Page 35 of Plain Sight

“We’ll have to be ready to go get him. Go with him, if that’s what it comes to.” Mason sways, his hands on Robin’s carrier. “Just like old times.”

“I wish you had a dance studio.”

Both of the brothers stare at me.

“I’m a dancer. That’s my thing. I used to sneak out of my grandfather’s house to dance at a club. On a hoop suspended in the air, most of the time. And I really miss it. It’s a great way to relieve monumental stress.”

“Wow.” Gabriel’s eyebrows go up. “Why didn’t you say so before? Maybe you could teach Jameson. Change his life. Keep him off the streets through the power of dance.”

We all share a laugh, but it dies down into worried silence. A siren wails, fading away into the distance.

I would teach Jameson to dance if I thought it would help.

What if nothing will?

9

JAMESON

In a life of crime, it’s unreasonable to expect for every extralegal activity to go according to plan.

Guess fucking what? Even legal shit doesn’t go according to plan most of the time. Or, if it does, it goes according to plan for the worst of humanity, like Judge Beaufort Hayes. He helped the consortium screw the remaining members of my family over heartily, and then he got a nice kickback. All within the bounds of the law of the land.

It shouldn’t be that way. People should be able to trust that they won’t get fucked over by an evil business group at the lowest moments of their lives, but they can’t.

You can’t trust anything but your own two hands.

Sometimes, your own two hands will fuck you over just like everything else.

I’ve tracked a chain of invoices to a ritzy little town north of Manhattan. It can’t be shell companies all the way down, and Malcolm Walsh prefers physical records, probably because they’re easier to burn or destroy. The digital shit is harder. A file made from ones and zeroes can, in many ways, be eternal.

So paper is what I’m after, and for once in my life, I’m completely focused on the task at hand.

And, of course, being completely focused is what fucks me over. I’m being taught a lesson by the universe. I don’t know which one it’s supposed to be, but I spent years being cajoled and threatened and coaxed to pay attention in class, and when it finally happens, it’s at the wrong place and the wrong time.

I don’t hear the ritzy couple’s college kids coming home from a party. I don’t hear them coming upstairs. I don’t hear them discovering me in the office. I don’t know they’re in the room until I nudge a filing cabinet shut with my hip.

“What the fuck?” one of them says.

“What the fuck,” I answer automatically, because I have plenty of paperwork in a scanner app in my phone and I’d thought, for a few minutes, that I was finally doing something right.

At least in the context of breaking and entering to exact vengeance on Malcolm Walsh. This visit was going according to plan. I disabled the security system, wiping the last few days’ worth of footage in the process, and went through the house in a manner that can only be called methodical. I got records off a computer and onto a thumb drive. I saved the paper shit for last.

I thought I was getting closer to finding Walsh, damn it, not getting beat up.

Jamie, please, my mom says.

“Not the time,” I tell her, which is when one of the brothers takes a swing at me.

In my favor: they’re drunk. There’s no way they should’ve driven home. It’s past two in the morning, and they’re not used to being up all night like I am. These kids look purposefully clean-cut, probably so that if they get pulled over, they can aww-shucks their way out of a ticket, and guys who’ve lived tougher lives don’t usually look like this.

In their favor: this is their house, and they’ve got all the blood-pumping chest-puffing adrenaline of catching somebody out. They’re in the right no matter how you spin this, and I’m breaking and entering.

The bigger one—I’m assuming he’s the older one, too—gallantly steps in front of his brother and lands the first hit.

Ouch.

Another punch splits the skin on my cheekbone. As long as they stay away from my ribs, I’ll be okay. If one of those breaks—re-breaks—then I’ll have a problem, because I don’t have any painkillers on me and shouldn’t be driving while I’m on them anyway.