Page 125 of The Vigilant

The Straw Sandal’s eyes widened, and then he barked out a bloody laugh.

“Little Dog wasn’t guarding anyone.”

“If he wasn’t guarding anyone, then he was the one being guarded,” I said slowly, filling in the holes of his cryptic answers. I took the twitch of his lip as confirmation. “Why was he being guarded?”

Kang wasn’t part of the Wah Ching. He wouldn’t be afforded their protection. Not like that: in a penthouse with a high-ranking member of the organization bringing him drugged women to fuck.

I pressed the flat of the knife under his chin, forcing it higher and scanning his eyes. And there, I finally saw it.

“He’s family to you,” I said slowly. “Not a son…”

I pressed the knife harder until he couldn’t back out of its bite.

“My nephew,” he snarled, and when I didn’t let up, the truth continued to tumble out. “After you attacked him and then when some of my other…associates…went missing”—the men Tynan had killed at the townhouse—“I moved him to the penthouse to protect him.”

That was why Kang disappeared. Why Creed found Carson’s associates shuttling back and forth to the apartment building. Not because Mara was there, but because Kang was.

And the Straw Sandal was protecting him this whole time. Because of me.

“Where’s my nephew? What have you done with him?”

I stepped back and faced Tynan, feeling only an overwhelming sense of failure, even though he’d given up more information.

“What’s the passcode to your phone?”

“I’m not—ahh!” he shouted in pain as Tynan took a screwdriver and pressed it into the open wound on his leg.

“You want to walk again, you open your fucking phone, and you start talking.”

The Straw Sandal panted like he was in the middle of a marathon, resisting for one more nanosecond until Tynan shoved the tool deeper and the man screamed in pain.

“Little Dog created an app—for women. To find women,” he said, sweat mixing with the blood that dripped down his brow. “Word got out, and he was approached by a man?—”

“Carson,” Tynan interrupted, threatening to spear him with the driver again.

“Yes,” the Straw Sandal spat. “Brock Carson. He came to Little Dog with a proposition. Protection and distribution for his product by my associates.”

“And Kang was allowed to make that kind of deal?”

The Straw Sandal scowled.

“No, he wasn’t,” I said, picking up on the nuance of his face and adding it to what I knew about Jack Kang. “He made the deal because he wanted to be inducted into the…organization. He was trying to prove his worth.”

By bringing them the source of ninetypercent of the heroin coming out of Pakistan.

The bloodied brute only snarled at me, replying to Tynan like I’d take his refusal to speak to me as a slight.

“He overstepped. But my associates were interested in the deal.” He turned his head and spat another glob of blood onto the white floor. “Carson wanted a show of our capabilities, and in exchange he’d provide a sample of the product.”

“He wanted Mara.”

“He wanted a girl with specific…attributes, and Little Dog found one.”

Mara.

“Whenyoucompromised him”—he said you with the same tone as he did when he called me a cunt—“Carson threatened to back out.”

“So you handed over Mara.”

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