Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ben

“What the fuck do you want?” I grouse into the phone after leaving Tessa at our table.

“Come outside.” Dirk Conrad’s tone is low and menacing.

“I’m having brunch.”

“I know where you are. Come outside.”

“For Christ’s sake. You’re not getting anything out of me, Dirk. This is ancient history, and I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re struggling. This isn’t on me. It’s all on you.”

I end the call.

I have the best security money can buy, but cell phones are never solely private. I don’t want him saying anything else through those lines.

I walk outside the Plaza and look around.

He strides toward me, wearing low-hanging jeans again, a New York Yankees cap on his head. A gold bracelet sparkles on his wrist, seeming out of place. “Let’s walk.”

“I’m in the middle of something.”

“This won’t take long.”

What the hell? I may as well see what he wants now. He’ll probably try blackmailing me again, which didn’t bode well for him the first time. He claimed something would come in the mail, but nothing ever did. That was months ago, and he really thinks I’m going to fall for this again?

There’s no evidence. We were very careful—thanks to Jerry and his knowledge of how to dispose of a body.

Poor fucker. He was an escaped convict, and no one went looking for him, but still…

I sure never meant for it to happen.

Dirk and I walk together for about a block before I stop. “I’m not going any farther. Tell me what you want here and now.”

“I hear you met my brother.”

I wrinkle my forehead. “I don’t think so.”

“David. At your brother’s bachelor party. He was the bartender you had dismissed.”

I clench my jaw as tension threads through my body. Is he fucking kidding me? This can’t be happening. The man who wanted Tessa. Who upset Tessa. I glare at Dirk. I suppose there was a slight resemblance. Christ. I want to lunge at Dirk. Take him out for good. “Figures he was related to you, since you’re both assholes and all.”

“Turns out he has a past with someone you care about.”

“I doubt it.”

“That lovely young thing you’re dining with.” He grins.

An invisible crow pecks at the back of my neck. “Why don’t you tell me what you think you know right now?”

“That’s for her to tell you. I’m here to show you something.” He reaches under the collar of his shirt and pulls out a chain. On it is some kind of—

The salmon in my stomach threatens to come back up. “What the fuck?”

He fiddles with the chain, moving his fingers in an almost sensual way. “I probably don’t have to tell you what this is. Because if you remember, when we yanked that motherfucker’s teeth out all those years ago, we couldn’t find one. It was easy enough for me to get the rest of you to believe that the derelict was missing a tooth, but he wasn’t.”

I look closely at what Dirk has dangling around his neck. “You are one sick bastard.”

“I’m a sick bastard who knows how to keep insurance. This happens to be that poor guy’s cuspid.”

A cuspid. One of his canine teeth—a tooth that can easily be disguised as something else. It’s not like he could wear a human molar around his neck with four roots hanging down.

“You’re disgusting.”

“Funny thing about teeth,” Dirk says. “They can identify people.”

“Dental records can identify people, you moron. One tooth isn’t going to do anything.”

“I don’t know. There might be DNA in here.”

“You’re fucked up. That tooth is fifteen years old.”

“Still, I have it. This is my insurance policy, Black. You’re going to have to pay me off, or I’m going to the cops.”

I don’t for a minute believe him. If he had that poor fucker’s tooth this whole time, he’d have crawled out from his snake pit before now. At the very least, he’d have sent me evidence of it three months ago when he threatened to. This is some other person’s tooth, and I don’t even want to consider how Dirk might have gotten it.

I close the short distance between us but resist grabbing his collar. We are out on the street, after all. “You’re the one who killed him. Or have you forgotten that little fact?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten that fact, but I figure you’d rather pay me than go down with me.”

“If you and I go down, so do Carlos and Jerry.”

Dirk shrugs. “Jerry’s already in the slammer, as you well know,” he says.

He’s not wrong. I’ve kept tabs on all of them since I had enough money to do so.

“And Carlos is long gone,” Dirk says. “I’m figuring you’re smart enough to pay me off rather than have the both of us go down.”

“I’m done with this conversation.” I turn and then look over my shoulder. “Don’t contact me again.”

“Meet me in an hour.” He shoves a business card in my hand. “This is the address. Come unarmed.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I’m not kidding you. That pretty woman you’ve got in there with you? I happen to know someone—and it’s not my brother—who wants her out of the picture. Someone who’s willing to pay me a lot. So if you don’t meet me, I’m going make sure that happens.”

This time I don’t hold back. I lunge toward him, reach forward to grab his collar, but then think better of it once more.

It’s Sunday afternoon in downtown Boston. Certainly not as busy as it would be on a weekday, but there are lots of witnesses nonetheless.

“You leave her out of this.” My jaw is clenched, my whole body throbbing with the need to mutilate this fucking bastard.

Dirk chuckles coldly. “I thought that might get to you. I’ve been watching you for the past couple weeks, and my brother was watching you in Jamaica. Seems you’ve been paying a lot of attention to a gorgeous young woman. So I did some digging, and I found out a certain man is out on bail for reckless endangerment and rape.”

“She has a restraining order. He goes near her, he goes back to jail.”

“She may have a restraining order, but that won’t stop him. Because you see, I filled his head with some…information.”

“You mean lies?”

“Does it matter?”

I look at the card in my hand. “Fine. I’ll fucking be there.”

“Good. See you in an hour.” He walks away, the human tooth still dangling around his neck.

Before I head back to the Plaza, the first thing I do is call my security company to get someone on Tessa right away. Then I do a quick internet search.

“Fuck,” I say out loud.

DNA can be extracted from a tooth. In fact, dental tissues such as enamel, dentin, pulp, and cementum have the advantage of being resistant to physical and environmental degradation and are an excellent source of DNA. I still don’t believe the tooth belongs to that escaped convict, but damn… If I’m wrong…

I head back into the restaurant. I’ve got to put on my game face.

“Is everything okay?” Tessa asks. “You were gone a while.”

“Just a business deal that’s driving me slowly insane.” I pull out my wallet and throw enough to cover our brunch plus a generous tip onto the table, trying to still my racing heart. “But I have some bad news. I have to go to work this afternoon. I won’t be able to take you to the zoo after all.”

The crestfallen look on her face breaks my heart.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I understand. Maybe I’ll…”

“You want me to take you back to your mom’s?”

She shakes her head. “No, I can’t keep crawling back to my parents’ house. It’s not the same now, anyway, with my father gone.”

“I know, but it’s only been a week, Tessa. If you need more time with your mom—”

She holds up her hand. “I don’t. I’m okay, Ben. Just take me back to my place, and we’ll do the zoo another time.”

“You can count on that.”

…

I instruct Sherlock to take Tessa home. No way am I having him drive to this place. This is between Dirk and me, and he has no idea of the kind of security I have watching me at all times.

However, I turn off my security for this.

This is something I don’t want anyone to know about. And if my security team—who I trust implicitly, of course—finds out I’m meeting with Dirk, that means more people will know, and I don’t want that.

The address is for a warehouse on the south side of town, eerily close to the warehouse where our crime took place fifteen years ago.

Not the same one, though.

I have the cabbie drop me off about two blocks away and then wait for me.

I throw a couple hundred-dollar bills in his lap to show him I’m serious. “Double that if you wait.”

“Not a problem, sir.”

I walk, then, the two blocks to the warehouse, to the address on the card Dirk gave me.

I’m going to finish this once and for all.