Page 87 of Constantly Cotton
“Looking forward to some time with your boy,” Ace said. “Welcome to the club. Membership: everybody here, plus their boyfriends, so that’s six. What can we do for you?”
“Well, for one thing, you can come with me into the hotel, because I’ve got us a suite, and if you like, you can take a cold shower and we can figure out what the fuck to do with this thing. How’s that sound?”
Ace beamed at him, then got quiet. “Sounds good—but we’d better not tell Sonny. He likes hotels alot. He’d be downright sad to be left out.”
“Understood.” Burton and Jai both nodded, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Knowing that would make the difference between enjoying a cold shower and some clean sheets that night, and feeling awful every second of the day.
They took a second nap to make up for the shitty sleep in the RV, and Burton got them room service breakfast, which Ace enjoyed, and then Burton brought out a map and they started planning.
“Now see,” he said, “the kids were bound for this place here. I scoped it this morning while you two were snoring in the RV and it’s one of those estate places out in the middle of the desert. You take what looks like a side road, and suddenly you’re surrounded by trees and landscaping that is just sucking down water and does not belong there, and then the driveway turns to gravel, and there’s a roundabout in front of a fountain and a mansion the size of Victoriana.”
“You are shitting me,” Ace said, and Burton pursed his lips and shook his head.
“I am most assuredly not shitting you,” he said. “And I almost shit my pants when I got that far. I was on my motorbike and it wasn’t quiet. There were cameras and everything—but practically nobody there. Jason apparently has the entire base working on where those kids were supposed to go, and I’m telling you, something super hinky is going on. They were heading to this place—the chatter we were picking up is that there is some sort of auction theretonight, but there is now cross chatter about something major going down—some sort of big power transfer up north, and it looks like all the rats have jumped ship. So, we’ve got a conundrum here.”
Ace and Jai looked at each other, and Jai narrowed his eyes.
“Is not such a conundrum,” he said. “Are there bad guys in the house?”
“Yes,” Burton said, holding out his hands. “That house is run by one of the most bloodless Russian mobs in the southwest. There’s no sweet unsuspecting family in there—I climbed a tree and got pictures, and I’m telling you, it’s not quite the mansion fromScarfacebut it’s notnotthe mansion fromScarfaceeither.”
“I have not seen this movie,” Jai said. “Is good?”
Ace shrugged. “Super violent. You know all those memes and shit of Al Pacino with the big machine gun and the face iced in cocaine going, ‘Say hello to my little friend’?”
Jai’s eyes widened. “This is the house the children were going to?”
Burton nodded, and Ace knew he and Jai were on exactly the same wavelength—but he wasn’t sure if Burton was, so he wasn’t going to warn him.
“Why?” Burton asked. “Do you want to see it?”
Ace and Jai exchanged a longer glance.
“I think we need to drop the RV off there,” Jai said. “Do not worry. If you were caught on camera, you can wait back before the estate starts. It will just be Ace and me. We will not get into any trouble.”
Well, Ace figured, that was probably right. They’d either do what he was thinking they’d be doing, or they’d be dead.
BURTON DIDnot like this—he did not like this one bit. Thirty-six hours after finding Jai and Ace asleep in a hotel parking lot, he lay under some of that unnaturally placed foliage, a signal jammer in his pocket making damned sure none of the cameras caught his image, or Ace and Jai’s either. He was about a quarter of a mile from the house with the fountain, watching as Ace parked the RV in front of the giant architectural monstrosity and trying not to rethink his life choices, when his phone buzzed.
Don’t worry, they’re fine.
Oh, thank God. Ernie—even when he said woowoo shit, it was usually a comfort.
What about Jason?he asked.
Not so fine. Will need your help, but I don’t know where or how.
Fuck.Fuck.Goddammit.
Thanks, Ernie. How’re you and Sonny doing?
There was a long, long pause, and Burton’s heart froze in his chest.
Is anything wrong?
And another pause. For a moment, he thought about screaming Ace’s and Jai’s names, throwing them all in the tiny rental car Ace had suggested he get, and hauling them all back to Victoriana.
We have it handled,Ernie finally texted.Don’t worry. It’s all good.
