Jamie leans against the polished mirror in the elevator, sighing. “Same guy who tracked you down here. He’s good at finding things out.”
Not that good if he still thinks I’m freelancing, though. I’ve been working solely for Zee for the past year now. My name should be all but forgotten in the organized crime circles I used to dip my toes into every now and then. Things move fast in that world. People rise up and fall quickly. You can be king of an empire one day and dead and buried the next. “So you’re done with the army. And you found it necessary to come hunt me down in someone’s bed. To what end?”
The ever-present smile that’s been playing over Jamie’s lips fades as he straightens up, shoving his hands into the pockets of his faded out, torn jeans. “Laura,” he says.
“Laura?”
“Cade’s sister. You met her a couple of times a few years back. The blonde?”
“Ah, yeah. The chick with the huge crush on you?”
Jamie shakes his head, making an exasperated sound at the back of his throat. “How did everybody know about this but me?”
“Jesus, man. All you had to do was look at the girl. She was glued to you closer than your own shadow.” The elevator doors open and we both step out into the quiet lobby. The marble floor is cold under my bare feet, reminding me that I haven’t even bothered to put my shoes back on. Italian leather doesn’t really go with Adidas sweatpants. “So what about Laura, then? You get her knocked up and now Cade wants to murder you?”
“Fuck no. God. She was at Louis’ fundraiser three weeks ago. We had a small disagreement and she left. She said she was going home, but she never made it back there.”
The doorman holds the door open for us as we both exit the building. He refrains from saying anything, as all good doormen should, but I catch the bemused look on his face as he surveys my attire. He’s often here when I show up late at night; he knows what I normally look like and it isn’t like this.
Outside, my cousin’s best friend Cade is leaning up against what appears to be a motorcycle—a big one, with a matte black tank and a polished chrome frame. Another motorcycle is parked next to it—Jamie’s apparently. My cousin collects an open-faced helmet from the seat and puts it on. “Michael, you remember Cade, right?”
“Of course.” Cade holds out his hand and I shake it. “Sorry to hear about your sister, man.”
Cade nods, looks down at his boots, and then looks off down the street, swallowing hard. When I was a kid and I would spend summers visiting Jamie and my highly racist, not at all awesome uncle, Cade and Laura were ever-present at the house, always joined at the hip, always joking around and creating too much noise. They were inseparable. It’s clear, no matter how hard he tries to hide it, that’s he’s struggling to keep his shit together.
“Yeah. Thanks,” he says, his voice, gruff. “We’ll find her. And when we do, whoever took her’s gonna know the meaning of agony.”
“So you think she was taken?”
Cade gives me a strange look. “What do you mean?”
“Well. Could she have just...left? Decided to take off on her own?”
Both Cade and Jamie shake their heads at the same time, equally as emphatic. “No. No way,” Cade says. “She would never have done that. She was just made partner at our father’s firm. She just bought herself a new house, too. She wouldn’t just go without telling me. And if by some weird twist of fate she did decide to just up and leave, she definitely would have called me by now to let me know she was okay.”
“Have her cards been used?” It’s reasonable to assume they’ve checked, since it seems they had absolutely no problem checking mine.
Jamie swings his leg over his motorcycle, producing keys from the pocket of his jeans. “Nothing. Not a single withdrawal or charge since that night,” he says. “Can you follow us? We need your help with something.”
The sun’s just coming up over the lip of the unseen horizon, long fingers of burnt orange light filtering in between the tall buildings, casting stretched out shadows across the sidewalk. I squint at my cousin, trying to figure out what exactly he needs from me at this ungodly hour of the day. He’s family, though. There was a time not too long ago that we were like brothers. He knows I’ll do anything for him, the same way I know he’ll do anything for me should the need arise. It’s as simple as that.
“Sure.”
******