“I’m not weighing coke for you,” I fire back, mortified he’d even suggest it. “As far as anyone is aware, I’m moving bags of flour between bakeries.”
Rocco grins at the disgust in my tone. I still hate what I do, but he knows I’d rather run drugs for him than be Col or Agent Moses’s lacky. “I’m not asking you to test the merchandise, fuckface. I just need you to check the digits on a set of scales before they load the bricks into the trunk.” Unwilling to take no for an answer, he shoves a prototype tablet into my chest. “Weight specifications are on here. If you have any issues…” He taps his index finger on a business card stuffed under the protective casing of the tablet. The lack of information on the card tugs my lips into a smirk. It has nothing but a cell phone number smack bang in the middle of a piece of black-gilded cardboard.
“What if the scales are off?”
Rocco rubs his hands together before he breaks out his biggest grin to date. “Leave with the goodies, then ring me. I’ll send some men over for a tea party.” His smile sags when the creak of a front door opening buzzes louder than the mosquitoes circling our heads. “Expecting company?”
I cut off his reach for his gun with a warning sideways glance. “It’s my sister.”
I have more understanding of the benefits of carrying a weapon when Rocco’s smile returns like it never left. Except this time, it isn’t laced with stirring. It’s poisoned with envy. “Perhaps I should chaperone this run. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the supposedly untouchable Justine Walsh.”
“I’ve got a handle on things,” I assure him for the umpteenth time the past five weeks. Although this is the first time he has used Justine to rile me instead of Demi, it doesn’t see me offering him any leeway. “I’m also not taking my baby sister on a drug run. That may be how things work with your family, but the Walshs don’t operate that way.”
“Says you.”
With Justine galloping down the palatial front stairs of our family home, I don’t have the time nor the care to reply to his mumbling comment. Instead, I give him a look, one that announces it’s time for him to fuck off.
“The merchandise will be on deck long before fight night commences,” I guarantee when the business side of Rocco’s head switches on. He’s all fun and games until it comes with a risk of lost revenue.
“No later than five, Ox. Don’t make me come searching for you.” He tosses me the keys for his Buick a mere second before he disappears into the darkness of a shadow.
Justine is at my side a nanosecond after the revs of his Mercedes G Class fade to a buzz. “I should have brought my coat. The winds whipping off the ocean are a little chilly.” That’s her way of saying she’s suspicious about why we’re creeping out of the house at five in the morning.
As far as she is aware, Demi and I disappeared because we got into a fight. I took off for a few days to ‘get over her’ and only returned once I realized that would never happen.
I was pissed when I found out the stories our brothers told her while I was away. I get they wanted to save her the heartache of knowing the truth, but surely, walking around with a blindfold on is worse than a tiny nick to an unvital artery.
The wary gleam hueing Justine’s cheeks double when I gesture for her to climb into the passenger seat of the Buick. My family has seen me getting around in Rocco’s ride a couple of times the past five weeks, but they have no clue where it came from or why it shows up unannounced.
I switch on the radio before slinging my eyes to my baby sister. “Your playlist or mine?”
Justine’s innocence is showcased without fault when she screws up her nose at my suggestion. “Duh. Mine, of course. I can’t understand any of the words in the songs you play. All they do is scream. That isnotsinging.”
Even with her having a point, I laugh. “Well, out with it. This baby is old school. You’ll need to plug in your phone to use your playlist. There’s no wireless Bluetooth connection in old girls like this one.”
The Buick, along with every car in Rocco’s arsenal of vehicles, are jacked up with state-of-the-art equipment. I just want an excuse for Justine to whip out her phone.
Once Justine has her phone plugged in via an iPhone cable and her playlist selected, I grunt out in a long moan, “Fuck… I forgot my sunglasses. They’re on the entryway table.”Where I purposely left them only minutes ago. “Can you grab ‘em for me?”
Justine glares at me like I asked her to sniff Landon’s stinky socks.
“Come on, J. Walsh men aren’t just hung like horses, we have big hoofers like them too. Take one for the team. I don’t want to wake up Mom. Even her hungover head will hear my clumping feet a mile out.”
I almost lost her with my brag, but I brought her back by reminding her how much of a light sleeper our mom is. It’s a known trait of any mother, much less one with five children close in age. “Fine. But I’m getting my coat while in there.”
I wait for her to curl out of the car and clamber up the front stairs before snatching her phone up from the middle console. With her belief the world isn’t full of child molesters, rapists, and murderers, I unlock her phone after only two attempts of inputting the password.
Recalling Demi and Sloane’s love of long chats via messenger, I log into Justine’s Facebook Messenger app first. When I fail to find anything incriminating there, I move to her recently called list. My back molars smash together when I notice call after call after call the past three weeks have been from one number. She hasn’t added her caller’s credentials to her contact list, but I don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to discover who the number belongs to. I merely need to push a single button.
After drifting my eyes to my family home and noting Justine’s shadow in the arched window on the top half of the compound, I hit the number blowing up her phone at all times or the day and night, then squash her phone to my ear.
“That was quick. I hope you’re calling to accept my invitation?” greets an unfamiliar British accent at the same time Justine breathes out furiously, “What are you doing onmyphone?”
When she snatches her phone out of my hand, my eyes snap to the arched window she careened past only seconds ago. I realize my error when the shadow’s hair swishes out from behind her back when she steps away from the window to conceal her watch. Justine’s red locks are hanging over her shoulders like lava. Demi is the only one who wears her hair in a ponytail no matter the occasion.
My eyes drop back to Justine when she screams her frustration into the street before adding words into the mix. “This needs to stop, Maddox! Youallneed to stop!” Her shouted words switch on numerous lights in our family home. “I’m not a child, so why do you continually treat me as if I am one?”
Although I’d rather bookmark our conversation for a better time and location, there’s no stopping it. Justine has reached the end of her tether. There are no seconds remaining on the detonator.
