Page 111 of Vicious Arrangement
Part of me hopes they took her to get a reward and they’ll rock up any minute. But again, at their hearts they love loyalty and business, and I’m good business. They might figure I’ll deal with them on something down the road. Knowing a very rich and lawful man who they did a paid favor for is worth more than fucking it over. Fucking me over.
“But I think it’s worse,” I say softly. “I think Aaron got lucky and saw them coming and he took Aria for revenge.”
“So why hasn’t he called?” Katie asks, voice wobbling.
“A longer wait means more panic, or he’s trying to make a deal or… I don’t fucking know a thing except this is on me.”
“It’s on your twisted half-brother,” Asher says. Then he looks at me and puts the phone down. “Sorry man, it’s pretty fucked. Not sure what it would tell us, anyway. It isn’t with her and last time I checked you didn’t have her chipped.”
Something lights up lightning bright in my head.
“I got her the latest Apple Watch for running so she could record her steps and fitness. So if we can’t track the watch via her phone then?—”
“Her iPad!” Katie says.
We race upstairs to her room, and Katie lunges for her iPad, which is on the coffee table.
I let her log in. That? Aria has a password. And of course, her best friend knows it.
Angus and I pace as Asher taps his foot. The air vibrates with palpable tension, thick, cold, and clammy.
What if she didn’t link the watch? Nausea twists my stomach. What if she wasn’t wearing it? I got the fancy one that’s feminine, but… shit.
Asher lunges to the sofa and takes the iPad when Katie says, “I’m in.”
He starts tapping away, and I can’t look.
It’s taking too long, even a second is too long, I should have called the cops. I should have fucking hired the mafia to take out Aaron, become what I was always destined to be, a murderous monster, even if I didn’t pull the actual trigger.
I spin. “Hurry the fuck up,” I spit at Asher.
“Chill, man,” he says, unbothered by me. “I’m going as fast as I can.”
A few seconds later, he grins and holds up the iPad. “Got her. Some vile area of lower Manhattan, a no man’s land, by the looks of it.”
I call the car that’s waiting to take Aria and I to our dinner when I snatch the iPad and Google the address.
The street’s tiny, with an overspill of council buildings, and a few old historic tenement hoods. And the address? A hole in the wall rent by the hour hotel where a lot of the forgotten, those who want anonymity and drug heads and hookers play.
“Let’s go.”
Katie says, “I’ve got Angus?—”
“No, you stay here. Look after Angus, he needs some TLC for being such a good dog.”
He barks and sinks down, shaking.
“But—”
“Katie, you know Aria would kill me if I left him here, alone and distressed. He was drugged, he lost his mama, and he needs you. Right, Asher?”
“Fucking A. Look after him, Katie, and keep this place safe.”
With that, we race out. She’s angry, I can feel the burn, but she doesn’t argue.
We jump in the car waiting for us, and I tell him to step on it.
Asher glances at me. “What are you going to do?”
