He didn’t seem happy with my answer. “Fine, I’ll hash it out with Andrea. Get out of here, I have early meetings tomorrow.”
I glanced at my watch; it was just barely evening, but it felt like days had passed since I left the airport. He was likely going to log into his porn obsession and jerk off as soon as I left the room.
“Good night, Mr. DeNiro.”
A soul-worn sigh blew from my lips as soon as the office door shut behind me. Sometimes I wondered if my talent was wasted, letting myself be loaned out to Andrea’s cronies. After the absolute shitshow that was the last black market auction, he had taken to lying low until the dust settled. All of my investigations so far kept leading to dead ends about who the hacker I encountered was. It was a testament to their impressive skill; I prided myself on being able to hunt down my peers quickly and efficiently, so much so that I earned the nickname “Bloodhound”. It was a thankless, lonely existence, constantly shifting identities and updating firewalls to stay hidden. There were a number of people who would pay good money tojustwatchme be tortured to death, much less get involved themselves.
My dear friend Jimmy was nowhere to be seen when I pushed the front door open, and neither was his car. Not that I had plans to ride anywhere else with him and his sour attitude. My bags were haphazardly dumped at the bottom of the steps with absolutely no care taken to even stand them up.
“Fucking asshole,” I muttered, plugging in the address of where I’d be staying for the foreseeable future into a taxi service app. It wasn’t a hotel as I expected, but some kind of multi-family building boasting modern, clean architecture, a couple of miles south of the main Vegas strip. “Home, sweet home.”
The concierge was prepared for my arrival. Maybe Frank’s butler called ahead of time to let them know I was on my way. The young man slid a lumpy manila folder over the white marble counter just as I reached him. “Good evening, Mr. Black. Here are your keys, along with general information on amenities in the area. You’re on the top floor by yourself.”
At least Andrea was considerate enough to give me a whole floor. “Thank you. What are your security measures?” I’d already passed by the footman guarding the door. A subtle bulge beneath his uniform at his waist hinted he was armed.
“Inside the folder, you will find a passcode that will unlock the elevator so you can use it. A footman is at the door twenty-four seven, and there’s a keycard in the envelope that unlocks the condo door.”
“So entirely hackable,” I huffed a sigh. “Alright, thank you. I’m letting you know now that I don’t plan on having any guests during my stay. So if someone’s asking for me, I’m not here. I assume you have your own delivery service for meals?”
“Of course. We are used to our residents requiring discretion.”
I’m sure they were. If Andrea owned a condo in the middle of another mob’s territory, I’d imagine he needed more than just discretion. “Very good. That’s all I have for now.”
The man bowed his head. Clearly an omega, judging by his deference even to a beta like me. “Have a good night, sir.”
Most of my luggage was equipment packed into two hardcases that rolled smoothly across the marble floor to the bank of ostentatious gold elevators. I hefted the duffel, holding a meager few sets of clothes and a couple of handguns, as I dug around in the envelope for the code.
As promised, the elevator let me off on the top floor that was solely dedicated to Andrea’s condo. There was a short hallway from the front door that I wheeled my luggage up to and tapped the key card on its lock. The light flickered green, and a smalltickof the locks disengaging let me into the main foyer.
I’d only been to Andrea’s house in Chicago a handful of times, but there was no sense of his personal touch in this sterile space. Everything was a shade of beige on white with no art hung on the walls, and minimal furniture that the empty space dwarfed with its vaulted ceiling. I toed my boots off and left them lined neatly by the coat closet before rolling my bags further inside. Stairs peeked from around the corner that led to a loft on the second floor overlooking the main living room space. The master bedroom must be up there, with the hallway branching to the left leading to another two closed doors and a bathroom at the end of it.
Leaving my things beside the staircase, I wandered through the living room into the kitchen and flicked the bright LED lights on to reveal the white-on-white cabinetry with white marble counters.
Yeah, no way in hell someone actually cooked in here and kept it this clean.
Fortunately, Andrea had the fridge stocked with basic ingredients like eggs, milk, cheeses, and some assorted lunch meats that I’m sure were overpriced, judging by the fancy names on their wrappers. Beside the fridge was, blessedly, a small bar with two white shelves bearing various whiskeys and scotches. Alcohol trumped food at the moment. My hand drifted to the first bottle holding caramel-colored liquor, and I pulled it down with care to read the label. Thirty-year aged scotch.
“Perfect.” Foregoing food for now, I poured myself a double and carried the heavy crystal with me as I moved back through the condo, hauling my suitcase carrying all my equipment with me toward the hallway I hoped the office would be in.
Time to get to work.
Within the first ten minutes of research—I hadn’t bothered to fully unpack yet, I was so eager to dive in—I learned a couple of important things. One, the police don’t give a damn what Red Riot does, according to their utter lack of reports tracking them.
And two, for being such boogeymen in the shifter community, finding any contact info for this mob was a pain in the ass. I didn’t expect there to be signs outside the local community center saying ‘Line up here for a meeting with the boss,’ but I was hoping for some crumb of information on the chat forums dedicated to mafia activity. From the last interaction I witnessed between Frank’s staff and the Riot, I didn’t think a simple referral would be welcomed or wise. A half-watery glass of scotch sat to the right of my mouse pad as a testament to how intent I’d been scouring the internet for three hours straight. All I had to go on were assumptions right now, and they were tenuous at best.
“Where the fuck are you?” I muttered to myself as I scrolled through articles reporting on violent criminal activity. For a city this massive, crime from turf wars seemed remarkably low. I was counting on the abundance of them in a particular area todetermine where the Riot was most active. Whatever kept them coexisting peacefully was working.
But something caught my eye in the background of a recorded interview with a witness to a shooting. The woman herself was pretty eye-catching, dressed like many of the other women meant to lure people into clubs and bars from the sidewalks. I clicked the pause and magnified the screen just over her right shoulder. The quality of the frozen shot was shit, blurred and grainy on anything beyond a couple of steps of the interviewee. I could just make out the shape of an X and some lines curved beneath it that looked eerily similar to another logo I’d seen recently. One that was prominently displayed on the sides of the helmets the Red Riot members wore when they stopped Jimmy.
The woman’s head was blocking part of the name painted on the building behind her. I zoomed back out, going down to the video’s description to see if it gave a location of where the crime happened, or possibly where the interview was filmed. Wishful thinking, but I hoped anyway. ‘Armed robbery ends in fatal shooting near popular Vegas nightclub,’ the video was titled. “Not very informative,” I squinted at the screen and leaned in like that would help me uncover some hidden clue. I’m not even sure I blinked, judging from the burning sensation in my eyes from staring hard at the page. Even after playing the video through twice—maybe the woman had shifted over enough to uncover the club name behind her, with no luck—I was no closer to finding the name of the establishment than I was almost four hours ago.
The only letters I could make out were ‘ked’ and ‘row.’ Maybe. They were painted in some swirling cursive font that only added to the ambiguity with how shitty the video quality was. Seriously, was this thing shot on the first fucking camcorder ever made?
In the end, my last Hail Mary attempt lay in a general search of all nightclubs in Vegas open when this video was shot six months ago. “Forty pages?” I breathed a heavy sigh. “Fuck me.”
I narrowed the search to names using part of the words I could make out in the video, cutting down the search results to a manageable eight pages. Still, this was going to be a bitch of a research project. My fingers pinched the bridge of my nose beneath where my glasses rested, and I rubbed the spot in agitation. “Fucking Andrea,” the bitter curse hissed from my lips, and I sighed again.
“Masked Merrow?” I asked aloud, stopping on the fifth page of results. Clicking on the business page to show more pictures of the storefront and location gave me a little hope. It had the same dark brick exterior I remembered from the video, and I pulled it back up to show the windows side-by-side for comparison. The same dark-tinted windows, the same industrial-looking front doors… and right above the doors, scrawled in the same looping script in white, ‘The Masked Merrow’ sat in the same position as when it had been blocked by the woman.
