“Let me take care of some stuff and I’ll be home in a few. Kiss the baby for me and get some sleep, I’ll wake you up when I get in.” I hung up and waited for the others. This had become about more than just me and mine.
These guys had come all this way and done me a solid, the least I could do is return the favor. As long as no one tried standing in the way when the time comes.
***
Creed
Shit was chaotic, people were scattering like flies but I knew what my prey looked like. I heard a shot off to the side earlier and figured either Ty or Lyon had broken ranks. We’ll have to deal with the cleanup later, or maybe not. These boys were loaded for bear. I’m thinking we were all on the same page here.
Right now my only focus was on Sal and Dee. Lo’s team and Law’s crew were lining up the hate mongers like war prisoners as I walked through looking, but they were nowhere to be found.
I was starting to freak the fuck out thinking they’d escaped when I heard a whistle a little off to the side. “Over here.” It sounded like the Travis guy and he was calling from a little distance away, away from the fray. I jogged my way over there and found gold.
“These two were hiding out in the outhouse.” He had them by the necks and I’m guessing Sal was still weak from losing his balls because he looked kinda pale in the moonlight and wasn’t putting up much of a fight, unless Travis had worked him a little already.
For some reason now that I was faced with them I was more pissed at her than him. She’s the one I’d trusted with her, the one whose betrayal cut deep. Sal’s fate was already set after what my girl had told me, but this one, she needed special attention.
“What the fuck is she doing in that book?” No sense in beating around the bush. From the look of surprise on her face and the noise he made, they weren’t expecting that, which meant they had no idea we’d gotten hold of the book.
“I don’t…” This time I didn’t take it easy on her. Grabbing her hair, I pulled her head back roughly, twisting her neck. “Don’t fuck with me, how did she end up in there? How did he get to you?”
“He said he’d kill us if we didn’t.”
“He who?” I know it wasn’t Khalil or The Fox as we’d been calling him for years, because that fuck has never touched American soil. And since they’ve been shacked up here with the Stockton dude for the past few days I was pretty sure they knew his name by now.
“I don’t know, we never met…Ouch I’m telling the truth I swear, please don’t kill us, we had no choice.” Okay maybe I was wrong.
“When did it start I wanna know everything and Dee, if I don’t like what you got to say I will put a bullet in you. Now make it quick.”
She told of being contacted by phone and then receiving pictures of her doing everyday stuff, classic scare tactic maneuver. Then someone had dropped instructions in the mailbox as to what she was supposed to do.
“When did it start?”
“She was sixteen when we were first contacted.”
“And?”
“And nothing, every couple of months we’d get a call, a kind of reminder.”
“When was the last one? What was supposed to be the end result? And don’t tell me you don’t know.”
“I didn’t I swear, not at first anyway, but then we sorta caught on. It was the way he would talk about her ya know, how she was gonna fetch a good price.”
“This guy, what did he sound like?”
“Well the first one, he was American he wasn’t as scary as the other one.”
“The other one, tell me about him.” My guts tied itself in knots because I was pretty sure what she going to say next.
“He only started calling coming onto the end. He had a very thick accent, middle-eastern I think, he was not a nice man.” She took a deep breath and looked around for an escape.
“What else, why did he start calling instead of the other one and was there ever any talk of collecting?” That was my only real interest. Was I going to have to look over my shoulder now for some fuck coming to collect?
“It was after you stopped calling or coming by.” She said that shit almost accusingly and I almost popped her right then and there. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I still hadn’t eased up on her hair so I know her neck had to be hurting like fuck.
“After the prom, you just stopped coming by and you weren’t calling as much. They had the phone tapped and someone was watching the house because they knew everything.