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“He wants me back,” Mary said, smirking.
“I hope you told him to get bent. We’re here for Rayna,” she said.
“Right. Ah, okay,” she said, eyeing the two of us. “She’s at the end of the hall.”
“Is she conscious?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s all I need to know,” she said, turning, and charging down the ward like she owned the damn place.
Then again, Vega probably always walked like that. The impact was probably just stronger because she was all dressed up in her lawyer lady clothes, not a faux fur jacket and knee-high socks.
“Rayna, what the fuck is Dennis into?” Vega hissed as soon as she walked into the room where a dark-haired woman was nestled in a bed that seemed to swallow her up.
“Vega, what the fuck?” another woman asked, rising from her chair.
“Sandra, I swear to God, get in the way right now and I will personally take your wife’s case when she learns that you’ve been fucking the delivery chick and decides to divorce you and take you for everything you’ve got.”
That silenced the woman who dropped back down into the chair with wide eyes.
I couldn’t blame her.
Vega was in rare form right then.
“Rayna, what is Dennis into? What did he have you into too? Because Mere is missing, and if a single hair on her head is mussed, I am going to personally make you pay for it.”
On the bed, the woman’s eyes were wide.
There was fear.
I’d instilled enough of that over the years to recognize it.
But there was something else underneath.
Despair?
“Mere?” she gulped, eyes looking watery.
“Don’t. Don’t you dare cry right now,” Vega snapped. “Talk.”
Rayna’s gaze slipped to me, taking me in.
“Yeah, you know exactly who that is. And what he is willing to do to you if you don’t start talking.”
I never put my hands on women. I didn’t even like that she was using the empty threat to instill fear in a woman.
But this was for Mere.
Sweet, innocent Mere.
Besides, if you got yourself involved with some shady shit, you had to expect it might blow up in your face one day.
Rayna made her choices.
“Dennis was getting greedy,” Rayna said. “He thought he was doing all the work and you were getting all the money,” she said, looking at me.
“What did he do?”
“He… made a deal with someone else. To bring in heroin with the flowers. In place of a lot of the guns.”
So that was it.
Why there wasn’t as much money.
Not because he was skimming, per se. But because not as much product was coming in to sell since he was filling the boxes with something else.
A vision of Jake flashed in front of my eyes.
That was nobody’s henchmen.
That was a boss.
There overseeing the import, making sure the drugs all got handled properly.
“Why did you get attacked?” I asked, looking at her battered face, the cast on her arm, the many lines that were attached to her for… whatever other injuries she had that weren’t immediately apparent.
“Because I was getting… uncomfortable with it all. I told Dennis I wanted out.”
“Is Dennis still alive?” I asked, watching as her brows knitted.
“Yes?”
“When I first showed up, his house was fucking rancid.”
“The house on Miller?” Rayna asked.
“That’s his house, isn’t it?”
“No. I mean, yes. But no. He doesn’t live full time in Balm Harbour anymore. I don’t know where exactly, but it’s not here. Maybe he left it like that thinking you might show up eventually when the numbers didn’t add up?”
“And then I would figure he was missing.”
“He’s really not very smart,” Rayna said. “Just selfish.”
“Who is he involved with? Who was that Jake guy I saw at the shop?”
“Jake,” Rayna scoffed. “His name is Jameson. And he’s a heroin dealer. And vicious,” she said, gesturing at herself, making one of her lines pull.
“Where does he operate? Where would he take Mere?” Vega asked, desperate to keep moving. “Think, damnit,” she snapped, making Rayna jolt.
“He’s over in Bronzeville? I heard one of the guys talk about a factory once.”
She didn’t get a chance to say more. Because suddenly Vega was turning and storming back down the hall.
I caught up with her at the elevators.
“What is it? Do you know where she is?”
“There is one warehouse in Bronzeville. It was the home to a workplace massacre.”
“How do you know that?”
“I took a tour of it once.”
“How far is it?”
“Fifteen or twenty outside of town.”
“I mean, how far is it with you driving?” I asked, nodding at Gav as I saw him parked a few spots down from ours.
“Eight,” Vega said.
I reached for my phone as we got back in the car, calling my brother.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Mere was taken.”
“Who is Mere again?” Gav asked, and I felt rather than saw Vega’s gaze on the side of my face, eyes narrowing.
“It’s a long story. But she’s important to me and she’s missing and hurt and she’s in a warehouse. Likely being held by Dennis and some shithead heroin dealer named Jameson.”
