“Who gave you stitches?” Paul repeated.
“Hmm? Oh, a doctor, obviously,” Mercedes said, rubbing her hand over her neck and looking over her shoulder to the bar.
Paul sniffed and stared down into his drink, his smile still wide but his tone giving him away. “How is she?”
Mercedes looked like she was surprised to find herself not in trouble, and Adam cocked his head. Paul had always been over the top in keeping Brooke out of the dark parts of their lives, but he must’ve seriously gone into overdrive the last few years.
Mercedes reached her hands across the table to comfort him. “She misses you.”
“I’ll get your drink, what do you want,” Adam said.
“Oh, thanks...Mai Tai,” she said.
As he left the booth, he could see Mercedes and Paul deep in conversation. Immediately being served, he asked the bartender for another scotch and her Mai Tai and rested his elbows on the bar while he waited.
“These guys yours?” the bartender asked, throwing a dish towel over his shoulder and grabbing bottles from the shelf.
“Who the fuck is asking?” Adam squared his shoulders.
“Whoa.” The bartender raised his hands in retreat. “Settle down, it was just a question. I have no loyalties.”
“Right,” Adam said, doing his best to relax. “Sure.” It was hard to take anyone at face value or consider a question as anything other than a threat.
“So, are they yours?”
Adam glanced around the bar, it wasn’t only his four friends. There were dozens of his people, playing pool in the back corner, drinking on bar stools, laughing in booths. A whole litany of Blake exiles and Cortez Cartel stragglers, no idea who they were really working for, but just knowing this place would be safe.
“Yeah.”
“Big group,” the bartender noted.
“You’re a bit too mouthy for my liking.” Adam squinted his eyes.
“Not trying to be. I’m good at secrets,” the bartender said. “I just thought I’d let you know the bar won’t be open for much longer.”
“Oh?”
“Owners have backed out, so we can’t keep the place running much longer. With a crew your size, I thought you’d appreciate the heads up to find new digs.”
Adam looked over to his four friends in their booth, finally smiling, and then at the other outcasts. It was kinetic in that moment. Like he could see in them what he felt inside. He’d spent five years without a home. He recognized one when he saw it. And he certainly recognized the potential to create one for others.
And then he had an idea.
“Hey, Dan…get over here.”
Obedient as ever, Dan jogged quickly to Adam’s side, wiping the coke from his nose and bouncing his curls as he shook his head clear.
“You need someone to buy the place?” Adam asked the bartender.
“We do.”
“How much?”
“Five-hundred thousand.”
Adam turned to Dan, smiling and raising his eyebrows suggestively.
Dan squinted, looking back and forth between the bartender and Adam. When he caught up, he smiled, reaching into his back pocket for the checkbook. “Cash or check?”
