Page 39

“You read faster than that.”

“Maybe I’m tired.”

Mathias takes another sip of coffee and shrugs, not pressing it.

I look down again and spot a few additional surveillance stills. Kamden beside Wade’s truck, Kamden being pulled from the passenger side, Kamden with Wade’s hand around the back of his neck.

Zooming the printed image is impossible, but I don’t need clarity to recognize the body language.

“What was their relationship?”

Mathias answers, “Wade was sleeping with the mother.”

Not Kamden’s friend, or partner, or associate. His mother’s boyfriend. John’s son was dragged to a drug deal by Sherry’s boyfriend.

“Any indication the kid was involved?” I ask.

“Nope,” Mathias says.

“Prior deals?”

“None.”

“Then he’s a civilian.”

“Yes,” Mathias says without hesitation.

Normally, this would become a discussion about what Kamden actually saw and whether fear alone would keep him quiet.

But Mathias hasn’t called me here after midnight because he wants me to frighten a teenager.

“He’s a witness, Adrien. And we still don’t know why he was there. Wade could’ve had him recording.”

The boy John begged me to protect survives eleven years without me, and somehow, out of every criminal organization in every city he could have stumbled near, he ends up standing at the edge of mine.

No, maybe this is good. Just thinking about the boy in the hands of some other fucker makes me feel homicidal.

Mathias taps the folder. “Handle it.”

The word hits like a bullet. Between us, it means kill.

I tuck the file under my arm and start toward the door.

“And Adrien?” I pause at the door and glance at him over my shoulder. “If there’s something I should know, tell me now.”

Mathias gave me work when I had no idea what to do with myself. He never treated the missing arm as weakness or inspiration. He trusted what I could do and paid me well to do it. Over the years, that became something almost resembling friendship, though neither of us is sentimental enough to name it aloud.

Still, some things belong to the dead.

John is one of them.

“There’s nothing.”

Mathias holds my gaze several seconds longer, then quietly says, “He’s a kid.”

“Nineteen is an adult,” I answer.

“You know what I mean. Don’t make him suffer.”