“They’re letting you do your thing. But you gotta know they’re beginning to get antsy about it.”
Uh-oh.
Letting me do my thing?
Letting?
I decided to let that slide since I loved Darius and figured he didn’t mean anything by it (or I was giving him the benefit of the doubt) and focused on something else.
“Why on earth would they be getting antsy?”
“Because you aren’t stopping.”
Uh-oh again.
“Okay. Now tell me why they’d want me to stop? Or maybe the better question is why they’re in my business at all?”
He turned and leaned closer to me before answering, “I don’t know, Ally. Maybe it’s ‘cause you’re their sister. Or as good as a sister, or a daughter, and they’re worried. Maybe it’s ‘cause you’re untrained, which is why they’re worried. Maybe it’s ‘cause you’re out at places like this and unarmed, which, if they knew you were here, they’d be all kinds of f**kin’ worried.”
“I have a stun gun,” I shared.
“The last three years, this bar has had four hits carried out in it,” he told me. “Bullets are flying, stun guns aren’t worth shit.”
Fuck.
Four?
That was a lot.
Hell, one was one too many.
I knew this place was seedy.
Maybe I should have asked Brody to do an electronic look-see into the location I was casing. I’d remember to do that next time.
“Ally,” Darius called my attention back to him. When he got it, he said, “I can tell by your face you aren’t listening to me.”
“I am,” I returned. “I just think you need to be straight up about what you’re saying.”
He leaned in closer and replied quietly, “You have no business being here.”
“I have a friend who has a friend he cares about who has a fiancée who, I’ve heard, is tied up in some business here. He’s in knots about it. He loves her. And he can’t afford Lee. He can’t even afford Dick Anderson.”
Dick Anderson was another local PI, less expensive than Lee and his boys, also less talented. Though, a nice guy.
“So enter me,” I finished.
“Whatever shit she’s wound up in here is shit you don’t want swirlin’ around you.”
I had a feeling he was not wrong.
“I’ll exit this situation shit free. Promise,” I assured him blithely.
“You do not have the skills to do that,” he contradicted me.
My back went up, but my attention sharpened.
“Do you know the job I’m on?”