Page 37 of Savage Hero

Chapter Eighteen

Savage

Ifrown at the dilapidated Happy Earth motel through a sagging chain-link fence. “What a fucking dump.”

“Wouldn’t let my own mother stay here, and you know how much I hate that bitch,” Vito says. He’s smoking a cigarette, the windows rolled down, but the way the breeze is blowing the smoke ends up back in the car again. I don’t mind it—I’ve always liked the smell of cigarettes and cigars. Add wood polish and a hint of bourbon, and that’s my fucking childhood, right there.

There’s a pool inside the motel grounds, but it’s empty. Three deck chairs, two with broken slats. The building was once painted in cheery colors—bright yellow walls, and each door a different color. Not much of that paint is left though.

Two hookers stand on the corner of the street, and there’s a take-out place across the road, but all the other buildings are boarded-up businesses that look as if they stopped trading when Pablo Escobar got a bullet in the head.

“You sure it’s them?” I ask, training my eyes on number twelve’s door. It’s been closed since we arrived, but Vito assured me that the two young girls who stay there would be here soon.

It’s been two days since Nyx called Athena. I took a chance putting her surname down as ‘Gray’—I’d only suspected they were family from the brief glimpse I got of her texts to Nyx the day she went missing.

I’ve been keeping my distance from that guest room. I keep telling myself I did what I had to do…but I’ve never really been able to lie to myself. Instead, I’m trying to figure out who Nyx Gray is. I need to know her pressure points so I don’t have to resort to fucking her the next time I need her to do something.

And that day is coming.

We’ve been in several meetings with Bryan and Sergio. They’re gearing up for an all-out war with Bogota. If my instincts are correct, it’ll happen before the end of the week.

Nyx is the trigger. And here I am, watching a motel.

“Why do I have to be here for this?” I mutter, shifting irritably in the driver’s seat of the battered sedan we took from the villa’s shed. We keep an assortment of deregistered junkers in there in case someone needs to go somewhere and not leave a trace. “You could have sent me some fucking pictures.”

“Want a job done right, you gotta do it yourself,” Vito says, smoke puffing out with every word. “Plus, pictures never do this shit any justice.”

When I shift again, my Beretta digs into my side. I adjust it a little, catching Vito’s attention.

“Trust me, man. Like fucking clockwork.” Vito flicks his wrist, exposing a flashy gold watch, and then makes a point of smoothing his sleeve back down his arm. “Any minute now.”

I see them before Vito does. We’ve both done a ton of stakeouts for the Family, and he knows how to describe someone so you’ll recognize them the instant you see them.

Two girls appear on the second floor of the motel. They both have backpacks, blond hair, and a fast walk. I estimate the eldest to be about sixteen, seventeen. The younger one must be in middle school.The eldest, I’m assuming Athena, scans around like she’s looking for something. And I think she finds it when she spots our car parked across the street outside the take-out.

“Let’s go,” Vito says, grabbing his door handle.

I flick my hand, and he stops. “They’ve made us.”

“What?” Vito scoffs. “Come on. They’re like thirteen.” He grabs the handle again, but he doesn’t open the door.

The girls reach number twelve which, according to Vito, is where Nyx’s sisters stay, but they don’t stop. They just keep walking, perhaps a bit faster now, until they’re at the stairs at the end of the hall, and then go down them.

“Holy fuck,” Vito mutters. “How the hell did they make us?”

I let out a quiet huff. “They had a good teacher.” I gesture for him to open his door. “Let’s get something to eat.”

“At this place?” Vito grimaces as he ducks his head to glance at the cracked and faded sign of the take-out place beside us.

“Leave your jacket and the Rolex in the car.”

Vito doesn’t bother to argue—he slips off his suit jacket and tosses his watch in the glove compartment, then musses up his hair and turns to bat his thick eyelashes at me. “Better, mi amor?”

“Christ.”

I get out of the car, slamming the door hard enough that the sound has to have echoed into the motel’s swimming area. If the girls are still in earshot, they would have heard.

We go into the Chinese take-out restaurant, and I order us some tacos. Vito hangs around by the cigarette machine, muttering about how expensive smokes are getting before buying himself a packet with a crisp bill he slides out of his platinum money clip.

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