He turned to me, the harsh slant of his sexy mouth softened. “You agree?”
“Yeah,” I said easily, but I dreaded what we were about to uncover. From the way Regina had rejected us, it had to be bad.
Chapter Eleven
Decker
“I need to make some calls—one to my handler. And since you’re still living back at home, why not call your dad? He might know what’s happened to Regi since that fucked up day with Teke,” I suggested.
Krew shook his head. “Dad’s useless. Trust me. After I got out of prison, I looked for her. All he told me was that she ran away, and her parents didn’t bother lifting a finger to find her.”
“You keep saying jail—you mean juvie,” I corrected, watching as Krew’s face shut down.
“No. I mean prison. Specifically, Chillicothe Correctional Institute,” he bit out through clenched teeth.
“That’s not right?—”
“What’s not right is you telling me what happened when you weren’t even there.” Krew turned his back to me. His shoulders slumped, as though a two-ton weight had dropped on them.
Slack jawed, my mind fought to understand what had happened to Krew. When he mentioned jail earlier, too much shit was happening around us at the time for it to sink into in my skull. I’d just assumed he meant juvie. But Chillicothe?
It might be a medium security prison, yet something had happened inside there for Krew to be tight-lipped about his time.
My heart revolted against this knowledge. Those demoralizing pricks had put Krew in with convicted felons doing hard time. And for what? He’d only been trying to do the right thing and not rat out his brother. Instead, he’d marginalized his own innocence and gone down for the theft of that damn car.
I wanted to reach for Krew, pull him into my arms, but pity and remorse seemed to be the last things he needed right now from me. “Tell me what happened.”
“Some other time. Right now, we need to stop the killers from coming after us.” Krew dismissed me like I was a gnat. He went back into the motel room, and quietly shut the door.
I stood there for a long moment, mentally ticking off the minutes until I could put a bullet in Teke’s brain and then bury his sorry ass in a shallow grave as payment for what he did to his own brother. I pulled out a cigarette, needing the nicotine, lit it and took out my cell phone.
“Yo, bossman,” Sabrina chimed in.
“You’re not funny,” I grated out, then glanced at the closed door of the motel room. I took the metal stairs down to the parking lot. “What do you have for me?”
“Word’s out that you’re in the game, and you’re not gonna be happy about the players involved,” she said, as rapid tapping echoed from her end. There was no doubt Sabrina was digging deep into the search for whoever put out the contracts on Krew and Regina.
“Who are the players and who threw my people under the bus—I want to know specifics. Those are the three things I need to know,” I demanded, climbing into my truck and leave the door open. I glanced up at our room and saw an edge of the closed curtains move.
“Hold on. I text you the list of who the heavy hitters are, but…” More frantic tapping on reached my ears. “Shit, this doesn’t make sense,” Sabrina muttered.
“What doesn’t?” I dragged in a deep inhale from the cigarette and let the smoke fill my lungs before I released it into the chilly air.
“From the information you gave me on your friends, I don’t understand why these two are targeted. They grew up together—you already know that. What I’m not seeing is any connection between them for at least ten years. There’s nothing on the radar that’s bad. There’s no connection to any criminal organizations. They aren’t friends with any scumbags who need their faces rearranged.”
“That doesn’t give me much, Sabrina,” I huffed out, and climbed into my truck.
“Hold on bossman?—”
“Will you stop calling me that?” I slammed my fist down on the dash, as frustration fueled the need to do some damage.
“Chill. Ever think about alternatives to nicotine or coffee? Caf?—”
“Sabrina,” I hissed in warning.
“Sor-ry. Okay, I… wait.” More vigorous tapping met my ears. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“You already said that.” I barely refrained from yelling at the infuriating woman.
