“I’m not careless with anything,” I said, my own anger bubbling to the surface. “You have no right to judge the way I live my life or the way I run my business.”
“Except when the way you run your business becomesmybusiness.” He exhaled sharply. “I’ve been hired to track down your psychic. O’Banion won’t go to the police, for obvious reasons.” Graham’s brows furrowed darkly. “Mickey, hell, all four of the O’Banion brothers are batshit crazy. I don’t want you anywhere near him.”
Hmm.
Graham didn’t seem to realize I’d already had the displeasure of meeting Mickey. The memory of our interaction by the dumpsters made my hands go clammy with hindsight anxiety.
“Do you know her address?” His gaze, already searching, became frighteningly sharp. “It’s not on file with the city or in any of the government databases. Wherever she’s staying, it’s either under a fake name or not registered at all.”
My mouth opened, then clicked shut as my mind whirled with contradictory thoughts. Part of me wanted to tell Graham the truth, come clean about everything that I knew and trust him to handle it. But a louder, more insistent part of me was adamant that Graham had his own interests at work. He was representing Mickey O'Banion, not Madame Zelda. Anything I told him would be used against her. And while she might not be my favorite person in the world… I wasn’t about to throw her to the proverbial wolves. At least, not until I had definitive proof she deserved to be tossed there.
“Gwen, focus,” Graham said tiredly. “This is important.”
“Mickey O’Banion…” I lifted my gaze to meet his. “What’s he going to do to her?”
“I don’t know. He’s paying me to find her. That’s where my curiosity ends.”
“But what if he’s planning to hurt her? Make her swim with the fishes or something?”
His lips twitched. “Swim with the fishes?”
“Sue me, I’m not up on my mafia lingo.”
Graham shook his head slowly back and forth, looking like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh at me or throttle me. “All I can tell you is, your psychic fucked with the wrong people. The O’Banions are not big fans of getting ripped off. They’re even less thrilled when it's their bed-bound, soon-to-be-in-hospice-care family matriarch getting ripped off.” He paused, all traces of humor leaving his face. “What theyarebig fans of is retribution, in whatever form that comes. That does not bode well for Zelda.”
My whole body locked, every muscle going solid as a rock. “And, knowing that, you’re just going to hand her over to them?”
“Like I said, my job begins and ends with locating her. Anything else is the client’s business.”
“How can you think that way? Even if she screwed up… she’s still a human being.”
“She’s a career criminal.”
“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
“That’s for the judicial system to sort out. You want black and white, call your precious detective. Me? I’m not bound by those parameters. I do my job, I get paid. That’s it.” His eyes glittered darkly as the muscle in his jawline clenched and unclenched. “Told you once before, babe.Gray. Remember?”
Oh, I remembered.
I stared at him, wondering if he was truly as callus as he wanted me to believe. I knew, deep down, there was a heart that beat inside his chest. I knew he cared about people. I’d even seen it in action, been on the receiving end of it. But in this moment, staring at him, I saw only the cold mask he was so fond of wearing to intimidate others into submission. And I knew, with sudden clarity, that I couldn’t tell him the truth — not about Zelda’s potential whereabouts, not about the incident with Mickey by the dumpsters, not about a damn thing.
I swallowed harshly. “Fine. Got it. Good luck tracking her down.”
“Gwen—”
“Like I said, I have no idea where she is or what she’s up to these days. If you find her, tell her to call me.”
“Gwendolyn,” he repeated more firmly, his tone totally no-nonsense. I got the sense he wasn’t buying my bullshit. Not at all. “This woman is not your friend. She is not part of your inner circle.”
“So?”
“So,” he stressed, his tone softening a smidgen. “I’ve seen a lot of cases like this, involving people like this. Rarely works out with a fairy tale ending, carriage ride into the sunset, if you catch my drift. The way I figure it, Zelda’s made her bed. She’s shit where she eats, she’s shit where she sleeps, she’s shit everywhere. And when that shit hits the fan — and it will hit the fan, that I guarantee — I don’t want you getting splattered. I don’t want you anywhere near this mess.”
He’s worried about you.
I banished the unwelcome intrusive thought with a ferocious mental shove to the dark recesses of my brain. “What do you expect me to do, Graham? Zelda’s off the grid. I’ve been calling her for days. Her voicemail is full.”
“She comes into the shop, you call me. Immediately.”