I looked to him, saw how hard his jaw was, the tenseness around his eyes.
I nevertheless persevered.
“Yes, honey, I’m okay. The girls are okay. I’d like to know what’s going on with Dad, but—”
“Evan, you do not handle a guy like Cisco. You do not make deals with him. You do not work things out with him. You do not do shit to circumvent what people who know what they’re fucking doing are planning in order to get you and your friends safe. It doesn’t matter. You’re never gonna be in that position again. But, God fucking forbid, if you are, sit tight, shut up and wait for the people who know what they’re goddamn doing to sort shit out for you.”
Okay.
Now it was time for me to get pissed.
“All right, Danny, next time you get kidnapped, after you’re safe, I’ll weigh in on how you should have handled it. That work for you?” I asked sharply.
“Evan,” he growled, “you are not hearing me.”
“I heard every word you said,” I snapped. “And really, as lame as this is, how fucking dare you.”
He shut his mouth.
“He had that place wired to blow,” I informed him. “The guys are my friends. I wasn’t big on them being blown to pieces. You mean the world to me, so obviously, I didn’t want that in your future. And by the by, if someone had perchance talked to me or any of the girls about what we saw and heard, we could not only tell you where that place is, we could tell you that Brett informed us there’s a tailor on Evans who deals in explosives behind his shop.”
“Brett?”
“Yes,” I bit out. “Brett.”
“You know, baby,” he said in a smooth, velvety voice that nevertheless gave me a chill, “I got a call, personally, from Brett, informing me where we could go to find your girls’ bags.”
Oh shit.
Mag must have felt my changing vibe because he purred, “Oh yeah. He was all about making sure he returned what he confiscated from you when he fucking abducted you.”
Yikes.
“He also,” Mag went on, “shared, if I didn’t treat you right, he’d cut off my balls and shove them down my throat.”
Eek!
“So,” he continued, “you wanna talk to me again about how you should have handled that sitch?”
I was understanding now why he was pissed.
It wasn’t jealousy, per se.
It also maybe kinda was.
“He’s creepy,” I said.
“I know he’s fucking creepy!” Mag exploded. “Jesus Christ, Evan, could you not be you long enough you didn’t give some crazy-ass felon the hots for you?”
It was highly inappropriate at that juncture, but I had the desperate desire to giggle.
I must have made a noise because Mag grunted, “Nothin’ about this is fucking funny.”
He was wrong.
I didn’t share that.
“It’s over, honey,” I reminded him quietly.
“Yeah, you wanna know how over it is?” he asked, and the way he asked it, I knew I didn’t want to know.
I still said, “Okay.”
“It’s very fucking over because Brett assured me not only that you no longer had to harbor any concerns that he might cause you or your friends any harm, you could rest in the knowledge that no one would cause you or your girls any harm or he’d intervene.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed, not wanting a cop killer at my back, and also wishing he weren’t a cop killer because evidence was suggesting this guy could be redeemed, if he hadn’t done something entirely irredeemable.
“Right,” Mag clipped. “So, you got yourself a champion, baby. Though not sure how he’ll keep his finger on that pulse, seeing as he’s particles. Cops have that gun. He knows the cops got that gun. So, it’s just a hunch, but I’d bet big money on the fact that Cisco is nowhere near Denver right now and has no plans of coming back.”
That’d be my hunch too.
He was creepy, but he didn’t give any indication he was stupid.
Mag continued speaking.
“They also have your dad. Eddie and Hank, Slim and Mitch want me to share the gratitude of the entire DPD that you sorted that for them. Though, as I mentioned, who they don’t have is Cisco, seeing as he’s got a sixth sense when it comes to the preservation of his own ass and he never showed at Glazed and Confused. My guess, he thinks your dad screwed him and is in the dark that it was you who tipped who had that gun, or he wouldn’t throw down for you.”
I homed in on one part of that.
“The cops have Dad?” I asked.
“Accomplice after the fact,” Mag answered. “I put two and two together, and his fingerprints found at your pad and on your car that they previously put down to him being your dad, now he’s being charged with vandalism and burglary. And a search of his home found that dope stash, which was too hot to move, but he was clearly willing to wait it out, so he kept it. This means they also got him on possession with intent to distribute. Considering he was found in possession of a weapon that killed a cop, even if it wasn’t his, he didn’t turn it in, the police are motivated to make something stick. So I’d brace, Evie, because he’s going down, one way or another.”