Tough Guy: A Hero Club Novel by Jamie Schmidt (the reading list .TXT) 📗

you. He was going to go out to Carson City last I heard.”

“I’m not there,” I said in a small voice. Why didn’t he call? Did he lose his phone in the fire?

“Fuck a duck. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“I’ll see too.” I bundled back into my coat and my boots, cursing myself. I should have known that Miles would never ghost me. He was the only person in my life who had ever put me first. I had to go back and find him.

“Where the hell are you going?” my boss said.

“Back to Vegas.”

“No, you’re not. You just got back this morning.”

“I had an emergency come up.”

She groaned. “Not Lisa again.”

“I’ll explain later.”

“You’re lucky you still have some vacation time left. You better hurry or you’re going to get stranded on the tarmac. There’s a storm coming in.”

I ran outside and hailed a cab. It was a good thing I hadn’t unpacked yet.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Miles Carvello

The worst part of all of this was the memories. The smell of burned wires and broken dreams. I walked through the wreckage. It had been arson all right. Mav had smelled the gasoline when he was doing his final rounds at four a.m. He had tried to put it out with a fire extinguisher, but it had spread too fast. At least he had enough time to clear the building and no one got hurt.

“Miles?”

I had to do a double take. I almost didn’t recognize Ginny in street clothes and sneakers. “Not now,” I said. I didn’t have the energy to fight. I was still sporting a hangover from drinking myself to sleep on Highway’s couch last night.

She walked up to me anyway, steadying herself as she climbed over the rubble. “This is for you.” She pressed a compact disk in my hands.

“What’s this?”

“This is the security footage from the bail bondsman office. You didn’t get it from me.”

Both Konner and Dieter’s pawn shop and the bail bondsman had claimed their security cameras had been off last night. Our tapes burned up in the fire. There had been no evidence except for circumstantial, just like when my uncle’s club was torched.

“How did you get it?”

“I took it from Leonidas, who took it from the bondsman.”

“He’s going to kill you. We have to get you protection.”

“Look, I’m not stupid,” Ginny said. “No matter what you think. He’s not going to realize it’s missing. I swapped it with one of Dee’s CDs. He destroyed the evidence this morning.” She put finger quotes around the word “evidence.”

“Dee?”

“Yeah, she told me keep away from Dalton’s Saturday night, so I stayed at her apartment in Pahrump. Leonidas came by with a few friends after he got bailed out.” She gave a chuckle. “You did a number on his face. He was already bragging that Dalton’s was going to burn to the ground. He got Zeke to do it.”

“Zeke?”

“Yeah, Zeke’s been trying to patch into the Rivs forever. He thought having Dee be an escort for them would get him in. But then she decided she liked working at a brothel instead. Don’t get me wrong, she still freelances—which is why Leonidas came by last night. Zeke would have done anything Leonidas said to become a full member of the Rivs. I watched the footage. You can see Zeke coming in with the gas cans in the confusion when the cops took you away. And it shows him torching your car as he left the building after closing time.

“That son of a bitch,” I said.

Movement caught my eye and I saw Grier shambling down the sidewalk toward us. He was in his homeless person disguise. No one even blinked at him.

“Why are you telling me this? I thought you and Leonidas had a deal.”

“We did. I sold his drugs and he’d leave my baby sister alone.”

“Did you tell him about Jackie?”

Ginny looked away. “Yeah. I didn’t think he’d go psycho.”

“Are you willing to tell the police what you know? It’s the only way to keep him away from your sister for good.”

She shook her head. “He’ll come after her if I take the witness stand. You don’t need me. You’ve got the evidence. Zeke will turn over on Leonidas.”

“Not if he wants to be a loyal gang member,” I said. “He’ll go to jail first.”

“Oh, Miles.” Ginny reached up and rubbed my cheek affectionately. “Not everyone is like you. There’s a reason Zeke has been only a pledge of the Rivs for most of his life. He’s a weasel.” She stood up on her tiptoes and tried to kiss me on the lips. I turned my head just in time and she got my cheek. “We could have been good together. You would have protected my sister.”

“You should have come to me.”

“You should have come to me, but you were never interested. I hope Jackie appreciates what she’s got.” With a sigh, Ginny walked away.

Jackie was safe in New York and that was all that mattered. That’s what her sister Lisa had said when I hauled ass to Carson City yesterday. I was caught between being relieved and being gutted. She was the one person I needed to speak to. If I couldn’t hold her in my arms, I just wanted to hear her voice.

I would have called her, but my phone was dead, and the cord was ash under my feet. It was on my list to get another one, but I had to figure out where the hell I was going to live in the meantime.

Grier came up to me next. “I’m sorry about the club and for the bullshit arrest Saturday night. We’re looking into why you couldn’t get bonded out right away. I’m not the type of guy that says, ‘Heads will roll,’ but it’s someone’s ass, that’s for damn sure. All I can say is Leonidas didn’t torch your place. He was in Pahrump.”

I was pissed, but I knew there was only so much Grier could have done. Shielding my actions from