“He came here to have lunch with, um, an associate,” she told her followers as she scanned the room.
A battered cabinet of a busing station was to her immediate right, its veneer peeling.
A pitted and scarred wooden bar was just beyond it, running the full length of the wall to Casey’s right. Barstools were bolted to the grungy floor in front of it, one of them missing its round seat—a dangerous-looking, hollow tube of metal with duct tape across the top.
Only a few people, all of them flying solo, sat at the bar, heads down, nursing drinks. Most of the crowd—if you could call a half dozen people a crowd—were around the pool table in the center of the room. The sound of balls being hit cut sharply through the music.
Tables with mismatched chairs lined the non-bar walls of the dimly lit room—and there Jon was. He was sitting at the table in the far front corner, diagonally across from where Casey was standing. There were three other men at the table, surrounding him. They sat oddly close together—not properly spaced the way you’d expect four relatively large men to sit at a relatively large table. But rather the way you might sit if you were trying to intimidate or threaten someone.
That someone being Jon.
He hadn’t seen her—no one had.
It was time to get noticed.
Casey unplugged the juke box.
Yup. That worked.
“Hey, hi, how are you?” she announced to the unfriendly faces staring at her as she held her phone up and out and let her camera scan the crowd.
Rio skidded to a stop at the end of the alley-like driveway leading into the bar’s back parking lot, dipping his head around the corner to check to see if anyone was out there.
The lot was deserted. Nothing moved. There were fewer cars and trucks than there’d been back when Rio met Jon out there, just a few hours earlier.
He’d seen the black SUV parked out front that Casey had mentioned, and yeah, there was nothing like that back here. Just a very shiny silver SUV, probably the one Casey had been driving, parked nose out, not too far from the back door. But there was no black truck with a broken grill. No white van. No sign of the men who’d tried to ambush him. That was good at least.
As Rio swiftly headed for the open back door, he heard Casey’s voice carrying clearly from inside of the bar. “I’m Casey Esparza and I’m live-streaming so say hello, too, to around a hundred thousand of my favorite Instagram followers. Apologies for shutting off the juke box, but it’s a royalties thing. It also makes it a little easier for you to hear me, and for me and my fans—oops, now there’s two hundred thousand watching. But now they’ll be able to hear you as well as see you.”
It was brilliant—what she was doing. Announcing to the entire bar—including anyone connected to Miller—that she’d come in here with a small city’s supply of witnesses.
Of course that wasn’t accounting for any chaos, like, say, someone coming up behind her and knocking the phone out of her hands. Heads, it landed lens down, instant black. Tails, it landed lens up, which would let the multitudes see an equal amount of nothing on the ceiling. And even though the audio would be working either way, when it came to witnessing a crime, a picture was worth a thousand audio tracks. Not to mention that with one heavy heeled boot on the phone, her live-stream would be over.
As Rio ran down the back hallway he dug for his own phone. He had a Facebook account—mostly to keep up with his mom and Aunt Angela—but he rarely used it and had no freaking idea how to live-stream. Still he could fake the shit out of anything, so as he burst into the main room of the bar, he held his own phone up, as if he, too, were live-streaming instead of simply recording video and hoping that no one would get a good look at his screen. Or if they did, they’d be like him and simply not know how the fuck it all worked and assume the red square and running time-code meant he was broadcasting to the world.
“Hey, Casey, oh good, Jon’s here,” Rio said, realizing he’d blasted right past Casey, who was standing over near the juke box, phone held up and out as she filmed. “Say hi to Casey, everybody.” But thank you Jesus, there indeed was Jon, over at ten o’clock. “And say hi to Jon.” He was sitting at a table in the far corner past the pool table with three other men, none of whom were Red Cap, Camo Cap or Van Guy. Hooyah for that.
And hooyah for the fact that, accidental or not, Rio was now positioned between Casey and that table. There was a strong stench of menace coming off of Jon’s three companions, so when Casey started to move forward, Rio held up a hand to keep her back.
“No,” he said. “Stay there. Please. I want the...” Fucking hell, what was it called? “...the wide shot.” He pulled the filming term out of his ass, although maybe it was angle. Wide angle, wide shot, good enough. “I got the close-up.” He aimed his phone at Jon, who was sitting so close to his table-mates that they were in the shot, too, which for sure they did not like. They all shifted back, first a little, then a lot. Good.
Rio had no real clue what Casey’s intention was—why even the most diehard fan would think a visit to her brother in this dank hell was entertaining social media content, but... Here they were, cameras on, and there was Jon within reach.
“Whew,” Rio said, since everyone was still looking at him. “I’m here. I made it. I thought I’d be late.”
His first instinct was to simply grab Jon, grab Casey, and run.
Although, as he looked around the bar at the unamused pool players, the dead-eyed, gray-faced people sitting at the bar, the nervous bartender... he had no clue how many of them were working for the man who’d tried to kill Casey and Rio. The three at Jon’s table, for damn sure. But the others? All of them? None of them? If he grabbed Jon and Casey and ran, they’d be chased at least by those three, who all appeared to be carrying. Rio didn’t like those odds.
But for right now, no one moved. No one spoke. They all just watched.
Casey was right—a live-streaming camera was a powerful weapon.
“I had a little bit of a fender bender, so I ran a few miles to get here on time.” Rio’s words didn’t quite explain the blood-soaked underwear bandage that he’d wrapped around his upper arm but he wasn’t being graded for this.
“Are you okay?” Casey asked.
He could tell from the way she was eying him that she was very unhappy about the blood, but again he held up a hand to keep her back. “I’m great,” he said.
