Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 61042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
“They’ll come looking for you.” Inferno shook his head, not buying it. Can’t say I did either.
“No, man. Prospects are disposable. We all know it.” He’d spoken like perhaps the notion of being expendable finally hit home and he realized the situation wasn’t going to end well for him.
Griffin nodded once, like that lined up with something he already knew. “Iron got eyes on the front gate?”
“I think so. I don’t know for sure. He don’t tell us where the eyes are, man. Just where to be.”
“Who else is huntin’ her tonight?”
The prospect’s mouth worked. “I don’t, I swear, I don’t know names. He put the bounty out wide. Said anyone in the city could collect, not just Serpents. There’s freelancers. Couple guys outta Memphis I heard about. That’s all I got. That’s all, I swear it on my mother.”
“Your mother know what you do for a livin’, son?”
The prospect gave a strangled sob, an ugly wet sound. “She’s dead.”
“Then I reckon she ain’t gonna mind.”
The prospect had given him a bounty number, two men in a truck, freelancers from Memphis. I had to wonder what would happen next. I think I knew, but I needed to see how Griffin handled this. More than anything, my next move would depend on what happened in the next few seconds.
“Tiny’s already movin’ on the truck. Knight pulled the pole cam two minutes ago.”
“Good.” Griffin glanced up the fence line, then back down. He looked at the prospect for a long, quiet moment. “Anything else you wanna tell me, son? Now would be the time.”
“That’s all I got.”
“You sure.”
“I swear to fuckin’ God, man!”
“All right then.”
Griffin straightened from his crouch and pulled his phone from his back pocket. He sent off another text, this time staring at the screen for a long time before putting it back in his pocket. Griffin pulled a serrated knife from the small of his back. The motion was so plain and without ceremony, that I had a half-second of refusing to understand what I was watching.
The prospect understood. “Wait! Wait! I told you. I told you what I know, man! I told you everything! You said… Hey! Hey!”
Griffin crouched again. He set his free hand on the back of the prospect’s neck. He leaned in close enough to be heard at a whisper.
“You came over my wall for twenty-five grand.”
“I’ll tell you anything!” The prospect looked from Griffin to Inferno and back, a desperate, growing fear in his eyes. “Anything else! I got more! I got… I got the truck plate! I got stuff on the club! I got --”
“You came over my wall,” Griffin said again, “for a woman I swore would be safe here, for my woman. For twenty-five grand.”
Had Griffin slapped me, I doubt I’d have been more surprised. His woman? Maybe he was just trying to scare the prick. The prospect whimpered and tried to fight despite his hands being zip-tied behind his back.
Griffin sank the blade into the guy’s side before pulling the knife out and repeating the motion several times in quick succession. The squishing and gurgling sounds were loud as blood squelched with each plunge of the knife into the prospect’s body. I nearly gagged, but the fear and outrage I probably should have felt never came. The prospect’s body didn’t move again and a darkening stain spread on the gravel beneath his body.
I had my hand pressed over my mouth. The gauze on my palm scraped my lips. My pulse beat in my ears so loud I half expected Griffin and Inferno to hear it even though they were twenty yards out. I waited for Griffin to do something else to the body, like kick it or spit on him or any number of other disrespectful things, but he didn’t. He wiped the blade against the back of the prospect’s cut and slid it back into the sheath at his waist. He stood, rolled his shoulder, and looked at Inferno.
“Get a tarp,” Griffin said. His voice carried the same flat absence of inflection as before. “Tiny texted he’s got a couple prospects headed our way with a cage.”
“On it. Maybe the guys in the truck will have more info.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for.” Griffin stood over the body for a moment, head tilted. Then he turned in a slow half circle, scanning the fence, the buildings, the dark spaces between the floods. His gaze moved past my hiding spot and kept going and then came back. He looked right at where I stood but didn’t say anything. I hardly dared to breathe.
Then Griffin turned away and walked toward the fence to look through the chain-link at the access road beyond, and I let myself breathe again. I should have been horrified. I had watched a man die, and what sat in my chest was not horror. The man on the ground had been climbing a fence to collect twenty-five thousand dollars for delivering me to Iron. Then Griffin had ended him.