Page 87 of Pay the Price

“I was too busy trying not to end up at the bottom of the cliff to look for the license plate number,” Jace said.

“It has to be Calvin,” I said.

“Or someone sent by Calvin,” Otis said.

Jace leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I told you we should have killed him.”

“When was this?” Daisy asked.

“A few weeks back, when you first came home,” I said.

“We wouldn’t have gotten the info about the Velvet Rope if we’d killed him then,” Otis said. “Or any of the other shit Aloha found.”

“Wait… what did Aloha find?” Daisy asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Jace said. “We haven’t had time to go through it all, see if it matches up with anything.”

It was hard to look at her without being hit by a wash of fear. She could have died, could have ended up thrown from the bike and left to die on the road or broken at the bottom of the cliff.

I forced my voice steady, reminded myself that she hadn’t died, that she was right here, right now, and that was all that mattered. “Aloha told us about the Velvet Rope because it stood out. But there was other stuff, cryptic shit between Calvin and someone named Mr. X with a cloaked IP. They were careful. It’s going to take some time to sort through the data.”

“But we got it,” Otis said. “We have the data. We don’t need Calvin alive anymore.”

“Agreed,” Jace said, cracking his knuckles. “I say we pick him up and see if we can beat something else out of him. Either way, he’s dead.”

“Can’t we just take the stuff Aloha gave us and give it to the police?” Daisy asked. “Don’t they have… I don’t know, digital forensics people who can sort through it and look for proof that he and my dad are involved in the trafficking ring?”

“None of what we have is admissible in court,” I said. “It was a hack.”

“What about my dad?” Daisy asked.

I was almost relieved. No one else wanted to address the elephant in the room: Daisy’s dad, who was pulling Calvin’s strings.

“What do you want to do about him?” Otis asked her.

She looked at her hands. “I know I should want him dead. He’s not a good person…”

I took her hand, wrapped it up in mine the way I wished I could wrap her up, protect her from everything. “But…?”

She shrugged. “He’s my dad. And even more important, he’s Ruth’s dad too. I can’t… I can’t take him from her, not like that.”

“If we get the proof we need, he’ll go to prison,” Otis pointed out.

Daisy looked at him. “That’s different. That’s the legal system punishing him for what he’s done. That’s not me sanctioning his murder. Ruth would never forgive me.”

“She doesn’t need to know,” Otis, ever the pragmatist, said.

“I’dknow,” Daisy said. And then, more softly, “I’d know.”

“Taking out Calvin and leaving your dad alive is like cutting off the tail of a lizard,” Jace said through his teeth. “The lizard will just grow a new tail, and in the meantime, it’s running around, eating everything in sight.”

Daisy pressed her lips together and nodded. “I know.”

She was asking us not to kill her dad. Asking us not to kill him even though he’d obviously sanctioned Blake’s plan to traffic Daisy. And the bastard hadn’t even done it for the money. He wasn’t doing any of this for the money.

He was just a fucking psychopath like his son.

“Fuck.” Jace stood and paced the floor, and I knew he was battling the same thing I was feeling but doing a better job of hiding it.

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