“You get a two-for-one special.” Jett deadpanned as he pulled his bandanna over his face.
“But you still need to share,” Gray warned me from the back seat of the car. “Nothing is ever a coincidence,” he said in disgust.
I looked over at the house, which was a simple single-story with a Spanish-style roof. The timber features looked weathered and worn, the yard unkept.
Shane Lowe did not live on campus; he lived in Cardinal with his brother. His older half-brother, Randy, who recently became unemployed.
“That’s why he was at the bar,” I realized. “To see his brother play in a new band.”
“It seems so,” Jett agreed. “Onyx can’t find anything on the janitor in regard to the other thing, so he had no choice but to let him go.”
“That’s disappointing.” I turned to Gray. “Sorry.”
“As long as I know that most of them are locked up, I’m sleeping at night,” Gray said gruffly.
“Amen to that, brother,” Jett murmured. “Now, in and out, quickly.”
“Not too quickly.” Gray shared a look with me. “We have some time.”
With eager anticipation, we got out of the car.
The three of us made our way around the side of the house to the back door. I could hear the TV. I had been waiting for this, to get my hands on this fucking janitor. The fact that he was the brother of the guy who had marked and bruised Red made it all the more worthwhile.
Both of them were in the living room, drinking beer, watching the game. We didn’t announce ourselves; we didn’t do like they do in the movies or on TV, and have a long monologue of why we were there.
We beat the shit out of them in their living room. Plain and simple. They touched what didn’t belong to them. They touched without consent and purposely tried to intimidate our girls. For that, they paid the price. It was disappointing that neither of them really fought back, but probably a good thing as Gray’s hand was just getting better. I didn’t care too much about my hands as I repeatedly punched Shane in the face.
While Gray and I took care of the brothers, Jett smashed some of the house up to make it look like a robbery gone wrong.
A robbery gone wrong. Who’d really smashed up Red’s apartment?
When Shane and his brother were both on the floor, bleeding and groaning, Jett pointed at his watch. Gray delivered another boot into the side of the older guy, Randy. I searched the bedrooms, and picking up their laptop, I joined the twins at the back door, and as quietly as we came in, we left.
Back at the house, I opened the laptop and passed their shit security. Who really uses “password” as their password? Idiots, that’s who. Within a short time, I was on a call to Onyx. The janitor may be innocent of being involved with the baby trafficking, but Shane wasn’t. His girlfriend in freshman year dropped out suddenly. It didn’t take much investigating on my part to find out why.
“We were right.” I sat back and looked at Gray. “They have eyes and ears inside the campus to find the girls and prey on them at their weakest.”
“You should have broken something,” Gray growled as he read what I was sending Onyx.
“We could go back?” I suggested.
“We lay low.” Jett was reading on his phone. “Cops are there.”
“And Onyx?” Gray asked him.
“Already sending the stuff as an anonymous tip.”
We sat in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Gray looked up and met my look before he turned to his brother. “Is it over?”
“I think it is,” Jett answered.
We all let the same breath, because it felt like the room feltlighter.
“What do we do now?” I asked as I felt the knot in my stomach, which I seemed to have carried around with me for too long, start to unravel.
“Move on?” Jett spoke quietly as he watched Gray, who gave a simple nod.
“Time to let the healing start,” Gray said as he rubbed his hand over his face.
