“And if I don’t agree?”
“You’ll destroy any fucking chance we have of finding Remy before Ms. Leone makes her move.”
He’s right. Terry has been an enforcer practically all his adult life. No one knows more about how the mafia works than he does. But still…
“Sit.” I’ve only heard him use that tone on a couple of occasions, and the last time was when he threatened to kill Emily’s husband if he fucked up her rescue mission.
I take my seat at the table. Cash’s eyes meet mine, and my heart is sliced open with the tip of a knife when I’d thought that Icould keep it together until this was over. He looks broken. Not beaten-up-and-bloody broken, but the kind of damage that only comes from within.
“I should’ve stayed with her, but this is my fucking casino.” Even his voice is sore, like he needs one of Mom’s honey and menthol shots. “She was inmy fucking booth.”
I don’t offer him comfort. Remy first.
“Talk to me.”
Caleb takes over. Kyle hasn’t said a word yet. Eyes down, he’s typing on his tablet keypad, while still managing to give us a hundred percent of his attention.
“The cops arrived with a warrant for Cash’s arrest,” Caleb begins, “and video footage to back it up.”
I glance at Cash whose eyes are somewhere far away.
“Here, watch this.” Kyle turns the tablet around so that I can see the screen.
On it, I watch Cash enter a gym on W 54thStreet. Shortly after, a young woman exits the building, closely followed by several visitors clad in fitness gear. Kyle leans across to fast forward the footage to Cash leaving the gym alone, head down, barely acknowledging the small group waiting to get back inside.
“Is that it?” I ask.
“There’s more.” Kyle gestures at the screen.
I watch paramedics arrive, blue lights flashing in the street and drawing a crowd of onlookers. Fast forward again, and the medics exit carrying a stretcher, the patient’s face covered withsterile dressings, a thermal blanket shielding his body from the gathered rubberneckers.
“He had it coming.” I sit back in my seat. I’m not entirely sure if they expect me to sympathize with the victim. I don’t.
“Agreed.” Cash sits forward. “Only I didn’t do that.” He slides the tablet towards him, the screen freeze-framed on the stretcher. “I’d fucking own it if I did. I’d hold my hands up and do my time because I know he had something to do with Remy’s disappearance.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I pulled him off the treadmill and threatened him to stay the fuck away from Remy, but I didn’t touch his face.”
Kyle reclaims the tablet, taps the screen, and passes it back to me.
Now, I’m looking at real-time camera footage from inside the Titan’s restaurant, Glamor. I zoom in to the table directly in the camera’s viewpoint. I already know what I’m going to find. George Quinn is seated beside his fiancée Isabella Leone. Two other people are sitting across from them, but I’m only interested in his mashed-up face, the black eye, swollen cheekbone, the bruising covering one half of his face and the busted lip.
“You think he got someone else to do this so that he could frame you?”
“Potentially.”
It’s a long shot. From what we know of George Quinn he’s a grifter, a chancer who struck it lucky with his arranged marriage to the Leone heiress. But grifters are not known for theircourage, and having met the guy, I can’t imagine him shutting his eyes and keeping his mouth shut while someone beats him to a pulp.
“Is there an alternative scenario?” I address Kyle.
“I’m working on it.”
This doesn’t add up though. “Where was he when Remy disappeared?”
“With his fiancée in their loft apartment on the Upper West Side,” Terry says. “I’ve had guys on him twenty-four-seven.”
“When did they arrive?”
