9. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

T he fastest flight I could manage included a layover in Michigan, of all places, before doubling back to land at Chicago O’Hare at noon the next day. Michigan, right , because that made so much sense. The worst thing about flying was being part of a group of people with nothing in common other than their desire to get from point A to point B, forced into close contact for hours on end.

The next worst thing about flying was the way the whole process seemed completely arbitrary when determining who, what, when, and where we stopped along our journey. I didn’t believe in arbitrary, but goddamn, airlines could test even my patience.

For the first flight, I was seated between a teenager who kept his headphones in for the entire trip, and a chatterbox of a lady who was clearly nervous and took it out on me with loquacity.

“My sister said it would be hot, even in Michigan. And we’re going to be on the lake, and I knew I was going to forget something on this trip, and you know what? I completely forgot to pack my bug spray. How am I going to be outside without bug spray? I’ve already had malaria once, and I don’t want to get it again, blah blah blahhhh…” She dropped off for an hour in the middle of the flight, thank god.

Upon arriving, I glanced at her eyes once, quickly, and said, “Don’t forget to use sunscreen.”

“Oh…you know, I didn’t even think about that.”

Yeah, I knew that. This lady had plenty of first-degree burns in her future, but hey, I’d done my part.

The second flight was faster, quieter, and by the time I landed in Chicago, I was more than ready to get to work.

I made my way out of the morass that was the baggage claim and called Andre. “I’m here.”

“Great. I’m twenty feet behind you.”

I jumped, honestly jumped, and whirled around to face him. Andre Jones was taller than me by a few inches, with dark brown skin and an angular, attractive face. He didn’t look like a reporter; he looked like a Marine. A smirking, smug Marine who dabbled in covert ops.

“Feeling a little edgy?” he asked as he lowered his phone and walked over to me.

I put my phone away and holstered my sudden desire to yell at him. It wasn’t Andre’s fault I was working on less than three hours of sleep and my perforated arm hurt like a bitch. The bullet wound bothered me, beyond the normal “oh damn, there’s a hole in my body” type of unease. It was a weakness―it would slow me down. With the people I was going up against, I couldn’t afford to be slow. I also couldn’t afford to piss off the only person I had to help me out in Chicago, so I plastered on a smile.

“Long flight.”

“Yeah, not that long.” His eyes immediately went to my sling. “How bad is that?”

“Nothing I can’t manage.”

“Let’s hope so,” he said cryptically. “My car’s out this way. You got that?” He gestured toward my duffel bag. “’Cause you don’t need to be ripping stitches just to prove you’re a man or anything. I’m happy to help.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m overly concerned with my masculinity? I’ll take the assist.” The duffel bag wasn’t really heavy, but it was unwieldy, and I’d already strained myself back in Denver hoisting it around.

“Got it.” He picked it up like it was nothing. “C’mon.”

His car was a Tesla that smelled like baby powder and dog hair. I wrinkled my nose, and he laughed. “You’re welcome to take a cab, Cillian, but my ride’s cheaper.”

“Not for what I’m paying you,” I replied, but I got in and, after a moment of awkward staring, buckled myself in with a sigh. “Where are we going?”

Andre started up the car and began to weave his way out of the airport parking lot. “We’re going to lunch.”

“Lunch.”

Well…that wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but then, waiting for him to say, “We’re going to the mob boss’s secret hideout!” probably wasn’t in the offing. “Anywhere in particular?”

“TGI Friday’s, down on the Magnificent Mile. Be grateful―I could have you buying me a fifty-dollar steak.”

I closed my eyes and leaned against the headrest. “Don’t get carried away just because you get to play private investigator for a while.”

“Hey, I don’t have to be a PI to know my shit. Reporters are fact finders. I could do this in my sleep,” he chided as we turned onto the highway.

“Oh yeah? Then tell me what you’ve found out.”

“Not yet.” He glanced sidelong at me. “I need to make sure of something first.”

I knew what was coming; I fucking knew it. I groaned. “For fuck’s sake. Really?”

“Do you have any idea the kind of weird shit that’s going on with these people?” he asked. “I’ve got to make sure you’re above board before I do any more business with you.”

“Yeah? And how can I possibly prove that to you?”

“Tell me what they’ve got on you that makes you so anxious, and let me verify it.”

I shook my head. “No way. This is you angling for a story, Andre, and you already got your story from me. I told you not to expect a new one.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “You didn’t tell me not to, either, and you know what? There’s something happening here. That other story was a puff piece for a magazine about psychics. This is about the Icelandic mob moving some sort of illegal contraband into the United States and throwing its weight around to make sure no one comes down on them before they move it again. And when I say weight, I mean some heavy-duty shit, Cillian. Political, monetary, and mercenary leverage. This is a real story.”

Aaand here was the unwitting deprecation of my entire life. I was good at taking it, but I had rarely been in less of a mood to. It seemed that living for a few months with people who were like me, who believed me, had spoiled me. Andre knew what I could do, and I had expected to be taken at face value, especially after he’d done an entire interview with me. Apparently he considered that prior experience a waste of time.

Fuck that. “Look at me.”

“I’m driving, man—”

“The road is clear for the next two hundred yards, this won’t take me long. Fucking look at me.”

Andre kept his eyes resolutely forward for another moment, surveying the traffic and slowing down a little before, finally, turning his head. Our gazes met, and I pushed myself hard, fell into his mind and past his surface thoughts— ridiculous, not really a, oh my god— and beyond into the depths of his past, and his future.

Three seconds later, I broke eye contact. “Journalism major but you entered the Marine Corps right out of university because you thought it would make your daddy proud of you the way college wasn’t going to. You did two tours in Afghanistan, and you hate it there, but you also can’t stay away, can you? You’re always thinking about going back, looking for whatever you feel like you lost over there, but you’ll never find it again.”

“So you did some research on me,” Andre said, his lips pursed tight, eyes staring straight ahead. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“You’ve got a baby girl who’s five months old and has been colicky for the past three days. She keeps you and your wife up at night. You love her, but you don’t know how to tell your wife that you’re going to accept a contract to go overseas again in three months and leave her alone with the baby.” I plowed ahead, ignoring the growing strain on his face. Question me? Let’s see you question me now.

“You haven’t fit into the life you thought you should have ever since getting back from the war, and you never completely will. You have a scar above your left knee that you scratch at when you get nervous, and you secretly like how easily you can tear the skin and make it bleed. It makes it feel fresh, like it’ll never go away, and you don’t want it to.”

“Shut up now , Cillian, or I swear to god—”

Time to back it off a little, or I might self-righteous myself out of any help. “You’ve got a special speech all planned out for your daughter’s first date, and it’s going to scare the shit out of that boy, but he wouldn’t have been good for her anyway. You’ll be there to walk your daughter down the aisle, and your first grandchild will be named Andrea, after you. You’re a survivor.” I exhaled noisily, letting go of the visions as best I could. They were still lurking in my mind, and they’d be there forever now, but I had plenty of practice pushing them back. Andre wasn’t the worst I’d seen, not by far.

“And I’m a psychic. You don’t think that a person like Egilsson would be able to find a use for me?”

“He did before,” Andre guessed after a tense minute. “When you told me about being a guest, you meant more like a prisoner, right? This is a personal thing for you.”

“I certainly don’t give a shit about the mob.”

“Huh.” We drove the rest of the way to the restaurant in silence, but it wasn’t the kind of silence that made me worry I was going to be shoved out of the door onto the road. That was an improvement.

Andre managed to find parking in a ridiculously crowded section of downtown, in the middle of skyscrapers I’d never seen before. I felt positively tiny and completely insignificant. It was kind of nice.

“The Magnificent Mile,” Andre said as we got out of the car. “Shopping and lodging for people with more money than sense.”

“And we’re eating at TGI Friday’s?”

He smiled at me, a little narrow but still genuine. “Everybody wants to slum it sometimes.”

“Why are we here?”

He snorted as we walked down the sidewalk. “What, you didn’t see that in my head?”

“I don’t see anything that connects to my own fate.”

“So you never know what’s going to happen to yourself, just to other people.”

“Yeah.”

He sighed. “Gotta say, I’m real tempted to pop you in the mouth for what you pulled in the car, but I don’t start shit with guys who can’t fight back.”

“Not to mention you had it coming.”

“Maybe,” he allowed. “Come on.” We went in and were seated fast inside the overly bright, overly neon restaurant. We got water and ordered burgers, and then Andre started pulling things up on his phone.

“So, this is your guy’s warehouse.” He showed me a picture of a two-story brick building with high, opaque windows. “It’s huge, twenty-thousand square feet, and he had some big-ass skylights installed before he moved whatever contraband he’s got into there. It’s also guarded.” He swiped a few more pictures across the screen. “Four people are always on site, two outside, one just in the door, and another on the roof.” I quickly checked the pictures for S?ren, but he wasn’t there.

“What I’m getting at,” Andre continued, “is that you’re not gonna get into that place. Not the way it is now, not without major backup that I don’t think you’ve got.”

“Great,” I muttered, grabbing my pain meds from my pocket and popping one out. I washed it down with some water and grimaced. “What else?”

“Well, Egilsson himself? He’s not staying at the warehouse. He’s in a hotel, checked in as Ollie Venkin. He got two suites, one for some bodyguards and another for him and a guest.”

A guest…it had to be S?ren. If something strange was going on, he’d want to keep S?ren close. “Which hotel?”

Andre grinned. “Glad you asked. We happen to be one block from it. It’s the Omni.” He looked at me. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a nice suit in your bag, huh? Sports coat, maybe? They’ve got a bar―good place for some recon―but it’d be easier if you looked the part.”

I’d left most of my nicest suit in the club, and the pants had been unfixable after sliding through broken glass. “Shit.”

Our burgers came, and we lost a couple minutes of conversation to hunger as my appetite caught up with me. Marisol’s chicken and rice had been delicious, but it had also been yesterday, and I hadn’t eaten since. It was almost one now.

“Never mind,” Andre said after most of the food was gone. “I can go in and do the initial sightseeing.”

“No, you can’t. Your wife’s about to call.”

“My—what?” His phone rang a moment later, and he stared at me unblinking. I carefully avoided his eyes, and he finally answered the phone. “Hey, baby. Yeah. Really? No, I can do that, sure…yeah. I’ll be there soon.” He hung up and stared at me. “My sister-in-law just went into labor. I’m supposed to meet the family at the hospital as soon as I can.”

“Fancy that.”

“Did you do this?”

I laughed―I couldn’t help it. “Did I what, jumpstart your sister-in-law’s labor? How the hell would I do that?”

“How the hell do you do any of the stuff you did?”

“Good question, one for the ages.” I didn’t say anything else, and he looked away after a moment.

That was fine. It was better I be alone for the next part anyway.