My father’s hand flew up to my wrist, as quick as lightning, and he looked down at me with a grin, his gold tooth glinting in the sunlight. "Gotcha."
"Crap." I yanked my hand back, and tucked it in the pocket of my jacket, tattered and worn.
"Hannah Wilde," he said, looking at my mother. "Your child just made an excessively clumsy attempt to lift my wallet."
"My child?" My mother was in front of the house, sitting in a rocking chair, newspaper held up close to her face. She folded down the edge, then peered over it at us. "Tempest's pickpocketing skills are more similar to yours than to mine."
My father looked down at me and winked. "Better luck next time," he said. "You need more practice. You're already eight years old. You should be smoother than that."
I sighed and kicked at the pebble on the ground under my shoe. "Come on, dad," I said. "When can I try it, for real?"
"You can try it when you're ready," he said. "And only then. If I can catch you, it means you're not ready."
I followed him up to the front porch of the house where we were staying. It wasn't our house, of course. It was a scam. We were squatting, pretending to be the relatives of the owners. We'd been there for two weeks.
"Dad?" I asked.
He sat down on the porch, then pulled out a deck of cards and began shuffling them, the cards flying through the air in a blur. I sat in front of him, mesmerized as I always was by the movement.
"I like it here," I said.
He didn't respond, just kept shuffling, his fingers flying.
"Could we just stay here?" I asked.
My mother looked over her newspaper at me. "You mean, like regular people?"
I nodded, the thought of being a regular person - someone with a house and friends, someone who stayed in one place - like something out of a dream.
"You're not meant to be a regular person, you hear me?" my father said, pausing his card shuffle. He laid three cards out on a small table between us, then gestured toward me. "Sit. You're a grifter, understand that? It's your birthright. You want to work for someone else your whole life? Be a slave to the system?"
I exhaled heavily. "No," I said. I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded bad. "But we could stay in one place. We wouldn't have to move so much."
My father gave me a long look. "And what? Find the Queen,” he ordered, pausing for a moment while he waited for me to pick a card, which I did, incorrectly. “You put down roots, you die. It's as simple as that. There's no staying in one place for people like us. You're a wanderer. It's in your blood. The people that work for the man, they're getting conned. The people that own the businesses, they're the real cons."
I pointed to the middle card.
No roots. Traveling was in my blood.
Right now sitting here with my parents, was deceptive, a lull in what was otherwise a chaotic life.
The problem was, I liked the lull. It was comforting. Safe. I wanted to stay in one place.
But I knew it was temporary, that something bad waited just around the corner. It always did.
"Watch the card," he said. "This life isn't something you choose to do. It's something you're born into. You're a lucky kid. All these other people going about their lives? The marks? You're smarter than they are. You're learning how the world works. You con or get conned, you understand that?"
The problem was, I didn’t want to see it that way, as us versus them. Even then, I wanted to belong. Being on the outskirts hated by everyone, was no life. That was what I understood.
He tapped the table, his finger near the cards. "Now," he said. "Where's the Queen?"
Silas' Mustang wasn't exactly hard to follow - a bright blue car like that stood out like a sore thumb, especially as we wound through the roads in the shitty little neighborhood.
"You're distracted again," Iver said. "I can only assume that you're preoccupied with thoughts of one of the men in the car. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m afraid I'll have to point out that this little detour will need to stop, because we must meet with Coker."
Coker.
Damn it, I thought. Get your head in the game, Tempest.
I was acting like some love struck teenager, following Silas down the road. Stalking him. It was madness.
What the hell was I going to do, even if I found out where Silas was staying? It was stupid, and I was smarter than that.
"Now," Iver said. "Spill the story."
"There's nothing to tell," I said, watching as Silas turned down a street. I had to practically force myself to keep the steering wheel straight, to avoid veering down the road and following him. From my peripheral vision, I saw the blur of the blue car fade into the distance, and I exhaled. "He's just a ghost from the past, is all."
Iver harrumphed. "That boy didn't look like a ghost to me. Judging by the expression on your face when you saw him, I'd say he's very much a part of your present."
I didn't answer. The last thing I needed right now was for Silas to be part of my present. He was past tense, and that's how it was going to stay. I'd left him behind in West Bend.
Silas and I were ancient history.
Trigg hung up the phone. "Abel is out of the hospital," he said. "He was discharged last night. He's good to go."
"That's a relief," I said. Just the thought of what that shitbird Coker had done to Abel, and to three of us now, was killing me.
"We're going out for beers," Trigg said. "It'll be a celebration. Abel's going to meet us."
"Yeah," I said. "It's a fucking celebration, Abel getting put in the hospital because of that asshole."
"All right, pessimist," Trigg said. "Or how about we'll celebrate the fact that he's going to be fine, and you can stew and be pissed off and figure out how to kill Coker."
I grunted. "That sounds better."
Please just tell me you’re not going to shoot the guy when you see him. Not in broad daylight anyway.” Trigg reached into the backpack he'd stuffed on the floor of the car, and opened a bag of potato chips.
"Come on, man," I said. "Not in my brother's car. You're going to be the one getting shot in broad daylight if you get crumbs all over the place."
Trigg ignored me, popping a chip into his mouth and chewing loudly, then wiping the corners of his mouth while continuing to eat. "I'm starving, man," he said. "I have to eat."
“Anyway, did I shoot him when I saw him last, mom?” I asked.
Trigg narrowed his eyes. “No,” he said. “But that was at the fight.”
“So?” I asked absently. The fight. All I could remember about the fight was Tempest, standing there beside Coker. Looking like sin in that outfit she was wearing, the skirt that hugged her curvy ass.
"You were distracted," he said. "And besides, witnesses."
“Are you saying he doesn’t deserve to get shot?” I asked. “After what the hell he did to me? To Johnny? Now with the hit and run, the way he messed up Abel?”
“That's not what I'm saying at all, and you know it,” Trigg said. “Coker deserves worse than getting shot. Screwing with fighters the way he’s done? I’m just saying, don’t do something in broad daylight, that’s all.”
“I’m not a dumbass.".
“I didn’t say you were a dumbass, Dumbass,” he said. “I just want to know what the hell’s going through your head.”
“Shut up and eat your chips, Trigg,” I said. “I didn’t invite you along so we could talk about our feelings. Coker is a goddamned safety hazard. End of story.”
“So was Jade,” he said.
I laughed, the sound bitter. I hadn't heard that name in a while.
“Jade.” I spat out her name.
Jade was my ex-girlfriend, the one who betrayed me. Betrayal was too kind of a word for what she’d done. Attempted murder was more accurate. I didn’t know if she’d ever given a shit about me, or if she’d just been Coker’s lackey from the very beginning. Coker knew I was too paranoid for him to do something to me himself, so he’d used her. She
was the one who’d slipped me something at the fight, laced my drink.
Jade could go to hell as far as I was concerned.
“She’s nowhere, you know,” he said. “Fell off the radar. She's probably out in the desert somewhere.”
I already knew that much. Jade had disappeared after that fight, months ago. I'd tried to get a handle on where she'd gone before I left, but I couldn't. I didn’t know if Coker was protecting her or if she was dead. To be honest, after what she’d done to me, I hoped it was the latter.
“Good riddance,” I said. "The same shit should happen to Coker. We could leave him out in the desert."
Trigg looked over at me from the passenger seat, a grin on his face. "Yeah, sure, we'll just kill him and leave him out there. No problem." He paused for a beat. "A pretty boy like you should do well in prison."
"Shut the hell up before I punch that fucking smile off your face," I said.
"Seriously, though," Trigg said. "A couple of friends of mine are with a biker club out here that does some fighting, run bets and stuff for some of the rich folks out here. The Inferno MC. I'm sure they could make Coker disappear."
"Or we could do it ourselves."
"Have you ever disposed of a body?" Trigg asked. "It's not that fucking easy. This isn't a damn TV show. Do you know how much forensic shit there is to think about?"
I laughed. "You've been watching too much CSI."
"I'm not joking, man," he said. "You're the fucking genius. You should know that."
"Why do you think I haven't taken care of him?" I asked.
Trigg shrugged. "I don't know what you got going on in that big fat brain of yours," he said. “I really just thought you'd up and left Vegas for West Bend."
"I need to go back," I said. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, thinking about all the crap I needed to deal with back home.
"Yeah. What happened with your mom was some bad juju," he said, shaking his head.
"I guess so." I didn't have anything else to say about it. I'd been pondering my mother's suicide since it happened. Overdose by pills and booze just didn't seem like her style. It wasn't that I doubted she was capable of killing herself. But there were reasons she wouldn't. Like the fact that my abusive asshole of a father was finally out of the picture. It made no sense to kill herself now, after her tormentor was finally dead.
"We'll get some beers, dude. Take your mind off things." Trigg's voice broke through my thoughts. "Tonight. One of the guys from my gym has a girl that's bartending at one of the fancy hotels here. She'll hook us up - we won't even have to pay."
"All right," I agreed. "Tonight. Hey, did you ask around about the girl that was with Coker at the fight?"
Trigg chomped on another chip. "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you," he said. "She's been into some of the gyms around town. A television producer, deals with Chinese fights or some shit like that. A private channel. Maggie something. James? Jameson. Maggie Jameson."
"Chinese fights," I said.
Trigg brushed chip crumbs off his lap and onto the floor. I made a mental note to get the car detailed before Elias saw it and had a heart attack. I could already see him, clutching at his chest before keeling over at the very thought of crumbs in the seats of his car. "I don't know," he said. "Middle Eastern maybe? Something like that. Who knows? Foreign channels - I mean, really, who the hell cares?"
So Tempest was calling herself Maggie. She was an international television producer. Or posing as one, more likely. The thought almost made me laugh. What a bunch of bullshit.
Elias had called earlier, undoubtedly wanting to know where the hell his car was, but I ignored it. I hadn't checked in with Luke or Killian, either. I didn't even know if they were still in town. I needed to go home. Nothing was keeping me here now that the fight was done.
Except Tempest.
She was running some kind of scam. She had to be. And if she was scamming Coker, I sure as hell wanted to know what she was doing.
And I sure as hell wanted in on it.
I handed Coker the slip of paper with the account numbers written on it.
He took it, the tremor in his hand betraying his nervousness. "This is it, then," he said.
“Yes, this is it," Iver said, looking down at Coker over the edge of the glasses he'd donned for the meeting. His voice couldn't have been any more saturated with snobbery if he tried. I had to hide a smile. Iver was exceptionally good at playing hard-to-get with a mark. It was one of his most honed skills. "But if it's too much for you, I'd encourage you to reconsider."
"Yes," I said, giving Coker a smile. "It's quite a lot of money, and risk is for a certain type of individual. You should certainly consult with an advisor if you're the type of man who requires that kind of affirmation, because this is a transaction that is meant for man who is comfortable with taking risks."
Iver rolled his eyes, and looked at Coker with disdain. "Yes," he said. "I do suppose a million dollars is a considerable sum to some people."
Coker cleared his throat, his face reddening. "A million dollars isn't chump change to most people."
Iver turned toward me, his hand on my elbow, pulling me away from Coker, toward the door. "I said this was a mistake, dealing with a new investor," he said, his voice a stage whisper. "You and the vibes you get from people, kindred spirits and all that. It's an adorable tendency, but one you really must give up."
I turned back toward Coker. "It is highly unusual for me to consider a deal with an investor I haven't personally known for long time, Mr. Coker. I am only considering it because of your reputation for assisting your fighters by any means necessary." I emphasized the words. I wanted to imply he was a cheat, a man I knew was rotten to the core. "I feel we share a certain...sensibility, a kinship, if you will. But I don't require your assistance."
"We do share the same kind of sensibility," Coker said. "These fighters, they're commodities."
Iver interrupted him. "I'm afraid I'm not comfortable with this arrangement at all."
"What?" Coker's face grew even redder. He looked back and forth between Iver and me. "You said we had a deal. An understanding."
I put my hand on Iver's sleeve. "Roger, please," I said. "Mr. Coker is exactly the kind of man who understands what we're trying to do."
Coker nodded. "I do, I do. And your viewers want the kind of fighter I can provide."
"Our clientele have everything, Mr. Coker," I said. "They are world leaders who have to have their appetites...restrained...in public. They want a more...authentic fight experience, and they are willing to pay a premium for it."
"I have no problem putting up the money." He laughed nervously. "It's just, in my side of business, a million dollars is a large investment, that's all."
Iver sighed loudly and rolled his eyes, looking Coker up and down before turning back to me again. "I don't know," he said. "It just seems like much more trouble to deal with a small-time investor, adding him into the fold. We could simply ask one of the other investors to increase their contribution by a million. I'm sure Billy Murdoch would be fine with it."
Coker's eyes grew wide. "William Murdoch is one of the investors?"
Iver's hand flew to his mouth. "I've said too much. We should leave." His eyes widened as he looked at me.
"No, no," Coker said. "I've got my laptop right here. I only wanted to meet again as a precaution. I'm ready to make the transfer."
I nodded. "When you're ready."
Iver tapped his watch impatiently. "I'm afraid we can't wait