clothes. But there’s a small stain, as well as a few drops of Adri’s blood not far away. The puddle from the slice across the other guy’s face has been doused with Jameson and is pale pink.
“Find some soap and a towel and work on those blood spots, but leave the booze.”
“What are you doing?” she asks, alarm in her gaze as she looks at the guy in the blanket.
“I’m not going to kill him,” I reassure her, “but there can’t be anything tying you to this. My room is just down the hall.”
“Won’t that tie them to you?”
I nod. “It will, but not to Rob Davidson. He’s not here.”
She gives me a long look, then turns for the bathroom.
I open the door and peer into the hall. It’s empty. I pick the guy up and carry him, bride-style, toward my room at the end of the hall. “This is why you shouldn’t drink in the hot tub,” I say, in the unlikely event anyone’s watching out their peephole.
I close the door, dump him on the carpet, and check to see if he’s breathing. He is. So Adri gets her wish.
I spend the next five minutes packing my stuff, then wipe down anything I touched with a towel from the bathroom. I take the blanket from my closet and bring it with me when I head back to Adri’s room.
She’s managed to get the spots out to the point that someone would have to be looking for them to find anything. If I work this right, no one should suspect these goons were ever in her room, should they be discovered in mine before they wake and scamper off into the night.
The thug I left behind is starting to stir, soft groans coming through his gag.
Adri looks at him anxiously. “What now?”
I trade her the blanket for the facecloth she’s using on the carpet and shove it in my pocket. “Put the blanket back in the same place you found yours, then straighten everything up so it’s exactly how it looked when you arrived. Collect all the duct tape and save it for me.”
She takes the blanket and heads to the bedroom, throwing an anxious glance at me over her shoulder as I cut the tape on the goon’s legs.
I haul him to his feet. “Let’s go, buddy.”
I loop an arm around his waist, holding him tight to my side, and mostly drag him to the door. I check the hall again, and when I feel the goon haul a chestful of air, like he’s getting ready to yell through his gag, I say low in his ear, “The lady doesn’t want me to kill you, but if you make a fucking sound, when I get you to the end of the hall and she doesn’t know any better, I will. Capiche?”
He nods vigorously, his eyes wide with terror, tears starting to leak over.
We move down the hall, him staggering most of the way and occasionally whimpering. Again, for the benefit of any peephole onlookers, I say, “Your bride is expecting some action tonight, man. You got to sober up at least enough to get the deed done.”
We reach my room. I thrust him inside. He drops to the floor on his knees next to Wannabe.
I pull the tape over his mouth back. “Whose marker?”
“I don’t know,” he blubbers. “Uncle Marty just told me he needed some muscle and there’d be a big payday.”
I shove the muzzle of the Glock up his nose. “Who does Uncle Marty work for?”
He pees himself in a gush. “Oh, God! Please—”
I slap my hand over his mouth. “Too loud, buddy.”
He holds his bound hands in front of his face. “Please don’t shoot me,” he whimpers when I peel my hand away.
I lift my eyebrows at him. “If I get the information I need, we’ll be fine. Who does your uncle work for?”
He drops to the carpet on his side and curls into a fetal position. “He drives a cab. Said he brought you here from the airport.”
Christ. I’m such a fucking moron.
“That’s it? Does he run book or launder money for anyone?”
“I don’t know,” he whimpers, over and over.
I breath out a relieved sigh. This is classic. Uncle Marty thought he’d score big by taking down the Delgados single-handedly and use that money and clout to buy his way into another clan. Probably the Savocas. What they never seem to get is it doesn’t work that way.