Page 78 of Greed
Griffin shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Your loss.” Evan bounded down the steps, merging into the crowd, leaving Griffin alone.
Easy for Parker to say—have the night off—but greed was always there, niggling at Griffin’s periphery. Tony and Liza had it worst. Every club patron wanted a drink, to consume. Tony had already begun to dull his pain with alcohol and God knew what else. Liza, on the other hand, seemed to be affected by lust in a different way. He’d long suspected she felt her sin differently to the rest of them. They got a sick feeling in their gut when near sin, Liza… he caught sight of her grinding suggestively up against some tall, handsome man. She looked fine.
The music pounded, and he felt awkward sitting on his own. Perhaps if he put his earplugs in, it wouldn’t be so bad. After another ten minutes of psyching himself up, he decided to visit the restroom. When he finished with that, he would walk right up to Lilo and ask her to dance—just like Liza had suggested. He didn’t exactly know how he was going to dance, but he figured, there were many people around, so he could just go with the flow.
The restroom was the modern, unisex type with stalls on the outskirts and mirrors and basins in the middle. Naturally, it seemed as though the women shifted to one side, and the men the other. A bouncer stood watch at the door, making sure that everyone behaved themselves. Griffin quickly saw to his needs, sidestepped a few handsy drunk women and went straight to the center of the dance pit where he’d seen the girls last.
When he got there, he found only Grace and their blond friend. No Lilo.
He shouted in Grace’s ear. “Where’s Lilo?”
Smiling and red-faced, Grace replied: “Maybe she went to the restroom.”
A dark, insidious doubt crept into Griffin’s mind.
He’d just been in the restroom. He’d seen the girls, and not one of them looked like Lilo. Perhaps she’d been in one of the stalls. He rushed back to speak with the bouncer.
“Have you seen a woman wearing a long blue dress come in here?”
“Buddy, I get hundreds of women coming through here.”
“Short brown hair. Olive skin. She’s got a BMI of about twenty-one.”
The bouncer shook his head. “Still can’t help you. Take a look if you want.”
Griffin went into the communal restroom.
“Lilo?” he asked and banged on each closed stall door. His voice echoed off the tiled walls. “Are you in here?”
“I can be Lilo if you want,” a female replied. A woman at the mirror laughed and winked at him suggestively.
This was not helping.
Maybe she was having a drink, or maybe he’d passed her on her way back from the restroom. Maybe she was on another level…
For the next five minutes, Griffin searched the crowded nightclub and came up with nothing. It wasn’t until he went behind the bar that he felt a flare of greed prickle in his gut. It was stronger than the club’s mob. It stood out. He stood up straight to focus on it, rotating, trying to get a better sense of direction. It twisted and gnawed until the feeling became a cramp. The sensation grew as he approached the backdoor exit. By the time he pushed through to the cold alley outside, the sin raking his gut was an insatiable beast.
Lilo’s trembling voice stopped him in his tracks. “I told you, I don’t have your pictures.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lilo squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the disaster unfurling in front of her. Only minutes ago she was having the time of her life, letting loose and dancing with her two best friends in the whole world. She’d only gone to the bar for a quick drink of water and had suddenly found herself accosted by a man. He’d painfully pressed a gun into her lower back and urged her outside, past the bar staff, and through the rear exit that led to a deserted alley.
It was one of the men from the warehouse, the ones who’d kidnapped her father. She recognized the brown leather jacket. Not the same face, but his Irish accent made it too easy to assume he belonged to the same gang. When the man asked for the pictures that were in her father’s safe, her suspicions were confirmed.
He shoved her into the cold alley wall hidden in between two red dumpsters overflowing with trash. Three men glared at her from across the way, and the muffled thumping base of the nightclub reminded her that no one would hear her scream.
“We’re getting paid the big bucks to collect that envelope, girly,” said the man with the gun to her head. He had a row of hoop piercings along his ears, a ring in the septum of his nose, and one through his tongue. When he spoke, it glinted, reflecting the flickering fluorescent tube somewhere above them.
His friends watched casually, lounging against the opposite wall. One had a cigar in his mouth, blazing away. Another wore a Baker Boy cap, and the third chewed on a toothpick. All were rusty-haired and wearing the same brown, shapeless leather jacket that the kidnappers had worn.
“Look at me, girly,” said Piercings.
Lilo met eyes that reflected violence and pain.
“Not going to say it again. Where is the package?”
