like we all know you’re gonna do. We have other shit to worry about besides. Owen’s hard-pressing we take this Bronson Williams guy seriously and look into his brother’s death. The problem is I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who thinks he’s the Riddler for some bad superhero movie sending me lame-assed attempts to scare me. But I gotta take time and look into the death of Aaron Cardon. I don’t have time for that shit either. Not the threat that this idiot’s gonna throw rocks at me, and on a ten year old solved case that has nothing to do with me.”
“Owen thinks Bronson Williams will escalate,” I told Zane.
“To what? Lighting bags of dog shit on our front porches? Who the fuck cares? Once a week I get a threat from real people I need to worry about. Men who know how to dismember a body and build explosives. I’ll look into Aaron Cardon—later. As in maybe a year or two from now. In the meantime, I have to get you and Evette settled and prepare for Myles, Kevin, and Cooper. And something tells me we better brace when Coop’s time comes around. He acts all laidback and carefree, joking around, happy to be in Maryland near his family. But there’s something in his eyes that tells me he’s gonna fight this shit until the bitter end. You pass that shit on to Myles and Kev and watch him.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Women, brother. Women. We got three left and something tells me the worst is yet to come.”
That was seriously bad news. We’d had back-to-back fucked-up situations.
“Maybe Coop will meet a nice girl. You know, a barista or something. And Myles doesn’t like drama. I can see him with a teacher. Kevin’s already said he’s got his eye on this hooker; she books by the week so he’ll be set until he runs out of money.”
“Please tell me you didn’t buy him another hooker,” Zane groaned.
“I didn’t. He’s an ungrateful ass. I was trying to help him out; his dry spell was depressing as hell. He repaid me with a black eye and I was out two grand.”
It was a joke. I hadn’t expected Kev to actually sleep with her, but I figured he’d get a good laugh like the rest of us had. He didn’t think it was funny and neither did I when I was sitting on my couch with an icepack on my face and blood on my tee.
“Kev’s sensitive.” Zane’s lips twitched.
Kevin wasn’t sensitive. He was made of stone.
“So, we're good?” I asked.
“We’re all good. Get some rest. Then we’ll get you home and settled with your woman.”
That sounded like a damn good plan.
Home with my woman.
Chapter 33
I felt like I was running on fumes and an adrenaline high. At least it was the good kind of adrenaline and not the scary kind. The last four days had been a whirlwind. The first two because Gabe had been unconscious. Though over the last two days since he’d been awake, I’d learned he was actually in and out but didn’t have the strength to open his eyes, and the awake parts weren’t for long and they weren’t frequent.
Cooper, Owen, Kyle, Anaya, Nat, and Ivy all left the night Gabe had woken up. Ivy wanted to get back to her son, Coop and Owen had work to see to, which meant Nat was going with Owen. And Kyle wanted his girls home. My parents informed me they were going back to Maryland and they’d see me there when I brought Gabe home. This wasn’t a surprise. But I was surprised when Gabe insisted they stay at his house and not a hotel. And in a more shocking turn, my dad took him up on his offer.
I hadn’t talked things over with my dad. I would do that before he went home. What I had done was spend forty-eight hours lying next to Gabe talking to him. The roles were somewhat reversed. He’d spent the first two days asleep and I’d slept very little. The last two days I dozed between our talks and some of our chats had been deep.
Gabe told me more about his childhood. Nothing new per se, he just gave more detail. All of it was heartbreaking. In my mind, I’d pictured a hungry little boy—and he had been—but I never imagined him going days and days with no food. And that had happened the first summer when