Page 65 of Clubs

“The original is in my office. At home, I mean.” Again, Tyler tried to keep his mouth shut, but the words kept falling out. “What the hell is this? How are you making me talk? It doesn’t—”

“A unique gift of mine,” Emory said. “And not the point here. The original? So you made copies?”

Nodding slowly, Tyler swallowed hard. “One’s in a safety deposit box in town. Another one is hidden in the air vent in my living room. I’ve got another one down at the station, and I buried one in the woods.”

“Jesus Christ,” Brooke said. “Why? Why is figuring this out so important to you?”

“This place has been connected to a thousand crimes,” Tyler snarled. “Drug trafficking, murder, prostitution. I need evidence to shut the place down.” His eyes turned to me. “To take you down.”

“You wanted to take my dad down,” I snapped. “I don’t break the law. Or at least, not often. I don’t deal drugs, I don’t get sex that’s paid for, and I don’t…” Scratching my head, I stopped myself before I could lie.

“But you do kill people?” he asked.

“Like you haven’t killed people,” I said. “Don’t look at me like that. I kill people when I have to. And they fucking deserved it. Has every person you’ve shot deserved it?”

“I didn’t kill a hooker—”

Emory smacked him across the face.

“Fuck!” Tyler’s daggers of eyes turned up to Emory. “What was that for?!”

“I don’t like that word,” Emory said.

“But he does,” Ria said, crossing her arms and leaning against the bar, facing the two of them with her back to me. “I know this guy. Didn’t know he was a cop on this case, but I do know him. He’s never bought my services, but I’ve seen him with a few friends.”

Again, Emory slapped him across the face

“Jesus!” Tyler yelled.

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have hit you if you weren’t a raging hypocrite,” Emory said.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Ria asked Brooke. “If he’s out on the corner getting his dick sucked by girls like me, we can use that against him. Blackmail?”

“Blackmail isn’t gonna cut it,” Brooke said, shaking her head. “He knows way too much. And he’s a cop. Who’re we gonna turn him into? The other cops who also get their dicks sucked by girls like you?”

“Touché,” Ria murmured.

“Memory manipulation,” Emory said. “He smells like booze, and it’s—What? Ten o’clock? We can make him think he was on a drunken bender for the last week. Erase all this.”

“Too risky,” Brooke said. “I can fuck with his head, but I’ll miss things. I’m a Witch, not a Fae. A Fae might be able to pull it off, but I leave one string dangling, he’ll pull on it, and the whole charade’ll come falling down. The walls I build in his mind will crumble. No, we need help.”

“Don’t say the Chambers,” I said.

Brooke rolled her eyes at me, then snatched her purse off the table. Gesturing to Emory, she said, “Be ready to move him. Know any abandoned warehouses? Sketchy caves? Anyone knocks on that door, take him there.”

She turned to me. “If he gets out, you get him back in that chair.”

She looked at Ria. “And you get his car outta here. Somewhere it won’t be found. Put the closed sign on the door on your way out.”

“And where the hell are you going?” I called after her down the hall.

She held her cellphone—the disposable one—in the air. “Trying to save all our fucking asses!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

BROOKE

“Pick up. Pick up, pick up, pick up,” I murmured, bouncing with anticipation. I glanced around the corner of the bar at the adjacent roadway, waiting for the cavalry. A dozen police cruisers, maybe an ambulance. Hell, maybe a fire truck.

---