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My only advantage is that I know what The Basher looks like. He has no idea who I am. None of them do. They’ve never seen my face before.
I’ve made certain of it.
I get out of the car and pretend to mess around on my phone, like I’m a delivery driver. Meanwhile, I form a plan.
I can prove to Paigelynn’s guards that I have power over them. That part’s easy.
Unless they’re in on it with the Luisi family or the Donegals.
But The Basher? Possibly also a Donegal operative?
I have no plan.
This is one of those times where I have to trust my own instincts. I am trained. I am honed. I have muscle memory. I have an inner drive that tells me what to do.
I have a mission.
And I have Paigelynn to save.
Before I can even calculate the best way to start, my legs decide, moving me out of the car. Walking at a fast clip, I sharpen my brain, going only for the most essential, elemental focus:
I will save her.
Although Paigelynn’s house is only two blocks away from the crappy apartment complex our operation is housed in, her home is neat, with the fake Astroturf lawn so many people in LA use to zeroscape. Most of the front yard is a rock garden, and as I watch from afar, a van pulls up in front of the house.
Right in front, next to the mailbox.
It has a huge dog head on the side, a golden retriever that reminds me of Butter, the beast’s tongue handing out.
A sign on the side of the van says:
Obedience Can Be Fun.
I walk faster.
When I’m half a block away, I see him getting out of the van, a small bag, like a toolbox, in his hand. He wears black leather gloves, khaki pants, steel-toed workman’s boots, and a jacket.
Way overdressed for dirty work.
The Basher got his name the old-fashioned way: he earned it. A combination of his last name (Deybass) and the fact that he’s known for pulverizing his victims’ faces until they’re unrecognizable, he’s a concrete block in human form, enormous and daunting.
“Hey there,” I call out, hands in my pockets so he doesn’t see me as a threat. “You a dog trainer?”
His head pokes out. Slanted nose from too many breaks to count, watery eyes with hardly any lashes, and jowls that have tiny burst blood vessels, The Basher is not what you’d call aesthetically pleasing to look at.
The stone-cold absence of a soul in his eyes makes it even worse to make eye contact, but I hold.
“Yeah.”
“Are you taking clients?”
He opens one of the back doors on the van. It’s a workman’s van, the kind with split doors, but he blocks my view of the back.
Instantly, I know why.
He didn’t borrow this work truck.
At least, not without violence.
