“I just want info on where I can find Kenny. I’m not the only one out there looking for him, but I’m the only one who’ll guarantee he’ll still be breathing once I hand him over. Samms is on his trail.” I grinned at her derisive snort. “He’s probably got a fifty-fifty chance with Samms. Can’t say the same for anyone else. I read the docket. Kenny pissed off some pretty powerful people. You don’t go taking money from criminals, even if they’re legitimate businessmen.”
“Those are sharks, that’s what those are.” She glanced up at me, then back out into the crowd. “Your girl is fleecing mine. I’ll be lucky to have the canvas roof left by the time she’s done.”
“Warned you,” I reminded her. “Come on, Kat. I don’t have all day. Hell, Kenny doesn’t have all day. Where is he? Sooner I can put my hands on him, the better it is for him. How much do you want?”
“Let me see.” Kat tapped at the spool, pretending she was doing some mental calculations, but it was a lie. There’s no way she hadn’t already figured out exactly how much Kenny would be worth to me. The price she named was ludicrous, but I wasn’t going to argue over it. I had the money. Hell, it wasn’t even close to the bounty on Kenny’s head, and information was as good as coin and sometimes even better.
“That’s doable,” I conceded. “Half now, the other half when I find him. Assuming he doesn’t see me coming and bolt.”
“Funny you should say that,” she snorted, pushing herself up out of the chair. “He’s holed up in the Diamond Kitty. Seems that’s something he and Dempsey have in common. Both of them have a thing for pointy-eared bastards. There’s no way he’s going to see you with all the skin jobs walking around in that place. Not unless someone tells him.”
Fifteen
“SO THIS place gives you the creeps?” Cari asked, shifting in her seat and ducking her head down to look up at the sunlight bulbs flickering above us. “The Diamond Kitty.”
“You’ve got a bunch of human kids—mostly kids—who spend money to sculpt their faces and… everything… to look elfin,” I replied, cursing the drips splattering the Scout’s windshield when we got caught under a faulty rain line. “Imagine going into the Court and seeing a bunch of them with cutoff ear tips and squared-off jaws. It’s… weird. Just saying, it’s not my kink.”
“Still getting used to seeing an elfin in the mirror?” She tilted her head to look at me, digging down into one of my troubles.
“Yeah, sometimes,” I admitted. “I’m not saying they’re the problem. Because people need to shape themselves sometimes. I get that. Maybe it’s because I look at them and I see… me. It bugs me, and I’m not good about dealing with it. There’s been other shit on my plate to eat.”
We were deep into the understreets at this point, not to the depths but close enough to be skirting its edges. Above us the lights should have dimmed down to twilight, but only about half of them worked, and the ones that did seemed to be set either to full-summer blast or midmorning fog. The flashes of daylight over the Scout were disconcerting, and my eyes fought to maintain some kind of control over the wavering darkness as I drove. The tik-tiks here were a fast and furious dive in and out, tiny blue spiders skimming down across the waters to pluck up their prey or drop off corpses. The last time I’d been down to the Diamond Kitty, there’d been a scatter of industrial places around its old warehouse shell, but the neighborhood had changed, with small pop-up trailer homes and cargo-shipment containers turned into dwellings sprouting up where junkyards and mechanical yards used to be.
With the influx of residential dwellings came other business, flocking to pick off the bones of people barely scraping by. Bodegas sat on every other corner, gouging and scalping people too tired and poor to head out to other districts to gather groceries, and tattoo studios shoved for space next to paycheck-advance kiosks, their doors shadowed by large, muscular men with mean eyes and a nose for trouble. The junkyards and repair places were still there, mostly doing their best to hold up the edges of the district, but it wouldn’t be long before they were pushed out. All it took was one lot being sold and cheap housing to go up for a district to shift for the better or worse, and easy maintenance of a property was a hell of a lot more profitable than working a trade and paying employees.
The food truck parked at a curb between two lackluster clubs was doing a brisk business, and my stomach growled when the smell of grilling carne asada snuck into the Scout. It’d been a long time since breakfast, and the quick chew of a granola bar a few hours ago hadn’t quieted my belly. And even though Cari had been eating all day, I figured I’d give it about five minutes before she complained she was starving.
Instead, she dug down again into my nerves.
“So,” she murmured, not trying to hide the sly grin on her face. “You and Ryder? Actually doing the thing?”
“What the hell?” I slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a tiny beep-beep car abruptly deciding a yellow light meant stopping instead of gunning it through the intersection. “Why… shit, I don’t even know what to say to you. Who the hell raised you?”
“Well, technically, you had a hand in that,” Cari shot back. “Come on, it’s not like I haven’t known other people you sleep with, and everyone’s kind of noticed him coming out of your room in the morning, and his bed’s not slept in. We can do the math. It’s not that hard.”
There were times when it was difficult to remember Cari was a full-fledged adult. Usually it wasn’t. Of course, normally we were standing shoulder to shoulder in situations where there was gunfire and lots of shit happening around us, so not exactly a place I’d think of her as a kid, but there was always this niggle in the back of my head—that scatter of memories of a tiny larva of a girl with big brown eyes and a toothless, drooling mouth holding my finger while trying to learn how to smile.
This was definitely one of those times.
I pulled over, taking the Scout out of the thin traffic before I got both of us killed, and let the engine idle, trying to wrap my head around talking to Cari about sex and Ryder.
“Look, who else are you going to talk to? Jonas?” she pressed on. “I’m literally your best friend. Probably after that damned cat, but still, your best damned friend. I mean, hell, I’m practically your sister. Who else are you going to talk about this with?”
“No one,” I growled, still staring out the windshield, looking anywhere but at Cari’s face. It wasn’t like I was known for long-term relationships. I avoided them like they were diseased, hungry dragons, but I didn’t drag any of the people I slept with through my life. They were as disposable as the paper wrappers from the taco truck, balled up and tossed when we were done. “Look, Ryder and I—”
“They’ve got bets going on in the Court about the two of you,” she interjected. “About if you’re moving in. What you two are doing. When you’re finally going to be together. They’re very long-sighted, those people. Like, they think fifteen years is a short dating span. I told Alexa it’ll be faster than that. Ryder’s fallen hard for you, and, well, you think like you’re human. I need an inside track. You could seriously score me enough money to buy me something solid from Sparky.”