Page 104 of Hart of Darkness
32
Dillon
Isat in a booth in an all-night diner not far from the paint factory, waiting on Detective Hughes. I wanted to feel him out before I brought him over to the factory. My brother didn’t want anything to do with cops. So he’d stayed behind to watch over Grace and Dom in the event Dom found where Miguel was holed up and decided to tackle things on his own.
When I’d left, Dom wasn’t having any luck on finding more properties owned by Marco Holdings, and neither was his buddy. I believed that Miguel wasn’t stupid enough to put all his eggs in one basket. He knew Grace had probably heard too much while she was with him. Not only that, but after the raid on the house, I was sure Miguel had probably locked down his organization any way he could.
The bell on the door dinged, and Hughes sauntered through it, heading directly toward me. He looked tired and a tad pissed off. I imagined he hadn’t been too happy to get out of bed in the wee hours of the morning. We only had three hours left before Miguel showed up with Maggie. I’d been trying for hours to get ahold of Hughes. After I’d left several messages and called the precinct, he finally returned my call, and only because I’d mentioned that Maggie was in danger. I hadn’t given more detail than that. I was afraid if I had, he would’ve alerted his team, in particular Rick.
He slid into the booth across from me with a crease in between his bushy eyebrows. He combed his mustache with his fingers. “Start talking.”
Since we didn’t have a great relationship, his tone was rather brusque.
I played with a napkin as the aroma from my coffee cup wafted up my nose.
The plump waitress came over with a mug in one hand and a pot of coffee in the other. “Coffee?” she asked Ted.
Hughes nodded.
Once she had filled his cup and gone back behind the counter, Hughes said, “Talk.”
I raked my gaze over his skin, which was weathered and worn, no doubt from years of fighting crime on the streets of Boston. I gnawed on my bottom lip, debating where to start—with Maggie or the snitch in his ranks. If I began with Maggie, Hughes wouldn’t hear anything else. If I came out and told him about Rick, he wouldn’t believe me. He would storm out and get Rick on the phone. Rick would deny that he was feeding Miguel information, then Hughes would get his team together to search for Maggie while Rick alerted Miguel.
Maybe bringing Hughes into this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe Dom and Grace were right.
He eyed me over the rim of his coffee cup. “Hart, are you going to tell me why you got me out of bed or not?”
“I get the feeling you don’t like me. You certainly don’t like my brother, Denim. And you have no reason to believe what I’m about to say. But I don’t want you to fly out of here without considering the consequences.”
He slammed his cup down.
The waitress cocked an eyebrow.
Aside from the waitress, the two of us, and the cook in the back room who had poked his head out earlier, the diner was empty.
Hughes pressed his elbows into the table, pushing his head forward. “Get to the point, Hart.” He was a second away from tearing me to shreds.
I sat back. “I have reason to believe that you have a guy on your team that works for Miguel Rivera.”
He didn’t move. His nicotine breath sprayed with spit. “What are you smoking?”
You’re wasting time. Tell him quickly.
I sighed. “Here’s the deal. You know Hunt Thompson. You seemed to like him when you saw him at my shelter. He has a source who says Rick is the rat. I need you to believe me, or at least try, because Maggie has been kidnapped.”
His angular jaw bounced off the Formica tabletop. “You’re bullshitting me.”
It was my turn to lean in. “Really? I got you out of bed to tell you lies? Listen, I want your help. But if you bring your team in on this, Maggie will be dead. Miguel told me that I couldn’t tell you about him kidnapping Maggie or where I’ll be meeting him”—I glanced at my watch—“in two hours and fifty minutes. And if I do, he’ll get a call, and then I’ll never see Maggie again. You’ll never either.”
Ever so slowly, his body moved until his back was against the vinyl booth bench, seething either at the situation or at me.
I checked on the waitress, if for no other reason than to give Hughes a minute to process what I’d told him. The middle-aged woman was making another pot of coffee. When I swung my attention back to Detective Hughes, he was giving me a death glare full of disbelief and rage.
“You might not like me. I know I lied to you when you asked me if I’d seen Nadine. I’m sorry about that. I was thinking of Maggie, and she wanted to tell you.”
He sighed as though he’d needed my apology.
I gripped my coffee cup. “I don’t bullshit. It’s one of the things I learned from my father.” Not that my old man had actually taught me anything. I’d learned by observing, and he was the type of man to tell it like it was. “I care for Maggie, a lot. I will kill Miguel if he so much as hurts her. That, you can bank on.”
