Bullshit. All of it. Franklin was going to do whatever it took to get out of this with the most he could get, which he was afraid was not going to include lunch with Katherine Gray.
He ended the call and stared down the main aisle of the warehouse. The answer to his problems was watching him with her big gray eyes, her cute little suit fitting her just so, her blond hair twisted up in a real sophisticated style. She had diamonds in her ears, and high heels on her feet, and all he needed to do was get rid of her father, get rid of her goons, and keep her with him, and for that, he only needed one thing-her mother.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Esme stood carefully and quietly in the bottom of a canyon of paper-filled pallets-paper towel pallets, paper napkin pallets, and towering pallets of toilet paper. It was damned crowded on the floor, with a baker’s dozen of mostly very bad guys variously arranged around a small table, including the three gangsters on the home team.
No, sirree, having three of the worst gangbangers in the history of Denver on her side was not a comfort, not when Franklin Bleak was headed their way. Six or eight Locos might have done the trick, but she only had three, and it was all she could do not to bolt.
The bookie had his damn money. Dovey had counted it and given him the sign. All was well. All was as it should be, and yet Esme had a very strong feeling that the deal wasn’t even close to being over, and she wanted it over. She wanted out of this damn warehouse, and the closer Franklin Bleak got, waddling his short, overweight, gimpy body down the aisle toward the table, the more she wanted out.
She consciously deepened her next breath to keep from jumping straight into full-blown panic. Even with Johnny on one side of her, Dax on the other, and an auto-loading.45 closer than both of them, Bleak scared the hell out of her. The photographs she’d seen of him, a couple of stills taken in a Denver restaurant, did not do him justice. He’d looked almost normal, smiling, raising a glass of wine in a toast, a heavily made-up bimbo on each side.
But he wasn’t normal. Not even close.
It wasn’t his slightly misshapen body, his right leg obviously shorter than the other and giving him an odd limping gait, that made him look so strange. It wasn’t his hair, worn in a dark, greasy comb-over long enough to be tucked behind his ears. It wasn’t his clothes, a disco turn of electric blue silk and badly tailored black polyester with the looping chain of a pocket watch crisscrossing the front of his mismatched vest. It wasn’t even his shoes, shiny bright black patent-leather elevator shoes with taps-freakin’ taps. Every step he took down the concrete floor was an announcement-“I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming.” And every step made her want to run like hell.
No, what made Franklin Bleak so damn scary was his face, every part of his face, the low widow’s peak of sparse dark hair backed up by the comb-over, the beakish nose, his eyes too round, the irises too dark, like bottomless pits, fixated on her, and his mouth. It didn’t close, but stayed partly open, his tongue sliding across his lips. She was creeped out to the max and had to force herself to hold her ground-carefully, quietly, nothing showing, not giving her fear away. But sweat was beading on her upper lip and running down the middle of her back.
He stopped at the table, his gaze still riveted to her, and he stood there, staring, until she understood this was personal between them. That whatever was going through his head was more than the debt her father owed-and all she could think was that he was damn lucky she didn’t draw down on him, anything to get the bastard to back the fuck off. She wasn’t going to play this game with him, and yet it was only when he broke eye contact with her that she realized Dax had said something.
“Yes. The money’s good, but it’s late,” Bleak said, his gaze shifting to Dax for a brief couple of seconds before returning to her.
“Eighty-two thousand clears the debt, no repercussions, no blood revenge, no breaking anybody, no shakedown,” Dax said, his voice slow and calm and sure without an edge in sight. “That’s the deal, nothing more.” He made it sound like they were exchanging calling cards, but what he put on the table was the Lindsey Larson file.
Bleak picked it up, took one look inside, and turned beet red, color and anger infusing his face in equal measures. Those too-round, bottomless black eyes landed on Dax with the force of a train wreck, but Dax had faced down a helluva lot worse than a psycho bookie.
“That’s the deal, nothing more,” he repeated, still very calm, very matter of fact, and Esme breathed a little easier. As weird as Bleak was, Dax wasn’t fazed by the crooked little man. She was overreacting, that was all.
His fist tightening around the file, crushing it, Bleak turned to the huge guy who’d met them at the loading dock door, “Bleak’s beast,” she was calling him. The guy bent his head to Bleak’s, and the bookie said something too softly for her to hear. The big guy nodded and turned and left, heading toward a door at the rear of the warehouse.
“This is a mistake,” Bleak said, raising the fistful of crumpled papers. “You would have been better off leaving her out of this.”
Dax nodded his head. “Absolutely. You’re right, and I have no intention of ever going to Folton Ridge again… unless you give me a reason to go.”
No one with half a brain would mistake Dax’s calmness for anything other than what it was- complete and utter control of himself and the situation.
“A smart man would forget what he knew,” Bleak warned.
At the end of the warehouse, the huge guy had opened the door and disappeared inside.
“A smart man would take the money and call it good,” Dax said. “Take the money, Bleak.”
Take the damn money, Esme thought, her attention shifting from Bleak to the door at the end of the warehouse and back again. Take the damn money, so we can get the hell out of here.
This had dragged on too long already. Nothing good could come from staying any longer. All Bleak had to do was pick up the duffel bag, or give some sign of acceptance. Any damn sign would do.
But this damn standing there, giving everybody the evil eye, that wouldn’t do at all. That was indicative of some unforeseen problem, and Esme didn’t want there to be any unforeseen problems. Straight deal, that’s what her father had arranged with Bleak.
A movement at the end of the warehouse drew her gaze down the length of the aisle, and with the shift in attention came a horrifying sinking of her hopes.
Her feet moved of their own volition, everything inside her telling her to run, while at the same time telling her it was too late. Bleak’s beast had a bundle of rags by the scruff of the neck, an old green striped shirt and a pair of worn brown corduroys, and inside the rags, hanging slack from the beast’s hands, was her father.
Dead. He looked dead, and even with everything inside her telling her to run to him, she was frozen, held in place by a sudden wash of emotion and Johnny’s hands catching her and dragging her up against him, keeping her from moving any closer.
Her father’s arm had been broken. The way it was hanging, the angle, was bizarre, and for a moment, all she could think about was the pain he must have felt.
It was the beast, the damn beast who had hurt him. Bleak wasn’t big enough to have done the deed. The beast had beaten her father and broken his arm. Her breath started coming faster, and she began to struggle.
“Let go of me,” she said under her breath, the words meant for Johnny. “Let go of me.”