Page 40 of Merciless Angel
Cash eyed me as we followed Blaze out of the building and back to the car parked at the curb. “She’s still a person, Daire, and she’s obviously in trouble. Why are you here if she means as much to you as a can opener?”
I scoffed, brushing off his pointed remark. “I don’t like people touching my things.”
With Blaze driving like a maniac, we made it to Zane’s house in half the time it should have taken. The place was dark, the driveway empty.
“What if his parents are here?” Cash asked.
Blaze was already out of the car. “Then they’ll find out what a fucked up piece of trash their son is.”
He pounded on the door and laid on the doorbell. Anyone inside would definitely hear him. When several minutes passed and nobody answered, Blaze kicked the door open. I was happy to let him take the lead when he stormed through the place in search of Clover. It quickly became apparent that the house was empty.
“Fuck.” Blaze slammed a fist into the wall, leaving a gaping hole behind. “Where the hell would he have taken her?”
“Come on, let’s get out of here before a neighbor calls the cops.” With a hand on his shoulder, I steered him out of the house.
Once we were back in the car, we drove around to a few shady motels asking if someone matching Zane’s description had checked in. Nothing.
“We don’t have many options,” I said when we sat in a motel parking lot watching the sun rise. “We can talk to Raina and see if she has any idea where Zane would go, or we can hit up the Sinners. Strike a deal and see if they can dig up any other addresses associated with him.”
“Going to Raina is a bad idea,” Cash pointed out. “She probably has no idea that Clover is missing. Getting her involved might cause more problems.”
Personally, seeing Raina and the Gods was the last thing I wanted. There was bad blood between us. If she found out that Clover had gone missing on our watch, she’d blame us, and things would get nasty. I wasn’t in the mood to scrap with the Gods right now.
Blaze shook his head. “No, not Raina. We’ll try the Sinners.”
The Sinners were a solid bet. They were hackers who knew how to do pretty much anything with a computer and internet access. If there was any information out there that might give us a place to look, they would find it. It wouldn’t come for free though.
“How much is this girl worth to you, Blaze?” I asked as we drove to the Sinners’ house. They did their work out of some basement in the place they shared. “You know the Sinners’ help doesn’t come cheap.”
Blaze didn’t answer for a minute. He fumbled to get a cigarette out and light it, filling his precious car with smoke. “We still have that thirty grand in the account, right?”
I sighed, letting my head fall against my seat. “Yeah, you know we do.”
“Then we have something to bargain with.”
I turned in my seat to exchange a look with Cash who merely shrugged. We weren’t swimming in cash, although we had stockpiled a decent amount. We got paid in plenty of ways. Some people paid us to go after someone who’d wronged them and escaped justice. We also jumped assholes like the Gods and others involved in crime carrying large quantities of money. Sometimes we simply took what we could from those we went after. It all added up.
“Pretty early for an unannounced visit,” Cash observed when we sat in the car outside the Sinners’ house.
“It’s an emergency. I’m sure they’ll understand.” Again Blaze was the first out of the car and up the front walk. He moved with a fearless gait, determined as hell.
A camera out front stared at us as we approached. I assumed there was a lot more security here than that one camera. A voice came through an intercom, demanding to know what we wanted.
“Sorry to come by so early,” Blaze said. “We need help finding a missing girl. It’s an emergency.”
There was a long pause that made me think they would turn us away. A minute later, the front door opened. A blond guy with shaggy hair and a scar under his eye stared out at us. I’d met him once at a party. His name was Felix.
“Come inside, boys. You’re lucky that I’m still up. I haven’t gone to bed yet.” He stepped back to allow us inside. Quickly closing the door behind us, he secured half a dozen locks and hit some buttons on a security system. I’d call it paranoid but I figured they had their reasons to be concerned with safety.
Felix led us into the living room and down to the basement. That’s where an entire wall of computers had been set up. He plopped down into one of the many chairs and eyed us curiously.
“Tell me more about this missing girl. What exactly do you need me to do?”
I let Blaze explain the situation while I gawked at the massive setup before me. Impressive. No wonder these guys had a reputation for getting shit done. They had a lot of equipment.
Felix began clicking around, typing Zane’s name into a search bar. “Zane Larson? No problem. Should be easy enough. Let’s talk payment.”
“What were you thinking?” I asked, cutting in before Blaze could promise this guy anything he wanted.