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I had to assume it was something to do with a debt owed to the Saints. That they were going to collect or take payment in blood. If I could get something on camera, then maybe it would be enough to buy my freedom. Or at least, it would be a good start. I had no illusions that they wouldn’t just as easily kill me if I tried to blackmail them, but if they took me down I’d make sure whatever footage I had of them went absolutely viral.
Dom once explained to me how to do that, because this one time the Kings did it to her dad. They blackmailed him with footage of Dom getting double teamed by two college guys at a frat party she’d snuck into. They told himexactlywhat they were going to do with the little movie they bought from the two dickwads at Theta Kappa Nu. Down to the minute details.
Dom never forgot because dear ’ol dad never let her live it down.
Her father saw to it that they got off on all charges like they asked, even though the mess they’d gotten themselves into should have wiped them off the face of the planet.
Fucking gangs.
I’d offered to castrate the little fucklets for their crimes, but Dom made me promise not to, something about not wanting me involved.
I crept around the back of the building, careful not to be seen. A single security camera watched over the parking lot from the southern corner of the plaza. Easy to stay out of view. Around back, in the wide alley between the plaza and a closed down pharmacy were the back entrances to each shop.
Big green dumpsters lined the alley opposite the back doors. There were no windows back here. None at all. No cameras, either.Fuck.
How the hell was I supposed to see what was going on inside without straight up peeping into the front window?
I settled next to one of the dumpsters, wrinkling my nose at the smell, but at least I was out of direct sight here, tucked away in the shadows.
The text message from the unknown number insinuated that Billy Parker would be here until midnight. It was just past eleven now. No sign of the Crows.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I quickly drew it out and tapped the side button to silence the sound. The screen flashed with two messages.
Becca: Hey, you asleep? Want to watch bad horror movies and get high?
Kit: Are you ever going to call me back?
Stage four clinger alert.
I swiped ignore on Kit’s message for the moment, re-upping my promise to myself to get back to both him and Dom ASAP. Knowing that might not happen for a while. I really was complete and utter shit at being a friend.
Ava Jade: Out for a run, sorry. Raincheck?
I didn’t wait for a reply, toggling my phone to silent and slipping it back in my pocket. I didn’t run twelve fucking miles out to this sketchy ass plaza all the way on the other end of town for nothing. I was getting in there. One way or another.
Resolving to check the front again for a good vantage point, I stood only to drop back to a crouch as the door at the back of Parker and Sons burst open.
I tucked myself into the shadows, the cool nip of the metal trash bin biting even through my long sleeve black shirt and joggers.
“I can’t tonight,” a man said, speaking over a garbled voice on the other end of a call. He chucked a bottle into the bin I was hidden beside and it shattered. The smell of stale beer wafted to me on the cool breeze.
“All right, all right. Look man, borrow the truck, I’ll leave the keys under the visor, but if you score, I want a cut.”
A pause.
“Be back by midnight. You walking over?”
Another pause.
“All right. Yeah, yeah, I’m going.”
Keys jangled, and Billy Parker cursed as he dropped his phone and fumbled to pick it up, angrily striding around the back of the other shops toward the parking lot at the front. The instant he was out of sight I sprinted across the alley to the door he exited and stepped through into the dimly lit shop.
The space was narrow. At the front, a long bank of refrigerated displays poured their blue-tinted light toward the front window. That must have been the ambient light I was seeing from outside. Nearer to the back, to the right of where I stood, was a large structure built into the wall. I crept to the front of it and found the door slightly ajar, leaking icy air out into the main shop.
A side of beef hung from a hook in the ceiling, all vivid red meat and yellowed fat and bone. Several stainless-steel shelves held long slices of aging beef along the back wall. More hooks dangled from the metal sliders in the ceiling, waiting to hold more mangled cow bits for Billy Parker to cut down to size.
Okay, think Ava…
