“Force of habit,” she said with a shrug as she fired up the computer and logged in. We were sitting in the car, and I was watching the screen, tapping my foot because it wasn’t booting up quickly enough to soothe my nerves.
When the program was finally up and running, I was just as frustrated. It was gibberish to me, at least until Sloane made a few adjustments and shifted the specs into map mode. She tapped her finger on a purple dot blinking on the screen. “South Side.” She caught my eye. “Pretty deep in, too. And the vehicle’s not moving.”
“Deep in,” I repeated, looking at the lines that represented streets in neighborhoods I’d never seen, and wasn’t sure I wanted to. “You mean gang areas?”
“That’s what I mean.”
I told myself not to freak, but I can’t say that I was doing a very good job listening to myself. “Well, okay, then. That’s where I’m going.”
“That’s where we’re going,” Sloane said, and started the car.
“Tyler?” I asked, and in response she tapped the button on her steering wheel to connect the speakerphone.
His voicemail answered, and she glanced at me with a shrug. “He’s mingling,” she said. “And, no, he’s not going to be happy about us going into gang territory without him. But I have years of homicide under my belt and a Glock in the glove box. Your call, though. If you want to wait, we wait.”
I shook my head. “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve already waited too long.” I couldn’t shake my growing fear that something had gone horribly wrong. I just couldn’t understand what.
“Then I’ll deal with Tyler later.” She shot me a grin as she floored it out of the parking lot. “If he’s pissed, that just means I have great make-up sex to look forward to.”
“Since you put it that way,” I said, then grabbed for my seat belt, figuring that would up my odds of surviving our quest to find Cole.
Even with Sloane behind the wheel it took more than forty-five minutes to reach the Fuller Park intersection where we found Cole’s Range Rover smashed into a newspaper machine that may or may not have already been battered in a crumpled metallic heap.
“Shit.” Sloane reached into the glove box for her gun, then tucked it into her small beaded bag. It didn’t fit, and the grip extended from the flap of the bag.
I raised an eyebrow.
She shrugged in reply. “In this neighborhood, I’m not worried about having it concealed. Come on. Let’s go take a look at the car. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’s sleeping off a bender in the backseat.”
I didn’t believe it, but it was something to hope for, so I followed her out. Across the street, two heroin-thin guys called out from where they sat on the curb in front of a battered brick building that I think was a bar, though I wouldn’t swear to it. Their words were slurred and they seemed less than interested in approaching us. Frankly, I considered that a good thing.
There was a bench a few feet down from where the Rover had plowed into the newspaper machine, and I realized this was a bus stop. A burly guy in a filthy wifebeater with an arm covered in gang tats sat there, taking long sips from something concealed by a brown paper bag. He was turned toward us, but I couldn’t see where he was looking because the black shades hid his eyes. Even so, I was certain that we were the object of his attention, and I kept a cautious eye on him while Sloane peered into Cole’s vehicle.
His head never moved, his position never shifted. But he smiled slowly, revealing a row of gold-capped teeth that glinted in the fading light of the setting sun.
Honestly, I was glad for the gun.
“Anything?” I asked, hoping Sloane heard my silent plea to hurry it up.
“Not a thing,” she said. She tried the door and found it unlocked. She tugged it open, peered in, and looked at me. “Whatever the messenger brought him, he either has it on him or he left it at the wedding.”
Our gold-toothed friend got up and sauntered toward us. “You need help, Goldilocks? What’s the matter? One of the three bears stand you up for prom?”