5. Four

Why the fuck am I here? I took a swallow from my lukewarm beer and cringed. I already knew the answer to that question. Despite my insistence that I wouldn’t get involved, I was here because of Xion.

Floyd’s was a bar near the fairgrounds in Lancaster, the kind with lots of neon and live bands nobody’s ever heard of on Fridays. Nobody, including Harold Spencer, went there for the ambiance, especially at two in the afternoon. Considering how easily he struck up conversation at the bar, he must’ve been a regular.

Harold and his buddies erupted in laughter. From my position at the bar, I had a front row seat to their disgusting conversation, one that made me wish I didn’t have ears.

“I’m telling you, man,” one of Harold’s buddies was saying, “two drops and it’s like it never fuckin’ happened. They don’t remember a thing.”

“And there’s no aftertaste?” Harold said, leaning in, his arms crossed on the tabletop.

“Not if you put it in something strong enough.”

They erupted in more laughter. Glasses clinked and they drank to their discovery while my stomach turned over. Any doubts I’d had about this guy being a predator had long ago gone out the window. He and his buddies were all sick fucks who needed to be taken out.

The thing was, I wasn’t a fucking vigilante. Taking out these sickos would be community service, but that wasn’t me. I killed people for money, and killing them wouldn’t make me a dime. It’d also send Xion the wrong message. If I killed for him once, he’d think I was giving him the all clear to do it again. I wouldn’t be his weapon.

But I couldn’t let these fuckers walk away to hurt more people either, which left me in a pickle, one I’d been trying to solve all afternoon. I could call the Laskins. Killing child predators was well within the parameters of the shit they did.

If I called them, though, I’d have to explain how I knew about Harold. While War and Shepherd knew I had Xion, I’d given them my word that I wouldn’t blab to the rest of the family. My getting paid was conditional upon that promise. The minute they heard he was there, they’d go sniffing around and undoubtedly uncover why I’d agreed to take him in lieu of the thirty grand I should’ve charged for the last job I’d done for the Laskins. Not only would that eventually lead to me forfeiting the four million I’d get for turning in Xion, but the Laskins might get pissed enough to come for me. That was the last fucking thing I wanted, so calling them was out of the question.

So was alerting the police. I didn’t have any concrete evidence, which meant my call would just get ignored.

After another beer and a lunch of chicken fingers and fries, Harold left Floyd’s. I followed him to the nearest Walmart, where he shoved two frozen pepperoni pizzas and a six pack of Bud Light into his cart before heading over to electronics. There, he annoyed one of the young clerks by examining every video game in the case one at a time.

None of it jumped out at me as sinister, and yet any of those things could be red flags. That was the thing about child predators. Everyone expected them to be creepy-looking balding guys who preyed on random kids in the neighborhood by offering free candy from white vans. I didn’t know the exact statistics, but most child predators were parents. They were uncles. Brothers. Friends of the family. People the kid knew well. Manipulative fucks who used their positions of power over children to fulfil their disgusting desires.

My research into Harold Spencer told me he’d been working as a pediatric mental health nurse for almost twenty years. Twenty fucking years, this prick had somehow avoided being caught.

Today’s the day, motherfucker.I glanced up from the remote controls I was examining two rows over and froze when I noted a familiar head of brown hair ducking into the nearby hardware section. What the fuck? It can’t be…

I put down the remote I was holding, glanced at Harold, who was still casing the games, and made a beeline for the next aisle over, arriving just in time to see whoever it was turn the corner. I followed, but the next aisle was empty.

Something sharp jabbed into my lower back and I cursed silently as I realized I’d let whoever it was lead me right into their trap.

“Hands where I can see them,” came the demand from whoever was behind me.

I lifted my hands, but not so high up that it’d look suspicious on the camera. “Is that a knife or are you just happy to see me, Xander?”

He gripped me by the shoulder and spun me around. “Why the fuck are you following me?” he demanded, waving a pair of scissors at me. The damn things were still in the package.

“I’m not following you. I’m—”

“Ah!” He shoved the pointy end of the scissors at me. “Hands where I can see them, Country Roads.”

I rolled my eyes and lifted my hands again. “C’mon, Xander. We both know that if I wanted to hurt you, you’d never see me coming.”

“And if I wanted your balls, a few Walmart security cameras wouldn’t stop me.” He reached up to flip his fingers through his hair. “Now talk. What the fuck are you doing here?”

How I’d ever mistaken him for Xion was a mystery. While they might’ve been built exactly alike, Xion wouldn’t know what to do with lipstick and eyeliner, let alone how to apply glitter to his cheeks, but Xander did. He also wouldn’t be caught dead in leggings and those black pumps, though maybe he should think again, considering how good Xander’s legs looked in them.

My eyes darted toward the electronic section. The longer I stood there arguing with Xander, the more likely it was that Harold would slip away. “I’m working. You?”

Xander tipped down his pink, heart-shaped sunglasses, peering at me over them. “Creepy fucker in the red flannel?”

Fuck. What did Xander want with Harold?

This could be my opportunity to hand off the case. I shoved my hands into my pockets, and this time, Xander didn’t threaten me with a pair of sewing scissors. “What do you want with him?”

“Me?” Xander arched a perfectly drawn brow. “What do you want with him? You’re the one acting all sus. Isn’t he a little vanilla for you and your boys? I thought you didn’t get out of bed without getting paid for it. Unless someone with money wants him dead.” He crossed his arms. “Either way, you’re about to have to take several seats, Booney.”

I scowled at the nickname. You can’t kill him, Boone. Xion would never forgive you and the rest of the Laskins would kill you, stuff you, and put your head on the wall like a fuckin’ trophy. I let out a slow breath. “Is he a special assignment or something?”

Xander rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “As much as I want to give him a glow up, I’m just doing recon. Mom thinks he’s connected to this online ring Xavier found. It’s a whole thing.”

That complicated things. I couldn’t take out Harold without fucking over the Laskins, and I couldn’t just let him go, either. Not knowing he’d be reporting back to work the next day where he’d continue to abuse his patients. Maybe I could call Annie and get the information I needed, but I’d still have to explain to her how I knew. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

One thing was for sure. I couldn’t continue to trail Harold without arousing more suspicions.

“He’s all yours, kid.” I turned my back on Xander and walked away, hands clenched in my pockets and fury boiling in my blood. Damn Xion for telling me any of this. Damn him for putting me in this position, and damn him for making me care.

I went back to my Jeep and sat behind the wheel, seething. Then I punched the steering wheel three times so hard that my knuckles split open. My hair had come loose from my ponytail during my fit, but I didn’t bother to put it back up. Fuck it. Fuck everything.

I needed a cigarette.

I needed a drink.

I needed to find a fucking liquor store and drink it.

But first, I needed to call my tech specialist: Leo Astrada.

Once upon a time, Leo Astrada had been an operations research analyst for the United States Army, which was a fancy way of saying he got to play computer games to help determine military cyber operations. Well, it was a bit more complicated than that, but he did a lot of work in simulated combat scenarios and called it statistics. It sounded like computer games to me, and he talked about it like that’s exactly what it was. Sometimes, Leo would get so excited, it was almost like he forgot the statistics he was spouting off applied to real people.

When he wasn’t running something electronic, he was quiet, introspective. Always looked like he was putting together a puzzle behind his cerulean eyes. With his dark hair and perfect russet skin, he was a good-looking guy. Tall, dark, mysterious. Check, check, check. He was the Dog’s resident heartthrob and he hated all the attention it brought him, but he was damn good at his job. The best. Leo had never met a device he couldn’t hack.

My hand trembled as I punched in his number and tossed the phone onto the seat next to me, speaker on, starting the car.

“Yellow,” he said instead of hello.

“I need you to hack the Laskins,” I said, pulling out into traffic.

There was a long pause before he said, “Come again?”

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “They have information I want. It’s… a private job. I need everything Xavier Laskin has on a guy named Harold Spencer of Lancaster.”

Leo sighed against the loud tapping of keyboard keys in the background. “I can try, but he’ll probably know I’m doing it. There’ll be an extremely limited window for me to get information unless you can get me into the house itself so I can clone the hard drive.”

The only way that was happening was if I talked Shepherd or War into doing that. Pitting brother against brother was a surefire way to shorten my lifespan, especially when the Laskins were involved.

I hesitated, chewing on the thought as I passed another bar. Bar, church, church, bar, school, playground… Was that all Lancaster was made of? Fuck, I was becoming my father. He’d drowned all his problems in liquor too, hadn’t he?

“Boss?”

“No,” I said, rubbing my forehead to stave off the oncoming headache. “Just get what you can and try to cover your tracks.”

“Affirmative, boss.”

My hands tightened on the steering wheel as my brain conjured an image of Harold in his scrubs clocking in at work, fear etched onto the faces of vulnerable children. What sort of monster hurt a child? And a child who was already hurting, no less. That fucker was the lowest of the low, preying on the most vulnerable children when he was supposed to be protecting them.

“Put a rush on it,” I said firmly. “I want everything tomorrow morning.”

I pressed the button to end the call and slid to a stop at a light. There was another bar tucked down the side street, a shitty little hole in the wall with neon in the window and half a dozen motorcycles out front. Not exactly the most welcoming sight. It’d be stupid to pull in there for a drink. I was a belligerent drunk who liked to fight, and pissed off as I was, I was bound to pick one with someone I shouldn’t.

The light changed. I jerked my steering wheel to the right, tires squealing as I sped down the side street for the shitty little bar.

I never claimed to be smart.

The air inside smelled like sweat and stale beer. Some blues rock band I’d never heard of was playing on the jukebox. The only light inside seemed to be coming from the neon behind the bar or a few dirty lamps with yellow flickering bulbs. The tables were mostly empty, the bar being taken up by a bunch of guys with matching leather cuts. I wasn’t surprised to find the place was the hangout of some local motorcycle club, but I was surprised none of them were sporting one percenter patches, given the ambiance.

I got several unpleasant looks as I made my way up to the bar and took the last stool. A pretty blonde girl in a ripped-up tank top that was two sizes too tight came over. “What’ll you have?”

“Best whiskey you’ve got,” I said.

I counted out some bills while she grabbed a bottle and set a shot glass in front of me. Once she’d finished the pour, I put my hand on the bottle and tossed down the bills. “You can leave the bottle.”

She arched an eyebrow, looking down at the wad of cash. “This whole bottle’s worth half that, mister.”

Her eyes darted to the space behind me, which was quickly filling with sweaty, leather clad bodies. I didn’t acknowledge them, even when one asked, “What’s your business here, friend?” The way he said friend wasn’t very friendly.

I picked up the cash and put it right in the bartender’s hand with a wink. “The rest is for your trouble,” I said, standing.

She cocked her head to the side but took the money and backed away like a smart girl.

“Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, asshole.” One of the bikers put his hand on my shoulder.

I grabbed the bottle and spun, smashing it against someone’s head. Someone else threw a punch, but he must’ve been half drunk, throwing shitty punches like that. I grabbed his arm with both hands, twisting in opposite directions, until there was a tell-tale crack. A glass ashtray smashed into the back of my head and black throbbed at the edge of my vision.

I fell, catching myself with an elbow on the bar. The distinctive sound of a glass bottle breaking followed, and I found myself looking up at three more guys armed with broken bottles, cue sticks, and some scarred up fists.

A smile crossed my lips. Finally, these drunk sons of bitches were ready to put up a fight.

“Come on, motherfuckers,” I said, pushing up. I drew the back of my fist over my mouth, wiping away the blood. “Make my night.”