The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(55)

Mason caught up to him and grabbed him by the collar. He felt at least one of the gold chains coming apart in his hands as McManus escaped and starting running.

McManus was already in the next row of cars over, so Mason cut through a family getting out of their minivan and heard shouts from behind him. He reached McManus just as he was fumbling with his keys, trying to open the door of his bright red Corvette. Mason got a hand on the back of his neck and drove his face into the roof of the car.

Once.

Twice.

A third time.

The noise—bone on metal—echoed across the parking lot as the blood spurted from McManus’s shattered nose. Mason spun him around and drove wicked left hooks into his ribs, the kind of punches that break bones and bruise organs, that make you bleed not out but in.

“It’s not enough you set us all up at the harbor,” he said as he grabbed him by the throat and pulled him back upright, “now you’re taking f*cking pictures of my daughter?”

The next punch folded McManus right in half and he slid down the side of the Corvette. Mason was pulling him to his feet again when he heard the voice behind him ordering him to freeze. He ignored the voice and kept hitting McManus until he felt a great weight knocking him down from behind and then his hands being twisted behind his back and locked tight in cuffs.

Mason lay there on the ground for another few minutes, catching his breath, until he looked up and saw Gina’s face among the crowd of people who had gathered in the lot.

He didn’t see Adriana. Just Gina, and her face told him everything he needed to know about what she was feeling.

I was just protecting her. He tried to say it loud. I was just protecting our daughter. But she couldn’t hear him.

Then he was lifted up from the ground, put in the back of the squad car, and taken away.





26




It had taken a week for Nick Mason to be back between three concrete walls and a set of metal bars.

The walls of the holding cell at the Elmhurst Police Station had just been painted buff green. And the stainless-steel sink and toilet were immaculately clean. The bench he was sitting on had a pad thick enough to sleep on. It was probably the nicest cell Mason had ever seen.

But it was still a cell.

He looked at his hands, still red and swollen, especially the right hand, where the knuckles were scraped raw. He knew he had hit McManus at least three or four times with that hand. Maybe the car, maybe the ground.

His hands hurt, but there was something else, too. This feeling he had that maybe beating the shit out of McManus wasn’t a smart idea, but at least it was his idea. For the first time since getting out, he had committed an act of violence because he had wanted to, not because he’d been told to. It belonged to him and nobody else.

That was the moment. Sitting there in that cell, looking at his hands. That’s when Nick Mason started to wonder if he could stop being a f*cking windup robot and start taking back control over his own life.

He heard footsteps in the hallway. But it wasn’t the Elmhurst officer coming to release him. It was Detective Sandoval.

Mason sat up straight on the bench but didn’t say a word.

“I heard they brought you in,” Sandoval said.

Sandoval dragged the one folding chair from the narrow hallway between the cells and the outer wall, sat down, and looked at Mason.

“There was an off-duty at the game,” Sandoval said. “He stopped you before you killed that guy.”

Mason didn’t respond.

“They’re gonna give you a warning about calling the police next time. Then you’ll be out of here. But I asked them to hold you a minute so we could talk.”

This is just what I f*cking need, Mason thought.

“A dead sergeant in that motel room. And then Tyron Harris last night. You’ve been busy.”

Mason stayed silent.

“So now I got you,” Sandoval said. “I got Cole. I got your buddy Marcos Quintero. Ex–La Raza. How long’s he been working for Cole? You gotta have some protection to get out of that life. Or did Cole just buy them out?”

Mason leaned his back against the concrete wall.

“I got your housemate, Diana Rivelli, who runs Cole’s restaurant. I hope you’re watching yourself. Cole finds out you’re f*cking her, he’s not gonna be happy.”

Mason shook his head at that one.

This guy wants Cole, Mason thought. More than me, more than Quintero, more than everyone in the world who works for him. Or ever will. Cole is at the top of the pyramid and this detective will kill himself trying to get to him.

He might arrest ten other people on the way. They’ll promote him and give him a medal and take his picture with the mayor.

But he’ll never be satisfied until he gets to Cole.

“I put all that together on my own,” Sandoval said. “What do you think a whole elite task force of cops could find out?”

“Are we about done here?” Mason said.

“Did you hear what I just said? You ever hear of a group of cops called SIS? They got put together a few years ago to go after dealers. They can do anything they want, Mason. They make big numbers, so nobody gives a f*ck. They’re walking around with a god card, courtesy of the mayor and the police superintendent. Drag some guy out of his car, beat the shit out of him, take his money, take his drugs. Bust down somebody’s door without a warrant? Nobody cares.”