“Nothing good is going to come from messing with Keene,” he said.
“Surprise. What about Moffitt?”
Simington licked his lips slowly, then shook his head. “Him either.”
“But you gave me Keene’s name, I found him, and now I’m here. You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you anything, Noah,” he said. “Remember? We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
Throwing my words back in my face. Clever. And effective. “Darcy’s dead,” I said, trying a different path. “The lawyer?” I nodded.
His eyes shifted away for a moment, and he glanced down at his hands. He pulled them apart, laid them flat on the small overhang in front of him, and looked at me. “That’s too bad.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. “She didn’t deserve it. She was trying to help you.”
“I didn’t want her help.”
“And, yet, she tried anyway. So maybe you don’t owe me. But you at least owe her.”
A guard appeared behind Simington. He stood there for a moment, just checking to make sure things were okay. We both watched him until he moved on.
“I figured Keene would be dead,” Simington said.
“What?”
“When I gave you his name. I figured he’d be dead by now,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Why?”
“Because he’s a piece of shit, and I thought someone would’ve punched his ticket by now. I wanted to make sure he was in the ground.” He took his hand away from his face. “You’re in danger.”
“I can handle myself.”
He laughed and shook his head. “You think because you have a PI license you’re tough? Because maybe you get in a few scrapes here and there? That makes you tough?” Simington leaned closer to the window. “Keene is a different kind of tough, Noah. Not your kind.”
I shifted in the seat, uncomfortable under his hard watch. “You still haven’t explained your relationship with Keene.”
He grunted, pushing back from the window. “You got it right. I worked for him. I killed those two men in the desert because he told me to.”
“Why?”
Simington stared at me like he was trying to make a decision. Sitting under his look was uncomfortable, but I didn’t turn away. I refused to be the one who blinked. And in that hard, unflinching stare, I could see it—all the years of what he’d done and the time in prison. There wasn’t much that could reach or scare Russell Simington.
“Why?” I repeated.
And then a tiny crack appeared in his expression, his hardened features softening for just a moment.
“Because if I hadn’t,” he said, “you and Carolina were going to die.”
THIRTY-SIX
Simington rubbed a finger over the tattoo of my name on his wrist. “Your mother was smart to tell me to get lost when she did. I wasn’t a complete disaster when you were born, but I was heading in that direction.”
I took a deep breath. I knew I was about to hear some things I’d wondered about my whole life. I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said, an empty smile on his face. “I was never into anything good. It was just varying degrees of bad. Didn’t know any different. And I was good at what I did.”
“Which was?”
“I enforced.” He laughed, shaking his head. “I always liked that word. Almost made it sound legit. I was hired muscle. Threatened, intimidated, beat the shit out of people.” He paused. “Sometimes more.”
The glass between us was cloudy, smudged. I wanted to wipe it clean so I could see his face clearly.
“Keene and I ran in the same circles,” he said. “When all you do is the wrong thing, you get hooked into the bad guy underground network. We were both in it. We had done some jobs together, some small-time stuff.” The expression on his face darkened, and he folded his thick arms across his chest. “Then he got something on me.”
“Your gambling?” I asked.
He raised an eyebrow, surprised, then slowly nodded. “Nice work. Yeah. The gambling. I was shit deep in debt, and it was growing by the hour. I couldn’t stop it.”
“You could’ve stopped gambling.”
“Please. You’ve proved already that you aren’t stupid. All the cliches about gamblers? They all applied to me. I always thought my next big play was the one that would right the ship. And it wasn’t like I was going to get a job to pay off the debt.” The empty smile reappeared. “A real job, anyway.”
“What did you do before the casinos and Keene?” I asked for my own curiosity.
