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Instead, all I got was a slight shake of the head, and soon, she was rushing out the door with Calli, both laughing out into the parking lot.
“Thought you might want this,” Missy said with a soft chuckle as she placed a beer on the table. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“Mm,” I hummed as Missy walked away, knowing she assumed I was sitting here worrying about Calli going to New York City on her own in just a few days. And honestly, she wasn’t completely wrong.
But Calli wasn’t the only thing occupying my thoughts. There was something else.
Someone else.
Just as I started to gather up the pile of papers scattered across the table, ready to focus on anything but that damn green dress and the woman wearing it, a body slipped into the booth opposite me, and I glanced up, expecting to see one of my men.
Instead, an older man in a sharp navy suit stared back at me from across the table. His pure gray hair was slicked back, and he was clean-shaven, the type of man I would expect to see wandering Wall Street, not in my Detroit bar.
I waited for a few seconds.
Expecting him to say something.
Fucking anything.
And when he didn’t, I finally raised my brow. “I think you’ve got the wrong table,” I announced, matter-of-factly, still waiting for some excuse, reason, or any damn explanation as to why this rich motherfucker thought he could just pull up a chair like we were old buddies. “Are you fucking lost?”
“Sir, can I help you find another table?” Missy questioned loudly as she approached the table, her eyes shifting between the man and me, just as confused as I was about what the hell was happening. “If you just come this way...”
“I’m looking for Bishop,” he finally stated, completely ignoring Missy, rolling his shoulders back and tugging at his lapels.
Without looking away from the bastard, I flicked my head, indicating to Missy to get away from the table. The air in the bar shifted dramatically within seconds, the relaxed atmosphere quickly filling with tension so thick I was already preparing for the worst.
As Missy stepped away, several of my men stepped closer, surrounding the booth, poised and prepared to step in.
Not that I needed them to.
I wasn’t rattled.
If anything, I was annoyed and a little fucking curious as to just what the hell kind of twilight zone I had slipped into where the rich and stuck-up thought they could just show up at my business and get in my face without me breaking theirs.
In the end, that curiosity got the better of me.
“You found him,” I finally answered, leaning back and tapping my finger on the table. “Now, it’d be a good idea if you started explaining what the hell it is you want before I let my boys dirty up that expensive-looking suit when they drag you out of here.”
Without warning, he reached into his suit jacket, slipping his hand into the front left side. He didn’t even flinch when there were suddenly four guns pointed directly at his head, prepared to fire if he pulled out anything that even resembled a weapon.
But as he removed his hand from inside, there was no gun, no knife, no weapon clutched in his fingers. Instead, he slipped out a photo and slowly placed it down on the table, sliding it toward me. “I was told you were the man to see if I needed someone found.”
Knowing my men were surrounding me, I allowed my guard to fall just for a moment, lowering my gaze to the photo. A young girl, a teenager probably, lying in a hospital bed with the blankets pulled down to her waist.
Her body was slim—unhealthily so—and covered in a smattering of bruises and a couple of messy-looking tattoos that definitely hadn’t been done by a professional.
“That was my daughter about three weeks ago. Alice Hersh. She’d been missing for almost a month when I finally found her high and working a street corner downtown,” the man rasped, his nostrils flared and hands clenched into fists. He pounded them down on the table, the force behind it rattling the walls. “She’s only eighteen. Eighteen!”
I sat a little taller, rolling my shoulders back. “You need to calm the hell down.”
His entire demeanor had changed.
The put-together man who walked in here a few minutes ago was no longer present, and in his place was a father wanting answers and justice. And the fact that I was a father myself and knew just how devastating it would be to see my child like that was the only reason I didn’t immediately throw him out on his ass.
His breathing eased slightly, and he swept his hand through his hair, the perfectly-styled do quickly becoming a disheveled mess. “I want… I need you to find her.”
I scoffed at the demand. There was no doubt in my mind that a man like this would have gone to the police thinking they would give a fuck about some teenage girl whoring herself out on a street corner. Truth is, though, in a city with murder and crime rates ranking in the top five in the country, they didn’t give a damn.
