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Not hard, not enough to get him to fall, but more than enough to scare the little shit.
I motion to a chair, and the kid scrambles to it. From somewhere in his little apartment, a cat mewls.
“Gotta feed the cat.”
Glancing at Diego, he goes off, and the mewling gets louder, then it stops, and the kid goes pale.
I smile. “So, let’s talk about why you’re hassling Karlee.”
“Because she’s a bi—ah mean. She deliberately made me fail.”
“That doesn’t sound like Karlee,” I say. It does, but not the way he’s making it sound. If Karlee did that, she had a reason, possibly even told me back when we met, but I wasn’t paying that much attention then to log every detail.
The job went from a weird-ass babysit to serious. So, yeah, now I’m fucking logging everything, like the scratch on his face.
“She did. Fine.” The kid scowls. “She didn’t like me borrowing some of her work, and she sabotaged it.”
Nicolo laughs. “I like this girl.”
So do I, and that’s a real fucking problem because my libido might be beyond like and in lust. I drag my head back to the game.
“What do you know of the Smith Group? Your life might depend on it.”
The kid swallows, eyes big as the puff goes from him. “Who?”
“Lowlanders?”
“I don’t . . .?”
“The 86s, missing girls, De Luca.”
There it is, a spark when I say missing girls. I lean in. “What do you fucking know, Brandon? Answer wrong, and you’re gonna wish I didn’t know your name, you’re gonna wish you’d left for spring break early.”
He practically wheezes. “I . . . Charity . . . Charity, she didn’t turn up to class yesterday. I-I asked her out, and she smiled and said she’d let me know, and then she didn’t turn up. That’s all. I figured she was playing me, went home early. She’s got a light class load for a junior.”
Brandon continues to let forth with his verbal diarrhea, and there’s nothing much in there. Just he thought a girl was cute and asked her out, and she didn’t show. We’ll look into it, as her name isn’t on the list of girls missing, but that might be becauseit just happened. Also, he’s right, a lot of kids go home early, and some decide to drop out or transfer.
I look at the scratch again as Diego comes in behind him, a black cat sprawled in his arms, paws up like this is his right. Fucking cats. The cat turns yellow eyes on me at that thought and yawns.
“How’d you get this?” I run my finger down the scratch.
“Eddie. He’s a bastard.”
Diego looks at the cat like he’s a little in love. “Nah, he’s a cool cat.”
The kid turns, and his shoulders droop in relief.
“Yo, Brandon?” The kid whips back to face me. “Don’t fucking talk to Karlee unless it’s actual schoolwork, you get me?”
I straighten up, Diego sets the cat down, and we head for the door. “Let’s hope for your sake we don’t have a need to return.”
I close the door behind us.
When I get home, my jacket’s over my arm. We got almost nothing, which is the name of this frustrating game, it seems.
Wendy nods and leaves, and I lock the door behind her.
I don’t see Karlee, and I make myself a drink and have half of it before I go looking for her. My house is bigger than the one-bedroom unit she was in before, but it’s not that big. I don’t need big, I don’t need fancy. I just need a roof, a place to work, work out, and sleep.
