Page 113 of The Fractured

“Evenin’, sarge.” I rested an arm on the roof of the car as I peered into it.

“Has you walking around this late got anything to do with the description I heard over the radio about a high-speed chase involving a motorbike and a pick-up truck?” Mark asked.

Seb wasn’t being investigated, so I wasn’t about to bring him up. Mark would be none the wiser, thinking I was the one on that matte black bike.

I smiled. “I thought becoming a detective meant you didn’t have to worry about the usual traffic violations. Isn’t that below your pay grade?”

He looked at the bag strapped across my body and then rolled his eyes. More so at what he was about to say than anything else. “Get in.”

I climbed in without hesitation and dropped the bag on the floor between my feet. “What brings you to Bensonhurst?”

“Work…” He flicked the indicator and waited for a gap in the traffic. “A head was found in a dumpster.”

“Huh…” I had a feeling I knew who belonged to that head.

“What brought you to Flatbush?”

“Work.” I leaned forward and unzipped the bag to pull up some of its contents. A wad of cash and the gun.

Mark’s brow shot up, and he had to double-take before he pulled onto the street. “Jesus fucking Christ— You should’ve come into the office to get a wire.”

I put the cash and gun back in the bag. “It was a last-minute thing.”

“You aren’t changing your mind about working with us, are you?”

“No… Tonight has been one thing after another.” I looked out my window, pausing. “Antonio’s kids aren’t gonna back off.”

“And you know this how?”

“They made it pretty clear in the meeting tonight.”

“Great. Something else you weren’t wired for— Do you know how crucial this information could be to the investigation?”

“Antonio picked me up directly from my house without warning. It would’ve beena littlesuspicious if I told him and his driver to stop by your office and wait in the car while I got a wire fitted.”

He rolled his eyes but moved on. “What do you do with the bag now?”

“Well,” I sighed, “I’m keeping the gun— It’s the one you told me to get. But the cash needs to be delivered to Antonio tonight.”

Mark scoffed in amused realization. “And I suppose you’ll want me to drive you to Antonio’s house?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Weren’t you meant to pick up 50k?” Vince asked after running the wads of cash through the counter, sitting on the glass coffee table.

I stood in the doorway of Antonio’s large living room, where the only light came from a standing lamp in the corner of the room. My arms were crossed loosely over my chest. “We didn’t have time to count it in between running from a dog and a truck, Vince.”

Seb agreed with a hum from the couch. Still in his riding leather with his helmet beside him, he had sunk into thecushions the second we arrived. He had spent an hour getting the cops off his tail until they decided the pickup driver was of more interest and let him go.

Vince sighed, shaking his head as he looked at the cash. “He’s 20k short. Antonio is losing respect left, right, and center… You boys go. I’ll let him know what happened tonight.”

“Awesome,” Seb grumbled, lazily getting to his feet.

We left the mansion in silence until we were outside.

“Howdidyou get here, by the way?” Seb asked as we approached his bike.

“Lily’s dad,” I muttered.