“No,” I say honestly. “But if whoever did all this was working with Enrique and Anthony, there’s a chance that they’re also workingwith the mayor, and since he’s the only one alive, it can’t hurt to question him.”
“Where are the girls?” Dominick asks.
“Upstairs, having a girls’ night,” Lorenzo tells him.
“And Daniella?” he asks, looking at me.
“She’s okay.”
He nods. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah.”
While Dominick drives us to the warehouse, Eddy’s on the phone, catching us up on what he found out regarding the guy we were able to catch. The ones who died at The Underground will eventually be made public, and then Eddy can find out about them, but until then, this guy is our only link to the person who’s gunning for us.
When we walk into the warehouse, sitting in the metal chair, the same way Dani was, is one of the men who helped take Dani from The Underground.
According to Eddy, his name is Ross Ryker. He’s in his early twenties, and he has a girlfriend and baby at home. He resides in South Harbor Point and has been through a dozen jobs—he can’t seem to keep one because he’s a drug addict who refuses to get clean.
“Look,” he says the second he sees us walk in, his eyes wide with fear, telling me he knows exactly who we are. “I didn’t know what the assignment was. A friend of mine had told me that a job became available. It was supposed to be quick, easy cash. Get the girl and bring her to the port. If I had known it was your girl?—”
Without letting him finish his sentence, I punch him in the face. The chair flies back, and he knocks his head on the concrete.
“It doesn’t fucking matter whose girl it is,” I bark, lifting the chair back up. “You took a job that involved kidnapping an innocent woman.”
I punch him again, this time in the stomach, and he gags and then throws up all over the ground.
“Please,” he begs. “I fucked up, but I needed themoney.”
“Yeah, so you could buy some more drugs instead of taking care of your girlfriend and baby. I know.”
I grab him by his hair and yank his head back. “Who hired you?”
“I don’t know. I swear, I don’t know.”
“The person who was talking to the woman you had bound up—was it a man or a woman?”
He shakes his head. “I never saw him. I’m assuming a man, but he was dressed in all black with a ski mask on his face. His voice was fucked up, like a robot or some shit.”
“How did you get paid?”
“I haven’t,” he cries. “I was supposed to get it once we left, but you showed up quicker than we’d thought, and he told us he’d be in touch.”
“How?”
“Through my friend Steve. He’s the one who got me the job before?—”
He clamps his mouth shut, but it’s too late.
I pull my gun out and raise it to his head, just between his eyes. “What job before? And before you think about lying, I’ll know, and I’ll kill you.”
Usually, bullshit threats like this wouldn’t work with someone who is used to them, but this guy is an amateur, pulled off the streets. Whoever hired Ross didn’t care if he got caught because he doesn’t know anything. He—or she—needed a job done and knew he could find desperate guys on the streets of South Harbor Point, and if they died, it’d be no skin off his back.
“The fire last year,” he admits. “He hired us to set the warehouse at the port on fire. Said it was to cause a distraction.”
I glance at Dominick, and his jaw clenches. He obviously remembers the purpose of last year’s fire—to take us to the other side of town while Anthony was kidnapping Damien. Which means Anthony wasn’t working alone, and it wasn’t with Enrique because whoever Anthony was working with is still very much alive.
“What else?” I ask, clicking the safety off so he knows my intent.
