Cue Ball leaned in close, teeth bared like a rabid animal, eyes so dilated it looked almost cartoonish. “Now,” he growled in my face, flecks of spittle landing on my nose and beard, “let’s talk about that girl you’re looking for!”
Chapter Twenty-two – Elise
I was on edge. I glanced down at the truck’s clock. Jake had been inside too long. What if something had happened to him in there?
I picked up my phone and pulled the business card for Frost Security from my pocket, and thought about calling. It would take them, what? An hour, hour and a half, to get here from Enchanted Rock? And that was if they could get moving right away and sped the whole way.
My eyes seemed to travel of their own free will to the pistol sitting on the dash. I knew how to use it. Pops had been sure to teach me everything about firearms I’d ever possibly want to know before he passed.
I rubbed my hands on my denim-clad thighs and gritted my teeth.
What if something had happened in there? What if they had taken Eve? Or they were working with those Denver Mafia types?
The short time I’d known Jake flashed before my eyes. Not just him standing out in the cold shivering, either, or how close we’d been in the kitchen. But the way he’d offered himself up to help me find my sister. The way he’d broken into that guy Kevin’s apartment, bending the law so maybe I could have a chance to fix my family. And the way his hand had felt this morning, the way he’d bobbed his head to the music.
The way he helped people.
I swallowed hard and shook my head.
No, too damned long.
I opened the car door and grabbed the 9mm off the dash as I climbed out. I released the clip, checked to make sure it was fully loaded, and slapped the clip back in. I double-checked the safety, stuffed it down the back of my jeans, and readjusted my winter coat. If something was actually wrong, I was going to need the element of surprise.
My teeth chattered despite my layers of clothes, and my palms broke out in a sweat despite the cold winter air. My heart hammered in my chest and my breath came faster. I was about to walk into a biker bar to retrieve some guy I just met, with a pistol stuffed down the back of my pants, the barrel rubbing against my ass cheeks.
I took a deep breath, and tried to hold and control it. I didn’t want to freak out any more than was necessary.
I started walking. The snow and gravel crunched under my boots as I stomped across the nearly empty lot to the front entrance. I pulled open the heavy metal door and went inside, my eyes taking a moment to adjust to the dimness as I looked around.
Damn, this place was a dump.
No wonder Eve kept coming back here with her boyfriend. She loved places like this.
“Cheap drinks, sis!” she would have said, then let loose a “Whoo!” as she downed two more shots on some random guy’s tab.
The bartender, a scruffy-looking biker type with a long beard, looked at me, his eyebrows raised.
“Hey,” I said as I headed towards him, catching his eye. “You!” My voice came out more high-pitched than I wanted, almost approaching a squeak. I swallowed hard. “Guy come in here earlier? Black hair, black beard, flannel shirt?”
“Lilith?” the guy asked as he looked harder at me. “What the fuck are you doing here? I thought you was gone, girl!”
I stopped in my tracks, my mind racing, my hands still damp. He knew Eve? “There was a guy who just came in here. Where is he?”
“Wait, hold on.” The bartender shook his head. “You ain’t Lilith. Who the fuck are you?”
I pulled up the back of my jacket, just like dad taught me. I reached back, caught the gun’s grip, then pulled it around and held it in both hands. Elbows bent and shoulder level, just like Pops taught.
The bartender looked blankly at me, just blinking as he looked down the barrel of Jake’s 9mm.
“Not saying it again.”
He raised his hands slowly, letting the towel drop to the floor.
“Where. Is. He?”
“In the back. With T-Bone and Spike, couple of the other boys. I heard a ruckus back there, but you know me, I steer clear of this shit.” He paused and shook his head.
“Who the fuck are they?” I asked, advancing a step towards him, but having enough sense to keep my distance, even with the adrenaline pumping through me.
“Sorry, that’s right. You don’t fucking know me.” He laughed nervously. “But I swear, lady, whoever the fuck you are, I just meant good by it.”
“You meant good? What does that even mean?”
Before the bartender could answer, though, the yelling started up in back.
Chapter Twenty-three – Jake
I made my move when they pulled me from the wall and tried to get me down into the chair. I’d taken my licks for the last few minutes, letting them believe they were wearing me down with their punches.
Don’t get me wrong, they hurt. Each of those guys hit like a Mack truck on steroids, going downhill without downshifting, but they needed more than that to break me.
When they thought I was softened up enough, they tried to release the grip on my arm and angle me over to the chair I’d swept Thick Neck with.
I twisted my arm out of their weak, untrained grip, and had Cue Ball thrown over my hip in no time.
“Shit!” T-Bone yelled as Cue Ball crashed into a stack of beer cases, bringing the whole section tumbling down.
“Get him!” Thick Neck yelled.
I grabbed Whistler by the front of his shirt, spun him with my body as a counterweight, and sent him flying over the table, across to the other side of the small cubbyhole of a room. Better to have him over there rather than up in my face.
Beer bottles crashed off the table in Whistler’s wake as I saw, out of the corner of my eye, T-Bone scoop the baseball from the concrete floor.
Shit. Not much I could do about that. I went for the chair they’d tried to put me in and grabbed the back.
Just as T-Bone and I were about to swing, though, a pistol went off, startling us both, making our ears ring.
“Enough!” screamed a voice over the noise of the fight. “Stop this shit right now!”
All eyes turned to the beanie-wearing, gun-toting beauty standing in the doorway leading back to the bar.
Elise. She hadn’t listened. And she had my gun. I’d never been so happy to have someone so directly disobey my wishes.
“Lilith?” croaked Cue Ball as he shifted, a case of beer falling over on the side and breaking loudly. “What the fuck? Why are you back?” he asked as he began to crawl from beneath the pile of yeasty debris.
“I’m not Lilith, you dumbass. I’m her sister.”
“Thought I told you to call for help?” I croaked, my throat dry from the exertion.
She glanced down at the baseball bat in T-Bone’s hand and at the chair in mine. “Fat lot of good that would have done you, huh?”
I shrugged. “Guess not.”
“Now, as for these guys,” she said, her eyes turning to each of the bad biker dudes in turn, “apparently they’re the friends Lilith came to stay with about a month ago. The one Kevin’s landlady told us about. Boys, this man is trying to help me find my sister. He doesn’t work for the Denver Mob, like you think.”
All the biker eyes turned to me.
We all grimaced.
I went over and offered Cue Ball a hand, pulling him up from the floor, glass shards sprinkling down around him like jagged, razor sharp snowflakes.
“Now, how about we all have a seat,” Elise said as she lowered her pistol to her side, “and you tell me what the fuck is going on with my little sister.”
“Hey, guys,” I said as I looked around at all of them. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take that beer now.”
Chapter Twenty-four – Elise
My hands were still shaking as I clutched the ice-cold beer and tipped it back. Cool, refreshing cheap beer. It hit my stomach and immediately began to soothe my frazzled nerves, bringing me back to reality.
> My pops said to never pull a gun unless you were willing to kill with it. I hadn’t broken that rule, even though I’d only fired to get their attention. Carter, the bartender, had helped me put two and two together, that these guys weren’t our enemies. Yeah, they might have been really questionable characters, but they hadn’t meant Eve any harm. But if Carter hadn’t done some fast talking, Jake and I would have had to explain to the cops why there were a few dead bikers at Crossroads.
And the strangest thing about it? I had no idea why. I mean, I could understand being willing to kill for Eve. But this was Jake we were talking about here. I didn’t feel that way about him, did I?
Did I?
“Good to meet you, Jake,” the bald one said as he shook his hand. “I’m Spike. That there’s T-Bone, he’s Silverback, and he’s Russell.”
“Russell?” I asked the one whose neck looked about as thick as Jake’s thigh. “What happened? They run out of cool nicknames before they got to you?”
The guys all laughed, but Russell just went beet red. “I’ll have you know,” he said loudly, “that I just don’t like nicknames. Never wanted one.”
“Lighten up, Russ, she’s just giving you a hard time. Definitely Lilith’s sister, this one.”
“Elise,” I said, raising my beer.
Spike turned back to Jake. “Where’d you learn to fight like that, man? You karate chopped T-Bone and dropped him like a sack of potatoes! Surprised you lasted long as you did with all four of us.”
“Two tours in Iraq. Pick up a few things over there.”
The bald biker nodded. “Well, guess we got our tax dollar’s worth with you, big guy.”
“Boys?” I called, pulling out one of the chairs at the table and taking the gun from the back of my jeans. I checked the safety before I put it on the table and grabbed a seat. “How about y’all stop slobbering all over each other long enough for me to find out what happened to my sister?”
They all looked at me a little sheepishly, beers in hand. They came over and, with the sound of wood and metal scuffing on concrete, pulled out their chairs. Russell had to go into the barroom to grab an extra for himself while Jake took his pistol back, checked the safety, and holstered it at his side.
“Where should we start?” Spike asked after everyone was settled in. “What do y’all wanna know? How we know Lilith, or what?”
“Everything,” I said. “Start from the beginning. And her name’s Eve, not Lilith.”
He glanced to Jake, who nodded. “Where’d you guys meet Eve?”
Spike looked around at the other guys and sighed deeply. “Alright, so Lilith—I mean Eve—showed up in Enchanted Rock a few months back. She started dating this guy named Kevin, a bartender down at The Nugget in The Rock right after she got to town. Still practically living in that shitty motel on the outskirts of town. Well, Kevin does some work for us on the side.”
“What kind of work?” I asked.
He made a face, and glanced from me to Jake. “Before I go any further on this, I need to know something.”
“What?” Jake asked.
“Y’all ain’t cops, are you?”
Jake and I exchanged looks. He turned to Spike. “Think I’d be stupid enough to come in here without my gun if I was a cop? And looking like this if I was undercover? No, I’m a private investigator that Elise hired to help find her sister.”
Spike shrugged. “Just checking, man.”
“Besides,” Jake added, “cops don’t have to tell you if they’re cops, even if you ask. That’s how sting operations work. For future reference.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah, no shit. Now keep going and answer the lady’s question. What kind of work?”
Spike sighed. “Alright, we do shit, okay. We run stuff through the state. Well, through most of the state. Some areas we keep off limits, just cause it’s too much damned trouble to mess with. But, Kevin, he mules for us with the pain clinics and shit.”
“Mules?” I asked.
“Carrying drugs,” Jake said. “Eve’s ex-boyfriend was, in this case, probably faking chronic pain so he could go into certain pain clinics and get his prescriptions filled. Then he’d do what? Sell them to the Skull and Bones?”
Spike nodded. “Yep, that’s how it works. Oxies, mostly. Oxycontin, I mean. And hell, that one place down in Durango that got closed down, he didn’t even have to fake it much. Just told ‘em he was out, and they hopped to it. Pretty good amount of side money for him, just for doing a few drives across the state. But, most of ‘em, he’s gotta fake it.”
Damn. Eve was involved with this creep?
T-Bone leaned forward. “Y’all are keen on hearing about Lilith, though, ain’t you?” He took a drink of his beer. “Shit, sorry, I meant Eve.”
“Yeah,” I said, my poor thumbnail already tearing at my beer label. “How did she get involved in this shit?”
“Well, Eve needed money, you see,” Spike said. “But she didn’t exactly want to cocktail or tend bar or nothing.”
“Sounds like Eve,” I said, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. “Used to always try to get me to do her end of the work.”
The bald biker grinned. “Yeah, that’s right. She got hooked up with us through Kevin a little while after they’d started dating. Figured she could bring in two, maybe three times as much pills as Kevin each week. So I let her go at it. And, man, did she. She was buttering up those doctors left and right, twisting them around her little finger. They had more scrips getting written for her than a movie studio. Big bottles, too, and months’ worth at a time. She hands them right over, not a pill missing. Always on time and twice as full as any of our other mules. Paid her a pretty penny for it, too. A premium, in fact. Best damned mule we ever had.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned and looked at Jake. “Well, at least she wasn’t taking it, right?” I asked.
He nodded. “Small miracle, I guess.”
“Now, I’m not exactly sure if it was because of her bringing in more money from us, her buttering people up, or just the amount of time she was spending here at Crossroads just hanging with the guys, but Kevin seems to start getting a little jealous in their relationship.”
“Ain’t exactly like he has much to offer,” T-Bone added.
“Kevin’s kind of a punk ass,” Russell agreed.
“He makes a deal with some syndicate out of Denver.”
“Denver Mafia?” I asked. “The Florentinos?”
Spike nodded. “Yep. I told the boy not to mess with ‘em, that we can figure something out, but he doesn’t want to listen. He wants to be a hotshot. Starts talking all this crazy shit, about how he wanted to make Eve his, how he wants to marry her.”
I snorted and shook my head. “Yeah. That has Eve written all over it. She’ll find a guy, move in right away, change everything around them, and they’ll love her forever.”
T-Bone and Spike glanced away. Something told me I’d hit the nail a little too close to the head with that comment. “Well, okay, so Kevin wants more money. He gets these guys to front him some coke. Basically, they put up the drugs, he sells it after he cuts it, he delivers the proceeds to his suppliers, they hook him up with another package, or he buys it outright. Kind of like the, uh, what’s it called…?”
“Franchising,” Silverback, who had been quiet up to this point, offered.
Spike snapped his fingers. “That’s right, right there. Franchising! So, Kevin gets this package, you see. But Eve, she doesn’t want any of it. She doesn’t mind muling, she told me, but she doesn’t want to be living with a drug dealer. Especially not coke. Too much money involved, too many dangerous people.”
“Damn right about that,” Jake said gruffly.
“So she leaves him. She gives me and T-Bone a call, meets us down at that little diner in Enchanted Rock.”
“Dixie’s?” Jake asked.
“Dixie’s, right. We bring her up here.”
“He comes up here a few times, looking f
or her. Said he needed to talk to her, just for a few minutes, but we threw his ass right out the bar. He was crazy-eyed, babbling on about how desperately he needed to talk to her. T-Bone tells him to just call her. If she wants to pick up, she’ll pick up.”
“She never picked up, did she?” I asked.
“Shit no,” Spike said. “One of them times, he even came up here waving around a little rinky-dink revolver, swearing he was going to shoot somebody. Russell here had to disarm the little fucker and toss him on his ass. Don’t think she’s spoken to him since she left him, the little weasel, coked out bastard.”
“But then,” Russell said, “shit hit the fan a few weeks ago. Word is, Kevin did all that coke he got fronted. Blew it all up his fucking nose like a damn fiend when Eve left him, and his buyers never materialized. So when Denver comes calling, he ain’t got the damn cash. He’s shit out of luck.”
“What happens then?” Jake asked.
“He drops off the face of the earth,” Spike said. “One day, all freaking out, looking for Eve. Next, gone like a leaf in the wind. I mean, what would you do? Stick around to explain?”
Jake and I looked at each other. He raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to the side.
“What?” Russell asked. “Y’all know something.”
“We found Kevin dead in the trunk of his car yesterday afternoon after we went over to try and find Eve at his place. He’s been dead for a week.”
Russell whistled low, and the other three just sat back in their seats. “Man, that’s cold. I mean, Kevin’s a fuckwit and all, but damn. At least dig the guy a shallow grave or some shit, you know. Least I’d do.”
Not for the first time during this conversation, I wondered how my life had taken the turns it had. My father had tried to raise us right. He’d left a life like this behind, back in DC, and tried to get us to the country where we wouldn’t have to worry about drugs and all this other shit. But what did Eve do? She dragged me right back into it.
“How much was the package worth?” I asked.
Spike shrugged. “Dunno. Never did say. Guess it was enough to get killed over, though.”
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