Page 67 of Broken Mercy
“Easy, I threatened some old people.” Brenden’s having a harder time of it since he’s much bigger. I’m in the lead, since I know these passages better and I have a better sense of the house’s layout, but he’s keeping pace.
“Sorry, what now?”
“Don’t worry. They’re assholes.”
I screw up my face at him in the darkness broken only by a weakened beam of my iPhone’s light. “The Davises.”
“Took me a while to find the right angle. Did you know they have three kids?”
“Honestly didn’t think they were capable of reproducing.”
“Right, they really do come off like aliens, but it’s true. Their precious youngest works for JP Morgan as some shitty low level stock analyst. He also really likes hiring obscenely young-looking Asian hookers and snorting coke off their tits.”
“Oh wow.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t a fun weekend.”
I choose not to ask him for details. “So you used that against them?”
“I had to lean on the old lady pretty hard. Her husband’s not as sharp, which is actually a problem. He doesn’t know where the bodies are buried. But that old biddy? She’s the real killer.”
“Huh.” I try to picture old Mrs. Davis with a bloody knife in her hand and find it surprisingly easy. “But how did she know?”
“She doesn’t have details, but she’s aware of a ledger he keeps in a safe deposit box. Then it was a matter of elimination.”
“Wait a second.” I stop abruptly. He bumps into me in the darkness. “You don’t actually know where it is?”
“I have ideas.”
“We’re risking our lives on ideas?!”
He touches my wrist. “Stay calm.”
“Brenden!” I’m tempted to scream, but it wouldn’t do me any good. We’re half way between the main house and the private residence now. It was the secret, off-limits wing for a while, but they renovated it recently.
At least getting in here wasn’t difficult this time. The Sarkissians like to play at being civic leaders, which means using their amplespace for charitable functions. This evening’s event is for the children’s hospital and it’s being put on by a local minor league baseball team. The grounds are overrun by children, and those little bastards are fantastic at stirring up trouble and causing a general commotion. All we had to do was wait for one of them to knock over a fancy ice sculpture and there was our distraction. Annie’s singing not necessary.
“If you start panicking right now, someone might wonder why there are very large rats speaking English in the walls.”
I take a couple deep breaths to steady myself since he has a point. “If we get caught and I get tortured, I’m telling them everything about you. And I’m going to make up some really nasty rumors.”
“I’ll deserve it.”
“What’s the plan? I mean, for real?”
He shifts in the gloom. “Arsen keeps his important things in his personal area. I’m positive about that because I’ve already searched through most of the hidden spaces in the other sections.”
“That’s what you were doing in the piano?”
“Exactly. That safe only has cash and guns. Nothing fun.”
I’m tempted to go back. We’re breaking into my cousin’s inner sanctum on nothing more than a hunch, but I can see how his logic is leading him here. If he already exhausted the other options, surely this has to be all that’s left.
Reluctantly I start moving again. Arguing won’t do anything for me now and we’ve come too far to turn around. Only if I’mhonest with myself, I’m not pissed because he’s making some educated guesses.
I’m pissed that he might be right, and I still don’t know what that’ll mean for me.
We come around a bend in the walls and slow. Ahead, light bleeds through several cracks in the plaster. I drop my pace down to a crawl, listening intently as a voice filters through from a room we’re about to pass.
