Page 2 of Mess With Me

There’s a long pause. Ford’s not used to me not paying attention.

“Yeah,” he says. “Hey, you okay?”

“Fine,” I bark.

He chuckles. “That’s more like it.” Then his voice turns sober. “Griff, I said that feeling you had the other day that something’s up with Lionel. I…don’t think you’re wrong.”

That’s enough to bring me fully back. “Tell me.”

“You said you thought he hadn’t been himself for a while.”

“He hasn’t.” It’s been a few months. The changes are subtle, but I know how to read people. I’ve worked for the man for a decade. I know him better than half my siblings, which says a lot—I’ve got four of them.

“I saw three more locked meetings on his calendar,” Ford says. “When I asked him about them, he gave me the brush-off.”

Something tickles along the length of my spine. Up until a few months ago, Ford and I had Lionel’s full confidence. As his seconds-in-command, he’d run everything by us for our professional opinions. Even meeting potential clients, many of whom were highly vulnerable political targets.

“He did the same for me, telling me the meetings were personal appointments.”

“I call bullshit,” Ford says.

I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. Ford didn’t believe me when I first brought it up. I don’t give a shit about credit, but on this matter particularly, I wish I didn’t feel vindicated. There was a time I would have called Lionel a second father. But I can’t reconcile that man with his recent behavior.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you at first,” Ford says. “But to be fair, you’re suspicious as fuck about pretty much everything. To hear you voicing that shit about Lionel—I didn’t want to see it. I half convinced myself it was just time for you to take a vacation.”

“I’m on vacation right now.”

“A day off is not a vacation.”

“I took the back roads.”

Ford scoffs. “Driving isn’t a vacation, either, even if you go the long route.”

“I’d beg to differ.” Driving here via the old winding highways of upstate New York and Vermont last night on my Bonneville—a bike I fully restored in my workshop this year—felt like a holiday. So did coming home to my cabin outside Quince Valley, where I hadn’t been in three weeks since we’d been on assignment in Queens.

“Is that all you noticed?” I ask, already knowing it won’t be. That sick feeling I first felt when I started noticing Lionel’s odd behavior spreads in my guts. Instinct tells me something’s off, and not just a little bit. Inadvertently, I turn back to where the woman went, as if looking for an antidote. To my surprise, she’s still there, only farther up at the end of the treed path that runs parallel to the one I’m on now. She’s paused to look at her phone.

Her whole posture is stiff.

She looks the way I feel.

I force myself to turn away again and begin walking toward the wedding site, which I can see and hear through the trees up ahead—at least three hundred people are here, and they make a good amount of noise. If she’s not my client and not in imminent danger—and I know she’s not—then she’s not my problem. I have problems all on my own without looking for more.

“No, that’s not all I noticed,” Ford says.

I slow my pace.

There’s a long pause again, like he’s considering how to phrase something. “Lionel wants us to wind down the surveillance on Creelman.”

I freeze. The music’s louder here, the din of the crowd only a dozen yards from where I stand. “I’m not sure I heard you right.”

“No, you heard me right,” Ford says grimly. “He’s dismantled the team.”

“Thefuck?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. We’ve been staking out Creelman for weeks, with guys watching his every move.

Our company isn’t law enforcement, though several of our colleagues are ex-cops or military. McCrae & Associates protects good guys and helps push good ideas. Often, that means watching bad guys. Like in the case of our current client, an executive at a construction company whose company is doing deals with criminal organizations. Vincent Creelman’s a higher-up in one of those organizations—one that’s been the target of drug, extortion, and worst of all in my mind, sex-trafficking allegations, though law enforcement has never been able to make anything stick.

“Creelman’s a thug, through and through,” I grit out into the phone. “This doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

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