Chapter Nineteen
BAM
“There’s a girl outside,” Niki, says. He cups his hands around his eyes and presses his face against the glass at the front of the laundromat. Josie waves at him.
I laugh. “My girl.”
Niki swings around, surprise on his face. “That’s the reporter girl from Andy’s class. You two are a thing?”
“Yeah.” Usually, Niki and I see each other every day, but we’ve taken a break while he was helping his girl get her mom from rehab. Their apartment is run-down, and he had to do a lot of repairs to make it safe for them. “You’ve been busy, or I would have brought her around. Need to introduce her to Julie. Think she’ll approve?”
Niki shakes his head. “No way. Julie is possessive. Reporter Girl will need to bring a bribe.”
Julie is Niki’s little sister. Cute as a doll. I used to read bedtime stories to her while Niki was out fighting demons for Andy.
“I’ll give it some thought.”
“So why is Reporter Girl?—”
“Josie.”
“Why is Josie outside the laundromat?”
“Because she’s a curious cat, and I can’t keep her away.” I signal for one of the rookies sitting on a dryer in the corner. He jumps down and hustles over.
“Yeah?” His eyes are bright. He hasn’t had to handle a bad case yet. Perfect for watching over my girl. “Go outside and make sure nothing happens to that girl. If she even so much as stubs her toe, I’m cutting your balls off. Also, don’t talk to her.” The boy heads outside. “And don’t look at her,” I add with a frown. Maybe I should bring her inside.
Niki catches me by the shoulder. “Don’t break the rules when you need the club to back you.” There’s a “no women inside the base” rule, and I’ve never been tempted to break it before.
“How do you know I need the club?”
“Because—” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder at Josie.
“Right.” No reason for my reporter girl to follow me to the laundromat unless she needed something here.
“You should have shaken her off before you arrived,” Niki says as we walk toward the backroom where Clark, the head of our ragtag group, is.
“Nah, because then she would be roaming the streets without any protection. At least now I know where she is and I have eyes on her.”
We pause to get patted down before entering the inner sanctum. No weapons inside here. This is where the money is counted and assignments are handed out.
Clark looks up from behind the battered metal desk and squints. “Barely recognize the two of you.”
“It’s only been a week,” Niki protests.
Clark grunts and flicks a nonexistent piece of lint off his blazer. He always wears his school blazer. Niki and I think he sleeps in it. “You’re still on leave, so why are you here? You want work because I’ve got all kinds of tasks that need to be done.”
“Niki and I ran into a dead body the last assignment we had. The dead body’s last known location on his phone was here. We have anything to do with that?” I toss my phone onto the desk. Cole’s face stares lifelessly up at us from the screen.
Clark peers at the image for a good period of time and then shakes his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Name?”
“Cole Patton, eighteen. Six foot five inches. Basketball player at Central Academy.”
“Not a client. You can check the phones, though. We’ve got some that haven’t been cleaned and a batch that was just reset. Come back when you’re ready to work.”
Mobile phones are one way clients pay us. We reset the phones and sell them, and if we can’t reset them, we send them to China, where they’re broken down and remade into counterfeits. The ones that haven’t been reset are in a bin in the repair room. Niki and I go through the tedious task of turning them all on, and then I call Cole’s phone number. None of the phones light up, which means his phone was reset. A dead end.
“I need to find the person who brought Cole’s phone in.” I rifle through the bin of phones being prepared for sale even though a blanked phone won’t do me any good.
