Page 147 of Always: A Legacy Novel

Cross wasn’t up for that shit.

Zeke had a habit, too. Girls like that.

“Something she’s going to snort up her nose?” Cross asked.

Zeke shot Cross a look. “Mind yours, man, and I’ll mind mine.”

Sure, sure.

“What’s the minimum tonight?”

“Twenty grand to enter, four and up for betting. Find one of their bookies and get on that, Cross.”

“Shit, they raised it?” Cross asked.

Zeke nodded. “Someone got picked up last race, so anyone who wants to be in a car on the street needs to make sure they want it bad enough to pay for it, I guess.”

“Who’s racing?”

“The usual bunch, minus that guy who came down from Vegas from the last time. Guess his car got totaled in a rollover a month back.”

“The Porsche?”

Zeke flicked his joint to the ground, and let out one last exhale of weed-scented smoke. “Yep. Fuck me, that was a nice car.”

Cross scowled up at the dark sky. “That’s who I wanted my money on tonight.”

“Too bad. Five to one on—”

“Don’t care. I wanted Vegas.”

“You’ve just got a hard-on for Porsches.”

That was also true, but it didn’t mean he would admit it.

“There you are, girl,” Zeke said as a familiar redhead came to stand in front of the car. In a too-tight, too-short dress and six-inch heels, Jade’s attention was on something down the road instead of her man. “Did you find what you needed, or what?”

Jade turned on Zeke and Cross. Her cocaine-blown eyes stared back at them.

Coke was a vicious, expensive bitch. It could make a person feel invincible, but without it, that same person suddenly became useless. Cross knew how dangerous a relationship with coke could be, and that’s why he stayed way the hell away from it. But it was Jade’s best friend. Two clean lines picked her up off the floor in the morning, and four shakily made lines kept her from sleeping at night.

Cross didn’t know how in the hell Zeke did it, considering the guy never used more than weed or liquor. Maybe it wasn’t the type of girls he dated that Zeke had a bad habit for, but his desire to fix those girls.

“Somebody was holding,” she said, “but it wasn’t who I thought would be tonight. Doesn’t matter; they’ve got better shit anyway.”

“Oh?” Zeke asked.

Jade sniffed. “Andino Marcello’s supplying about twenty cars down. His cousin, too.”

“John?” Cross asked, surprised at that.

John was a little old to be dealing drugs at something like this, considering he was working on his button for his in to the Marcello family. Well, that was what Cross overheard from conversations he wasn’t supposed to hear. Plus, John was a little crazy—he was more likely to be one of the bastards behind a car racing, if he was going to be here at all.

Jade’s paranoid-high gaze turned on Cross. “No, the girl. Everybody just calls her Catty when she’s out with him. Sometimes she deals, sometimes she doesn’t. This is the first time I’ve seen them at the races, though.”

Cross stiffened.

Zeke laughed beside him. “Shit, really?”