I run a hand over my face, close my eyes. Try not to think about him and how easily he left. How easily we began again, like he’d been here every day for the last three years. I told him we have to stop, that I can’t drag my kids into this. And that’s true.
But…
I open my eyes, stare hard at the press photo of Jockey, a smirk on his lips and a coy laugh in his eyes. I never liked the asshole. He was always slippery, shady and as hard to grab onto as smoke. It was Milo who was always calling him on his shit, keeping him in check. They were this weird functional balance, the three of them, Liam, Milo, Jockey. With two gone, the third was bound to stray.
If my research is right, Jockey’s at the heart of this. Maybe he’s taking orders from somebody, but it’s his lack of caution and awareness and humility that keeps getting him caught, and odds are, that’s pissing someone off.
I’m brushing up against this weird kind of vision where the big bad guys a town away are kept in balance by Liam and whatever guys he can still call up to his side. A vision where Liam is making his own justice, and I’m not stopping him based on some stupid fucking moral code I’m not even sure I trust anymore. A vision where Liam and I are making this work. We’re being smart. He’s keeping us safe, and I’m keepinghimsafe.
In that vision, there is no Jockey.
By the vitriol I’ve seen in Liam, he wants Jockey dead. And if that’s the path he chooses, I sure as hell can’t protect him. He’ll get caught, he’ll get killed, he’ll get put away with no chance of parole or good behavior.
But there’s more than one way to skin a cat—and there are more ways to take care of someone than to put a bullet in their skull and their body in a bog.
I drum my fingers on the table and think, laterally, of what Liza said to me in her office.
You’re not a risk-taker. To be a good reporter, and a truly, really good writer, you need to bend a little. Not play it so safe.
My eyes go to the little clock at the edge of my screen. Midday. Mom and the girls won’t be back until Monday morning. In that time I could easily speed up the highway, track down Jockey’s boss, and speak some reason. Stupid? Absolutely. But if I play it right, who’s to say it won’t work? Jockey’s absence in this picture is mutually beneficial. That’s math. That’s sense.
And if Jockey’s gang doesn’t see it that way, they’ll have to—whether at the end of this Jockey’s sent to prison, or Liam succeeds in killing him.
Liam.
I watch out the slider, the glass trimmed with frost, eyes peeled for a glimpse of gray fur among the trees. But there’s only an eerie stillness out there, a calm before the storm, a sense that something is coming, and after it does, nothing will be the same.
Oh, Liam.
I tell myself I’m not doing this for us, but for him. Because I understand his grief and his anger over Milo, and I understand, more acutely than I’d like to admit, that this debt must be satisfied, and maybe with blood.
That little high whine of violence is in the back of my head too, much of the time, even though I try to ignore it. Only I don’t just want revenge or justice for Milo’s life—I want it for Liam’s. Because he’s been robbed too. And even if we don’t end up together, he deserves better. Better than the life he’s going to give himself, better than the shit he’s been left with. Liam Dunne, for all of his vices and virtues, deserves a fighting chance.
Maybe I can give that to him. Maybe I can save him.
Maybe, for once in my life, I just want to take a risk—and if all else fails, pay the price myself.
* * *
The town up the highway is only a little bigger, better, and cleaner than ours. They’ve got a few outlet malls, propped up stark and clean like pillars of salt against the tree-trimmed highway. They have nicer parks, more expansive suburbs, built like hives and humming with city-jittery and jacked-up families, compulsively pushing strollers up and down the streets while shouting on Bluetooth phone calls.
It makes sense the trouble’s coming from here. Even a little more money in a town is a good barrier to entry for shit like meth. This is a narcotics town, mommy’s little helpers and roids for the dads, pumped up and getting primed to fuck their secretaries. All of the hollow, deep-veined, scraped-up money would come from our sad, sinking little city.
But that kind of money isn’t long-con, and it’ll dry up fast. Junkies are unreliable. They die. They make stupid mistakes. Which means the trouble Jockey’s stirring isn’t business.
It’s personal.
Why? He’s not smart enough to have a plan. Maybe it’s guilt, corroding him all these years after Milo’s death. Maybe he knows Liam’s coming for him, and this is his way of saying fuck off, I’m a big boy now and I’ve got big friends to back me up. Maybe this is just the same weird vindictive power shit he used to pull when we were younger, when it was pretty harmless.
Well, the cause of it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it ends one of two ways—Jockey gone, or dead. Can’t say I’m necessarily opposed to either, but I can’t bear to watch this be the thing that sinks Liam for good.
I pull up to the drawn-back hooded parlor I’ve deduced plays home base for the guys, the wayBen’sused to in Liam’s dad’s day. This place is much nicer; slick mahogany panels and blood-red-lined windows with flooding geraniums. A few black brass lamps hang curling from the eaves and above the door, and people are gathered around bistro tables outside, drinking frosty pints and bundled deep in their layers.
I park and flick open my Google Drive, where I’ve saved most of the tidbits I’ve been gathering for my article—well, for my recon on Liam—and examine the face there: Connor O’Brien, a kid from the city with ties to bigger mafia names than have ever passed this highway. He’s a good-looking guy, closer to my age than Liam. He’s college-educated, which strikes some grim amused chord in me, and owns the bar across the street which is, perhaps unironically, calledBlood Money.
I tapped social media for this one, and figured out Connor drives a sleek little black Porsche from the 80s, a conspicuous car, but then in his position you’d want it to be. I glimpse it in the side lot, slotted between buildings discreetly, in a designated spot like some kind of MVP.
Another piece that doesn’t fit—Connor’s clearly not strapped for cash. No reason to slum it a town over with dirty drugs.Fucking Jockey.But just because Jockey is predictable doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.
