Page 126 of Tenderfoot

Since this didn’t make sense in the current convo, we all looked to her, but only Luna asked, “Sorry?”

“Whatever Kevin is hiding,” she answered. “Whatever he knew Trevor was into.” She turned to me. “You said Javi said he talked yesterday?”

I nodded.

She shook her head.

“If he did, if he told them everything, then they’d know what’s going on, they’d put a stop to it, and someone wouldn’t have come after Cap and Gabe today,” she replied.

I harked back to what I saw pass between her and Gabe earlier, and that she might have been freaking right alongside Raye when stuff started going down with Cap and Gabe in their vehicle tussle and chase, but I couldn’t get a lock on it before she spoke again.

“Kevin’s weak. Those guys put even minor pressure on him, he’d spill his guts. The fact that he didn’t means this is big. He’s scared. And he’s not scared of the Nightingale guys, so that means he’s scared of something even scarier than the Nightingale guys.”

We all sipped our palomas pensively on this thought because it was difficult to conjure up something scarier than the Nightingale guys. Especially after what we’d just seen. You know, with pulling into a driveway, stopping on a dime, hauling butt out of it armed, taking out tires with one shot, sprinting toward a vehicle with two men in it you knew meant you harm, extricating those men and subduing them in ten seconds flat, then disappearing them from the premises about five minutes later.

Yeah.

That was all kinda scary.

Kick butt and hot AF.

But scary.

We all took another contemplative sip of our palomas.

Jessie snapped out of it first. “You got anything on this for us, Titus?”

“Baby girl, you know I champion you women’s mission,” Titus said. “What you also need to know is, you get into this shit, you take baby steps. You don’t jump from feelin’ your way on the streets, developing a network, laying the foundation of a reputation, to wading in when a man gets his throat cut.”

More wise words.

But this time they were also scary.

“That said,” Titus carried on, “since it’s obvious I can’t stop you, if I knew something, I’d help you. But I got no lock on this. I’ve asked around, no one knows this guy who got whacked. No one knows dick. And before you ask, those two men who came in and out of my garage, I’ve never seen them either.”

Well, it was sweet he’d be in to help, but that wasn’t helpful.

We all took another sip of our palomas.

“Bitches!” Jinx snapped.

We all looked to her.

“He just gave you a clue,” she stated.

He did? I thought.

“He did?” Willow asked.

“If Titus doesn’t know the players,” Jinx explained, “this isn’t street.”

“Mm-hmm,” Titus agreed.

Oh boy.

We all looked at each other and not one of us did it easy.

Because, if this wasn’t street, we were wading into something else that was new, not just a guy who got dead in an ugly way.

---