Page 19 of Long Way Down

Titus scowled. He looked like he might have been wondering the same thing…but with a certain air of desperation. “You guys popped Waverly, yeah?”

Pongo had known, when Maverick first made the announcement in church, before the week of Manhattan chaos had kicked off, that going after someone as moneyed and famous as Jack Waverly was abig damn deal. He’d known it would get them attention in the underworld the likes of which they’d never had before, good and bad. When you plucked a king off the board, everything reshuffled, and new kings emerged.

But he was learning every day that it was aneven bigger dealthan he’d first suspected.

He shrugged. “That’s all I can say,” he said in apology.

Titus nodded, like he’d expected as much. “You Dogs handle that real sick stuff, though. You boys’ve got a reputation, now.” Fast, nasty grin.

“Good for us, huh?”

“If you’ve got your ear to the ground, maybe you’ll know who I oughtta be lookin’ for.”

“I dunno, maybe…” He trailed off when Titus stood, went to a door, and shouted down a hallway.

“April! April, get in here!”

The baby’s cries grew shrill and frightened.

After a moment, the quick slap of flip-flops sounded in the hall, and Titus stepped back to make space for one of his girls.

She was tall, leggy. Dressed in gym shorts and a soft, faded t-shirt, her dark hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She spared Jimmy – who was picking his nose, now – a glance, and then her gaze locked onto Pongo, narrow and suspicious.

“You really a Lean Dog?” she asked. “Or a cop dressed up like one?”

He offered one of his best grins, and lifted up the tail of his shirt to flash the snarling hound inked down low over one hipbone. He licked the thumb of his free hand and rubbed it over the dog’s snout to show that the ink didn’t run. “Real deal, sweetheart.”

She snorted, unimpressed. “No cop would act that stupid, so yeah, guess you are.”

“Ouch.”

“Hey, you wanna flirt, get out your wallet,” Titus said. To the girl, he said, “Show him your back.”

Tension gripped her immediately. She folded her arms tight across her middle and her shoulders drew in tighter. Her gaze flicked from her pimp, to Pongo, and back. “Why?” Back to Pongo: “You get off on that or something?”

“Show him,” Titus said, sternly. “Maybe he can find out who did it.”

“Maybe I got it backward: maybe he’s a Dog tryin’ to be a cop.”

“April.”

She rolled her eyes, turned around, and whipped her shirt off over her head.

Scabs. That was all Pongo could make of what he was seeing at first. Her narrow, shapely back, bisected by a bikini tan line, was a mess of dark, crusty scabs, skin puckered at the edges in a way that suggested the cuts had been deep.

A beat later, he realized the scabs were shaped like letters. Someone had written a message into the flesh of her back. Shaky all-caps.

THIS ONES FOR YOU DAVEY.

“Shit,” Pongo muttered, before he could help himself.

April yanked her shirt back down and turned to Titus, chin trembling in profile. “We done?”

“Yeah.”

She stomped off, flip-flops slapping the floorboards. A few moments later, a door slammed.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Pongo said.