Like he’s toying with a decision from which there is no turning back.
“Sit tight,” he tells me, slipping from the driver’s seat. “Give me ten minutes on the fucking dot. I don’t come out? You go back to the shop and pretend you were there all fucking night. Got it?”
“No!” I’m already unfastening my seatbelt. To his annoyance, I wrench open my door and place one foot on the pavement. “You don’t get to drag people into situations like this with no explanation. Again.”
He winces at the reminder. “Fine. The guy here cracks video, phones, laptops. You name it, and he can probably rip into it, among other things. If anyone can help us make use of what info Faith had, he can.”
“You don’t look very convinced,” I point out, eyeing his hands. They’re clenched so tightly the knuckles protrude.
“A better option would be going to the police directly, but who knows how many are up Gino’s ass? This is the next best thing.”
But his tone alone gives me doubt. “Can you trust him?” I ask.
He switches off the car, and muscles open his own door. “He’s damn good at what he does. Not to mention, if it’s illegal and risky, he doesn’t care.”
Admittedly, those actions sound just a step below a drug deal.
“The more you elaborate on this plan of yours, the less enthusiastic I feel.”
“Look.” When we’re both out of the car, he grabs my arm, spinning me to face him. “I won’t lie to you. It’s not ideal, and he’s a sneaky son of a bitch. Usually, he wants a favor. A tit for tat sort of thing. He does an illegal favor for you; you do something for him so you can’t rat him out. It’s why he’s lasted in this business for so damn long.”
I suck in a steadying breath. “So, is this your way of asking me to cooperate in another drug deal?”
He flinches. “No! This is my way of asking…”
“For what?”
Sighing, he cups my chin, urging me to face him. “I’m asking you to trust me. And I’m asking you point blank—do you want to go in and get involved in that shit? Or wait here like a good little girl?”
I answer him by turning to the nearest building and craning my neck back to observe it in full. “This the place?”
Together, we approach it, following a desolate back road. At a glance, it looks like nothing more than an abandoned brick building. Any windows appear to be boarded up with plywood. An array of colorful graffiti mars nearly every inch of the side sporting a single battered door.
“Last chance to stay out of it,” Rafe warns, meeting my gaze. When I say nothing, he sighs again and knocks once. Not even a second later, a voice comes from an unseen speaker.
“What the fuck do you want, Wei-Shen?”
“I’m here for business, Ace,” Rafe replies. “Open up.”
“You’ve been banned,” the man snarls through the speaker. “Now get the hell out of here.”
“Trust me, you won’t want to miss this ‘business,’” Rafe hisses through gritted teeth. “I promise I won’t kick your ass this time. Now, open the damn door.”
“I doubt that. Nothing you have could be worth the occupational hazard of working with you.”
Rafe raises an eyebrow, inclining his head. “Not even if it could bring down Gino?”
A reply doesn’t come for so long I figure we’ve been ignored after all. I look to Rafe, but he lifts a finger before I can say a word. A second later, I realize what has his attention—footsteps. They approach sounding muffled as if from the other side of the door.
Then, with a metallic squeal, it opens from the inside amid a muttered curse from a figure I can’t make out clearly. He’s slender from what I can tell, leaning against the wall of a small, narrow hallway bathed in shadow.
“What kind of business?” he demands.
Rafe wrenches the door open wider and surges inside without an invitation. “Preferably now. So go on and name your price and take me to your little office.”
“Hey! You can’t just barge in here,” the man sputters, attempting to block his path. He’s short, with shaggy dark hair and large glasses that make his eyes seem comically wide. Shock doesn’t begin to describe what I feel. I’d been steeling myself for someone like Gino or his uncle.
This man, however, doesn’t seem to match Rafe’s caution.
At all.
“Hey!” he exclaims, barring the hallway with his outstretched arms. “I said, stop! And I don’t even know if I should work for you. Not after the last time—”
“Get over it,” Rafe snaps, easily pushing past him. “Now cut to the chase. Can you do it or not?”
He’s already rounding a corner, and I scamper in his wake as Ace has no choice but to close the door behind us.
“Who is she?” he demands, referring to me.
“No one you need to worry about,” Rafe calls back. “Now, answer the question.”
I find him in a cluttered room, his arms crossed. I have to blink several times just to make sense of the chaos. It’s like a pawn shop exploded. Shelves and mismatched bookcases line nearly every available inch of wall. Each one is filled to the brim with old television sets from various decades, as well as boxes filled with assorted electronics—computers, radios, and pretty much any related device under the sun.
“I’m not doing shit for you without insurance,” Ace says, squeezing past me. “Something good enough that if you ever so much as think about touching me, I could bury you.”
Rafe forms a fist but doesn’t lift it. “Name it.”
“You must really want this job done,” Ace surmises, a hint of smugness seeping into his tone. He approaches a desk wedged in between two bookshelves and throws himself into the swivel chair before it. A honeycomb of computer monitors, each displaying a different scene, loom behind
