Page 36 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

X ia had about half her “supervillain secret lair” set up in the formerly empty apartment between the unit where Becks and I lived and the one we left cleared out as a “war room” when we needed to have a lot of people sitting around a big table trying to figure out what to do.

Which happened more often than you’d expect now that we worked for the federal government.

Turns out when you’re part of a massive bureaucracy, you need a big-ass conference table.

Xia’s place was a dimly lit one-bedroom with a couch along one wall, blackout curtains completely covering the sliding glass balcony doors, and an array of six massive monitors fastened to one wall.

She sat at an L-shaped desk in one corner, and there was a long couch by the kitchen as a token effort to pretend people might ever come visit her cave.

Luke and Becks were already there with Nameless when I arrived, and Xia looked up from her keyboard at my entrance.

“Oh good! You’re finally here. What took you so long?

It’s the middle of the night, it’s not like there was traffic?

And why did you stop for twelve minutes on South Boulevard?

You were almost here, and then you just…

stopped. I was tracking your phone, and I texted you, but you didn’t answer.

I’ve been waiting, and I don’t like waiting, Harker.

” Her words tumbled over themselves like pebbles in a rockslide, and it took me about ten seconds to actually parse what she was saying.

“I stopped for takeout,” I said, holding up a bag. “Wings. The manager owes me a favor after I exorcised an imp that was spoiling his chicken a couple years ago, so he kept the kitchen open late for me.”

“Good call,” Becks said. “I’m famished. Now that we’ve got three people who either don’t have to eat or can’t be bothered to remember to buy groceries, there’s nothing to eat on the entire floor.”

“In my defense, I was trapped in an underground cage fighting ring for like two weeks,” I said.

“I keep plenty of sustenance on hand,” Luke said. “It’s not my fault you can subsist on neither whole blood nor Fancy Feast.”

“I just moved in two days ago,” Xia said. “But if you got any nuclear face-melting hot wings, I’m all about ‘em.”

“Dig in,” I said. “I got four dozen wings, assorted flavors.”

“Garlic Parm?” Becks asked.

“Of course,” I replied, handing her a styrofoam container of wings and her extra crispy fries.

I pulled out a cardboard container of teriyaki wings for myself, along with some celery, and handed the super-hot ones over to Xia.

I didn’t expect her to go for the thermonuclear warhead wings, but I’d gotten eight different flavors, so she was in luck.

“What did you find out from Piss Boy’s info? ”

Everybody stared at me for a second before Xia asked, “Piss Boy?”

“The dude I hung off the roof. I can’t remember his name, but he soiled himself in every way imaginable, so I just called him Piss Boy in my head.”

“Oh,” she replied. “That makes sense. I’ve been calling him Douche Bro in mine, but given the type of people you seem to run into on this job, that might not be specific enough long-term. By the way, his name is Jameson Stoller.”

“Don’t care,” I said around a mouthful of chicken.

“I get that,” Xia said, licking her fingers. “But I saw somebody on some TV show say that details matter in an investigation, and that made sense, so I thought that one might, too.”

“Yeah, I watch Reacher , too, kid. I like that actor. Big motherfucker.”

“I’m five-nine and a hundred thirty pounds, Harker.

Everyone’s a big motherfucker to me. But that’s beside the point.

Stoller didn’t have any direct connection to your guy Pete, but I tracked his phone’s movements and his credit card purchases for the last six months, and ran an algorithm to determine?—”

I held up a hand. “Xia, I’m sure whatever you did was really impressive to anyone who gives a shit about tech stuff. But I don’t. So how about you just say you did nerd shit and found somewhere for me to go.”

“Oh.” She looked momentarily crestfallen, then smiled. “Okay, I did super-awesome nerd shit that you’ll never be smart enough to understand, and I found that every few weeks, Stoller went to the same bar on Sunday at eleven a.m.”

“That’s early for Sunday drinking, unless he’s really into mimosas,” Becks said.

“Nobody’s that into mimosas,” I replied. “They’re just the warmup drink, not worth getting up early for.”

“Especially since the bar in question doesn’t open until noon on Sundays,” Xia said.

“Well, how late is it open on Monday nights?” I asked. “And what’s the address?”

“I already sent it to your phone and the Suburban’s GPS,” Xia said with a grin. “Now, did you say you got four dozen wings?”

* * *

I stuck around the house long enough to get some wings in my belly and change out of my socks and shoes.

It seems Stoller hadn’t quite managed to miss my feet when he was peeing all over himself.

I threw the socks in the trash, but I liked those Docs, so they were gonna have to be cleaned.

Once I got my magic fully recharged, I’d use a spell for that.

Some practitioners give a shit about universal balance and not using magic for piddly little shit like cleaning my shoes, but balance isn’t something I’ve ever been very big on, so fuck ‘em. I figure if I’m throwing the universe out of whack by not wiping the piss off my boots with a towel, then the universe’s balance was way too precarious already.

Also, I didn’t want to ruin a perfectly good towel with banker piss.

With clean shoes on, I headed out to a faux dive bar in Southend.

I didn’t bother taking the Suburban because the address was only half a mile from my building, so it was a pretty easy walk.

Kind of blasphemous in Charlotte, where people drive to go around the block, but I grew up in London before cars were nearly as ubiquitous as they are today, and I still like getting a chance to stretch my legs a bit now and then.

Plus it gave me plenty of time for a healthy dose of self-recrimination about this whole case.

I’d started this shit the better part of a month ago, and all I had to show for my time were a few more dead cryptids and paras, a phenomenal amount of property damage, a couple weeks living in an underground fight club with sweaty monsters who wanted to cave my head in, and a fuckload of self-doubt about my ability to judge character, since I was taken in so completely by Pete’s aw-shucks attitude and hapless demeanor.

Oh well, at least the odds of me getting to punch somebody tonight were pretty high.

I walked into The Last Ride Bar & Grill around midnight, handing ten bucks to the door guy for a cover charge.

Fucking hipster joints, charging an entry fee whether there’s a band playing or not.

I stuck out like a sore thumb, having left my Harley-Davidson t-shirt, my leather vest with a biker club cut on it, and my chain wallet at home.

Or more like I left them at the store, because I owned none of those things.

I’d owned a Harley at one point, though, which I figured was more than I could say for three-quarters of the bar’s population.

Good bike. I think I left it in Boston, but I couldn’t be sure. I was really high when I left the city.

I walked up to the bar and passed a twenty over to the bartender. “Harp and information,” I said.

“We don’t have Harp, and I don’t talk to cops,” he said.

He was the stereotypical biker bartender, about six-six, three hundred pounds easy, with a black sleeveless t-shirt, arms full of ink, a shaved head, and a goatee.

I briefly wondered if there was a look requirement for slinging drinks at a biker bar, then decided I didn’t give a fuck.

“Then gimme a Guiness. And I’m not a cop.” I’m not. I’m a federal agent. Kinda. More like an independent contractor with one client who happens to be the Department of Homeland Security. But close enough to a fed for government work, as the joke goes.

“You’re totally a cop,” Chrome Dome said, pouring a perfect Guinness, right down to the shamrock in the foam. He slid it over to me. “You stink of cop.”

“That’s because I’m banging a fed,” I replied. “But I’m not a cop.”

Hey! Becks protested in my head.

What? I am banging a fed.

Yeah, but you don’t have to broadcast that fact.

I didn’t say which fed. Now let me work.

We’re not finished with this conversation.

“See?” Baldy asked. “Totally cop. I bet you’ve got one of those ear things with somebody talking to you right now don’t you.”

“No, I don’t,” I said, turning my head from side to side to let him see into my ears. “I’m a fucking telepath and my fiancée is talking in my head about how much trouble I’m in for telling some rando in a douchebag wannabe biker bar that I’m sleeping with a federal agent. Is that better?”

“You don’t have to make up stupid shit, dude. I just thought you were a cop is all.”

In my world, the truth is often so much stranger than fiction that I can tell people the absolute facts of a situation and they still won’t believe me. “I don’t give a fuck what you thought, I just need some information, and I’m willing to pay to get it.”

“Well, if it’s information worth anything, it’s worth more than ten bucks,” the bartender said.

“Ten bucks? I gave you a twenty!”

“Eight bucks for a Guinness, two bucks for tip, ten for information. And that’s not enough for information.”

“Motherfucking hipster bars and their motherfucking hipster beer prices. I guess I’m glad I don’t drink IPAs,” I muttered, putting two more twenties on the bar. “I’m looking for a man.”

“I thought you said you were with a hot fed?”

“Not like that, asshole,” I said. He gave me a smirk that said he knew exactly what I meant and was still fucking with me.

I pulled out my phone and showed him the photo of Jameson Stoller Xia had texted me.

“This dude has been coming in here a lot and meeting somebody. I need to find that somebody.”

The top of Baldy’s head turned pale. “No, you don’t.”

“The fuck?” I asked. “I think I know?—”

Baldy held up a hand to stop me. “No, trust me. You don’t need to find that guy. I recognize your little nerd boy. He’s been in here a bunch. And I know who he meets.” Baldy slid the two twenties back across the bar to me. “But I ain’t sayin’ nothing about that guy. He’s fucking scary , dude.”

“Come on,” I said. “You work at a biker bar. How scary can one dude be?”

“I work at a fake biker bar in a trendy-ass part of town where most of the people who walk in the door think a fucking Vespa is edgy. But that guy’s the real fucking deal. Him and his boys used to be Outlaws before they got kicked out.”

The Outlaws were the biggest bad boy motorcycle club in the Charlotte area.

They didn’t have the national rep of the Hell’s Angels, but they were into the same shit.

If this guy got tossed out of that club, he might actually be a legit bad guy.

“What do you have to do to get thrown out of a one-percenter club?” I asked.

Baldy’s eyes kept darting around the bar like he was worried about who might be listening, but he leaned forward and said, “I don’t know, I don’t want to know, and I’m never fucking asking.

I’ve heard rumors, but it’s been everything from sleeping with the chapter president’s old lady to sleeping with the chapter president’s daughter, then killing the president when he got pissed off about it.

But for real—this dude has dropped bodies.

He is not somebody you want to fuck with. ”

If only Baldy knew who he was talking to. “I’ll take my chances. Just gimme a name, and I’ll handle the rest,” I said.

Baldy still looked reluctant, although terrified might be the more accurate way to describe him.

After a long moment, I slid the cash back across the bar to him, putting a couple of rectangular portraits of Ben Franklin on top of them, and said, “Nobody ever hears where I got my information from, and I promise never to set foot in this place again after tonight.” Not that I ever wanted to darken the door of any place that goddamned trendy again.

“Connelly,” he said. “Richard Connelly. His boys call him Big Dick.”

“Thanks,” I said, and turned to leave. Well, at least Big Dick Connelly wasn’t lacking in confidence. Now to see if he had information to go with his namesake energy.