Luke

---

We were going to draw straws to see who had to go see Dad, but in the end we didn’t have to. Jace was exempt, because he’d just left a prison and there was no way he was walking into another one, even for a visit. Ryan begged off because of his kid. I was starting to see how Ryan could just use the words I have no babysitter to get out of anything he didn’t want—or was too lazy—to do.

That left me and Dex. We tried arm wrestling for it, but it ended in a draw. We were going to do a championship round of rock-paper-scissors, but in the end we just decided we’d both go and share the fucking misery.

That was how I ended up on the two hours’ drive with Dex in my car, slouched in the passenger seat. He was wearing sunglasses and half his hair was on end. He was hung over, of course, because Dex was usually hung over. My big brother wore a hangover as often as he wore clothes—probably more often.

The last place I wanted to be going was a prison—Dad’s prison. I hadn’t visited him yet; none of us had, and we wouldn’t be now if it wasn’t for that stupid money and the note. No, what I really wanted right now was to have my head under Emily Parker’s loose flowered top, inhaling the skin of her 36C’s. Because now I’d had a refresher on what they looked, smelled, and tasted like.

Instead I was sitting here with my wreck of a brother, who turned the radio down and rubbed a hand through his hair. “I’ll say one thing,” he said. “This Charger is fucking boss.”

“I know,” I said. “It only had a thousand miles on it when I got it. It was a steal.”

We talked cars for a few minutes—we’d pretty much learned cars along with our ABC’s—and then Dex said, “The house still standing or what?”

This was more interest than he, or any of us, had shown in our birthplace in years, so Dex was making an effort. Or maybe he was just bored. With a psycho, you never know. “Still standing,” I said. “That’s about all I can say. The place needs pretty much everything, from the roof down.”

Dex nodded, like he’d expected that. “You look in the second safe at the shop?”

“Yeah, the combination was in the office safe, like the note said. I opened it. Nothing there.”

“Until the nineteenth.”

“Right.”

Dex seemed to grind the rusty gears of his brain for a second. “Do you need the shop alarm code to get to the second safe?”

I’d already thought of this. If someone was dropping money into that safe behind the garage, they were either climbing the fence or coming through the shop. “Yeah. The fence back there is ten feet high, and I didn’t see any signs that anyone’s been climbing it.”

“So whoever does the drop is either an employee or an outsider who has the alarm codes.”

I shrugged.

“The money is handy. Even though it’s dirty.” Dex patted his pockets, looking for something.

“You spent it already?”

“Spent is not exactly precise,” Dex said. “I lost most of it at poker night.” He pulled a joint from his pocket and patted his clothes again, looking for a lighter.

“What the fuck,” I said to him. “Don’t light that.”

“You’re driving, not me,” Dex said, ignoring me and lighting up.

“Yeah, and if I get pulled over I’m still fucked.”

“So don’t get pulled over.” He cracked the window halfway. “Jesus, you’re getting uptight.”

I ground my teeth. It wasn’t the joint I was uptight about, it was the fact that I could lose my license, or my car—and he knew it. Because a Riggs without a car was like a Riggs without a dick. Still, there was no way to get Dex to put that thing out unless I fought him for it.

This was why I’d stayed away from my brothers for eight years.

“Are you gonna tell me what you know about Dad?” I said, changing the subject and going on the attack. “Because it was obvious as hell the other day that you knew something you weren’t telling us.”

“I’m not a cop anymore,” Dex said, blowing weed smoke out the window.

“Tell me,” I said again.

Dex rubbed his fingers on his temple like his head hurt. “You work with Big Jim at the shop, right?”

“Sure.” Big Jim was one of Dad’s new dirtbag hires. True to his nickname, he was at least six four and built like a linebacker.

“There are stolen cars moving through Riggs Auto,” Dex said. “That’s a fact. Big Jim helps Dad run it, and Ronny Red was Dad’s partner. That’s what Jace told me after he got caught.”

I felt my head spinning and I tried to focus on the road. “Jace was stealing cars for Dad?”

“Of course he was,” Dex said, tossing his joint out the window. “Did you think he was stealing cars for himself? You think it was his own idea? You think that’s Jace?”

No. I didn’t think that. I’d thought it was out of character for Jace, and now I knew why. Shit, I had to start thinking. “I don’t get why,” I said. “It couldn’t have been for Dad’s approval. And I thought Jace had a job.” If Jace had enough to live on, he wouldn’t go for a life of crime. He’d never been greedy. The Jace I knew always just wanted to get by and, mostly, be left alone.

“Fuck knows why,” Dex said dismissively, like he couldn’t be bothered to figure Jace out. He’d mostly ignored Jace growing up, like the rest of the world did. “But he was one of Dad’s guys.”

Until he got busted. Jace hadn’t seemed angry, or out for revenge. But he had to feel something, doing twenty months in jail for something Dad put him up to.

“Were you investigating Dad when you were on the force?” I asked Dex.

“Not me,” Dex said. “I worked robbery, but only in Detroit. Dad keeps his operation local to Westlake. Jace only got caught when he jacked a car in Detroit instead of sticking near home.”

I tapped my fingers on the wheel. I’d had a hunch what was happening, but hearing it confirmed burned me up. I’d seen a couple of cars I didn’t recognize come and go through the shop, but with the complete lack of records I couldn’t be sure they weren’t from regulars. The fact that stolen cars were being run under my nose by the assholes who worked for me made me very fucking mad. “So what’s our play with Dad?” I asked Dex.

“That depends,” Dex replied. “Do we want to run a stolen car business? Or don’t we?”

Maybe he had to think about it, but I didn’t. “No,” I said. “That isn’t what I signed up for. Jace already went down for this, and I’m not following him. Neither is Ryan.”

“Maybe I don’t give a fuck,” Dex said.

I glanced at him. “You’re trying to tell me you don’t care about jail time? Because my bet is the Westlake PD are all over this.” It was a pretty educated guess. Dad might have some kind of operation, but he wasn’t a criminal genius. No way was he running stolen cars through Westlake without Nora Parker getting wind of it.

Which meant that Emily’s mother was most likely investigating my father’s criminal activities.

Which meant Emily and I were a bad idea.

I had a feeling I was about to find out just how bad we were.