Page 57 of Rough Hard Fierce (Chicago Underground 1-3)
The atmosphere of the room demanded I whisper. “What is it?”
“She’s so big,” Rick said, looking at Bailey.
Well, yeah. It’d been about a year since he’d last seen her, and then only for a brief hello one time when Shelly’d gotten an “emergency” call from a client and had dropped Bailey off at the bakery on her way. Which served to point out that the word “friends” was a bit of an exaggeration for the boss-employee relationship we’d had.
I cleared my throat and spoke normally. “We needed privacy for that?”
“Ah, no. It’s about your new guy.”
“Colin?” Damn. I had to stop volunteering information, especially with the cops nosing around.
“Yeah, Colin Murphy.”
I narrowed my eyes. I wasn’t even sure I’d said Colin’s first name when I told Rick about him, but I definitely wouldn’t have said his last. It hadn’t been a secret at the time, but it wasn’t Rick’s business.
“What about him?” I asked.
“I don’t know how much you know about him, but he runs some dirty shit. Anyway, he…” Rick trailed off.
“Spit it out,” I said.
“Well, I had some debts. You know, gambling, shit like that. Just around town, but he bought them up. Then he said I had to pay up.”
I glanced at Bailey, who’d managed to pull the stem off a red pepper, the use of swear words around her registering distantly in my mind. “Okay…did you want me to talk to him about it? Because I don’t really know if—”
“No, not like that,” he said. “He didn’t want the money.”
He looked at me expectantly. I didn’t get it. “But you just said…”
“He wanted the bakery shut down,” Rick said. “He wanted you out of a job.”
More crazy. Shouldn’t be surprised. “Why would Colin want me to be out of a job?”
He shook his head. “I’m not explaining this well. He wanted you out of a job so that you’d be dependent on him. For money. And since I was in a shitty situation, he could just make it go away. He knew I couldn’t pay up, but he didn’t care.”
“Wait. Colin came and said all this to you.”
“No, no. It was just one of their players. One of his brother’s guys.”
Yeah, Philip. It seemed as if everything circled back to him, and not in a good way. “But if it wasn’t Colin, then it could have just been…”
“He said I had to leave town,” Rick said. “And I wasn’t allowed to tell you why or give you anything or talk to you after that.”
I raised my eyebrows. Of course the thing I’d latched on to would be the useless piece of information, that he wasn’t ex
actly following the rules if he was talking to me now, was he?
Rick flushed. “I left, but I couldn’t stay away without you knowing what you’re getting yourself into with him.”
“Well, it’s a little late for warnings now. Jesus, Rick.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and I was gratified that at least he did look sorry.
But fuck, I was still annoyed at him. To tell me this at all. To tell me this now, when it was clearly too late for caution. I was entirely moved in and financially dependent on Colin, I was a known associate of his and Philip’s according to the cops, and Philip and Colin were now, independent of me, it seemed, handling my situation with Andrew. The cart of groceries that Bailey sat in, the groceries I couldn’t pay for without Colin’s money, underlined the entirety of my dependence.
Bailey picked that moment to throw the stemless pepper at Rick. I wanted to do that too. He caught it and tossed it back, where it hit her in the chest with a soft thud and fell to her lap.
Her eyes widened, and her lips quivered.
