Page 27 of Demon
Gizmo’s questioning look turned to a confused scowl.“What do you mean?”
“She sent me a name I don’t recognize.”
“Is it maybe his girlfriend?You haven’t seen your cousin in years, who knows who he’s seeing now.”
“It’s a woman named Jennings.You said you could find no record of him being married, but I don’t know who this is.”Demon pulled out his phone, went to the messages and forwarded the message from Ronnie with the name and address.“The address feels off too, I’m not sure why, but can you run those and tell me what you find?”
“I can.But tell me something before I tell you the rest of what I found when I ran everyone.”
“What do you want to know?”Demon leaned back in his seat, trying to keep from folding his arms across his chest and making it look like he resented being here.
“Was it the bounty hunter Puck caught you in a lip lock with this evening?”
Demon stiffened.Puck had talked.Not that there was any reason to keep it a secret and if it had been anyone else, Demon wouldn’t give a shit.But knowing he had been talking about Ronnie, that made him want to rearrange Puck’s teeth.
“It was.Is there a problem with that?”Demon didn’t want to start trouble, but he wasn’t going to let anyone bad mouth Ronnie.
“In itself, no.But with some of the shit I found, I suspect it will be.”
“What do you mean?”Demon leaned forward.He needed to know what was going on.What had Gizmo found?
Gizmo glanced around the room again.He must have caught Puck’s eye, because he pointed to the table, then made a circular motion with one finger that Demon knew from his own days behind that same bar, meant to bring another round for everyone at the table.Gizmo’s gaze returned to Demon.
“I’m not sure if you know how I do things.Typically, I run whoever I’m asked to, then I’ll also run anyone I come up with that is a frequent associate.”
Demon opened his mouth to ask how Gizmo determined who was a frequent associate, but the tech sergeant waved one hand and kept talking.
“I’m not going to go into the how-to’s or the technical details.Let’s just say I’ve picked up a few things and I’ve developed a bit of a sixth sense as I’ve been doing this for a while.”He glanced toward the bar, then around the room again, as if keeping track of who was there and what they were doing.“I ran your cousin, you know what I found there.After you gave me her info, I ran the bounty hunter.That’s where things get twisted.”
“What do you mean?”Was there something off about Ronnie?Had he misjudged his firecracker?How had his instincts been so far off?
“Don’t worry, the issue isn’t with your girl.”Gizmo smirked at that one, but continued before Demon could argue.“So Ms.Darq told you she was with The Darq Side Bail Bonds.The Darq Side is owned by one Randall aka ‘Randy’ Darq, also known as Ms.Veronica Darq’s father.”
Demon hadn’t thought about it that much, but that made sense.With both her name and the business name sharing the same spelling of Darq, it made sense that someone in the family owned it.Demon hadn’t even considered that it could be anyone other than Ronnie.
“Okay.”He didn’t want to say too much and stop whatever Gizmo was leading up to, but he seemed to be waiting for something.
A moment later Puck appeared, setting fresh drinks in front of each of them.
“Can I get you anything else?”Puck asked.
“Is there anything easy to heat up in the kitchen?”Demon asked.His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in hours, not since before his shift started at six this evening, that was more than eight hours ago.If there was something simple, he’d heat it up and eat after he finished talking to Gizmo.
“Yeah, one of the girls brought in a huge pan of mac and cheese, and someone left a huge bucket of fried chicken in the fridge.Want me to heat some up for you?”
“No need, I’ll do it myself when I get done here.”
“Not a problem.You’re busy and I’m just standing around waiting for something to do.Light meat or dark?”
Demon stared at Puck for a moment, wondering if he was up to something, or maybe feeling guilty about telling everyone about what he’d seen.Especially now that it looked like he was being called to task for something.
“Dark meat, please.”
“No problem.I’ll be back.”Puck spun and headed for the kitchen.Demon watched as he took the first few steps then turned back to Gizmo.
“You were telling me what you found about Ronnie?”He got the sense, from the way Gizmo was acting, that whatever it was, was big.
“I was.I ran Randy Darq, because that’s part of what I do, and that’s where I hit some red flags.Randy Darq is in debt to the Devils.”
