Page 49 of A Breath of Life (Shadowy Solutions #4)

He hit the gas, peeling away from the curb as the security guard shouted something I couldn’t make out.

In the side mirror, I watched the man tug a radio off his belt and speak into it.

Heart thundering, lungs wheezing, I buckled up and was about to say something to my cousin when a figure standing at a different rear exit caught my attention.

The man spoke into a cell phone but didn’t seem to notice us. He wore a black suit and tie and might have blended with every other guy in the vicinity of a courthouse, except that I recognized him.

“Shit.” I spun, watching the man as Costa flew past. It was him all right.

Mr. Hi Glitter Converse cleaned up nicely.

Had I not spent the previous day keeping such a close eye on him, I might not have noticed at all.

Spiffed out in a suit and polished dress shoes, he appeared ten years older and far more threatening.

At the security guard’s shouts, the man’s attention shifted. Registering the officer’s alarm and swiftly finding its source, the man noticed our fast-fleeing vehicle. Whether he had enough time to take note of the car’s occupants or license plate, I didn’t know.

By the time we rounded the corner and were out of sight, I wanted to throw up. Perhaps I’d gotten away unseen—at least from the people who mattered—perhaps I hadn’t. I banked on the former since processing the latter conjured scenarios I didn’t like.

Costa took us onto the main road and drove without speaking for a long time while I caught my breath.

His white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel spoke volumes.

I had disconnected our call once we were together, but I stared at my phone, at Diem’s contact number, debating if I should call him, alert him, or at least see if he was okay.

“Don’t.” Costa’s warning burrowed into my scrambled brain. “Not yet.”

“Why?” I knew why. If they had Diem, they had his phone. If they had his phone, they might be able to track my call and determine my location. I’d lost them—hopefully—for now.

“Shut it off.”

“My phone?”

“Yes. Until I can look at it.”

“It’s not tapped. They haven’t had the chance.”

“Tallus, shut it off. With all due respect, what the fuck do you know?”

I shut off my phone. “Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer. Costa took the Gardiner Expressway all the way to Kipling before exiting. From there, he weaved among streets seemingly at random, eventually pulling into a strip mall .

He parked and ordered me to get out.

“What are we doing? Where are we?”

Instead of answering, he pulled out his phone and texted someone as he aimed for a set of crossing lights on the corner.

I followed, scanning for a tail, still jittery from my flight out of the courthouse.

My worry for Diem escalated. I wanted him to call, text, or give me some sign he was okay, and I was overreacting.

What if he went back to the courthouse and found me gone?

What if my bathroom visitor was nothing more than an elderly judge with irritable bowel syndrome who decided he wanted to shit without an audience?

Diem liked to say I jumped the gun too often without thinking. Was this one of those times?

We crossed the street and walked for several blocks before Costa aimed for a parking lot near a nondescript office building. At a mid-sized Audi SUV in sleek silver, he hit a different fob on his keychain, and we were greeted by the click of doors unlocking.

He wrenched open the passenger door. “Get in.”

I stared from the vehicle to my cousin, waiting for an explanation. He had keys, so we weren’t stealing it, but what the hell?

“It’s Tia’s. We’re borrowing her vehicle since I was probably caught on camera picking you up.

I’m not worried about getting in trouble with the courthouse security, but they might trace my plates and send someone out to find me and ask questions since you drew attention to yourself.

I’d rather delay that happening. Also, we can’t be sure your new friends didn’t have eyes on you. ”

It made sense. I didn’t ask questions and got in.

Costa drove to a Thai restaurant a dozen or so blocks away.

It was long past lunch hour, and the place was quiet.

He requested a secluded table at the rear of the room, far from the handful of other customers.

I wasn’t sure I was hungry, all things considered, but when my cousin ordered several dishes at random, I didn’t object.

Once we were alone, he folded his hands together on the table’s surface and pinned me with a look that almost made me cower. “Talk. Everything.”

I was fourteen again, facing off with my bully cousin. Except, the threat of wedgies and noogies wasn’t in the cards. Costa was on my side this time. No matter how unhappy he seemed, our relationship had moved beyond violence and slurs.

So, I talked, only pausing when the server delivered our food. I started the story on the day we found Clarence dying in the alley and his insistence that we take the finely crafted card from him and get rid of it.

I told my cousin everything that happened between then and now. About Diem’s abduction, the threat against his grandmother, the missing man we were supposed to locate, and our suspicions that Clarence might have hired Ace and his guys to murder his wife and couldn’t pay his debt.

I told him about Mr. Hi Glitter Converse, about Diem’s determination to locate the place he’d been held, and about Memphis’s visit to an establishment called The Royal Whispering Ace.

Lastly, I explained about Diem’s brilliant idea to leave me in the bathroom at the courthouse and his excursion into the city to locate a half-remembered building with a funky wooden door.

“I think they figured out he was gone.” I poked at the mound of pad Thai unenthusiastically before opting for a spring roll instead.

“What did you do with the card?”

“I put it in the toilet tank before running. I hoped it would delay them for a time. No one saw me leave the bathroom, and I’m pretty sure it was only a security guard on my heels, but the Converse guy was outside as we pulled away. He might have seen me.”

“Give me your phone.”

I slid it across the table, and my cousin turned it on. He spent a while fiddling with the inner programming. When he finished, he placed it in the center of the table. Costa scanned the restaurant once before pulling up Diem’s contact information.

“I’ve installed a generic blocking app and removed as many location tracking abilities as I can without turning this into a government experiment. Call him. If he answers, say nothing. Let me assess his tone.”

I huffed. “It will be hostile no matter if he’s strolling down the street or has a gun pointed at his head. With all due respect, Costa. You don’t know Diem like I do. Maybe I should assess his tone.”

“I’ve had training. I know what I’m looking for.”

It took effort not to roll my eyes. I reluctantly agreed, not that it mattered. The call went immediately to voicemail without ringing, indicating the device had been shut off. My stomach soured. Diem never turned off his phone.

“They’ve got him again.”

Costa scrubbed his face, tipped his head to the sky, and cursed in Spanish. “This is really fucking bad.”

“What does intelligence know about this… organization?”

“Not enough. They’re slippery and smart.

The way they operate is deliberately messy.

I spent a year trying to follow tens of thousands of threads of stolen money that we knew were connected to them, but their system is complex.

They skim barely noticeable amounts from innumerable sources, wash it through hundreds of accounts so that by the time it comes out the other side, it’s untraceable. ”

“I don’t care about theft. They kill people, Costa. ”

“We have no record of that, but it’s not surprising. When you have secrets this profound, you protect them at all costs. It’s only a matter of time before people like this escalate.”

“Does intelligence know anything about an underground casino?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I don’t work in intelligence.

I help out with cases from time to time, but if they were aware of a location like what you’re suggesting, they would have moved in ages ago.

They’ve tagged a few key players and have systems in place to monitor them, but these guys are good at slipping under the radar. ”

I stared at my phone, the knot in my gut pulling tighter. I hit Diem’s number again with no different result. His surly voice filled the air between us. “I’m busy. Leave a message.” Short, snappy, and appropriately Diem. I ached. The last time we spoke, it was in anger.

“Are they going to kill him?”

My cousin didn’t answer.

I lifted my attention from the phone.

Costa’s troubled gaze remained on the spread of food, the gears of his mind spinning and calculating as his brows slowly inched closer together.

It was a long time before he spoke. “Given what you’ve told me, it depends.

How badly do they want Clarence? Will Diem cooperate?

Is their leader feeling especially generous or forgiving?

” Costa shook his head and lifted his gaze to mine.

“I don’t know, Tal. This isn’t good. I could make some calls. Get people on it.”

I could hear the but in his proposal and finished his thought. “But if they found out we brought in authorities, they would end it much faster and go underground.”

“Yes.”

Bile burned the back of my throat. I tried to swallow it down.

I couldn’t speak to Ace’s state of mind after we’d purposefully deceived him, nor did I know what it would take for him to give up his search for Clarence, but I did know Diem.

They had threatened his nana’s life. He would either comply with their every demand or destroy the fucking world if they hurt her.

Had they already?

If I’d gotten away, Ace had only one target.

I shouldn’t have run. I should have sacrificed myself to protect Diem’s nana. What kind of shitty boyfriend was I?

“Our best bet is to find this Clarence guy,” Costa said, breaking into my musing. “I have a lot more resources than you guys. It might help.”

I huffed. “Even if we locate him, I don’t know how to contact Ace or whoever needs to know.”

“You don’t have to know how. Clarence will take care of that.”

“Are we really going to hand this guy over to some mob to be killed?”

My cousin smiled for the first time since picking me up. “You really think I’m a monster still, don’t you? No, Tallus, but we’ll worry about that when we find him. Let’s go to my office and see what we can come up with.” Costa waved down a server and motioned that he wanted to settle the bill.

My phone rang before the bill arrived, and I broke into a cold sweat. Costa and I peered down at the display.