The VIP Room(31)

“Let’s get out of here, honey. Axel’s guys can go through this stuff and see if there’s anything to find. They know what they’re doing. And I don’t think it’s safe here.”

“Okay,” I said, too shaken to argue. He was right. I’d thought if I came home to look around I’d spot a clue. But I wasn’t Nancy Drew. All I saw was a mess. “Let me just get some stuff from my bathroom and then we can go to work.”

The bathroom I shared with Nolan was largely untouched. A box of face powder I rarely used had been knocked to the floor, but most of my make-up and other toiletries were intact, if not where I’d left them. I packed my travel bag, sorting through the disarray to separate my things from Nolan’s. Of the many things I didn’t love about my brother moving in with me, sharing a bathroom was at the top of the list.

Almost done, I was leaning into the shower to grab my shampoo when I spotted a flash of lime green paper wedged half under the bottom of the toilet, as if it had fallen out of a pocket and been pushed aside by a careless foot. Picking it up, I saw it was a matchbook. A sketch of a pool table was on one side with the name ‘Balls and Sticks’. Creative. On the other side someone, not Nolan, had written ‘Feliks’. I froze.

I knew that name. The guy with the gun had said it the night before. Shoving the last of my stuff in a bag, I brought the matchbook out to Sam, who was looking through the books and DVD’s that had been dumped out of my bookcase.

“I found this in the bathroom,” I said, holding it out to him. “The guy with the gun last night said that name. Is that a pool hall? Do you think he’s there?”

Sam turned the matchbook over in his hand, studying it. “Maybe. I’ll give this to Axel.”

“We should go check it out,” I said. It was a lead. An actual lead that might get us to Nolan. We could give it to Axel, but I still wanted to follow it up.

“No. We should go to work. Axel can find this Feliks guy.”

“Sam. We talked about this last night. We’ll give everything to Axel, but I’m not sitting at home waiting for him to find Nolan. I can’t do that. He has other clients, other responsibilities. I don’t. I have Nolan.”

“Honey,” Sam said with a sigh, taking my arm and leading me to the door, “You need to let him grow up. Your whole life can’t be about Nolan.”

“It’s not,” I said, pulling my arm out of his grip and beating him out the door. I hated it when he gave me a hard time about my brother. Sam would never understand. I’d practically raised Nolan. He might be a mess, but he was mine.

“No?” Sam asked, his hand on my arm again in a tight grip as he walked me out of the building. “You can be pissed at me all you want, honey, but stay close. I don’t like being here when we don’t know what’s going on.”

I didn’t answer, but relented, allowing him to tuck me into his side as we walked. He was right. It had been a risk to go back to the apartment, though I was glad we had. At least we knew a little more than we did before. Whoever those men were, they’d been looking for something, not just for me and Nolan. And we had a name and a location to start our search for Nolan. Feliks at Balls and Sticks.

I let Sam lead me to the truck and help me in, both annoyed and grateful for his protection. Once the doors were shut, and he’d started the drive to work, I said,

“I’m going to this place to find Feliks.”

“No way,” Sam said immediately.

“I’m not asking, Sam. I’m telling you what I’m going to do.”

“And I’m telling you no f*cking way.”

Supremely aggravated by his bossy attitude, I said, “You’re not my father, Sam. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Well maybe if your father had bothered to say ‘no’ once in a while, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Maybe we wouldn’t,” I said quietly. “But he didn’t. He was a terrible dad, and he left raising Nolan to me. And I completely messed it up. I know that. But I’m going to fix it, Sam. I have to.” Sam swore and pulled the truck into a parking lot as I whispered again, “I have to.”

He threw the truck into park and turned to me, taking my face in his hands. “I shouldn’t have said that, love, it was a shitty thing to throw at you. Your dad is an *, but that isn’t your fault. And Nolan being a f*ck up isn’t your fault either.”

“I raised him,” I said quietly.

“And who raised you, Clo?” Sam asked in a gentle voice. I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. We both knew the answer was that no one really had.

“You raised yourself,” Sam went on, “And you’re the most amazing woman I know. So you did something right. Whatever is going on with Nolan isn’t on you. We’ll find him because he’s your brother and you love him. But don’t blame yourself for this. He’s twenty-two years old. He makes his own decisions. You’re only three years older than him. Hardly old enough to baby-sit him, much less be responsible for him.”

Sam waited for me to respond, but I didn’t know what to say. He was right. When he put it like that it was absurd for me to feel more like Nolan’s mother than his sister. I’d been barely more than a child when my Mom had left and our Dad stopped caring about us. Still, logic couldn’t shake my sense of responsibility. Nolan would always be my little brother. To make Sam feel better, I said,