Page 48 of Avenging Kelly

I had to assume Phil was Phillippe Trudeau, and I was going to kill that motherfucker if I ever laid eyes on him.

“Was he here yesterday?”

She laughed. “Like always. He flies down every Wednesday for the poker game. Gets himself a little taste of the new stock Ricky has on hand, and then he flies back home on Thursday to play the good husband. That wife of his is dumb as a box of rocks.”

Sally poured another shot for us, but I put my hand over hers to stop her from getting too drunk such that she couldn’t tell me more. At the moment, she was the only source of information I had, and I wanted to know everything she knew.

“Where does Phil fly back to?”

“Portland, though I wonder if he’s gone back yet. The girl he knocked up for the next baby sale got picked up with the others, and I don’t know how he’d be able to explain not having her with him since he said he was bringing her down for a doctor appointment,” Sally stated.

That perked my ears. “Whatchu know about that?”

I took my hand off the top of that shot glass, and Sally slugged it back without hesitation. She pulled another cigarette from the box, and I struck the match against the bar top. I held it up for her, and when her smoke was lit, I blew out the match before tossing it on the floor.

She inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out through her nose, staring off into nothing. I kept my eyes on her, convinced she was in the mood to get shit off her chest, and I was more than willing to listen.

“Phil and Ricky are half-brothers—same deadbeat father. The two of ‘em actually met again when the old man died. Ricky was twenty-two back then, and they struck up a friendship and stayed in touch. They’re both devils, but when they put their heads together, they make some money.” That explained how those two got together to do business.

Sally continued. “Phil’s wife—Bess is her name—she’s some stupid fucking religious nut. She was a stripper at a gentlemen’s club outside the city when Phil met her. She claimed back then she was pregnant with his kid, but she lost it and she can’t carry babies no more. She started going to some evangelical church and claims that God forgave her for her sins and she’s a good Christian now. She says God told her that Phil was going to be the father of the second coming of Jesus. She can’t have babies, so she lets him sleep with all these young girls. Says they gotta be young so they’re like the Virgin Mary. That’s how he gets away with sleepin’ with all those little girls. I don’t believe that bitch for a minute.”

I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. Hearing the casual way she talked about those fucking degenerates had worn me thin.

“You remember a young girl coming through here? Name of Mia? She was pregnant with one of Phil’s babies.” She knew this shit was happening, and she didn’t report it. I had no sympathy for the woman and wanted away from her.

“Oh, yeah. Them guys took her… Uh… I think one’s name was Duke. Yeah, that was it. One of ‘em was a fella named Duke. Never caught the other guy’s name, but he was right handsome. You know that girl?” Sally asked.

I bit my tongue to keep from screaming. “Kinda.”

“Oh, I never saw Ricky so mad. Them guys took her, and that dang baby was already promised to somebody wealthy. New York people. They paid Ricky a bunch of money to give them that baby, and he’s still pissed that she got took. He made enough at poker these last few weeks to give ‘em back the money, but they really want that baby. Phil took the poker money when he killed Ricky,” Sally explained.

My skin crawled at her comments, but I pushed it down. “Did he know where she’d been taken?”

“Somewhere in New York, he says. That Duke guy pinned Ricky to the floor with a stool and said to come find him in New York. I think Ricky told that soldier who came here where to find Duke.”

Suddenly, her face lit up. “If you know her, we could try to find her and get the baby first? They’d pay us a bunch of money, and we could split it if you know where she is.”

The rage surged again like a viper trying to strike at a threat, but after five deep breaths, I spoke. “Who’d pay? What soldier? I need to know who’s looking for that girl if I’m gonna track her down.”

“I don’t know, but he came here a couple times to talk to Ricky about the baby sale. Ricky said he was part of some secret group trying to make some soldier pay for bein’ a snitch. Said the guy who came here wasn’t one to mess with,” Sally explained.

Were they talking about me? Before I could ask any more questions, I heard the action of a nine-mil and her blood spurted out of the front of her neck mid-sentence. She’d been shot in the throat. The nine likely had a suppressor, which is why it didn’t draw any attention, because no sirens were echoing in the neighborhood yet.

I was stunned… and then I got mad.

20

LONDON

I looked at my brother like he’d sprouted a third fucking head. “An errand? An errand!”

Yes, I was shouting, but what the hell was wrong with Dallas, Ace, and Duke? They just let Kelly walk out with a comment about running an errand and didn’t ask questions? God help me.

“He had to have walked by you,” Dal said, smirking at me and making me even more pissed off.

I’d been standing in front of the hotel to take a call from Nat Crossley, Giuseppe Torrente’s IT guy, who’d been digging into Frances Ritchfield’s life. Rafe had suggested we keep Casper out of it because the situation might end up involving the US government, and nobody needed that kind of trouble.

Crossley had told me a flight plan had been filed by a private charter service under Ritchfield’s name the previous day, and it had landed in San Diego last night. I had a terrible feeling about the news—maybe the chip we weren’t sure about was active again and she tracked him? Now with Kelly in the wind, my gut was telling me all hell was about to break loose.

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