No Justice_A Croft Mob Family Book

by Morgan Kelley

  “I can look it up.”

  “Good idea. I hope you can tell me something about it because my associate is getting twitchy.”

  Lee’s eyes went huge.

  He began digging around in a file.

  “Here it is,” he said. “A man called ahead, asked for a key to be left under a mat, and then paid by credit card.”

  “Do you have that?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulled it out of the file.

  When he handed it to him, Dimitri knew it was going to be useless.

  “See those first four numbers? That’s a prepaid card. We won’t be able to trace it.”

  He was surprised.

  “That’s a thing?” Greyson asked.

  “Yeah, you go to a convenience store, you add money to it, and they preload it for you. Then it works like a credit card.”

  Well, shit.

  Hell!

  This dude was really trying hard not to be seen.

  Then again, if he was Zachary Lipton’s guy, there might be a reason.

  Look at Dimitri.

  He was practically just as notorious as him—because he worked for him.

  “Okay, what else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Think harder, Lee. I don’t like that answer at all. Make me happy.”

  Beads of sweat were on the man’s forehead.

  He looked at a board.

  “Wait! There was a card left in the room on the floor. I think someone dropped it.”

  “What was it?”

  He rolled toward the wall, pulled the card off the board, rolled back, and handed it to him.

  “I kept it in case any of our guests needed a place to go to keep busy.”

  Greyson read it.

  “Neptune.”

  Dimitri glanced over.

  “Pardon?”

  “Neptune,” he said, showing him the card. It had a trident and another mermaid.

  “I like the colors,” Lee stated. “I may go there myself one day.”

  “Me too,” said Milo.

  “Uh, don’t,” Dimitri stated. “Keep the tacky in one place. It’s better like that.”

  Greyson agreed.

  “I love mermaids,” Milo stated. “They are so pretty to touch.”

  Greyson knew they weren’t dealing with Mensa candidates here. That was clear. Someone was hopped up on something.

  BUT hopefully, they could ID Harold and the girls.

  “I need you to look at a few pictures, Lee. Can you do that for me?”

  “Titty pictures?” Milo interjected, irritating the hell out of Greyson and Dimitri.

  They didn’t want to be there all damn day. The hookers came out after dark.

  Tick.

  Tock.

  “Take him into the back and beat the hell out of him,” Greyson stated.

  Dimitri grinned as Greyson handed him his gloves. The man was grabbed and dragged back.

  Lee looked from Greyson to the door where Milo had been taken.

  “Now, how about those pictures?”

  Lee nodded much more enthusiastically.

  It was hard for him to concentrate. From the back, they could hear someone getting beaten up.

  Beatdown.

  And all kinds of knocked around.

  “If you try to help me, you won’t die. That’s all I can promise you right now.”

  The man nodded.

  “I’ll help!”

  Great.

  First, Greyson showed him the picture of Misty that Dimitri took.

  He studied her.

  “She came in a couple of weeks ago, picked up the money, and was taken in a car.”

  Good.

  He wasn’t lying.

  Greyson didn’t have more gloves, so he hoped he didn’t start now. All he kept thinking was his son and HIV from this place.

  Okay, one down. He pulled up another picture on his phone and showed him Candice French.

  He nodded again in recognition.

  “She was here about four months ago. It was late April or early May. In fact, she was the one who went to the room. She was the only one.”

  Okay, so they had a timeline.

  They’d work with that. It fit for the one body in the bag. One had been further along in decomp than Candice French, so they could say it wasn’t Misty. They had a third dead woman.

  Misty—still MIA.

  Candice—being ID’d.

  And mystery woman number three.

  Now he had to know if the man had seen anyone else. He might be able to help with IDing her body.

  “Did anyone else come here?”

  He thought about it as Dimitri left the back room. He was straightening his hair and then brushing some lint from his suit sleeve.

  “Milo won’t be thinking about ‘titties’ for a long, long time. He’s going to be worried about his balls,” Dimitri stated nonplussed.

  Greyson almost laughed.

  Yeah, oh, well. He was done screwing around. It had seemed to make Lee want to help out.

  “My question, Lee?” he asked.

  “Mr. Croft, I think there was one other girl who would come here. That’s about it. They were the only three. She was a long time ago though.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “What did she look like?” he asked.

  He stared blankly at him.

  “I don’t know.”

  Greyson knew you couldn’t get blood from a stone. This was as good as it was going to get.

  He pulled out an Aquarius card and handed it to him.

  “If you see this going down again, and Harold comes back for another pickup, call us. Any time of the day or night. Stall her, and we’ll come.”

  He took the card.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, and if Milo thinks about calling the cops, you’re the one who will get hurt. I’ll come for you.”

  He slid a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill across the counter. “Get him some Aspirin.”

  The man nodded.

  With that, they headed out.

  The place was too much, and he was at his max. The bright aqua was giving him a headache. He felt like he was on the bottom of a swimming pool.

  Out in the car, Greyson knew that they were going to be visiting a strip club.

  “Well, partner, do you want the good news or bad news?” Dimitri asked.

  That unnerved him.

  Dimitri had called him partner.

  Yikes.

  “Uh, hit me up with the good. My mood is fraying and fast.”

  “That club he mentioned is not a dive.”

  Uh oh.

  They’d had a conversation like this once before regarding a strip club.

  He felt it coming.

  “And the bad news, partner?” Greyson asked, bracing for it. He knew it was coming.

  “We own it.”

  “What the hell?”

  Dimitri would have laughed if this wasn’t serious. He hoped the killer wasn’t hanging out in that bar.

  “Yeah, it’s ours. There are nude mermaids swimming in the tanks, bourbon, and Cuban cigars—before they were exactly legal again.”

  Well, holy shit.

  “Dimitri…”

  “You said no strip club. That’s more a gentleman’s club. It’s very profitable. It funds…”

  He stopped him.

  It didn’t matter.

  Emma hated strip clubs.

  PERIOD.

  Whether it helped fund their endeavors or not. Telling his pregnant wife otherwise was going to get ugly.

  Fast.

  In fact, he was going to make Dimitri do it.

  To save his damn life.

  “I’m glad I have a child coming,” he stated. “Because after this, you won’t be the only one servicing his own needs. I will be too. When you get in trouble, so do I.”

  Dimitri laughed.

  Only, it wasn’t funny.

  AT ALL.<
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  * * * G R E Y S O N C R O F T * * *

  Sky Villa

  Tuesday Afternoon

  After giving Emma a break, long enough to take a short nap, she definitely woke looking, and feeling, better.

  In fact, after waking up from her twenty-minute power snooze, she was found wandering around the kitchen, trying to figure out what she, Greyson and Chris would have for dinner.

  Yes, she was thinking about food, again.

  Sue her.

  Only, she wasn’t up to cooking anything.

  Eating?

  Yes.

  Slaving away?

  No.

  This pregnancy thing was hard, and she suspected delivery would be that much worse.

  Who knew it would be this bad? Did Mother Nature put every woman through pre-birth boot camp like this, or was she the lucky one?

  As she was standing in the large luxurious kitchen, Chris was hovering around her. He was practically stuck to the back of her.

  Why?

  In case she slipped.

  In case she passed out.

  In case…

  ANYTHING.

  “What do you want to eat?” she asked, hoping he’d come up with something that took zero effort to make.

  Like a glass of milk.

  “We can order in,” Chris offered. “While food is the way to my heart, you already got there with the homemade pasta last weekend.”

  She laughed.

  “Men are easy. YOU are easy. Someone really should check his ancestry. You say you’re not Italian, but I call BS on that.”

  “Mama mia! Let’s order from that Italian place with the sexy garlic bread knots,” he teased with a cheesy Italian accent to get her to smile.

  It did the job.

  It made her laugh.

  “Deal.”

  Poppy was watching and taking it all in. There was something about this interplay that gave her an idea. She decided to ask Emma about it.

  “Do all men like women who can cook?” she asked, trying to be nonchalant about the whole thing.

  Chris laughed.

  “Do we?” he asked. “FOOD, SEX, INTELLIGENCE—and in that order,” he stated. “I will overlook everything for someone who can cook. Thus, why I put up with her bitchiness.”

  Emma flipped him off.

  “See?”

  “Yogurt for you tonight. We aren’t even going to order,” she said, tossing him his least favorite flavor. It was lime.

  He laughed.

  “Momma mia!”

  Poppy wasn’t kidding. This gave her a look into a relationship, and she wanted to see if it could go somewhere.

  “I mean it, do they?”

  Chris knew where this was headed. She was asking because of Dimitri. He was no fool.

  “Yeah, it’s homey to come home from work and have a meal with your woman. When I was married, I would come in, there would be the scent of another man’s cologne in the air…”

  Emma laughed.

  “Tasty.”

  “Yeah, and all kinds of wrong,” he stated. “I got lucky though because, now, she cooks for me, and I don’t have to be nice or buy her shit.”

  “Preach,” Emma stated. “You’re using me for my food. My heart just broke.”

  They both knew the truth.

  Poppy thought about it.

  Maybe if she made Dimitri something to eat, and they all sat down as a family, he’d see she was trying to make that reconnection with him.

  Maybe he’d stop being angry.

  Today, she’d had hope.

  He wasn’t scowling at her.

  Growling.

  Being hostile.

  “Does Dimitri like stuff like that?” she asked, hoping Emma said yes. She was running out of hope. Poppy knew she shouldn’t have run.

  She saw that now.

  She regretted it. She should have leaned on him, and let him hold her up when she was broken—like when she had helped him work through his issues.

  Dimitri wanted a team.

  A unit.

  Poppy desperately wanted that too. She could see that with each passing minute with the Crofts. Plus, she was willing to do what she needed to get them there.

  It was her turn to try.

  Emma knew Chris was basically right. While some men wanted a woman playing Susie Homemaker, what Dimitri craved was not that, but normalcy. He wanted his kids to be happy, and his home to be filled with love. They all could order food, but you couldn’t order contentment.

  She saw where the woman was going.

  It was a pretty clever plan.

  “Well, as of late, he’s been trying to feed the kids at night by themselves. We only do family dinners on the weekends.”

  “I only know how to make a few things my grandmother taught me.”

  Thank God for her Russian grandmother. Who knew all those years ago, that her kitchen lessons would come in handy in her adult life?

  “I say try. What do you have to lose?” Chris asked, trying to play matchmaker with Emma. Dimitri needed all of the help he could get.

  “What do you need?” Emma asked. “He doesn’t keep a stocked fridge for cooking. Dimitri doesn’t cook.”

  Poppy rattled the ingredients off.

  Emma dug them out of the big refrigerator and passed them off to Chris who bagged them in canvas grocery bags.

  She smiled.

  “I can do this.”

  Emma had no doubt.

  “Go for it.”

  “Are the kids still with the tutor?” she asked, glancing at the big clock on the wall.

  “Yes, until five.”

  “Do you think he’ll be angry if I send her home?” she asked, wanting to get the pretty thing as far from Dimitri as possible.

  JUST.

  IN.

  CASE.

  “Uh, why?” Emma asked, suspiciously.

  “I can handle the kids. I like hanging out with Sam. He cracks me up.”

  Yeah, he did that with all of them.

  “I doubt he’ll care. He does often when he’s home and she’s not needed.”

  That was good enough for her.

  She grabbed the bag Chris handed her, and she had hope this might work.

  She was going to show him she wanted to try.

  And feed his soul.

  Hopefully, the way back into his heart was through his stomach.

  Now all she had to do was pray.

  For a miracle.

  * * * G R E Y S O N C R O F T * * *

  Las Vegas

  Country club

  When he rode up to the man in his own golf cart, he was all smiles, but beneath them, he was nothing put a pissed off man in a rage.

  Claude Black was dead.

  He’d been watching the news all day, and he’d used his ex-career to call in a few favors to get some information.

  It seemed the two bodies retrieved in the cabin had bullet wounds to the head.

  Sniper bullets.

  Yeah, he knew who pulled the trigger.

  Dimitri was the knifeman, and Greyson Croft had been the sniper.

  He was well aware how it went down.

  They’d, once again, saved Poppy Wayne’s pathetic life from his hit guy.

  His plan was foiled by those two do-gooders.

  It was ruined.

  Now, she was being stashed somewhere they thought was out of his reach, and he didn’t doubt where.

  SKY VILLA.

  Now, he had to redo his plan and try something completely different—and riskier.

  The head-on attack wasn’t working.

  It was time to work behind the scenes. This was about trying to get into the other man’s head, and to get him to play ball.

  Zachary Lipton, if anything, was a hard nut to crack.

  Stopping at the hole where the man was making his final shot, Jeffrey put plan B into action.

  “Hello, Zachary, how are you?” he asked.

  The man smiled as he lined up his sho
t.

  “I’m well, Raye, it’s a nice night to golf, isn’t it?” Zachary asked, swinging at the ball.

  It flew over the green and landed not far from the flag by the hole.

  Jeffrey wasn’t enjoying it at all.

  NO.

  It really sucked.

  Instead of bitching, he kept the fake smile in place and got down to business.

  “Yeah, it is. I love coming to the club to enjoy the weather and some golf.”

  Bullshit.

  He hated this sad sport that required pastel clothing, a stick, and a ball. It was boring, and he had better things to concern himself with.

  Vegas’s domination.

  “How are things?” Zachary asked as they walked toward his now motionless ball.

  Jeffrey knew he had one-shot.

  “Shitty. I have Greyson Croft all over me.”

  Out of the blue, the man laughed. It only added fuel to the fire. It pissed Jeffrey off.

  “That’s too bad,” Zachary stated. “He’s tenacious.”

  Yeah, he was aware. How hard was it to end his reign of goodness? You’d think Croft would get bored.

  Yeah, well, he hadn’t yet.

  Here’s where it got fun.

  “Well, he’s coming for you, so laugh it up, Zachary,” Jeffrey stated, dropping the bomb.

  The man lifted a brow.

  “Pardon?”

  “He’s investigating you, and you’re his competition. You’ll see. He’ll start digging around, making you edgy. Once he sniffs out a target, it’s days before he takes you down.”

  Zachary looked worried.

  “What?”

  Well, that couldn’t happen. Zachary couldn’t lose his businesses. They were…lucrative.

  “What did you hear?” Zachary asked, his interest finally piqued.

  Jeffrey knew he had the man—hook, line, and sinker.

  “He’s talking about your businesses and your personal affairs.”

  The man handed his caddy his club. That wouldn’t do at all. His businesses were his business, and not Greyson Croft’s. His personal life was also his, and his alone. The last thing he needed was the ex-Fed digging around in his life.

  That would end badly.

  There was only one thing to do.

  “Richie, get me back to the clubhouse. Now! I need a drink!”

  The man did just that.

  When he pulled away, Jeffrey smiled.