“It sounds like a story to me. Some kind of urban legend. It’s a good idea. Make up some big, bad boogeyman to keep people from looking too deep into shit, to keep them from talking to the cops. Mafia, maybe?”
The mob certainly had the pull to intimidate the neighborhood. The Italians didn’t run out of his neighborhood, but that didn’t mean they didn’t poach girls from there. Jericho had no idea where Mercy had ended up before being dumped. The Irish and the Russians had a pretty good grip on the gambling and the guns around town but left running girls and dope to the street gangs.
The mob just didn’t make sense. “Bryan said nobody suspected them. He said they pretended they were there to help. Nobody mistakes the mob for the good guys.”
Atticus grunted. “He also said they were ghosts. I don’t even know what that means. Ghosts. Helpers. Crosses. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the box.”
That was what was so frustrating. Jericho needed a bad guy. He needed somebody he could punish for whatever happened to his sister. But first, he needed to find out what the fuck happened to her.
Fuck, this was frustrating.
“We need to find Carlos Perez,” Jericho said through gritted teeth.
“I already have Calliope on it, but it sounds like it’s going to take a lot more work than it did with Bryan.”
“I don’t know what else to do. This Carlos guy is our only lead,” Jericho said, white knuckling the steering wheel.
“I think I should talk to my father—” Atticus stopped abruptly to clear his throat. “I thinkweshould talk to my father.”
“You want me to meet your dad?” Jericho asked. Usually, he’d tease Atticus about this but he couldn’t muster up anything close to humor.
“I don’twantto bring you home to meet anybody.”
His words were a kick to the balls. Still, he gave a humorless laugh. “Wow. Don’t worry about my feelings or anything. Afraid I won’t know which fork to use?”
Atticus snorted. “What? No. I am not worried about your behavior. I’m worried about theirs. They don’t know how to behave around strangers. They’re like…wolves.”
“So, it’s not about your family finding out you’re less straight than you’ve implied?” Jericho asked, not sure why it suddenly mattered so much.
Atticus gave a frustrated sigh. “No. Look, I’m not gay, but I’m…gay for you? I don’t need to clarify it or justify it to my asshole brothers. Besides, this isn’t about them. It’s about helping you find out what happened to your sister. That’s more important.”
Atticus’s flustered declaration made Jericho feel warm all over. “And you think your family can do that?”
“I’m not an investigator. And, as far as I know, neither are you. I just kill people and I’m not even very good at that. My dad, Noah, Lucas, Calliope, they’re like our…investigative team. That’s what they do. They vet our kills, get evidence even the police can’t access. There’s no system Calliope can’t crack, no connection my father can’t exploit, no object Lucas can’t read, and no place Noah won’t ferret his way into…whether we want him to or not. If I ask them to help you, they will.”
Jericho’s heart clenched behind his ribs. He knew better than anyone how much it would pain Atticus to ask his family for help, to bring Jericho into the lion’s den. But he was willing to do it for him if it meant helping him find out what happened to Mercy. There was something telling about that. Something Jericho wasn’t sure he should look too closely at. Atticus seemed to think of himself as a hopeless screw-up, but as far as Jericho could tell, he was pretty fucking close to perfect. Even if his family didn’t see it.
What would Felix think of Atticus? What would the others think? Did Jericho care? Maybe a little. They were his family. The people who always stepped up when he needed help, and he always needed their help.
He couldn’t do what he did on his own. There were too many people who needed help. Too many people that criminals and the government took advantage of because they weren’t in the country legally, because they knew there was no way for them to fight back, and if they did, nobody would care when it went badly.
It didn’t matter, though. If Felix and the others couldn’t accept Atticus, they were just going to have to get over it. He didn’t need their approval and he certainly wasn’t giving up Atticus. Not anytime soon, anyway.
“When?” Jericho asked. “When do you want to go to your dad?”
“We’ll go tomorrow. I just need to make sure my dad’s…”
“Available?” Jericho supplied.
“Sober,” Atticus muttered.
“Is this about the adoption thing?” Jericho asked. “Did it hit the paper or something?”
“Not yet. But it will eventually.”
Jericho kept his eyes on the road as he contemplated the situation. What man drank himself into a drunken stupor over a potential scandal? Jericho didn’t know Thomas Mulvaney, but he imagined any man who willingly raised a gaggle of psychopathic children wasn’t prone to histrionics. It just didn’t gel.
“Are you sure this isn’t more about feelings?”
