The Midnight Society: Penumbra Part 30

When I regained consciousness, Cairo was sitting on the ground, like a child, wiping blood from his mouth. I slowly sat up and tried to shake the pain out of my throbbing skull.

"What the f.u.c.k happened?" I asked. It hurt to talk.

"We just got our a.s.ses handed to us by super nerd," Cairo groaned, "That's what happened."

I tried to get up, but the ache shooting along my ribs told me to lie back down, so I did.

I stared up at the chandelier that hung in the room and marveled at the light refracting through every one of the crystals.

"You couldn't take him?" I asked.

"The guy's f.u.c.king loco," Cairo said. "After you decided to intercept his boot with your face, he began clubbing me like a baby seal all over again. There was nothing I could do."

I took a deep breath, and winced as I tried to turn my head to look at Cairo.

"He should have killed us," I said.

"d.a.m.n lucky he didn't," Cairo shrugged. "Just when I thought he was going to finish it, he got up, scratched himself, and then grabbed the little girl and walked out." Cairo tilted his head towards the door leading to the main dining room. "Nathan just let them walk out of here, like they had just finished dinner or something."

I rolled over onto my stomach, and then pushed myself up-slowly and painfully.

When I was on my knees, I took a deep breath and looked around for the gun Duckface had killed Elena with.

It was gone.

"There was only one bullet in the gun," I said.

"So?"

"I think he intended on killing only one person tonight, though he must have known there were other people here."

"Still doesn't make any sense. Why not kill you?"

I shrugged. "Maybe he wasn't paid to. Why do something for free, when another person around the corner is willing to pay money for it?"

Cairo nodded as he slowly rose to his feet. "You have a point," he said. "I'm sure there's more than one person out there who'd pay money to kill your stupid a.s.s."

I made my way over to Elena and began running my hands through her body, searching.

"Aww man, seriously?" Cairo asked, a look of surprise, and disgust, on his face.

"I'm looking for her cellphone you idiot."

Eventually I found what I was looking for in her small, golden handbag.

"Elena was talking to someone on the phone, just before we entered. I think it was Calisto."

"Is there a number?"

I searched for the most recent calls, both incoming and outgoing. The numbers were all from an unknown caller.

"Do you think Reiko can trace Calisto's location from this phone?" I asked.

"No idea, best to ask her yourself."

I nodded.

We headed for the dining room, where cowardly Nathan and the rest of his men were waiting. The first thing I noticed was the unconscious bodies of Elena's men. Some lay on the floor while others were still in their seats, faces buried into the red fabric of the dining room table where they sat.

"Huh," I stated.

"The food didn't seem to agree with them," Nathan said. He was sitting alone at a table, sipping tea from a small porcelain cup. His men stood around him, hands holding their guns tightly.

"Are they dead?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Sleeping," he said. He glanced at me from head to toe and then shrugged. "I must admit, I'm surprised that you're still alive."

"Did you hire that four-eyed maniac to kill Elena?" I asked, bluntly.

Nathan smirked. "You really don't have any trust in me, do you?"

"No more of your whimsical bulls.h.i.+t," I said. "Answer the d.a.m.n question; did you hire Duckface to kill her?"

The Triad leader rose from his seat and walked over to me. It wasn't until we were inches apart that he stared me right in the eye and said, "No. I did not hire Duckface to kill her."

I tried reading his body language to see if there were any indications of him lying. From what I gathered, he was either telling the truth or a master sociopath, like my sister.

"Okay," I replied.

"I delivered what was promised-Elena Zhao," Nathan said. "Now it's time to keep your end of the bargain."

I laughed. "She was killed before I could get anything out of her."

"That is not my concern," Nathan said. "Our agreement was that I would deliver her to you. What went on between your interactions does not concern me."

"Did you deliver her to me? Or was it the other way around?" I asked.

Nathan looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "Would I have drugged her men, if the intent was to betray you?"

"You could have done that after you saw her dead corpse on the ground," I said.

Nathan nodded. "Yes, I could have."

I looked at him, and then smiled at a simple revelation. Nathan would have struck a deal with whoever walked out of the private dining room in control of the situation.

For him, it was a win-win scenario the entire time. The appearance of that four-eyed goon was an unexpected curveball.

Who hired Duckface in the first place?

The only name I had was Calisto. She knew I was getting close. Perhaps she had Elena followed by that creep. It was an insurance policy in order to keep Elena silent if she decided to sing for me.

"There's no backing out of our agreement," Nathan reminded me. The guns that his men were holding were now pointing at us.

"No need for threats," I said as I pulled out my cellphone. "A deal's a deal. You'll get what you want."

I pushed the sequence of icons that Reiko had instructed for me. Suddenly, the accounts of the Triad filled my phone screen. I watched as money was slowly being transferred over into their corporate account.

"It's done," I said. "The full transfer should be completed in a couple of weeks." I handed Nathan a folded piece of paper which contained all the account information.

Nathan took the doc.u.ment and brought it to a laptop he had set up behind the cash register. He spent the next couple of minutes staring at the screen, deep in concentration.

When he was satisfied, he returned to me and extended his hand.

"It looks like everything is in order," he said. "It was a pleasure doing business with you."

I gripped his hand, and shook it.

"What are you going to do about Elena?" I asked.

"Hide the body of course," he replied. "We'll probably have to run an acid bath for her and her men, just so none of us are implicated in her murder. Despite being long retired, Elena's father is still a very powerful man with a lot of influence. We wouldn't want him looking in our direction as the primary suspects for Elena's death."

I agreed.

"Any thoughts on who hired her?" I asked. "Who would want Elena dead?"

Nathan shook his head. "I don't care," he said. "Elena's gone now, and we'll need to dispose of her body. That's the only thought on my mind at the moment."

"So I guess we're done here," I said.

"It does look that way," Nathan agreed. "I suggest using the back entrance to avoid any suspicion. Now if you don't mind, there's much work that needs to be done."

Not being one for goodbyes, I simply nodded, turned, and walked away. Cairo walked beside me.

"Well that was all f.u.c.ked up," he said.

I opened the door to the kitchen and found Nathan's men, lying on the floor, unconscious. There was no doubt that Duckface had entered into the private dining room through this back way.

We made our way through the kitchen, past a few unconscious bodies, and then finally out the back door which led into the alleyway.

I closed my eyes and let out a heavy sigh, gripping Elena's cellphone tightly in my hand.

"f.u.c.k man," Cairo said shaking his head. His face looked like a mess from the senseless beating that Duckface had served him. "Just...f.u.c.k."

"What are you cursing about?" I asked.

"It feels like we came out empty handed," he replied. "Now we're back to square one."

"I have Elena's cellphone," I pointed out.

"You think it was worth giving Nathan an empire in exchange for a cellphone that may or may not contain the info we need?" Cairo asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I think your girlfriend's the only one that can answer that question."

Cairo shook his head and made a fist. "d.a.m.n," he said. "s.h.i.+t's not right."

I looked at the Black Devil and couldn't help but smile. Yeah, Cairo was hotheaded, lacked strategy, and wore his heart on his sleeve, but at least he was loyal. After all, he could have walked out of the room and left me to deal with Duckface alone.

Loyalty was such a hard thing to find these days.

"So I guess the trip to Hong Kong wasn't worth it for you, was it?" he asked.

I looked at Cairo, the son of the lion that was Brevin West, and shrugged my shoulders. "It wasn't a total loss," I replied.

Without wanting to get too sentimental, I left it at that. After all, if I was going to succeed in bringing Calisto down, I needed Cairo enraged and on edge.

He was halfway there already.

We both were.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Aria "Well good morning little lady! I'm a.s.suming the couch wasn't to your satisfaction?"

I awoke to see Beau standing in front of me, still in his clothes from last night. He was holding a large paper bag in one hand and a tray with two coffees in the other.

I lifted my head off the table and grimaced from the painful crick in my neck.

I felt foul. I a.s.sumed that the smell of whiskey was coming from me-or was it Beau?

He looked like had downed a few drinks himself.

"The couch was fine until you shot a bullet through it," I said as I stretched in the chair.

"Better a bullet through the couch than a bullet through that boyfriend of yours," Beau said.

"He's not my boyfriend," I corrected him.

"Oh? I guess you two were lying about that as well."