Page 48 of Huge Dynamite
Grinning, he grabs a beer from the cooler, pops the top, and hands it to me.
“Yup, and anything else I can do. Just glad to be alive, you know?”
“I do.”
Holding up my bottle in a toast, we smile at one another. The kid’s been through way worse than me. He was in Sing Sing for three years, but I’m the only other person here who knows what it’s like to have been on the inside—and how fucking good it feels to be out. Shit, even the crap jobs, like cleaning the bar, are a downright pleasure when you know you’re doing it by choice.
Looking around, I only see a handful of the guys. “Where is everyone?”
Matt dries a glass as we talk. “Don’t know about the rest, but Seneca and Bullseye are home, and Bullet and Nick are in the back.”
“Thanks.” I make my way to the back room of Hoppa’s Taphouse. Bullet’s there, pouring over some books.
Nick looks up from his stack when I walk in. “Where you been all day?”
“The construction company. Since they agreed to our deal, I knew they’d be on our side. I figured I’d spend some time nosing around to see what they know about the cement mess.” Truth is I haven’t stopped thinking about Holly for a moment since she left my place last week, and I’m doing anything possible to keep my mind off of her. Grabbing a chair, I hop up and sit on a nearby counter, sliding the chair under my feet.
“You find out anything?” Nick looks concerned.
“Nothing we didn’t already know. My guys at the company have no idea how the cement got blocked.” Taking another long pull from my bottle, I place it down next to me and then turn to Bullet. He hasn’t so much as glanced up from the stack of papers he’s plowing through. “What are you looking for?”
Grumbling, he looks up. “Money in the budget, what else?”
“We’re short?” Hopping off the counter, I walk up to him. “Impossible. I’ve been through the numbers about a billion times.”
“No, we’re fine for the time span we’d planned,” Nick explains. “But with my proposed extension and the concrete holdup, we’re starting later, which means guys are on retainer—”
“I’m sorry about that,” I interrupt Nick. “I had no idea the Dogs had their hand in the unions now.”
“None of us did.”
Blink!A text comes in, and my heart nearly jumps into my throat. Closing my eyes just for a second, I silently will it to be Holly texting. I feel like shit about the way I left things with her the other day, and all I want is an opportunity to make it right. But considering the way she left me, after what I said… damn. I haven’t bothered reaching out to her because she probably never wants to speak to me again.
Still, I have to look. Glancing at it, I see the text came from a cell number I don’t recognize but with our area code.
Normally, I’d just delete the damned thing, but something in my gut is telling me to look at it.
Scrolling down, there’s a picture. It’s grainy and hard to see, but—is that Holly? It’s pixelated, but squinting and focusing hard, I can just make out the silhouette of Holly standing next to a child in front of an old building. Two more texts come in, and then two more. Each has a picture of Holly coming and going from that same building. The last picture is of her hugging a little boy. Blowing up the picture, I see the address on the building identifies this as Main Street in Greenville.
Greenville is Dog turf.
From what I can tell from the time and date stamps, Holly has been in a building on Dog turf for the past week, and they’ve been snapping pictures of her every damned day.
One more text comes in, but this time, it’s only a short message:To really be a saint, you have to be dead.
“What the fuck?”
Jumping to my feet, Nick and Bullet look at me.
“What’s going on?” Nick asks.
“It must be the Dogs. Someone just texted me a week’s worth of pictures of Holly, and the last text is a death threat. She’s standing in front of a building in Greenville.”
“That’s Dog turf,” Bullet says, standing tall.
“I’ve gotta go.”
Hurrying to the door, I hear Bullet and Nick call after me.
