Gift From The Bad Boy

I turned to face the boy. “You had a cousin named Eric, didn’t you, Petrov? A distant cousin, probably, maybe not even blood related. Eric Joiner.”

He kept his face studiously calm. “I don’t know. Maybe. My family is very big.”

“You’d remember this one. He came to you, didn’t he? Told you he was in trouble. Said he saw something but refused to tell you what it was, just that it was bad and he needed to disappear for a while. You helped him, right? And you didn’t tell your father?” With every passing word, he went whiter and whiter, until it looked like there was no blood running through his veins at all. “Thought you’d get in trouble for getting your daddy’s business involved in something without his permission, right? Tell me, Petrov, is that right?”

He paused for a long time. Then he nodded. He started to speak in a whisper. “He just said he needed some help getting people off his back. Guys were looking for him. They came to his house when he wasn’t home, kept trying to snatch him off the streets. He was terrified. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t let him get killed, could I? I just gave him a place to stay for a while, that’s all. Then he asked for my help to get the obituary published. I was too afraid to ask my dad for help. He would have yelled at me and told me we didn’t need to risk tangling with biker gangs, that there was nothing good in it for us.”

I nodded solemnly. “Where is Eric now, kid?”

His voice was a pipsqueak. “He works in the kitchen.”

I rose. “Thanks, Petrov. Thanks, Ivan,” I said.

Ivan’s face was purpling with rage. I turned and strode out the door as the sounds of his enraged bellows erupted behind me. “Stupid, stupid boy!” he screeched. I heard flesh smacking flesh before I was too far down the stairs for the sound to carry anymore.

I burst into the kitchen, eyes blazing. A few bored-looking teenagers were half-heartedly pushing meat through the slicer or lugging boxes around the walk-in refrigerator. I stopped in the middle of the room. “Which one of you is Eric Joiner?”

Everyone looked up in surprise. I swept my gaze around the room. Two people looked at each other and shrugged. A girl in the corner gave me an irritated glance, then went back to chopping lettuce. Then—there, out of the corner of my eye. I pivoted and saw a frail, nervous-looking kid with prematurely graying hair. He took one look at me and bolted through the door.

I hopped a counter and took off after him. He ran from the kitchen into the main dining area, overturning a table as he went. The few patrons sitting down to eat exclaimed as he knocked past them, reached the door that led outside, and flew out onto the sidewalk.

I was close on his heels as he wove through the pedestrians, leaving a trail of angry businessmen and tourists in his wake. He lurched suddenly into oncoming traffic. Drivers slammed on their horn as he ignored them and zipped straight across the street.

My breath was coming in short bursts as I followed behind, narrowly avoiding getting struck by a passing sedan. “What the fuck are you doing, you maniac?” the driver hollered out his window. On another day, I might have taken the time to beat the man’s ass just to prove a point, but right now, all that mattered was collaring this runaway motherfucker and finding out what he had seen the night that Olaf and James’s wife were killed. If he got away now, I doubted I’d ever find him again. Getting this close had been a fluke. I wouldn’t get a second chance.

Ansel mounted the sidewalk on the other side and kept sprinting. He hooked around the corner of an alleyway. I was only a few yards away now. I whipped around and saw him halfway up the ladder of the fire escape that led to the rooftop. With a savage yell, I hurled myself upwards and managed to wrap a hand around his ankle. As gravity tugged me back to the ground, I brought him with me.

We landed in a heap of arms and legs. I didn’t want to wait around to see if he had a knife or a gun on him. Instead, I rolled over and pinned his skull against the concrete with my knee. I was panting heavily. “Eric, calm the fuck down. I’m not going to hurt you.”

He snorted angrily in response. “Yes, you are. You’re with him. With them. You’ve been trying to find me for years.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I snarled. I looked up and saw a few passersby at the mouth of the alley, looking at us and gawking. “Come here,” I said. I picked him up by the back of his shirt and dragged him towards the back, behind a dumpster. Tossing him to a seat against the wall, I crouched in front of him and withdrew my knife.