“Seven thirty. And you make sure you make that little weasel suffer before you dispose of him, alright?” Charlie doesn’t seem bothered that I rejected his offer of the drugs. He cuts it for himself and then inhales in a sharp blast. God knows how many lines he did before I got here, but that’s three in the last five minutes. The old man slumps back in his chair, head tipped back, chest rising and falling slowly as he makes a euphoric moaning sound. I stand up and make my exit, still warring with my need to curl my fingers into a fist and smash it repeatedly into his face.
“I’ll let you know what happens,” I throw over my shoulder as I leave. Except I probably won’t have to. Charlie will probably be monitoring me somehow. He’ll watch the whole thing via fucking satellite feed somehow, I’m guessing. From outer fucking space. I tear out of his house before I can do something rash. He still has his security detail on site. If I even so much as lift a finger here, break a vase, scratch the wingback chairs, breathe in the wrong direction, I’m a dead man.
Instead, I jump into the Camaro and lose an inch of rubber off the tires as I scramble to get the hell out of there. Through the gates, out of the suburban headfuck Charlie likes to call home. I’m almost through the other side of Clyde Hill before I pull over the Camaro and get my phone out of my pocket.
It’s a smartphone, not the kind of phone you can remove the back from. How Charlie would have gotten a bug inside, I don’t know, but if anyone was going to do it then it’s definitely him. I open the security lock and then have the forethought to hit the contacts button to retrieve the one single, important number that I haven’t memorized just yet: Sloane’s. I scrawl the digits onto the back of my hand and then I take the thing and I smash it against the dashboard. Small shards of glass shatter everywhere, into the footwell and all over the leather bench seat. I pry apart the metal casing and catch my breath. There it is—a small, square chip, soldered into place on the main processor. It obviously doesn’t belong. The other circuitry is a work of art, neat and meticulously created. This alien chip, this listening device, this act of betrayal, was probably put in place by a very talented hacker indeed. They couldn’t replicate the precision of something machine made, though. I open the window on the driver’s side of the car and I hurl the phone out of it, roaring with anger.
I can’t believe he’s done this.
Actually, I can totally believe he’s fucking done this. I just can’t believe I was stupid enough not to expect it from him. Who’s the fool here, me or him?
God knows what the old man has heard me talking about on that cell. It doesn’t even bear thinking about right now. The car engine screams as I gun it, charging in the direction of home.
I’ll do this one last thing for Charlie, but not to help him. I’ll do it to find out what’s going on with Rick. I’ll do it to find out what the hell is going on around here, and then I’m gonna start making some arrangements.
The deal goes down just as Charlie said it would: on the wharf, Rick—built like a tank, every square inch of skin below the neck tattooed and tagged—meeting with three bikers from a crew I don’t recognize. Their top rockers read Wreckers. I arrived early and set myself up on the second floor of the burned-out warehouse Charlie sometimes uses for meets like this, not really believing Rick would be dumb enough to use this place, but the guy shows up like clockwork. The bikers roar up ten minutes late, cursing and swearing about a police tail they had to shake. These Wreckers must be high-end fuckers to warrant that kind of heat. Rick hugs the first guy, a huge piece of work that would tower over me even, and bumps fists with the other two guys.
“What you sayin’, Caleb? How much longer?” Rick says, addressing the guy he hugged.
The massive guy leans back against his bike, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his washed-out Wranglers. “Three, four days max. Our guy’s ready to move.”
“And you’ve got what we talked about?”
“Yeah, four. Although you could get six on the container. Don’t know why you wouldn’t wanna maximize your profit.”
Rick shakes his head. “You get greedy, you get caught. Four’s perfect. And they’re all virgins?”
Caleb nods his head. “So our doc says. “
“Good.”
“More than good, brother. You’re gonna wanna fuck this pussy yourself, believe me. They are some fine, grade-A ass.”
Rick grins, scratching at his jaw. “Yeah, well if I stick it to ’em then I get the feeling they won’t be worth quite as much after. And I get pussy just fine, anyway. Better to save these whores for Rebel. Guy has more money than fucking sense.”
Rebel.
I’m not even all that surprised. I haven’t heard the man’s name in a while, maybe not since that bent P.I. nearly sold Sloane to him two years ago. Seems around about time the fucker reared his ugly head. Rick’s right—he does have more money than sense…and a very nasty habit of buying pretty girls and using them up until there’s nothing really left.