scrambled eggs and buttered toast onto the plate. “There.”
“But are you feeding me?” August pressed, just for the hell of it. “Because that would be fine.” He sat down, leaned forward onto his elbows and opened his mouth. Ricardo rolled his eyes.
“Good grief,” Heidi groaned. “You two are disgusting. I’m glad I’m leaving today.”
Deciding that he’d pushed his luck far enough, August sat back and took a bite of toast. “Where are you going?” he asked once he swallowed.
“I’ve got options,” she said vaguely. “Some of it depends on what your program dug up about the guy who was after me.”
“Right.” August pulled out his phone, opened it to the picture and data the program had compiled for him in the early morning hours, and put it in the middle of the table. “Voila. Your would-be assassin, Brock ‘Bubba’ Johnson.”
Ricardo and Heidi both leaned in. “Huh,” she said after a moment. “I didn’t expect him to be so…so…”
“Blatantly shady?” August suggested. “So openly skin-heady? So unsubtly tattooed?”
“He has knuckle tattoos,” Ricardo muttered, sliding over to the next picture. “Five years in federal prison for gun running, gang activity, suspicion of murder…not a professional.”
“No,” August agreed. A true professional never would have gone to prison like that, Jesus Christ. “But that doesn’t mean he’s useless. He undoubtedly thinks he’s a big tough guy whose reputation speaks for itself, but he still might have had the wherewithal to look into the person hiring him to kill someone he’s never met before.”
“I hope so,” Ricardo said, his face curiously stiff. “Because if he didn’t, I’m going to cut that swastika tattoo off his bicep and feed it to him.”
“Aw, Ricky.” August reached out and patted his hand. “You can do that even if he does have useful information for us. I promise I’ll help.”
“Disgusting,” Heidi reiterated. “So then, where is he?”
“Back in the heart of the city. His brother runs a dive bar in the warehouse district and Brock tends to do his business there.” August pulled up a map of the city, centered around a thick cluster of red dots. “This is a scatter plot of everywhere the guy has been over the past five days. He never moves more than five miles from that bar and his apartment, which is just a few blocks from the bar. You were at the very outer limit of his travel, Heidi.” He pointed to a little dot near the edge of the screen.
“Is this pulled from his cell phone?” Ricardo asked.
“Yep! And before you ask, yes, it’s very illegal, but why should we look a gift horse in the mouth here?”
“I don’t care about legality,” Ricardo said, and whew, that was a relief. Not that August had been worried, really, but still—talk about cramping someone’s style. “If your program can access his cell phone data like this, then maybe it can check his messages. If we can find a communication chain between him and the person who hired him, we can use it.”
“The person coming after us has to be better than that,” August protested. If they found this guy—or gal, or person, lots of people probably wanted to kill August regardless of gender—via some Neo-Nazi meathead’s cell phone, August had to confess, he’d be a little bit pissed.
Ricardo shook his head. “Not like that,” he said. “I mean that we can spoof the number and text him, ask him to meet us somewhere. You say he works out of a dive bar? It’ll be full of his kind of people, and if I have to go in there and drag that son of a bitch out myself, there will be mass casualties.”
I would pay a million dollars just to watch you go into that bar and beat up a hoard of thick-headed idiots who willingly associate themselves with the Third Reich. If August could pick an emoji to be in this moment, it would be heart eyes. “We can spoof his phone,” he confirmed.
“Good.” Ricardo glanced at Heidi, and August took the opportunity to eat some of his eggs. They were surprisingly fluffy. “Will I be able to reach you if I need you?”
“Only if it’s absolutely, end-of-the-line necessary,” she said seriously. “Otherwise I don’t want to hear from you until this is all over. I mean it, Ricardo. I feel bad about passing that job along, but not so bad that I want to dive into the deep end with you to deal with it. You guys found me, and I appreciate