There is an awkward silence between us for a moment and the hair on the back of my arms rise.
“What aren’t you saying, King?” There haven’t been any lies between me and Camden since we were teenagers and he better not start now. “Spit it out.”
“I don’t have them yet.”
“What do you mean?” I look at Jade as I continue talking. “Jade said they’re alive.”
“Cutter went a little overboard with the bomb and because of the amount of smoke we couldn’t see that well. So they’re alive, but I don’t know where just yet.”
Jade lowers her eyes as if she can run from the fact that she didn’t tell me quite everything.
“So the three of you came in that warehouse like McGyver with homemade bombs and shit and didn’t nail one of them!” I exclaim.
“Stop yelling,” Jade chastises. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“The mission was to getyouout of there, Rome, so it wasn’t a total loss.”
“We need to finish this. She will not stop coming for what’s mine because I manhandled her precious little boy. I saw it in her eyes, Cam.”
“I know this is easy for me to say but don’t worry. I’ve got a lead on one of them, and where I find one, I will find the others. I always do. Plus, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll even include the old man on the search and you know how I feel about him.”
“Cam, don’t fuck this up. You owe me.”
“When have I ever fucked up a fix? And let’s not forget that it was my tracker that saved your life last night. If anything, you owe me one.”
“My hand is tired,” Jade deadpans. “Can you two wrap this up?”
“Well, hand over the phone then,” I tell her. “We’re not done talking.”
“Sorry, dude, but you’re done. My phone needs charging.”
She steps away from my bedside and says something I can’t discern to Camden. I’m about to curse her out something awful when she walks back over to my bed smirking.
“Your beloved will be here in fifteen minutes, but if you don’t behave I’ll tell them not to let her in the ICU.”
“I’ll have them kick your ass out instead.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Elizabeth is not your wife yet, so she has just about as much say in this place as I do. The difference between us is I’ve been here since you were rolled inside half-dead on a gurney, so I’d say the nurses who I bought a nice hoagie platter by the way are not going to throw me out—ever.”
“You’re fired.”
Jade laughs. “No one else could stomach working for you and you know it, so I’ll just chalk that up to the painkillers talking.”
Then we’re interrupted by a knock at the door.
20
CAMDEN KING
There is an unfinished basement underneath Club Lotus that is too humid and moldy for storage but great for interrogation. There are no windows and there is only one door which is bolted on one side.
I’ve successfully tracked down and have been hosting Roman’s Russian guests down here while working on their final arrangements. No one knows they’re down here besides me and my brothers because Jade probably wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret from Roman, and that crazy fucker would figure out a way to roll his half-dead body out of bed and put a bullet in each of their heads.
While that would be a satisfying solution to end this story, the Bratva is a bitch to deal with when you decide to murder someone in their family, so it’s probably best that we handle this another way.
With the help of my brothers, I’ve taken the prints of Irina’s son and planted them in the dead girl’s apartment from our fix in Chicago. I’ve also switched out Whitfield’s prints for the son’s in the Chicago PD’s evidence database, and made the son look like a passenger on a flight to Chicago a day before the murder.
With a little help from Joseph, we hope that the department will avoid an investigation into their “fingerprint mistake” as long as there are some prints in the system that are linked to the case. It was completely wiping all prints from the case that was the problem. Hopefully, I’ve fixed that with the plant.
