by H. P. Bayne
Bulldog snagged Sully’s wrist as he tried to move past. “Don’t you go anywhere important without getting me first, got it?”
Sully held back the sigh. If it wasn’t bad enough having Dez pulling the big brother thing at every turn, he now had to contend with Bulldog acting as an effective and equally frustrating stand-in. “Yeah, okay. Got it.”
Sully followed Zane at a brisk pace down the hall and through a door. There, they crossed another hall and passed through into the currently empty kitchen area. Sully was starting to wonder why he was getting the full tour until Zane answered that question for him, shoving him back against the wall and holding him there by the collar of his jacket.
“Why are you looking for Sparrow? What do you want with her?”
“Whoah, chill out,” Sully said, holding up his hands in a show of peace. “I think she might be in trouble, and I’m trying to help. That’s all.”
Zane didn’t look wholly satisfied but released Sully anyway. “She doesn’t need your help. She’s got me.”
“But you said you don’t know where she is.”
“I don’t. Yet. I’m working on it.”
“Just a question, man, but what’s your stake in this, anyway?”
“This place has been helping to put me through university for almost three years, and I’ve been volunteering here for five. You don’t work here and not get to know people, all right? They’re not just clients to me, or mouths to feed. Some of them are friends.” He backed away from Sully and leaned against the kitchen island, rubbing his face in a hand. When he looked back up, he appeared to have aged several years. “Look, you must know living around here that the girls face a lot of safety issues when working. And it’s not as easy as just quitting and going straight. The centre takes a holistic approach, and the first thing is treating their addictions and past traumas so they can leave behind all the other negative things about the life. It’s not unusual for the girls here to continue working while they’re in programming. Some work for pimps or gangs, but not all. The ones who work for themselves don’t have anyone at their backs when they’re on a job, no guy to step in and act as muscle if things go bad. So some of them ask me to go with them when they’re meeting a john they don’t know or don’t trust. I introduce myself to the guy first and say I’ll be waiting outside. I guess I must come off intimidating enough because none of the girls I’ve escorted have come out with so much as a scratch they didn’t personally allow.”
“What about Sparrow? Did you help her the same way?”
“I offered. But she’s young and, I hate to say, a little stupid still. The life sucks naivety out of most people on the street within days. She’s different. She’s been lucky so far, I guess. Or was. Listen, I want to find her as badly as you do. She’s a good kid, has a good heart. She’s messed up, sure, but who the hell isn’t? The fact is, it hasn’t changed who she is, and that’s a beautiful thing to see around here. I’m hoping to keep it that way.”
“Me, too. Listen, I really need to get moving on this. Any chance you can find Abby for that address?”
“No need. I know where Barwell lives.”
“So why’d you say—”
“I wanted to talk to you alone, find out what the hell you were up to. Sorry. As you can no doubt tell, I’m a little protective of the girls and a lot suspicious of strangers. Barwell lives at 1254 Mitchenson. It’s a pretty typical house for Riverview, but he’s got security cameras up, so you’ll be able to pick it out easily enough. Normally I’d go with you, but I’ve got a crapload of prep to do here, and it looks like you’ve got Bulldog at your back. Be careful though. Everyone knows Barwell runs his guns and drugs out of that place. He won’t take kindly to strangers turning up on his doorstep.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.”
“You’d better,” Zane said. “If you don’t, you can forget about finding Sparrow. Kenton Barwell will be the last face you’ll ever see.”
9
“We shouldn’t do this,” Bulldog said, huffing through a jog. “Not without Dez.”
“I tried calling him,” Sully said. “I’m not getting through. Maybe his phone’s dead.”
“Copper’s phone is never dead. Did you try his work cell? That one’s always on.”
Sully and Bulldog ran until they reached the nearest bus shelter, then ducked inside with the three other people who’d had the same idea.
Make that four. Breanna was back, standing in the corner next to an unsuspecting man holding a bag from the nearby drug store. The man ducked, barely avoiding a beak-on-head collision with a small brown sparrow that dove inside the shelter. It flapped to the ground, alighting at Breanna’s feet where it shook the rain from its body.
Sully hadn’t been able to get a message to Dez yet, but Breanna was still working at getting her own through to Sully.
He pulled his phone from his sodden hoodie pocket, grateful for the sandwich bag Myra had given him to keep it safe from the rain.
It occurred to him this wasn’t a conversation he should be having around other people, so he opted to text both his brother’s phones instead. With Bulldog. Need to check a lead at Ken B’s. 1254 Mitchenson.
Sully estimated it was about a twenty-minute walk to that address, ten if they really hoofed it and cut through some yards. They could chop the time down by bus, though, and he was checking the city transit website for the right route when his phone rang in his hand. Dez’s face showed on the call display, a big, goofy grin and a thumbs-up. Chances were that wasn’t the expression he was wearing right now.
Sully looked around for somewhere quiet to talk, and was saved by an approaching bus that emptied the bus shelter. He and Bulldog took the bench inside while Sully reluctantly answered.
“Hey, Dez.”
“What the hell are you doing? Where are you?”
“Bus shelter down the street from The Hub.”
“Stay there. I’m coming to get you. I just dropped Kayleigh off with Mom.”
“You’re at least half an hour away.”
“What’s your point? I mean it, Sully. You plant your ass and you keep it that way, you hear me? Don’t you go near Barwell’s. He dangerous.”
“I know he is. That’s the problem. We think there’s a chance Sparrow went there and he’s known as a rough date. If she’s in trouble, we might not have a lot of time to waste. She’s been missing two days already.”
“If it’s been two days, I doubt you need to worry about wasting time. Everything’s probably been decided for us.”
“But it could be they’ve just been using together and nothing worse has happened yet.”
“Barwell doesn’t use. He just sells. He’s a commercial dealer, in it for the money. He’s got a lot to lose, Sully, and he’s not going to put up with some kid turning up on his doorstep asking questions.”
Sully bristled, bottoming out on his usually sky-high patience. Dez was only three years older, but sometimes he acted like a decade separated them. When they’d been younger, it had been reassuring to have Dez’s hulking presence at his side as a threat to would-be bullies. Sully had since grown his own two feet, but it was pretty hard to stand on them when his big brother insisted on pushing him back down. “Well, everything’s cool then, Dez, because as it happens, I’m not a kid.”
He clicked the button to end the call, then silenced the phone before putting it back into the plastic bag and stuffing it with some heated force back into the confines of his hoodie pocket.
“We need a Number 17,” Sully said.
“Whoa, reign it in there, cowboy,” Bulldog said. “What is it you think we’re doing exactly?”
“We’re heading to Barwell’s.”
“We can’t. Not without Copper.”
“He’s half an hour away on a good day. Traffic’s crawling and streets are flooding right now, so you can probably add another fifteen minutes to half an hour to that. Then we need to get to Barwell’s from here, which is another ten minut
es by car. If Sparrow’s there and she’s in trouble, we could be wasting some serious time.”
Bulldog was scanning the pavement, jowls hanging lower than usual as his face clouded with doubt. “I don’t know. I promised your brother ….”
“Breanna’s here, Bulldog. Maybe that means we’re getting close to something.”
Or she was here. As Sully turned to look, he spotted her not in the corner of the shelter but back at the door to The Hub at the end of the block.
No matter. They had a lead now and the sooner they figured this out, the quicker he could get the unsettling image of the murdered woman out of his life.
“Bree’s here?”
“She was a second ago.”
Bulldog blew out a breath. “I’m a lover not a fighter, Sully. You know that. But if my niece needs me, I’ll try to change my ways.”
Bulldog’s phone was ringing now and the gap in time suggested Sully likely had two or three missed calls from Dez. Bulldog pulled the phone out and checked the screen.
“Whoosh. It’s your brother.” He met Sully’s eye for a moment and then flicked the ringer to silent before stuffing the bagged phone back into the pocket of his wet jeans. “Number 17, you say?”
The bus ride wasn’t much quicker than the walk would have been, it turned out—particularly since they missed the right stop and ended up having to jog back three blocks.
There was nothing extraordinary about 1254 Mitchenson Avenue, nothing but a nondescript house sitting on a xeriscaped front yard that was bleeding weeds. The house looked like every other one on the block—until you looked closer.
A well-timed break in the heavy rain revealed this residence had a solid steel front door and what looked to be a decent deadbolt system. Two visible basement windows were made impassable by bars. And then, as Zane Mazur had described, there was the security camera mounted at the corner of the house, aimed at the front door.
“Why would someone like that want to record people coming and going?” Sully asked. “Wouldn’t that be bad for business?”
“Probably not hooked up to a recording device,” Bulldog said. “It’s probably just so he can check who’s come calling before he answers the door.”
With the front door looking less like a means of entry, Sully and Bulldog circled the block until they reached the back alley, counting houses until they got to the one they knew to be the back of 1254.
Here, there was an old one-car garage and an unmarked forest green delivery van parked next to it. The backyard didn’t contain anything of a lawn either, although it had a large back deck and patio area that meant neighbours didn’t feel so put upon by the weeds as to start calling City Hall demanding sanctions. The layout was suggestive of a smart man; the last thing a trafficker wanted was the wrong sort of attention, and an experienced trafficker knew how to avoid it.
“See any cameras?” Sully asked.
“I can’t make out the back of the house from here,” Bulldog said. “Rain’s coming too hard.”
Sully, hunched against the weather with hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his jeans, turned to Bulldog. “Between the two of us, I’m thinking I look more the type to be looking to buy.”
“I don’t think people come here for street-level purchases,” Bulldog said. “He’s a wholesaler. Just sells to gangsters and they hand off to their dealers who make the trades.”
“So what other excuse do we have to go in there?”
Bulldog shrugged. “Beats me. Looking for a lost dog?”
Sully pulled a hand from his pocket long enough to give Bulldog a shove. “Look, I’m going to try it. Stay here and—“
“I don’t think you should be going in there by yourself.”
“Listen to me. I need you to stay here so that in case I don’t come out right away you can call Dez. He’ll get someone here if he’s still out of range.”
“I think I should go in.”
“No offence, Bulldog, but you’re how old now?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“And holding?”
“Fuck you. So I’m forty-four. What’s your point?”
“Nothing, other than the fact you’re a bit old to be looking to make a buy like this.”
Bulldog’s face slumped, the look of defeat. “You got cash on you? He’s going to want to know you’re serious.”
“I get paid in cash, and payday was last week. I’ve got plenty left in the wallet.”
Bulldog’s face broke into a gradual grin. “Wanna scrap this idea and buy us a round?”
“Bulldog.”
“I’m just kidding. Jesus. I don’t like this, Sully. We don’t even know she’s in there, and this guy might be the one who killed Bree. And Copper’s gonna send me to join her if I let anything happen to you.”
“Look, you’re not letting anything happen to me. I’m doing this myself, all right? My choice. Do us all a favour. Call Dez and tell him we decided not to talk to Barwell.”
“Lie to him, you mean.”
“It’s for his own good. If he thinks he can’t get to us in time, he’ll call in the troops. Next thing is he’ll be facing internal investigation for digging into someone else’s case without clearing it first. After you talk to him, wait here and give me ten minutes. If I’m not out, call Dez back and break the news.”
“I’ll give you five.”
It sounded like a fair compromise and, as Sully started through the backyard toward the equally solid-looking back door, he figured he would have been satisfied with a two-minute cutoff. A lot could happen in five. By the time police arrived, he could be dead and gutted with Kenton Barwell making soup out of his innards.
As he approached the rear door, Sully forced himself not to take a reassuring glance back at Bulldog, not wanting to reveal the other man given the very real possibility Kenton was watching via CCTV. Instead, he kept his eyes focused forward on the steel door as he searched for a doorbell. He came up empty, but it appeared his presence had been noted as the door was yanked open in front of him.
The bald, bearded man on the other side was a couple inches shorter than Sully’s six-foot frame, but easily made up for his lesser height with the solid-looking, nickel-plated revolver in his hand. Sully took an involuntary step back as he eyed the barrel levelled at his gut.
“What the hell do you want?” The man’s voice was every bit as cold and hard as the gun in his hand, and the eyes just as soulless.
Sully fought to push his brain and his gaze past those eyes and the threat of the gun but found Kenton’s arms concealed beneath the long sleeves of a sweatshirt. No way to get a look at any tattoos he might have there.
“Uh ….”
“I asked you a question.”
“I was told I might be able to buy some coke here.”
The response took the situation from bad to worse as Kenton’s free hand came out and balled into the front of Sully’s hoodie, yanking him in and shoving him back against the wall. Sully winced as what was likely a set of light switches dug into his skin while Kenton kicked the door shut beside them.
Sully was trying to push away from the wall when the gun, its barrel brought to press up against the bottom of his chin with some force, had him changing his mind.
“You’re a fucking narc,” Kenton said, his voice unnervingly calm and close enough to Sully’s ear that he could feel the older man’s breath. “Aren’t you.”
It wasn’t a question, but it merited a response and a quick one.
“No, I’m not. I swear. I’m looking for some coke. That’s all.”
“I don’t fucking deal and you don’t use. I know a coke-head when I see one. Why don’t you tell me what you’re really doing here.”
“Let me go, and we can talk about it.”
“No, I think we’re going to have this conversation right here. Start talking or I’m going to put a couple new holes in your head and call this in as a home invasion.”
There was no way Sully could cop to the truth. If Spar
row really was being held against her will here—or worse, had Kenton already killed her—Sully would wind up buried next to her pretty damn fast.
“I’m looking to get into the trade,” Sully said. “I know people who know people and I heard you’re the guy to talk to.”
“You heard wrong,” Kenton said. Then icily, “Dead wrong.”
“But you’re a legend on the street.”
A lesser man might have bowed to the praise. Kenton Barwell was not a lesser man, and neither his gun nor his grip on Sully wavered.
“Who have you been talking to?”
Damn. “I’m not supposed to say.”
“Well, you’d better reconsider or you won’t be saying anything to anyone ever again. I had some damned little whore rip me off not so long ago. I’ve got no more patience for bullshit, and you stink of it.”
A rap on the door provided Sully with a moment to think, although forming a coherent thought was difficult given the unrelenting press of the gun.
“Who the fuck you bring with you?” Kenton asked.
“I came alone,” Sully said.
“Bullshit. No one comes here alone.”
“I swear, man. I don’t know.”
Kenton pulled back with his gun hand just enough so he could look Sully in the eye. “No, I swear. If I answer that door and I get even the tiniest whiff of a setup, I’m putting a bullet in both of you. You got me?”
Sully managed a nod and hoped for the best as Kenton released his hoodie to allow him to ease the door open a crack. The movement allowed Sully a glimpse down at Kenton’s arms, the sleeves having ridden up to mid-forearm with position and movement. Both arms were covered in tattoos, and old ones at that. Definitely no evidence he’d been limited to just one tattoo a month ago when Breanna was killed. What was more, Sully was able to pick out the candle dyed into the man’s skin. It was on the outer left forearm, not the inner right.
All of this, and they weren’t even dealing with the right man. Kenton Barwell hadn’t killed Breanna.