“What do you want me to do?”
“You’ll know when you get there. And while you’re doing that, I’m going to follow up on a few things, check on Mariah.”
LC motioned toward the door. I still wasn’t sure where I stood with LC—did he consider me family or foe now?—but I took the revolver and got out as ordered. I flinched when the bodyguard lowered his window, half expecting him to shoot me. Instead, he instructed me to walk through the overrun parking lot in front of me, toward a building that looked to be abandoned.
“Just knock on the door,” he said.
The door of the abandoned building was rusted, but from the flakes on the ground I could tell it had been opened recently. Someone was inside. I took a nervous breath, patting the gun to make sure it was still in my pocket before I knocked.
I was greeted by a well-built white man around my age, probably Italian, if I had to guess. He stepped aside so I could enter. Inside the dimly lit space, two men were leaning against a desk smoking cigars. When they saw me, the white-haired one got up and led me to another door.
“Right this way, Mr. Grant. Mr. Dash is expecting you.”
I nearly shit my pants when I realized Sal was there—and LC knew it before he’d sent me into the building. At this point, I was pretty sure I’d been set up. LC had probably made some type of deal with Dash the same way he’d done with Rio. The difference between me and Rio, though, was my sharp lawyer’s mind. I had the ability to talk my way out of sticky situations. I just had to figure out a way to talk myself out of this one.
It took me a minute to process what I saw when I opened the door, because it was so far from what I had been expecting. Sal Dash was there, but instead of sitting behind a large desk surrounded by juice-head goons ready to kill me, Sal was in his underwear, tied to a chair in an otherwise empty room.
I walked cautiously toward him, still trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Sal grunted as he tried to free himself with a harsh tug. His chair hopped once, but that was all. Expert knots held the rope that bit into his skin. His face looked like someone had taken out some frustration on it.
I removed his gag. “Hello, Sal,” I muttered, feeling cocky all of a sudden.
“Look at this shit. Bastards snatched me when I was going to church service. I’m a family head, Harris! You just don’t do something like this to me.”
“Just like you don’t take a man’s child?” I said, taunting him.
Sal stared at me in contempt, until he saw me remove the gun from my jacket. For the first time, I witnessed something less than the supreme confidence he usually displayed. I witnessed fear in his eyes.
“That was overreaching,” he offered meekly. “I’ll be the first to admit it. But you have to understand. I never intended to hurt your daughter. I wanted LC to think the Mexicans took her, so they’d go to war.”
“You used my child to start a war?” I asked, barely able to contain the rage I felt building in my chest.
“My men are weak ... selfish. I knew if we had to go head to head with LC, they would fall apart under pressure. I needed to do something to weaken LC ... take his family out of the equation. At least enough where my family could survive. That’s all it was.”
“Is my daughter okay?” I whispered harshly, gripping the pistol with a new intensity.
“Of course. She’s somewhere safe.”
I raised the gun.
“Cut me loose,” he pleaded, his face now wet with tears. “I’ll pay you anything you want. You name it.... Don’t you see? They’re trying to pull you in, make you just like them. But you’re not like them, Harris. You’re not.”