasped. “How big is it?” Holding out her hands like she was sizing a fish, she asked, “Like this?”
Laughing, I settled myself in to start the tale, but a knock sounded on the bedroom door before Angel popped his head in.
“Ari, are you good to stay here with your sister for a few hours?” he asked.
“Yeah, of course. I have no plans today. I can stay as long as you need.”
“Good.” He walked into the room and smiled down at Markie, brushing a strand of hair from her face and kissing her gently. “I’m gonna go help Bones with a job.”
“Be careful.”
“Always, baby. Don’t overdo it.” Then looking at me he said, “Feel free to strap her to the bed if she tries to do too much.”
“I don’t even want to know why you have straps for your bed,” I replied.
Laughing, Angel left.
As soon as he was gone, I gave in and told Markie everything. She listened intently, only interrupting to ask questions and get more of the details I tried to gloss over. I couldn’t help but appreciate the way our relationship had changed since she’d come back. I was so glad she planned to stay for good.
“So, what are you going to do?” she asked after I finished.
“I told you, we’re keeping it casual.”
“It doesn’t sound like you want to keep it casual.”
I shrugged. “It’s safer. Nobody has any expectations, nobody gets hurt.”
She frowned. “I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.” I grabbed the remote control from the night stand and pointed it at the flat screen television hanging on the wall above a dresser. “But this conversation has gotten way too deep. Let’s find something to watch that’ll make us laugh.”
She giggled. “You said deep.”
Feeling more content than I had in a long time, I curled up next to my sister and watched The Proposal.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bones
NO WONDER I hadn’t found Matt. The bastard had been hiding out in Goodsprings, a little hole in the ground located about forty minutes southwest of Vegas. Angel and I took his Hummer. He drove as I used his laptop to navigate past the old Pioneer Saloon and into a depressed residential area made up of mostly old manufactured homes.
“Hang a left here,” I said, watching the screen. We were closing in on the little red light that represented Matt’s phone. “And a right here. Looks like it’s at the end of the next block.”
“Which side of the street?” Angel asked.
“Left. That yellow single-wide right there.” I pointed ahead to a trailer that had definitely seen better days. The siding was peeling away, and old tires held down the roof.
Angel slowly drove past the trailer as I checked it out. A beat up old Ford Taurus sat in the driveway, but there were no signs of life. Like all the homes around it, the yard was nothing but dirt and sagebrush. The one window that faced the street had dark plastic taped over it.
Angel parked two houses down and we both scanned the area. It was still morning, and people in this part of town were either working or still passed out from the night before, because nothing moved.
“How do you want to play this?” Angel asked.
I closed his laptop and set it aside before turning my attention to him. We both usually worked in suits, but suits drew too much attention when we were hunting someone down, so we’d opted for jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. Sneakers, because Matt had run from me once. If he tried that shit again, I’d be ready for the asshole.
Angel looked completely different dressed down, and even if Matt knew who he was, I doubted that he’d recognize him. Angel had kind eyes and a friendly smile, making him look like the type of down-to-earth nice guy you’d invite to bar-b-ques, church potlucks, and community events. Nobody would ever peg him for the son of the Las Vegas capo dei capi, or boss of bosses. He didn’t look rich, powerful, or menacing enough to be Dominico Mariani’s heir, which made it easy for people to trust him.
We put our heads together and came up with a plan to get Matt out of the trailer before climbing out of the Hummer and marching up to the front door. Angel marched up the creaky wooden porch steps as I hid out of sight of the windows and door. Angel had to knock a few times before the door finally opened a crack.
“What do you want?” I heard Matt ask. His voice was raspy, like he’d been smoking two packs a day since the last time I’d seen him.
“You don’t have a cat, do you?” Angel asked.
“Hell no, I don’t have a cat.”
Angel released a breath. “I just hit one in front of your house. Think you could come look at it and let me know if you recognize it? Probably belongs to one of your neighbors.”
Matt snorted. “I told you, it’s not mine. Think I give a shit about some random pussy? Or any of the assholes on this street?”
The disrespectful way Matt was talking to Angel made me want to light him up. Soon, I promised myself.
Angel frowned, “Look, man, my daughter’s with me, and if I don’t figure out who that cat belongs to, I’m never gonna hear the end of it.”
“Again, man, I don’t give a fuck.”
The door started to close, but Angel shoved his shoe in it. “Wait. I have an idea to help us both out. Just come look at the damn cat and point to the next-door neighbor’s house. I went there first, but nobody’s home so my daughter refuses to accept that it’s theirs.” He pulled out his wallet. “I’ll make it worth your time. Help me out and I’ll give you twenty bucks.”
“I don’t do shit for less than a hundred,” Matt countered.
Ariana had a gift for seeing the best in people, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how she’d been with this greedy son-of-a-bitch. He must have kept her high the entire time they were together.
“We’re talking about two seconds out of your day to look at a dead cat,” Angel replied. “I’ll give you thirty.”
“Fifty. Cash only, upfront. You don’t want your kid crying all day, do you?”
Angel shook his head. “Twenty now, twenty after.”
“Fine. Let me grab my shoes.”
The door closed, and Angel stepped down from the porch, tugging a twenty out of his wallet. He held it in front of him as soon as the door reopened. Matt was so busy trying to get to the money, he didn’t see me hop up on the porch behind him. The whole thing buckled and shook under my added weight, and he reached out for the railing to steady himself.
“What the fuck?” he asked, turning around.
I grabbed him, slapping my hand over his mouth and shoving my Glock into his side. “Surprise, motherfucker.”
His entire body tensed as his eyes darted toward me. The surprise in his expression was priceless.
“Is there anyone else here?” I asked as I patted him down, relieving him of his cell phone and a switchblade.
He clamped his mouth shut, refusing to answer like he was some sort of badass.
I pistol-whipped the back of his head. “Answer the fucking question.”
“Ouch! Fuck!” He rubbed at the back of his head. “Goddammit, Bones, that hurts. No one’s here but me.”
I backed up into the trailer, taking Matt with me. The living room was a junkie’s haven, littered with takeout food containers, pipes, beer bottles. A small mirror dusted with white powder served as a centerpiece on the coffee table.
“Looks like a party,” Angel said, drawing his gun. “I’m gonna check it out.”
I didn’t like the idea of him searching the trailer alone, but he knew what he was doing, and we needed to make sure nobody else was home. We’d been taught better than to leave witnesses behind who could ID us.
“This why you could never find the money to pay me?” I asked, gesturing around the room. “Too busy sampling the shit to sell it?”
“You didn’t give me enough time.”
“Bullshit, Matt. You stiffed me, and you know it.”
“All clear,” Angel said, holstering his gun as he rejoined us. “I’ll be right back.”
“How much do you want?” Matt asked as soon as Angel was out of the room.
I ignored him. The asshole had stolen from me, then evaded me. Then he’d approached Ariana and tried to feed her some shit about getting her an audition. There was no amount of money he could pay to get out of this. I needed to make an example of his ass. If I thought I could get away with it, I’d put his head on a pike and put it front and center on the strip.
“Come on, Bones. I don’t have a lot of money on me right now, but I have some good shit stashed away. I can sell it, and—”
“The kind of ‘good shit’ you gave to Ariana when you almost killed her? Where the fuck did you get that ‘good shit’?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
I pistol-whipped him in the back of the head again.
“Ouch! Fuck! Stop doing that.”
“Then I suggest you start talking.”
“If I give you my sources, you’ll hunt them down and they’ll come after me. I’ll never be able to do business in Vegas again.”
The fact that he thought he was going to live through the day was so damn funny I couldn’t help but laugh. Jamming my Glock deeper into his side, I said, “Your distributor is the least of your worries.”
Angel pulled up, so I led Matt to the Hummer and climbed in the back seat beside him. As Angel drove, I continued to grill Matt for information.
“You might as well tell me who your distributor is now. Make it easier on yourself. You know I’m going to get it out of you eventually.”
“Are you gonna torture me? Because I don’t think Ari will like that.”
I leveled a stare at him trying to follow his line of thinking. “And what impact does that have on me?”
“Your boss is dating her sister, and I know how important family is to you guys. Ari loves me. She’d be devastated if anything happened to me.”
Angel and I both got a good laugh out of that. “Ari doesn’t care about you,” I said. “How do you think we found you? She gave me your new number and we traced your phone.”
He paled. “I don’t believe you.”
“Too much of that ‘good shit’ has apparently fried your brain. You fuckin’ left her for dead,” I growled. He needed to stop talking about Ariana, because his words kept reminding me that he’d spent almost a year with her. Did she still have feelings for him? She’d asked what would happen to Matt when I found him, but didn’t press the issue.
“She’d never sell me out. Not after all we’ve been through. She loves me.”
Anger and adrenaline pulsed through my veins, making me want to rip those words from his vocabulary. She didn’t love him. I bet she never looked at him the way she looked at me. “She doesn’t care what happens to you. She knows you’re a liar and a fraud. She told me all about the little audition you promised her, and I made some calls and found out that once again you’re full of shit.”
“No.” Matt shook his head. “This isn’t how this goes down. Ari’s supposed to call me, so I can pick her up for the meeting.”
“What meeting?” Angel asked, adjusting his rearview mirror.
“Cut the shit, Matt. There’s no audition. The Acropolis doesn’t even have additions on Tuesday nights.”
“No.” Matt rubbed his temples. “The meeting with your sister. Why the fuck aren’t you paying attention?”
How could I when the fucking junkie was all over the place? “I don’t have a sister.”
“Yes, you do. Her name is Natalia and she’s paying me to take Ari to her. Then she’ll trade… Ari for you. I’ll get Ari back, and you’ll get what’s coming to you.”
“I don’t know what kind of fairytale land you’re living in, but I swear to Christ if you don’t start making sense, I’m going to start breaking things. Starting with your fingers, then your hands, then your arms. I can make this really painful, Matt.”
He ignored me. “I need to call Natalia and tell her everything’s changed. I have you now. She doesn’t need Ari.”
What he needed was to come down to earth and tell me what the fuck he was talking about. I punched him in the gut with my left hand to get his attention. “You think you have me, motherfucker?”
He doubled over, guarding his stomach. “Bones, you don’t get it. You’ll want to hear what she has to say.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, because she knows the truth about what happened to your father.”
Words are funny. I never expected the words of a loser like Matt to affect me, but they did. Too damn old to be chasing after the memory of a father who’d disappeared, I should have been able to ignore him, but I couldn’t. Deep down, I was still tha
t confused kid who wanted to find out why his father had left.
How long had I wondered what happened to him?
How long had it been since I’d given up on him?
And most importantly, after all I’d done to hide my family, how the hell had Matt found out about my dad?
“You’re a fuckin’ liar,” I growled, punching Matt again. “Runnin’ your mouth to save your skin, but your words are worthless. You’re a dead man, Matt.”
“Fine, kill me,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “But talk to your sister first. Please. She’ll clear this all up. If I had my phone, I’d give you Natalia’s number. She said she has proof. She has everything. Let’s go back and get my phone, and I’ll prove it to you.”
“Fat chance. If this broad has all this proof, why didn’t she just come to me?”
“Because there’s always someone watching you.” He glanced at Angel. “Always someone watching, ready to report back.”
I glared at him. “Are you accusing Angel of spying on me? Of ratting me out?”
He shrugged. “Everyone knows you can’t trust the families. Hell, you can’t trust anyone in this goddamn town.”
That was probably the first true statement he’d muttered since we picked his ass up. Still, I trusted Angel above anyone. And I was done with Matt’s lies. It was past time to get back on track.
“Who the fuck is your supplier, Matt?”
Angel turned down a dirt road.
Matt’s eyes widened. “My phone. If we could just get my phone, I’ll call Natalia and prove all this to you.”
I put my gloves on, took his switchblade out of my pocket, opened it, and plunged it into his thigh, careful to miss his artery. He screamed, grabbing at the handle. “Who’s your supplier?” I asked again.
“You’re making a big mistake. I have valuable information. I’m valuable.”
Blood welled up around the blade. If I removed it, we’d have one hell of a mess on our hands, but I had no intention of removing it. Matt grabbed at the handle, clearly having other plans.
“You take it out, you’ll probably bleed to death,” I advised.
“Dammit, Bones! I’m trying to tell you something important.”