Page 56 of Creole Kingpin
I push off the couch and stride over. “I thought we already established that. Why are you getting so excited about it now?” I’m not taking any chances with this shit. I need to know for sure that Magnolia is safe and no one else is coming after her. It’s the least I can fucking do.
Trey spins his computer around on the long kitchen table. “Because I got a name.” He points to the screen. “Almost everyone forgets about high school yearbooks saved on microfilm—and I just got a facial recognition match to the picture we took of the body to a member of the class of 2010 in Brownsville, Texas. It’s him. Thankfully, whoever wiped him wasn’t as good as I am.” He grins. “And now we have ourselves aname,and that means I can keep digging and see what else they missed.”
“Who was he?”
“Ricardo Ortiz.”
“Keep digging. Find everything you can. And I mean fuckingeverything, Trey.”
“On it, boss,” he says, turning his computer back around and cracking his knuckles. “He should’ve paid the big bucks, because if we’d been the ones to erase him, there wouldn’t be a damn thing to find.”
* * *
I snatch up my phone when I see Jules’s number flash across the display.Finally.I’ve been waiting for an update on Magnolia. I tap the screen to answer and lift it to my ear.
“What’s going on?”
“Got a problem, boss.”
I set down the pieces of the gun I’ve been cleaning to keep my mind off things I’ve got no control over. Waiting has never been my strong suit, and being so close to Magnolia and still having to keep my distance today is even worse than being two thousand miles away. But at least our entire arsenal is cleaned and oiled.
“What kind of problem?” I brace, waiting for him to tell me she busted him near her house and told him to fuck off.
“Remember that club Magnolia used to manage?”
Instantly, I recall thesex clubshe used to manage a couple of years back. “I don’t like where this is going, Jules,” I tell him as my jaw tenses and my palm wraps around a suppressor like I need help holding on to my sanity.
“Sorry, boss. But ... she’s in there, and I can’t get past the gate. Would’ve called sooner when I figured out where she was going, but I didn’t have service.”
I drop the suppressor on the rubber mat I laid out on the living room coffee table as static fills my ears.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” My roar fills the room, and Trey practically jumps out of his seat as a burst of anger shoots through me. “She’s at the fuckingsex club right now?”
“What do you want me to do?”
That woman ... I could throttle her.
I force myself to wrestle the anger into submission before I speak. “Wait there. I’m on my way.”
“Got it. I’ll be up the road from the gate.”
As soon as I hang up, I look at Trey, who has a big shit-eating grin on his face. “Don’t say a motherfucking word.”
Trey’s laughter follows me as I storm out of the room. Lightning fast, I wash the grease and oil off my hands, put on some decent clothes, and head for the garage.
As I slide into the driver’s seat of the Rolls, I dial the one number I swore I wouldn’t need.
“I told you not to call me.”
“I need a favor,” I tell the king of New Orleans as I haul ass out of the driveway. I already know I won’t be able to get inside the club without Mount pulling strings, and I’mgetting insidethat fucking club.
“And you think your best choice was to call me? I thought I was clear when you sat in my office. You’re here for one reason, and one reason only. You’re on borrowed time, Moses.”
“Get me into the club. The one outside town. You know what I’m talking about.”
The other end of the call is silent for moments. I have a feeling Mount would shoot me on the spot for giving him orders, but I don’t give a fuck. I’m a man on a mission, and nothing is standing in my way.
“Did you tell her yet?”
