Page 46 of York

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t think we can assume men like this have any scruples. Garden-variety thugs.”

“Which means they’re working for someone else,” Huck said.

“That’s exactly my thought.”

“Where did it all start?”

“Philly, as far as I can tell.”

“I can reach out to the mother chapter. See what they know about any crews operating over there. Philly has some organized crime going on.”

“That’d be helpful. And I was wondering if you could send someone up that way to try to get some information once we know something.”

“We can do that. But I’d also suggest reaching out to Arty. He could listen for any chatter. Check around to see if there is some kind of bounty on her. That kind of thing.”

“Yeah, I can do that. I also have one more thing.”

“There always is with our women,” Huck agreed with a huff of a laugh.

“She was attacked at some rental in Georgia. I need someone to go up there and tell me if there are bodies. And if there are, I’m gonna need to handle that.”

“I’m up for a road trip,” Dixon said, shrugging.

“Alright. But I want you to take your brother. Need York and Velle here, holding down the fort.”

“Noa’s gonna want to go along for the ride,” Dixon said.

“Yeah, good. She’s got a level head. She’ll keep you two in check.”

We worked out the kinks of where and when they would go before Dixon took off to pack a bag. It wasn’t a long trip up to that part of Georgia, but knowing the Cider brothers, they’d probably dilly-dally on their way back, stopping to see some sights and shit.

Provided they didn’t find bodies.

I honestly didn’t think they would. A toilet tank lid was hard, but I doubted Runa had the strength with her sore ribs to really swing that with enough force to kill someone.

I just wanted to cross my Ts and dot my Is, so nothing legally came back to haunt her.

Once that was settled, I’d deal with the less than legal stuff. Because no one was going to hurt my kid. Or hurt her emotionally through hurting her mom. That was not gonna happen. I didn’t care if I had to go knock on the doors of my old mob contacts to get information.

Whatever it was gonna take.

“How’s she handling things?”

“Better now that she has somewhere safe to be. And after telling me all the shit. I want to get her a gun,” I told Huck.

“Yeah, it’s done. Take what you need.”

Then all I needed was to get my ass to a store with some good gun safes. Grab a pocket knife. And any other self-defense tools I came across. It never hurt to be overkill with that sort of thing. She could stash them around the apartment, her car, in her bag. The most important thing when it came to weapons was access. So the more, the better.

“So, she’s never gotten video or images of these fucks?” Velle asked.

“In the towns where the police even took a report, she didn’t get lucky with cameras. And I think she was too worried about getting away to think to take pictures.”

“No cameras at her places?”

“She did at the beginning but as they kept jumping places, there wasn’t money for it. She was struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. You should see the shoes she’s walking around in.”

“Sounds like maybe you need to add a couple more stores to your outing tomorrow,” Velle said with a shrug.