Page 31 of Blind Luck

I’d given up asking how she knew my whereabouts. She’d clearly installed tracking software on my phone, and even if I did a factory reset, that app would be back within a week, as sure as the sun rose in the morning.

“It’s better than nothing.”

“Send me the names, and I’ll do it.”

“What happened to sleeping?”

“Sleep is overrated.”

“Don’t you have some vital piece of national security to meddle in?”

“The world is weirdly quiet at the moment. Usually when it gets like this, it’s the calm before the storm, but if I don’t look busy, Chase will make me ride in a boat or something. Give me the names. I’ll run background, but unless the guy has pictures of himself and Kelsey all over BuzzHub, I won’t be able to tell you if they’re doing the nasty.”

“That’s what the surveillance is for. But the more information we have, the better.”

I replied to Erin with an update just as Big D walked across the parking lot, leaving tremors in his wake. I’d let him order breakfast before I went inside for a chat. He was always more amenable when he was eating. Sometimes he even shared, although I’d have to politely decline in this joint.

He’d barely sat down at his favourite corner table when Alexa called back.

“Sin will pick up Erin, and then she can follow your target.”

“In a helicopter?”

“No, on a moped.” I’d never once seen Alexa’s face, but I just knew she was rolling her eyes. “Of course in a helicopter.”

“And who is Sin?”

“A friend of Jerry’s.”

Terrific.

“Are you sure she has time for that?”

“As I said, it’s quiet. Tell Erin to go to the VIP terminal at the airport, and Sin will find her.”

Alexa hung up without a goodbye, as was her habit, and I shook my head slowly as I watched Big D through the plate-glass window. I liked Alexa, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever understand her.

I wasn’t sureanyoneunderstood her.

Once I’d updated Erin, I crossed the parking lot to thediner and slid onto the seat opposite Big D. He chewed slower, studying me for a moment, and then his thin lips spread into a grin.

“Ari Danner? Heard you left town.”

“I did, but I still come back to visit.”

“Well, it’s good to see you.” He shoved his plate in my direction. “Wanna fry?”

Big Daddy was one of those rare individuals who got along with both sides. A diplomat. He acted as a middleman when it came to solving disagreements between warring factions as well as running the biggest network of chop shops in Nevada. One time, he’d told me he planned to retire at fifty and move to Hawaii if his heart or his luck didn’t give out first.

“I just ate breakfast.”

He shrugged and stuffed a forkful of food into his mouth. A blob of egg yolk settled on one corner of his lips. “What can I do for you, Ari?”

Big D had a daughter a year older than Haven, and when she was three, I’d found her crying in a Target after she got separated from her papa. Big D had never forgotten that I’d helped to reunite the two of them, and he’d assisted several times over the years in return.

“Have you seen Shane Wallins recently?” I asked, using the present tense because Shane’s presumed death had been hushed up.

“Can’t say I have. What’d he do?”

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