Page 58 of Break for Me

forty-two

JERSEY

I didn’t know anything about her.

Hilarious.

No. I didn’t know what went down with her stepdad specifically. Not yet, anyway. I would soon enough. But being so alone in the world that it actually took less effort to walk off toward the chaos than it did to just stay still and survive where you were? I knew everything about that shit. I knew what happened to someone when they spent so much time alone that they genuinely stopped remembering how to function around normal people. I knew what it meant for someone’s state of mind to only be able to rely on themselves for survival. I knew what it meant for someone when their literal life was the only thing they had that was worth protecting because everything else had already been taken. It didn’t take much guessing to figure out what her world had been like before if the only word she associated with love was safety.

We made it to the hotel without any other issues from the stepbrother, but my brain was already working overtime for what he would mean when the sun came up. Getting out of this city was probably going to be a nightmare.

I about shit a whole ass brick when I opened the door to our hotel room. The rule was usually to stick to gross little motels and hotels where no one so much as looked twice in the direction of questionable behavior. This fucking suite probably drained half my bank account. Why it was split into more than one room was beyond my comprehension. We were here for a single night. We didn’t need a living room, a bedroom, and a fucking kitchen. We didn’t need one entire wall to be made of glass for a view of this city of disastrous hillbillies. Even Trista looked back at me in pure confusion once I’d added the second lock to the door.

“What is this?” She asked.

“Memphis still thinking she’s funny,” I said and pulled out my phone to text her.

Me: Why in God’s name did you put us in this hotel, cupcake?

Memphis: Closest one to your date night location.

Memphis: And don’t call me cupcake.

Me: Find me everything there is to know about the Evans’ operations and what Trista did to them.

Memphis: That’s a bad idea.

Me: A terrible one. And I need you to do it anyway.

Trista had moved to the wall of windows by the time I was putting our shit away. I was still pretty fucking worked up from the girl having the nerve to slap me. I was even more worked up that I hadn’t been ready for it to do something to prevent it. Everything in me believed she’d never have the lady balls to actually strike me. She was supposed to be terrified of me. I absolutely needed to get the fury over that under control before I considered touching her again. Otherwise, what I’d end up doing to her wouldn’t be for fun, and I still needed her alive. Instead, I took my jacket and tie off and pulled the computer from the bag to start looking through what Memphis would find in regard to this stepdaddy.

I sat in the ridiculous oversized chair in the corner of the living space and watched Trista while I waited for Memphis to start magically bringing up information for me to review. I watched her kick those stupid high tops off her feet before she wandered to a welcome basket that the hotel placed on an entryway table. She smiled at the bottle of wine when she pulled it up to look at it. She didn’t waste anytime getting it open and pouring it into both glasses that were in the basket with it. No doubt another thing I’d have to fucking pay for just because she’d decided to open it. It probably would have been just as easy to tell her not to touch it, but that little smile for those two whole seconds that it lasted had been so genuine that it almost looked out of place on her face. She didn’t even so much as glance at me when she sat one of the glasses on the end table next to me and went back to the window wall with her own to stare at whatever she found so interesting out there.

Folders and files started to open on the computer in my lap to pull my attention back to it anyway. Memphis had definitely gone digging into some places that she shouldn’t have. I was looking at documents that suggested this Evans patriarch was involved in an international small arms trade. It looked like he used that money to start up and run several casinos, no doubt to have a front business to run money through. He probably didn’t have control over the drug trade through Philadelphia but he was most certainly involved in the distribution of opioids in the city. The FBI was never not watching this man, but they never ended up with anything concretely tied directly to him. My eyes drifted back to my little mistress of mayhem when Memphis moved on to putting information about Trista on the screen. She was slowly making her way down the length of the windows. Dresses like that one should be against the actual fucking law. Showing that amount of perfectly tanned and flawless skin was dangerous. Well, probably not on its own. But in the presence of a man like me, it was. I shook those images from my head and looked back to the computer in time to see that this very girl was wanted for questioning in the disappearance of yet another Evans male.

“No fucking way,” I couldn’t help but say out loud. I picked up my phone and called Memphis.

“Jersey,” Memphis said.

“Are you seeing this?”

“I’m the one putting it on your screen, hot shot. Of course I see it.”

“Memphis, did she —?” I started to ask but stopped myself just as quickly when I glanced back at Trista.

“I’d say it’s a good possibility. I think she’s probably more dangerous than she looks,” Memphis said.

I couldn’t help but fucking laugh out loud at that. “We’ll just agree to disagree on that since I’m the one currently taking in the way that she looks. And it is — every bit as dangerous.”

“Gross,” Memphis said.

But it earned me another tiny smile when Trista looked back at me over her shoulder.

“They never did find the kid. Never found a body, never found any answers, and they never found her,” Memphis said.

“Any idea why?” I asked.

“I can take a pretty good guess as to what might drive a teenaged girl to murder her stepbrother and then disappear and run for years,” Memphis said. “But it’d only be that. A guess. There’s nothing here that would suggest what went on behind closed doors.”

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