“No.” Soft, deep. Quiet.
“Roch?”
“Yep.”
“Tell us what you know about Corsetti,” Koyn demands. “It’s fucking important, man.”
More silence.
I’m about to tell this motherfucker to start talking or I’ll gut his ass next, but then Cove climbs halfway over the console to bring his face to the front.
“You don’t like to talk much, eh?” Cove asks, his voice soft and lyrical, reminding me of a sweetly sung song.
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so,” Cove says with a sigh. “Listen, Roch, we have a problem. Your guy, Corsetti, we took care of him. Dragon gutted him. It was fucking nasty.”
Roch makes a grunt.
“All we got out of him, though, was a name. Victor Knight. You heard of it?”
“Yep.”
“Any other names that might help us?”
“Vaughn.”
“You got a last name?”
“Kingsville.”
“Katana,” Koyn says, eyes darting to the rearview.
“Texting Bermuda now,” Katana calls back.
“Anything else?” Cove asks. “Anything that might help us?”
“River,” Roch grunts.
For fuck’s sake.
“He lives on a river?” Cove questions.
“Don’t know.”
Cove sighs heavily. “That’s all you got?”
“Yep.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Fantastic,” Loki deadpans as he takes the phone. “Now I can go back to getting my dick sucked. Bye, cockblockers.”
He ends the call and Cove flashes me a smile. It’s not nearly enough information, but it’s a start. A lot more than we would have gotten with Koyn or me leading the interrogation. I snag Cove’s hand with my blood-stained one before he can pull back to his seat. Bringing my lips to his knuckles, I brush a kiss along them as a thank you.
Tonight, we’ll gather all the information we can get on Vaughn Kingsville or any other alias we can uncover, and tomorrow we’re going to fuck some shit up.
Cove
“We passed like three hotels,” I state, watching yet another Motel 6 go by.
In front of me, Dragon is like a caged animal, itching to be released. We’d stopped to fill up for gas in some shitty Podunk town and Koyn forced Dragon to get cleaned up some. He’s no longer wearing blood from head to toe and is sporting an Arkansas Razorbacks T-shirt that’s about two sizes too small.
You could almost confuse him for a college frat boy if it weren’t for the million tattoos crawling up his neck, another man’s blood under his fingernails, and the psychotic gleam of murder to come in his green eyes.
Like I said…almost.
“If you ask if we’re there yet one more time,” Koyn threatens, “I’m going to make Katana sit up front and Dragon can deal with you.”
Dragon laughs from the front, but it’s not a funny sort of laugh. No, it’s a dark chuckle filled with the promise of depravity. A shudder makes its way down my spine. Pass.
It’s not that I don’t want to get naked with Dragon again, because I do. I really, really do. It’s that, right now, in his manic state of needing to save his brother, he feels unpredictable and more unhinged than usual. I’m not looking to accidentally get myself choked to death.
My cock stiffens.
Oh, fuck off, man.
We pass by a motel with an empty parking lot and I throw my hands up in the air. “Honestly, Prez,” I mutter under my breath. “You said we were going to stop at the next hotel.”
“Hotel, BP. Not some hole-in-the-wall, bed bug infested nasty-ass motel. That’s how people get murdered, kid. They stay in Generic Roach Motel in Nowhere, Tennessee. And bam!” I jolt when he slams his fist down on the steering wheel for dramatic effect. “Dead. Some psycho sneaks into their room and stabs them eighty-seven times in the throat.”
“Gross,” I mutter. “And oddly specific. However, I would like to argue the fact that, in our situation, we have the psycho. He knows us and prefers to stab other people. Crisis averted.”
“Fuckin’ smartass is what you are,” Koyn growls. “Didn’t know I’d be getting a Stormy Jr.”
Katana smothers a laugh that fades when I give him an icy scowl.
“I don’t do bed bugs,” Koyn continues. “I’ll take some lunatic slasher over those damn bed bugs. Sorry, but PG will kill my ass if I bring bed bugs back to my house. She’d probably torch the place with us in it.”
PG, or Hadley, is his ol’ lady. She’s far from old, though, like Prez. Where he’s pushing fifty, she’s closer to my age. They’ve got one kid and another on the way. I’ve walked in on them fucking more times than necessary.
“So where are we going then?” I demand.
Koyn grunts, smacking Dragon with his knuckles. “Do something about your boyfriend. He’s getting on my nerves.”
Dragon unbuckles his seat belt and I groan. Seriously? I shake my head at him, but he’s already prowling between the seats toward me to do fuck only knows what.
“Ha,” I deadpan. “You made your point, Prez.”
“K,” Dragon growls, “move.”
I scowl, ignoring Dragon as he trades spots with Katana. Koyn starts yapping in the front seat about some big-ass gun he’s getting. Meanwhile, I’m left with a babysitter.