“You’re not a cop,” he said.
“I didn’t say I was a cop. I said I want access to apartment two-ten.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve got a drug dealer on the lease, and he owes me something.”
The guy stared at me.
True enough, Sanchuk did owe me something—namely assurance that Summer was safe from his ass—but I’d spare this guy the details.
“And who are you?” he asked.
I was getting impatient with the Twenty Questions routine, so I decided to move things along. “I’m the guy who’s gonna ruin your otherwise peachy day if you don’t open that door for me. How much?”
“Two hundred.”
“I’ll give you fifty and I promise not to accidentally burn this shit hole down.” I pulled a fifty-dollar bill out of my wallet, and handed it to him. “Let’s go.”
He took it, because clearly morals were not of his concern, and grudgingly let me in.
He got the key from his apartment, and as I followed him down the hall and up a flight of stairs, he grumbled at me. “I haven’t seen him in weeks. He slips the rent check under my door. I don’t have anything to do with him.”
“Other than renting him an apartment.”
“The management company deals with that. I just clean and shit.”
When we approached the door of apartment two-ten, he reached for the lock, but I caught his arm. “Knock,” I instructed in a low voice.
I rested my hand on my gun; it was tucked into the back of my jeans, under my jacket. I’d brought it for peace of mind more than anything. It was a crime for me to carry it, and definitely for me to use it under the circumstances. But I wasn’t gonna risk catching a member of the Bloody Bastards MC by surprise and finding myself in a life-or-death situation unarmed.
Scumlord knocked on the door. No one answered, and he glanced at me.
I nodded.
He unlocked the door and stood back. I stepped inside, my hand still on my gun, and did a quick walk-through, making sure it was clear. It took seconds. It was a studio apartment, all one room, plus the bathroom and two closets.
No one was here.
“Your friends already broke the lock when they broke in,” scumlord told me as I came full-circle to the front door. “Had to replace it,” he added, accusingly.
I glanced at the lock, and the splintered wood on the doorframe where it had been kicked in or pried open.
I dropped a cold look on him, and he shrank back. “You think friends of mine would break into a dump like this?”
He looked away.
“I’ll be done in a bit. I’ll bring you the key.” I put out my hand, and finally, he dropped the key into it.
Then he took off, grumbling all the way.
I shut the door behind him, locked it, and took a better look around.
The place was trashed. And not trashed like a messy person had lived here. It had been torn completely apart.
I searched the place carefully anyway, gloves on, but someone had already been through and cleared the place, if there was anything worth taking. Either that or Sanchuk took it himself. There was no laptop, no phone, no notes jotted anywhere. No keys.
And not a single shred of evidence that the person who lived here was either using or selling drugs.
The small bachelor apartment was a disaster of overturned furniture—what there was of it—and upended drawers, broken dishes, but it was clean. Even smelled semi-clean, like must and lemons. Like a shitty old apartment where no one had opened a window in a while… but someone had definitely wiped everything down.
Maybe it was the Sinners. Maybe it was the Kings. Maybe it was the Bastards. Who the fuck knew.
For all I knew, they’d all been through here on Sanchuk’s tail.
The Bastards trying to cover his tracks. The Sinners trying to erase their involvement with him.
The Kings trying to hunt him down.
Nothing. There was absolutely nothing in this place that told me shit-all about the man who’d lived here. The only personal items left behind were some ratty clothes and toothpaste, a razor.
There wasn’t even a lighter or an ashtray or a pack of condoms.
Jesus, I wanted to know who the fuck this guy was and where he was. And exactly why he’d disappeared.
But I wasn’t finding answers here.
I let myself out and locked up. Then I went back downstairs and knocked on the caretaker’s door.
“Nice place,” I said when he answered. I handed him back the key. “Could use a tidying.”
“Yeah, and it’s gonna cost me to tidy it…” He stared at me with his shitty, beady eyes, his sentence seeming to finish in the silence.
“Enjoy my fifty-dollar donation to the cause,” I said flatly. Then I turned to leave.
For whatever reason, he followed me down the hall. “It’s gonna cost more than that.”
“Ask me if I care.”
“I thought you knew him.”
“You thought wrong.”
“Is he dead?”
I paused at the front door of the building. Now there was an interesting question.
I met scumlord’s rat eyes again. The dude was shifty as fuck. “Honestly, I don’t know. But I doubt it. Cockroaches tend to survive.” I pushed through the door, and he fucking followed.
“Do you think he’s coming back?”
“If I knew that, would I be searching his place?”
“The rent’s only paid ’til the end of the month. I’m clearing the place this weekend, so if you find him, you can let him know. His things are going out to the trash by Sunday.”
“You seem to misunderstand,” I said. “I. Don’t. Care.”
“Just wanted you to know… everything’s gonna be gone.”
I stopped again.
Why was this guy so damn eager to convince me the place would be cleared out soon?
I turned on him. “Was there something in that apartment?”
Yeah. That struck gold.
“Something that’s not there anymore?” I ventured.
His shifty little eyes darted away. “I already told everything I know to the other bikers who came by.”
Other bikers.
Meaning he thought I was a biker. And he’d talked to the other
