Page 37 of Rent a Mob Boss

Something is wrong.

I know it before I know it. Before the minutes add up, and the logic kicks in. I know it in my body first, then in my brain, the animal part of me lifting its head and saying move. It’s the way I’ve recognized every threat in my life.

Five minutes. It takes me an entire five minutes to stop lying to myself, sitting in a booth and telling myself it’s fine, Lillie is being overly careful washing her hands, or Quinn is fixing her braid. Something normal, everyday.

Five minutes pass, and then I’m on my feet. Opening the door to the ladies’ room without knocking first.

The room is empty. Both stalls are open. Water drips from one of the sinks, and on the tile floor are Lillie’s butterfly shoes. One on its side, the other upside down.

It takes a moment for reality to catch up to the horror that’s frozen my brain. My daughter’s shoes are on the floor of a restaurant bathroom, and my daughter is not in them.

The sound that comes out of me isn’t a word. It’s something older than language, from the base of my spine. My daughter is gone.

And I’m moving through a second door in the room, because it has to be the way they left. They didn’t walk past me, so this is the only other option. I move through the service corridor, past boxes, to a fire exit propped open with a brick. The alley is empty, but there are tire marks on the concrete and a zip tie in the gutter. My hands are shaking in a way they haven’t since I was seventeen years old, standing over my father’s body.

Marco’s cousin finds me in the alley. He’s already on his phone. “White van. No plates. Headed east, maybe two minutes ago. I didn’t see it leave—I was watching the front; they went out the⁠—”

I take him by the collar with both hands and push him against the wall. Whatever he sees in my face stops his voice like I flipped a switch. I hold him there for three seconds but don’t say anything, because if I open my mouth right now, I will destroy something. It can’t be him. I still need him.

I let go, and he slides down the wall half an inch. “Find Tristan,” I bark. “Now.”

Tristan is already in the car when I come around the front of the building. He has two phones and a tablet, and the tablet shows a map. On the map, there is a blue dot, currently moving east on the highway.

The locket. Lillie’s locket. I first put it around her neck the day after Sofia died and have put it on her ever since. It’s gold, small, on a chain fine enough that a child could wear it without noticing. Inside there’s a photograph of her mother on one side and a GPS chip the size of a grain of rice on the other. I have checked it every morning for two years, clasping it around her neck and adjusting the chain and making sure the signal is live before I let her walk out of my sight.

I’ve done this every single day without exception, including today. Especially today, leaving the house with her. It was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.

“She’s moving east,” Tristan says. “Highway Nine, past the interchange. The speed is consistent. They’re not running. They don’t know.”

“How many men do we have?”

“Twelve on the way, six already rolling,” he reports. “Two of mine from the restaurant are a quarter mile behind the van.”

“That’s not enough.”

“It’s enough.” He looks at me. His face is flat and still. “Dorian. It’s enough. Breathe.”

I don’t breathe. Breathing is a thing that happens to people who aren’t watching a blue dot on a screen representing their daughter’s physical presence. But I stop talking, which Tristan takes as compliance. Sal puts the car in gear and pulls out, and we follow the dot.

“They’ll go to the warehouse,” I predict, staring at the screen. “The one on Mercer. The Castellano property.”

“The signal is trending that way.”

“That’s where they’ll take them.” I know it the way I know everything about these people, because I’ve been studying the shape of their operation for weeks. Learning the way they move and the properties they use, the patterns they fall into. The warehouse on Mercer has two entrances, a loading bay, and a second-floor office with windows overlooking the floor. It’s defensible, but not against what I’m bringing. “Tell the men: two teams. First team takes the loading bay, second comes in through the east side. Nobody fires until I’m inside. Nobody fires near my daughter.”

“And Quinn?”

“Nobody fires near either of them.” I barely recognize the sound of my own voice. “If anyone puts a bullet within ten feet of them, I’ll kill him myself. Make sure they understand that. Make sure they know it’s not a figure of speech.”

Tristan relays it while I watch the dot slow down, turn, then stop.

Mercer Street. I was right.

We park a block away. The street is dark—industrial, empty. The kind of block where nobody looks out windows because there are no windows to look out of. The warehouse sits at the end, lit from inside by a yellowish glow that leaks through the loading bay doors. There are two cars parked out front. A man by the entrance stands with a cigarette glowing in the dark and a phone that also glows. He might as well stand under a neon sign.

Fourteen men now. They arrive in ones and twos. Quiet, professional, parking in different spots, materializing the way Tristan’s people materialize—out of nothing, like the dark knitted them. They’re armed. I’m armed. The weight of the gun against my ribs is the only thing holding me together.

They’re all I have. The two of them. They’re my life.