I frowned, confused. Who was Nick?
“Zeus,” Denko clarified. “Bending over backwards for Nick—Zeus. The shit I’ve heard over the last few days with that bug is pretty fucking comical. Or I guess you could say sad. That would be another word for it. You think if Nick gets to fuck Isis in enough different ways, with you guys serving her up like the slavish assistants that you are, you really think that’ll satisfy him?”
“I don’t know if I’d go with slavish assistants,” Thor said.
“I would,” Denko said. “Think about it.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Right there Odin started ripping off a new gag.
“Ironic is all. This scene I witnessed right here, just now with the three of you. You had an idea of what you all wanted to do—clearly you wanted to very badly—but you stopped because poor Nick might not be able to handle it. What you don’t know is that all this time, he’s been talking to Isis here about leaving.”
My skin went cold. Odin and Thor turned to me, expecting me to say Denko was lying. “No. I mean, yes, but he’s taking it out of context,” I said.
“He’s been talking to her about having her all to himself,” Denko continued. “Nothing out of context about that. Ask her. Tell them, Isis. Tell them about Zeus. The walking-down-the-aisle discussion you two had?”
“He’s twisting it all around. It wasn’t like a real conversation. He’s messing with you.”
My men’s eyes stayed riveted on me, raw with emotion.
“Were you speaking in code? Was that it?” Denko asked smugly. “Is walking down the aisle a special code for something? Dancing to lame 1990s wedding songs. Is that a metaphor? Did I take all of that too literally?”
The tape strip dangled from Odin’s finger. “Is it true?”
“Of course it is,” Denko butted in. “The white picket fence? A bit more vanilla than the typical fantasies running through here—”
“You guys, it wasn’t like he was trying to get me to leave,” I said. “Don’t let him make you think that. It was Zeus feeling sad about never having that stuff, that’s all.”
The hurt in Thor’s eyes broke my heart.
Odin stepped toward me. “Did he ask you to marry him?”
My mouth went dry. “What?”
Odin’s gaze was dark, and not in a hot way—in an angry way. I’d never seen him like this. “Did he or did he not ask you to marry him? Because in my experience, when a person is talking about a wedding and a home, that’s usually in the context of a proposal.”
“No,” I breathed.
It wasn’t a proposal. Was it?
“No!” I continued. “Come on. You know him. It was someday-never stuff.”
“Not what it sounded like to me,” Denko said.
“Shut up!” I said. “You don’t know. You don’t get us.”
Odin’s voice lowered to a growl. “When a man tells you he wants to dance with you to lame wedding songs…”
Knock-knock. Knock-knock.
Zeus.
I stiffened.
“Yeah,” Odin said, speaking in a tone that let him know things were under control.
They were anything but.
The door opened, and there he was.
Chapter Thirteen
“What the fuck!” Zeus said, walking into the room and shutting the door behind him. He glowered at Denko, full of heat and testosterone, green eyes looking nearly backlit.
“You just missed it,” Denko said. “Rashad and Christian here were trying to get your girlfriend to fuck them in front of me. She almost went for it. It was quite the show.”
“Stop it! Don’t listen to this guy!” I said.
Zeus just stood there, displaying the kind of calm I’d learned not to trust. “Have you always been a snitch, or is this a skill you’ve developed as a ZOX agent?”
“He’s trying to drive a wedge between us,” I said.
“You don’t need any help from me,” Denko said.
“Can we get that duct tape on?” I wanted to stop him from talking, from using their real names, as if he had a piece of my men that I didn’t have.
“Good idea,” Thor said.
Zeus grabbed the tape.
“You’re done, and you know it,” Denko was talking fast now. “You know, Nick, if it wasn’t for Isis, they’d be fucking like rabbits right now, and I’d be watching. Is that what you want for your life?”
Zeus shot a dark glance toward Odin and Thor.
“Well, at least we weren’t asking her to elope,” Odin said. “White picket fence, anyone?”
Zeus’s face went white. I could see our conversation gliding through his mind. Odin would’ve texted him with the details of the bugged purse. “Is that what this motherfucker wants you to believe? You really fucking think that?” He worked at the tape, awash in betrayal.
“Groups like yours always break up—I don’t have to tell you that. Criminal organizations. Rock bands. There’s a certain shelf life. The question is, who gets the short stick?”
“I don’t give a fuck about other groups,” Odin said defiantly. “Nobody controls us. Nobody predicts us. Nobody tells us what to do.” He was saying it to Denko, but it was a message for Zeus, too.
Their fucking power struggle.
Thor came up and slung an arm around my shoulder and looked right at Zeus. Taking Odin’s side. Thor didn’t like control, either. But I could feel his distress underneath, like a knife in my gut. Could Zeus feel it?
I pulled away from Thor and faced my men. “We’re all okay as long as we’re together.”
“How about if two of us walk down the aisle to dance to lame wedding songs?” Odin said. “Are we okay then?”
“Odin—” I said.
“That’s right, Zeus,” Odin said. “Denko gave us the whole recap.”
“So let me get this straight. It’s not okay for me to imagine a thing,” Zeus said, “but you three can act on something so fucking out of bounds—”
“You don’t get to say what’s fucking-g in bounds and out of bounds,” Odin spat.
“Bringing Denko into things?” Zeus said. “That’s out of bounds.”
“Says who?”
“Stop it!” Things were deeply, deeply fucked up, and not in a fun way that I liked.
“You think you can start a fucking business?” Denko barked. “Own property? You really think you can have that?”
“That’s it.” I grabbed the tape from Zeus and tried to free a piece. The end got twisted and stuck together but I pulled a whole bunch off and just pressed it over his mouth. An end flapped loose and got stuck on his shirt.
Zeus angrily snatched the roll and started pulling more off, but not before Denko managed to dislodge the piece I’d put on by shaking around his head. “This is your chance, Nick. Cooperate and I’ll give you the white picket fence. The freedom you and Isis want. You can have that.”
“Fuck you,” Zeus said.
“Things will only go bad from here,” Denko said. “You know how these systems work. You know how groups break apart. Your friends wanted to fuck the woman you love in front of your worst enemy. They don’t give a fuck about your wishes. They were going to do that. They were—”
Crack.
A quick uppercut and Denko was out. Zeus slapped the tape over his mouth all the same.
And then there was this awful silence. The hit had sounded hard.
“I have a lead,” Zeus said. “Time-sensitive. All the shit is pointing at Handsome Jack.”
Thor went over to our unconscious would-be captor and pulled up the man’s eyelids, looking at his pupils.
“Does he look okay?” Zeus asked.
“Nothing Odin’s duct tape mummy head won’t fucking cure,” Thor said.
Zeus smiled wistfully, but the damage was done. The damage felt deep. Scary.
I wrapped my arms around my middle. “We need to talk about this.”
Crickets.
“You guys—”
�
��I don’t want to talk about it,” Zeus said.
Odin glowered at nothing. Thor stared at the door, arms crossed. The sense of betrayal in the room cut deep.
“You guys, we need to fix this.”
More silence. My pulse raced. Did they not feel like it could be fixed?
“We can do anything together,” I said.
“I’ll be honest with you, Ice, right about now, I just want to finish this thing for Diego.” Zeus buttoned his suit jacket and looked at each of us, one at a time. “Let’s go. Together. We’ll put Denko in the trunk of my ride and fix this for Diego.”
My belly twisted because all I could hear was, let’s fix something we can actually fix, and then we’re done.
I said, “I don’t like us going into the danger not perfectly together.”
Odin was already strapping up, holster to leg, buckle to the shoulder, chamber in, chamber in.
Thor came to me, pocketing his silver Sig. “Need time,” he said softly.
I nodded, unconvinced.
“Time,” he said. “And maybe if we could find this guy and fuck him up really, really bad together.” It was a little bit of a joke, but I could see he was scared, too.
“Fuck,” I breathed. “You guys, what about ZOX knowing where we’re going and who we’re after? What about that?”
“They’ll be focused on Denko now,” Odin said. “They’ll be looking to get him safe, and they’ll be looking for us to escape. It would never cross their minds that we’d stay to solve this mystery.”
“Nobody in their right mind would do that,” Zeus growled, smashing his chamber into his gun.
“And luckily we’re in our right minds,” I said. “Right?”
Thor looked grave. “The last place they’d expect us to turn up would be Handsome Jack’s.”
“Because we are fucking-g badass,” Odin said. But the spark had gone out of it.
Chapter Fourteen
Under the cover of darkness, we put a fully trussed-up Denko in the trunk of the old Lincoln that Zeus had arrived in. Odin rode up front and I rode in back with Thor, just like old times, but this was nothing like old times. It was new times. Dark times. I hated that we were risking everything while we were in a fight. We needed to talk about our relationship! Why couldn’t they see that? Was this like cavemen going out and hunting together instead of hashing it out?
Zeus briefed us on the way there. He told us that Galvano’s enforcers had both known that the old man was going to hand off territory. And when pressed, one of the enforcers revealed that he’d told Nico.
“Nico and Handsome Jack are behind it,” Zeus said. “I’m not sure how it’s working, but they’re behind it.”
“We’ll find out,” Odin said. “That’s why God gave people vocal cords.”
It was four in the morning, but my guys felt sure Handsome Jack would be in his bar. They thought ZOX might have a skeleton crew staking out the bar just in case, so they made a plan to case the area first. All very normal.
Or more like, air quotes normal.
I waited at the wheel while my guys melted into the darkness of the neighborhood around Handsome Jack’s bar, casing every car and van for ZOX inhabitants, and taking into account every possible window looking out onto the shitty little bar.
Zeus had promised they’d keep me in sight while they inspected the terrain, and I knew they would, but still, I was hyperaware of Agent Denko in the trunk. It wouldn’t go well for me to be arrested with him in the trunk. Then again, when would my arrest go well?
Fifteen minutes later Thor came back and joined me in the front, and then Odin squeezed in next to him, and Zeus had to get in the back. I didn’t like the configuration—it felt too emblematic of our struggle.
“They don’t have anyone here,” Odin said. “They thought we’d take off like frightened rabbits.”
Zeus grunted. “They really don’t fucking know us at all.”
Silence.
“This is a beautiful ride,” I said, tracing my finger over the classic silver detailing on the steering wheel. Was I doing it too, now? Wanting to talk about anything else but our problems?
Screw that, I thought.
“I love you guys. And I love our family,” I said. “And I’ll fight for it. What we have is worth fighting for.”
“We love you, too.” Thor said, but in a tone that said, don’t get mushy. “Now pull around back. Let’s do this thing.”
I put the Lincoln into gear and turned into the alley. “Should I wait?”
“No. Safest place for you is with us,” Zeus said.
“Always,” Odin said. But even that felt wrong. Like an echo of the sort of thing we’d say.
I pulled into a spot next to a dumpster and some stacked-up crates. We got out and clicked the doors closed, quiet as mice.
Handsome Jack’s red BMW stood next to the back entrance under the lone security light. Odin picked the back lock in record time, and we walked in.
An alarm started whining. Odin pulled a small circuit board from his pocket and got to work, ripping the face off the box and winding wires around it. The alarm quieted. Then he simply tore the box off of the wall and threw it across the kitchen.
An unnecessary extra. Not a good sign—Odin was usually economical.
Zeus was already heading into the back with Thor right behind him.
Odin didn’t follow just yet. He nudged me into a corner, and then I saw what he saw: a man at the far end of the place with a mop in his hand and earbuds on, just staring at us. Odin made a motion for the man to take his earbuds from his ears. The man complied. Odin crooked his finger and the man came to us.
“You want to live?” Odin whispered.
The man nodded.
He hugged the man to him and whispered into his ear.
The man turned pale and nodded.
“Come on.” Odin pushed him back. I followed.
The first person I saw in the back room was Thor, looking hot and pissed off, weapon loose in his hand, but ready for action. He was focused on Handsome Jack, who stood against the wall, ball cap askew, next to Len, the bald-headed, high-end muscle guy.
Zeus was behind the desk at the computer. “PayPal password. Now.”
“You can’t ask me for that kind of information,” Jack said.
Zeus got this scary smile of disbelief just then. Like a kid in the most bafflingly wondrous candy store ever…if the kid was Zeus’s fists and the candy store was Handsome Jack’s face.
Jack blurted out a string of numbers, a capital letter, a hash tag, and an exclamation mark.
Odin moved around to stand behind Zeus. “Good for you, Jack. That’s a fucking-g high-security password right there.”
The man with the mop sat in a corner on a bright orange crate under one of the horse portraits. He’d shoved in his earbuds and focused with laserlike intensity on the basement floor, creating his own little digital world.
This wasn’t the first time I found myself wondering what Odin whispered to people to make them do the things he made them do. Probably best not to know.
Zeus tapped on the keyboard.
I noticed a smashed phone on the floor. Handsome Jack’s. Maybe he’d heard the alarm and tried to get a call out.
“Look in payment,” Odin said. “Payments for services.”
“What the fuck? What are you doing?” Jack asked.
“You know what we’re doing,” Zeus growled.
“He’d hide it the way he hides the whole thing,” Odin said. “It’ll be something like design services.”
“Look at this.” Zeus tapped on the screen. “Is this Nico’s email?”
Odin looked over. “What do you say? We have a twenty-thousand-dollar payment for design services to NKO005. That feels Nico to me.”
Handsome Jack looked very small under his cap suddenly.
“We’ll clear that up when Nico gets here.” Thor said. “Jack was kind enough to text Nico to have him come by.”
“I
swear, it wasn’t my idea,” Jack said. “Galvano and Diego…please, you guys—”
“You think Galvano and Diego are your main problems here?” Odin asked. “You think the wrath of Galvano and Diego is what you need to fear?”
Handsome Jack looked confused.
Odin and Zeus exchanged glances. Either Handsome Jack was an awesome actor, or he wasn’t the one who’d turned us in to ZOX. Was it Nico, then?
“Maybe somebody needs to meet Nico at the door right about now,” Thor said. “You guys have this?”
“Yup,” Odin said.
Thor headed back up the stairs.
“So Nico needed the money,” Zeus said. “Was it gambling or the woman?”
“The woman,” Handsome Jack said. “He wanted to buy her a Benz and show he could keep her in style, convince her to leave her man. He placed a few bets and lost everything. Then the rumors started about Diego taking over Galvano’s shakedown zone once he married the daughter. People were saying Diego was going to raise the percentage and go really hard. There were rumors about the muscle Diego would send, you know, that he’d send the guys he uses to hold his corners—that they’d come around and fucking squeeze us. Fuck everything up.” Handsome Jack swallowed—the man was seriously sweating.
Odin leaned back against the wall behind the desk, weapon loose by his side. “And were a lot of those rumors coming out of Nico’s mouth?”
Handsome Jack shot a look at Len. “Not directly…but looking back, he could’ve been the source, yeah.”
“Fuck,” Len said.
“I was sitting at the bar one night,” Jack continued, “and I asked Nico if there was any chance he’d be getting back with Maria. I joked that I’d pay him for his stud services if he could win back Maria and break her and Diego up. That’s when he thought up the Corvette plan.” Handsome Jack looked away, unhappy, distraught. “Or anyway, that’s when he pretended to think it up. Like the notion of breaking them up or at least getting Don Galvano pissed off at Diego was my idea.”
“Fucker played you,” Len said. “Probably had it in mind the whole time.”
“Getting me scared and offering a solution,” Jack said. “Fucker led me into it. He said he’d nix the takeover if I’d erase his debt and give him twenty K besides. It sounded like a good ROI.”
The Most Wanted (Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers #4) Page 16