The Inn(37)

“I’M SUPPOSED TO get a call from Squid telling me when the drop is made,” Cline said, his voice languid, almost bored. “He doesn’t call. Then Tricks, the bartender, finds his bike crashed by the side of the road. I put two and two together. I could probably be sheriff around here. I have instincts for this sort of stuff.”

“Do you know anything,” I managed, my teeth almost locked together, “about the person whose life you took at that party? Marni was a beautiful, intelligent—”

“Oh, I bet she was.” Cline sighed. “People are always beautiful and intelligent and kind and generous when they die the way she died. Young, tragically, wastefully. I bet she lit up a room, didn’t she? They always say that. ‘She loved making people smile and she lit up every room she walked into.’”

“I suppose you’d know what they say,” I said. “You’ve destroyed so many innocent lives.”

“That sounds very grand, but I wouldn’t call myself a destroyer of lives,” Cline said. “These people do that themselves. You know what I am? I’m the master of pain. I have a monopoly on it. People like Marni come to me because they’re hurting, and I take the hurt away. I decide who feels it and who doesn’t.”

“You seem pretty happy to deal it out. Squid is terrified of you.”

“He should be,” Cline said, “with the stuff he’s seen. But you won’t be able to use him for anything meaningful. He knows what happens when one of my soldiers allows himself to get caught. And that’ll be your fault, Robinson. You’ve sealed his fate.”

“You’ve got a real swollen head, you know that?” I said. “You talk about killing people like it’s inevitable, like it’s your right. You’re not a god walking the earth, Cline. You’re just a piece-of-shit drug dealer from a long line of lowlife assholes.”

“Listen to you, motherfucker,” Cline barked. “You think you can talk about my family like that? You don’t know shit about my family, you punk-ass bitch!”

He’d lost it momentarily. I’d touched a nerve. I smiled as he dropped his sophisticated act and reverted to the trash talk he’d probably promised himself he would abandon the last time he left prison. There was a pause while he regained his composure.

“We don’t have to do this,” Cline said. “There’s a way out for you. Give me the kid back, and I’ll leave you and your people alone. It’s what’s best for everyone, man. You’re a smart guy. You know it.”

“Listen to you,” I said. “You’ve got your speech prepared. When threatening me doesn’t work, you switch to flattery. You’re like a used-car salesman. ‘You better get this deal now or you’ll miss out. You’ll hate yourself. You’re a smart guy—let me sweeten the deal for you.’”

“There’s no money in used cars,” Cline sniffed. “And you don’t know me, boy. But I know about you, Robinson. I know what happened in Boston.”

Prickles, tingles, spread out from my chest and over my scalp; raw adrenaline unleashed. I should have seen this coming. People like Cline had cops, judges, and politicians in their pockets. He had drugs, and that brought him money, and money brought him influence, connections, friends in high places. I gripped the phone tight. “Yeah? What about it?”

“I’ve got contacts. I can make that shit go away,” Cline said. “You can’t tell me you were happy to give up the beat to clean toilets in a shitbox guesthouse full of losers.”

“I’m guilty of the Boston thing,” I said. “I got what I deserve.”

“What about your roadkill wife?”

It took everything I had not to shatter the phone on the concrete steps to the house. I heard him shifting pieces of paper, probably Siobhan’s accident report. More evidence that Cline had the local cops on his payroll. I closed my eyes and breathed while he continued.

“You’re smart enough to figure, like I did, that the story the driver gave didn’t add up,” Cline said. “I can give you the people who were in that car. I can give you the real driver.”

“Let me give you something,” I said, my voice colder than I’d ever heard it. “Twelve hours. You have that long to turn yourself in to the police and not a second more.”

Cline was laughing as I hung up the phone. I walked back into the abandoned house, and Effie jutted her chin at me, made an okay shape with her fingers.

You okay?

I didn’t answer. Squid squealed with terror as I kicked his chair over and then stood above him, grabbed a handful of his shirt, and twisted it in my fist.

“Cline said we can’t use you, but I think he’s wrong.” I yanked the kid forward so his face was inches from mine. “You’re going to help me hit the master of pain where it hurts.”





CHAPTER FORTY-THREE





SUSAN WAS STANDING on the porch when we arrived home. She watched Nick turn the car around after he had dropped off me and Effie, her eyes impossible to read. Effie went around the side of the house and I stood with Susan, surveying the holes in the siding. Though she kept her expression neutral, I could see her temple ticking with her pulse.

“There was a kidnapped kid in that car just now, wasn’t there,” she said finally.