“Um, yeah, do you see that fireball down there?” He nodded to the river, where the Charger had exploded on some kind of impact, and a bright orange fire was showing no signs of burning out. Then he cupped his ear. “You hear those sirens? Shit’s about to get complicated around here, especially because I shot the shooter, even if I didn’t shoot the deputy. You want to talk, we’re going somewhere else.”
Rio hell-no’d that. But not because she was injured. She needed to find out whether the phone call she’d gotten before the shit hit the fan was connected to what had just happened. Had she been a bystander . . . or a target?
“I gotta go. We’ll meet tomorrow.”
Luke, likely not his real name, just stared at her. “You fuck me off, I’ll go to Mozart myself.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. He doesn’t meet directly with anybody.”
“I got special skills.”
“So do a lot of people.” Her bored tone was a cover-up for the stress prickling under her skin. “I’ll be in touch and we’ll try this again tomorrow night.”
And like the Caldwell Police Department patrol units had read her mind, those sirens the guy had pointed out doubled in volume, either because twenty more squad cars were coming in their direction or because the twelve dozen that were on their way had just turned the final corner.
“Suit yourself,” the supplier said. “But I was willing to make the deal tonight—and I’m moving on to someone else if you don’t take more of what I gave your organization last night. Also, you owe me.”
“Excuse me?”
“I saved your life, twice.” His golden eyes narrowed. “You owe me, Rio. And I collect my debts.”
“I didn’t ask you for a damned thing.”
“So you’d rather be dead.”
“Than indebted to anybody? You better believe it. And you need me. You can’t do the kind of business you want to with anybody but me. Mozart’s is the only organization that’s going to buy at the levels you’re talking about moving.”
“So let’s get the deal done.”
Rio glanced around, and heard the warning she’d hung up on haunting her. “I’ll contact you at the number I have—”
The man snapped a hold on her arm. “Don’t fuck with me. I have options you don’t even know about.”
Before she could react, he released his grip and walked off, his dark clothes helping him blend into the shadows.
“Dammit,” Rio whispered as she ducked and disappeared herself.
Sticking to the club’s flank, she took out her gun and measured the windows across the alley, the lane behind her, the lane ahead of her. The patrol cars screamed by one block over, and she caught sight of the lineup with their flashing lights as they crossed an intersection she could see through.
Her legs were killing her, her left one below the knee in particular.
A streak of lightning gave her eyes more than the ambient light of the city to go on—and also revealed her. As she sank into an inset doorway, she frowned and leaned back out. A moment later . . . there was another of the storm’s strobes.
“Where did you go?” she said under her breath.
The supplier had somehow . . . disappeared. Unless he’d snuck into one of the buildings? Maybe. That was the only explanation. In the direction he’d gone in, away from the river, there were no corners, no cutthroughs, no going any way but forward for two blocks straight.
Maybe he’d broken out into a sprint—
She couldn’t worry about it. Not right now.
Checking the clip in her gun, she relowered the weapon to her thigh and continued on. She found the body about forty feet ahead, crumpled facedown on the pavement behind a dumpster. It was a man, going by the build and the hair, as well as the size of the boots. As she knelt beside him, her brain connected the dots.
The jacket. She recognized the black leather jacket because of the red stitching that crisscrossed the shoulders and ran down to the bottom hem.
“Erie.”
One of Mozart’s lieutenants.
Had he been shooting at her? Or the Charger?
As she looked at the spreading red pool under the man, she thought about a killing down in Manhattan the weekend before. Johnny Two Shoes, an associate of Mozart’s biggest competition in the state, had been executed and rolled into the Hudson. The word on the street had been that revenge was imminent.
Maybe Erie had been protecting her, protecting the deal being made. Had the driver of the Charger been trying to kill her in retaliation?
Rio stretched an arm out and put her fingertips to the inside of Erie’s still-warm wrist. Feeling around . . . no, there was no pulse. Making the sign of the cross, she straightened—and left the area so that she could call in the shooting details to HQ from greater safety.
That she was walking with just a limp was better than she could have hoped for.
Good thing, too, as she wasn’t done with her to-do list yet tonight.
Lucan re-formed at right about the place he’d scared off those two boys with their ghost-hunting equipment. Lifting his face to the rain, he let the light drops fingertip his forehead and cheeks. On the backs of his eyelids, he saw that human female getting hit fair-and-square by the car. Then pictured her rising to her feet afterward, brushing herself off, and giving him the what-for.
She’d had a strong face, her features bold, her lips full, her dark eyes big under declarative brows. Her skin had lost all its color as she forced her weight onto what had taken the impact, but she had refused to give in to the pain.
He couldn’t decide whether the grit was sexy or stupid.
Well . . . he supposed it was stupid, but he found it sexy.
Wiping the rain through his hair, he leveled his head and stared straight ahead. If she didn’t call him sometime during the rest of tonight or tomorrow during the day, he was going to go out to the streets and find her.
And then what? the malest part of him demanded.
“None of your business,” he muttered.
You want her.
“Yeah, to get the Executioner off my back.”