“Can’t pack you up and put you on a plane back home, I’m afraid. You look like shit. Don’t worry, though. I know a guy who’ll have you back east in no time.”
I do, too. When I reach the docks, I head straight for the harbormaster’s office instead of stopping off at the warehouse first. I find Jeremy Daskill, fifty-three, sitting behind a desk piled with a mountain of paper with a glass of scotch firmly gripped in his meaty hand. He looks like he’s seen a ghost when he looks up and lays eyes on me. This is always how he looks when I appear before him, ready with a favor to ask. Couple of years ago, I did Jeremy a favor of my own. His brother in law had gambled all of his sister’s money away. He got drunk, beat and raped her, and then left her for dead at the foot of the stairs. Jeremy, good brother that he is, knew something needed to be done about the guy, so he came to me. The situation was dealt with, and now, whenever I need something stowed away in a shipping container for a while, or I need a bag or two dropped off into the Sound, I call on my friend Jeremy.
“Mr. Mayfair. Hi, I—I wasn’t expecting you.” Jeremy puts his scotch down behind a stack of papers, out of sight, like I would give a shit about him drinking while he’s on the job. We all gotta do what we gotta do to get through.
“Hi there, Daskill.” I give him a winning smile. “I have a little job I need you to do for me.”
Chapter Thirteen
MASON
I spot Kaya in a booth on the far side of the café, sipping from a long, pink curly straw. She’s drinking chocolate milk, of all things, and a metal cup is sitting next to her tall glass on the table, sweating with condensation. When she sees me enter, the bell hanging above the door chiming loudly to announce the arrival of another customer, she takes another bendy straw out of a caddy resting up against the wall—green this time—and she drops it into the silver cup, pushing it across the table so that it’s directly in front of me when I sit down.
“It’s almost nine,” she says, tracing her finger in a patch of water on the table. She makes a flower. “I thought you weren’t going to come.”
“I had to finish something up at the shop.” The Impala took longer than I thought it would, but I managed to get it done. When I told Mac what I’d done—a feat not even he could have accomplished—he relieved me of the keys and grunted under his breath, slamming his office door in my face. Asshole.
“Get you anything, sweetie?” A short woman with insanely tight curls hovers by the table, notepad in hand, pencil raised and ready to record my every desire. I order a coffee and she looks disappointed, like my dreams should have been bigger. Kaya doesn’t say anything about the fact that I’m not drinking her proffered chocolate milk.
“I need to make this quick. My sister’s with a sitter and it’s her first night home after the hospital,” I tell her.
Kaya blinks at me like a very wise owl. “You’re not going to like this.”
“I already don’t like it. You’ve got me freaked out. I feel like I’ve done something wrong.” I can’t have done something wrong, though. I’m not dating Kaya. I haven’t slept with her. I sure as fuck haven’t slept with her and then slept with her best friend, so what’s going on? Why the hell is she looking at me across the table with such worry in her eyes?
“It’s about my brother,” she says.
“Your brother?” I haven’t looked sideways at Jameson Rayne. Ever. Giving Jameson any reason to think I’m interested in absolutely anything he does is tantamount to inviting an ass kicking like no other.
Kaya nods. “Yeah. Jameson. Not just him, though. It’s about your friend Ben, too.”
Ah. Now that makes more sense. Ben’s been getting himself into trouble ever since we were kids. He’s managed to keep his head down for the last little while, though. It should be no surprise that his well-behaved run is finally at an end.
“What the fuck has he done?” I sit back, settling into my seat. I’m not going to be able to drain my coffee and run after all.
“He and Jameson were stupid. Jameson makes deals with fighters sometimes. He’s pretty arrogant. He knows he’s a good fighter. Great, even. So when he’s matched against an opponent by Johnny and his guys at French’s, he’ll go find them a few days before. He’ll offer them a percentage of his winnings if the other guy agrees to go down in a specific round, in a specific way. No one’s ever not taken the deal. I mean, they’re not stupid. They know already they’re going to lose. So they always take the money and go down when he tells them to.”