“No,” Miles says. “We can’t kill him.”
“Why not? He’s a piece of shit. He shot Davis—he would have shot me—and he’ll definitely go back to his scumbag ways if we let him go.”
“We’re on the side of the law now,” Miles says with a tone of sardonic anger. “That’s not what cops and private detectives do.”
“Yeah, but this way I can work him over for information. That’s what we want, right? Stopping these kidnappers will go ten times faster with some straight answers.”
Miles grips the steering wheel like he’s choking the damn thing. “We can’t do that either.”
“Why?”
“Illegally obtained information can’t be used against someone,” Miles states. “If we beat information out of this guy, we won’t be able to use any of it to prove the guilt of the people we’re trying to finger.”
“Says who?”
“The federal government. Shelby didn’t explain to you the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine? It’s a cornerstone of legal investigation.”
Jesus Christ. Does he know everything about the law now? I take a long drag on my cigarette and exhale. “Fine. We can’t kill him. We can’t work him over for information. What do you want to do?”
“We should take him to the police station,” Miles says. “We’ll tell them that we arrested him and brought him straight there.”
“I told you—we can’t do that. If he tells the cops about me, we’ll have other problems to deal with.”
Miles gets quiet.
What other option is there? The only other thing is to let the guy go, and we can’t do that either. He’ll go straight to the Vice family, which might be worse than him going to the cops. Jeremy is unstable and off in the head. He’ll do something—send enforcers to kill me, have someone bring me back, something—and I don’t think I can deal with that.
So what choice do we have? Keep Castor in our trunk forever? That’s tantamount to torture, and we won’t even get any information out of it.
Miles comes to a four-way stop and stares at the street signs. One street leads deeper into the city, toward the central police station, and the opposite leads toward the freeways out of town. There’s a honk from behind us, causing me to tense, and Miles turns the car toward Joliet. I exhale another line of smoke.
We still don’t know what we’re doing with this guy. We’re just eating time.
“What if we drop him off anonymously?” Miles asks.
“I dunno. You tell me. Will the police take a person randomly gagged and bound on their front doorstep?”
“No,” Miles murmurs.
“There you go.”
I sigh. There isn’t anyone in the police department I trust enough to leave this guy with. I know some officers who were on the Vice family payroll—and I would recognize them on sight—but they don’t owe me any favors. If I went to them, they would go to Jeremy. Same problem, different chain of events.
We get onto the freeway and exit Noimore. No trouble. No hassle. I figured we’d be fine, but fate has a way of fucking with me. Still… the problem only gets worse the longer we go.
“I need to pick up Jayden and Lacy,” Miles says.
“We should handle this first.”
“I can’t be late.”
“Why? What does it matter? A few minutes won’t kill them.”
“I told them I’d be there,” Miles states. “Okay? I know you don’t care about them, but they mean a lot to me.”
Yeah, I know. He went out of his way to save Jayden on more than one occasion. His siblings mean the world to him.
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s get them, drop them off at the house, ask our old neighbor lady to watch them, and then deal with this guy. One way or another.”
Miles nods. “All right.”
“—AND THEN we learned the basics of the quadratic formula,” Lacy says, her voice blending together in my ears like one long uninterrupted sentence. Parts of my body feel like they’re on fire, and listening to this isn’t helping.
I forgot how fucking boring school was. Although if I had to do everything all over again, I might try to stick it out. But Lacy makes it seem like the secret circle of hell.
“You’re learning about the quadratic formula in seventh grade?” Miles asks. “I’m surprised. I didn’t learn about that until high school.”
“It’s a fancy prep school,” Jayden interjects with a dismissive wave of his hand. “They keep telling us it’s for college. Hell, some of the classes offer college credits. Lacy might have a degree by the time she graduates.”
Lacy grabs the back of Miles’s seat and sits forward. “Can Shannon come over today? I got a perfect score on my history exam.”
“Of course,” Miles replies.
A thump echoes throughout the cab of the car, and I know immediately that it’s Castor in the trunk. Miles flips on the radio, no doubt understanding the situation as well, but it screeches with white noise like the piece of crap it is. He turns the radio off and pulls out his phone. He sets it to rock music—something with a buzz of bass—and then leaves it.
“Are you okay?” Jayden asks.
“Yes,” Miles says, curt.
“Are you two fighting? You both have, like, bruises and stuff.”
“We’re fine.”
Jayden leans in between the front two seats. He glances back and forth before smirking. “So, when you guys get a divorce, does that mean we won’t be seeing Pierce any longer?”
“We aren’t married,” Miles states.
“So we definitely won’t see Pierce any longer?”
“Jayden.”
Miles’s threatening tone gets his brother quiet. Jayden slinks back into his seat.
“Hey,” Lacy says. “It’s that police officer again. Who is he?”
I stare out the front windshield and grit my teeth. I knew fate wanted to fuck with me. Lieutenant Rhett Walker waits in front of
