Chapter Two
Slade
I fought the urge to punch the wall as I watched Christine walk away. She wasn't supposed to see the picture of her sister's murderer until I had time to figure out how it would help. What good was a date and time-stamped photograph if he testified he was forced to commit murder? Even Christine's friend, a district attorney, would have a hard time pinning it all on the young man in the picture. Especially when it was discovered that Christine set him up with her sister in the first place.
I glanced out the window again but could not see Christine on the street. New York traffic flowed by, but the busy hum did not comfort me. The city was cruel, and I knew only too well how Darren might have got himself cornered by Balducci.
There was no doubt in my mind that Darren was caught up with the mobster. I was willing to bet hundreds of dollars that Darren was a lot like me. Alone, friendless, and watching his meager stack of cash diminish faster than water down a drain. Balducci probably picked him up from the street and gave him a job and a sense of belonging.
Men had killed for a lot less.
The rest of the night was a tangle of bad memories and bloody dreams. I woke up in a sweat and knew why Darren had killed Christine's sister.
He loved her.
I could practically hear Balducci's sneering voice offering Darren the tragic choice: Kill Anya or she would suffer worse at the hands of another. There was no way out, and Darren did not want her to feel any pain. She would have, in the end, but Darren ensured her death was quick.
"What?" I croaked into my phone.
"Slade? Most people say 'good morning.' You sound like hell," Gavin said.
"Feels like I'm heading that direction." I dragged myself out of bed and fumbled the phone as I got dressed. "We need to talk about that security footage again."
"I know," Gavin said. "I just wish you would think about the big picture, Slade. You can't use the footage as a bribe. Balducci's never going to stop."
"Unless I return."
Gavin ground his teeth. "You won't."
"No, I won't." I grabbed my keys and headed for the door. "But I am heading over to my old neighborhood. Wanna meet for coffee?"
"Why in the hell are you heading to his turf? It doesn't matter if you offer Balducci the security footage, he won't stop harassing you, Christine, or trying to ruin the club," Gavin said.
"What if giving away that footage saves a kid's life?" I told him about Darren and the way he was forced to murder Christine's sister. "They'll probably tear the security footage apart in court if it even is admitted as evidence. But, I can offer it to Balducci as an honest trade for Darren."
"You mean Darren, the material witness who can swear in court that Balducci forced him to kill?" Gavin asked.
"Balducci doesn't need to know what we know. I'm sentimental. I want to save the kid, and Balducci won't even suspect why. He thinks he's so goddamn clever that no one can stop him." I hailed a cab and the driver raised a nervous eyebrow when I gave him my destination.
"Wait," Gavin yelped. "Does Christine know about Darren?"
"She saw the picture, Gavin. She's the one who introduced him to her sister." I drummed my fingers on my knee as the cab careened through traffic. "I have to get to him before she does."
"Jesus, Slade. Christine called this morning to cancel plans with Carrie. She wouldn't say what she was doing but she sounded upset. You don't think she's out looking for Darren right now, do you?" Gavin held the phone away from his mouth and yelled for Carrie. "Wait, she saw the picture? You printed the security footage of her sister's murder and then let her find it by accident?"
"It was an accident. I was distracted." I clenched my jaw. Christine had been the one to distract me. Even now, my mind ran through a loop of her finest features. "I couldn't decide if I should tell her. I was trying to protect her."
"That's why she's been getting so cozy with Balducci?" Gavin asked. "You could have told her everything but now she's off trying to find the truth herself?"
"We don't know that," I said. The cab pulled up to a dingy bodega with peeling posters that covered the small windows. I paid the man, got out, and let loose a string of expletives.
"She's there, isn't she?" Gavin said.
I hung up the phone and forced myself to walk down the street instead of sprint. Christine approached a shop owner as he unlocked and lifted the gate on his store. He shook his head before she even finished her question. Christine jumped in front of him as he tried to go inside, and I doubled my pace. No one in the neighborhood was going to talk to her about Balducci or Darren, and not everyone was going to be as polite as the shop owner. He shoved her aside hard and slammed the shop door in her face.
"What in the hell do you think you're doing?" I caught her arm as Christine tried to dodge around me, too. "You're going to get yourself killed."
"Like I got my sister killed?" Christine asked.
I wanted to shake her, hard, and then toss her into a cab and send her home. Instead, I was barely able to keep a grip on her arm as she wrenched it away from me. "You can't do this, Christine."
"Do what?" she asked. "Get to know a new neighborhood? Talk to the few people I meet?"
"We both know you're here looking for Darren," I snarled.
Christine slashed me with her green eyes. "There is no 'we.' We're not at work and this has nothing to do with you."
"Do you really think Darren is going to talk to you? He knows who you are, Christine. And this is not the neighborhood to go around mentioning Balducci's name," I said.
Christine reached into her pocket and pulled out a can of pepper-spray. "I'm not stupid. Or maybe I am, because I can't think of one single reason not to use this on you."
I let go of her arm but took a step forward. "We need to talk. Not here."
"I'm not getting into a cab with you, Slade." Christine edged back along the sidewalk toward the dingy bodega.
I yanked her into the narrow alley so we could talk without being seen. She stumbled over a pile of soggy cardboard, and I caught her hard against my chest. Heat flared between us, and I sucked in a deep breath. Even here, even now, I wanted Christine. Not just her body, but her stubbornness, her independence, her whole reckless self. I wanted all of her.
She melted against me for one heart-stopping minute. Then her glass-hard eyes glanced up at me. "Let go or you'll be smelling pepper spray for a month."
"I'm trying to protect you, Christine," I said, not letting go of her.
She struggled against my arms. "Protecting me? Is that what you call hiding evidence of my sister's murder? You knew who did it. You had his face on camera and you didn't say anything! How many times did I ask you about the security footage and you lied. You let me go on and on searching for it because you had already taken it."
I shook her just enough to make her blond hair bounce. "I didn't have it all along. I had to search for it, too. I only found it a few days ago, and you have no idea how many disgusting things I had to watch before I found what you were looking for. At least I was able to save you from that."
Christine pursed her lips, not wanting to give me a centimeter of credit. "Then you immediately hid it from me, from the police, from the district attorney, who could use it to put away my sister's murderer!"
"What if he didn't have a choice, Christine?" I pulled her close so she couldn't avoid my eyes.
The fight slipped out of Christine and her arms went lax. "Was it quick?" she asked.
I nodded. “Trust me, you don't want to see it. Don't do that to yourself, Christine."
She blinked back tears and finally pulled out of my grasp. Christine wobbled and grabbed hold of a dumpster to steady herself. "Trust you? How could I ever do something that stupid again?"
"You can," I told her. "I'm here. Who else are you going to trust?"
Christine snorted. "Gavin lied about the security footage, Carrie wants me to start over somewhere else, and you've been hiding the one thing I was searching for. So, no one. I can't trust anyone."
I followed her to the mouth of the narrow alley. "I'll prove you can trust me, Christine. Let me help you."
"How?" she asked. "All I want to know is why he did it. How could he have done something like that?"
I opened my mouth to answer her but no sound came out. If Christine blamed Darren alone for her sister's death, then maybe she would leave Balducci alone. Maybe, just maybe, she could get clear of all of this before she got hurt.
Across the street, a shaggy young man in a hooded sweatshirt appeared in a doorway. He looked up and down the street and then headed for the dingy bodega. Underneath the peeling posters, he paused, checked something in his pocket, and then went inside.
"Was that Darren?" Christine asked.
She started across the street so fast that I had to jog to catch up to her. "Don't go in there. He had a gun."
"What?" Christine paused at the streetlight. "What's he doing?"
I gritted my teeth. "Protection racket. He convinces the shop owners that the neighborhood is dangerous, especially if they don't hire his associates to protect them. If they try to say no, he smashes up their store, waves the gun around, and makes sure they rethink their answer."
"Is that what you did for Balducci?" Christine asked.
I shrugged. "Protection is a low-level racket. It's mostly just money-collecting."
Darren reappeared in the bodega doorway, and he spotted us right away. We didn't fit the neighborhood so he took a closer look. Then Darren turned and ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction.
Christine took off after him, and I was shocked at how fast she could move. I sprinted to overtake her and was able to clutch the back of her shirt with two fingers before it was too late. I pulled Christine back as a honking delivery truck drove by inches away from her face.
"He's going to get himself killed," Christine said.
Darren was in the middle of four lanes of New York traffic. He dodged and ran and even took a few hits from bumpers before the drivers could slam to a complete stop. Halfway across, Darren flipped onto the hood of a cab and cracked the windshield. He rolled off, clutching his arm, and continued his mad charge across the still rushing lanes of traffic.
I caught Christine's arm in an iron grip and hauled her back onto the sidewalk. "He's got a death wish. Let him go."
With frantic eyes, Christine watched her sister's murderer disappear, but she stopped struggling. When he was gone, she turned and fixed me with a painful look. "How do you know so much about Darren?"
"I don't. I've never met him. And, Christine, you have to believe me, I don't work for Balducci anymore. I'm out."
"I have to know why Darren killed Anya," Christine said. She rubbed her arm where I had grabbed it. "You were like him once. You don't want him to pay for my sister's death. So, tell me, Slade, why should I listen to anything you have to say?"
My shoulders sagged. "I can't. You won't believe me anyway."