Despite the threat to his welfare, Lacey wouldn’t stay hidden in the Mustang, and neither Tess nor Po had the time or inclination to waste trying to keep him there. In fact, if she wasn’t so worried about Pinky and Stella, his determination to get to his daughter might have won an iota of respect from Tess. As it were, she rushed for the door, only a step behind Po, barely aware of Lacey’s stumbling progress up the short flight of stairs behind her.
Po paused ahead of her, dipped down, and came up with a knife from his boot sheath. She could sense his reticence to entering unarmed. The lock was broken, and the door wide open. There was no other hint of a break-in within the entrance vestibule or the adjoining sitting room, but the evidence was plain to see strewn across the kitchen floor. Broken crockery was scattered on the tiles, a heavy skillet pan among it, and a chair had been upended. Po quickly held up a hand to stall the others. He gestured at Tess to check the sitting room before they all got bunched in the kitchen where they could be cornered. Tess made a brief check, not going further inside than the threshold, and then Lacey roughly pushed past her and followed Po into the kitchen. She entered, scanned left where the men had gone, and felt her heart squeeze. Pinky was face down and unmoving beyond more overturned chairs and a table shoved off-kilter, the obvious wreckage of a fight. Glass and broken dishes littered the floor around him, and a knife was buried almost to its hilt in the wall. Po rushed to his friend, and touched fingers to his throat. Po was still, concern waging with rage for control of his emotions. He looked up at Tess, and she’d never seen him look as desperate before. ‘He’s got a pulse …’
She rushed to Po’s side, dreading the full story of Pinky’s injuries. An awful amount of blood had poured from the wound on the side of his head; his right eye was swollen to the size of a baseball. They were indications of blunt trauma, and bad enough, but she was more concerned by any wounds they couldn’t see because of the way he was lying. Almost unnoticed by her, Aaron Lacey limped from room to room seeking his daughter, though Tess had already concluded she was gone. By the state of the kitchen, and Pinky’s face, he’d fought determinedly to protect her but failed.
Pinky’s breathing was ragged and noisy.
‘Help me get him on his side,’ Po said.
She wasn’t sure that they should move him, for fear he had a major brain injury, or broken neck, but first and foremost his airway should be opened. She knelt to protect his spine alignment, while Po dragged around one of his knees to help manoeuvre their large friend to a safer position. Pinky bucked and kicked, his left arm pawing at the air to shove them away.
‘Whoa!’ Tess held onto his head, without a care for the blood getting on her. ‘Hold still, Pinky, you’re going to hurt yourself.’
His response was an animalistic growl, the sound of ill-contained disappointment. He shrugged out of her hands, even as he pulled free of Po and rolled onto his back. Under him broken crockery scraped and shattered. His one good eye rolled, unfocused, and his lips worked as he cursed under his breath. Tess made reassuring noises, while Po moved in tighter, to help support Pinky, who tried to sit.
‘Wait,’ he advised, his left palm on Pinky’s chest. ‘Get your wits together before you try to get up.’
Pinky’s tongue lolled between his teeth a moment, and he dribbled a string of bloody saliva down his chin. Unconsciously he swiped it away with the back of his wrist. The glint of lucidity in his eye wasn’t as dim. He darted a look from Po to Tess, and settled on her. ‘Am I in heaven, because you’re a vision, you?’ he said, then squinting up at Po, he added, ‘Damn, I can’t be. There isn’t any angel as ugly as you, Nicolas.’
‘Right now you ain’t gonna win any beauty pageants either, bra.’
Pinky forced a smile, then hissed in pain and touched his fingers to the side of his head. The cut was wide, but the bone beneath seemed intact. ‘Son of a bitch downed me with a cooking pot.’
Po glanced at the heavy cast-iron skillet. Pinky was fortunate: it was apparent the flat base, and not the sharper edge had struck him, otherwise it would have been a different story altogether.
Pinky inspected the blood on his fingers. ‘Looks worse than it is; scalp wounds bleed like a bitch. Here, help me up.’
They both helped him sit up, and then jostled him so that the kitchen wall supported his back. Overhead, the knife jutted from the plaster. ‘Someone throw that at you?’
Pinky rolled his eye upward, grinned abashedly. ‘That was on me: missed by a damn mile. Never was that good with sharp implements, me.’
‘You could’ve been killed,’ Tess said pointlessly. She could have wept in relief, but was too busy checking him for other injuries. There was no sign of bullet or knife wounds, but for one bloody patch on his right thigh. She knelt to inspect it closer.
‘It’s nothing,’ Pinky reassured her. ‘Just lost a little skin, is all.’
His head still bled. He touched it again, then transferred his fingers to the swelling round his eye. ‘Man, I bet I look like Quasimodo’s uglier brother, me.’
Tess found a clean tea towel, ran it under the cold faucet and returned. She wadded it and handed it to Pinky who daubed it on the cut. ‘Try to keep pressure on it,’ she advised, and the words reminded her she’d a second bleeding patient. As if summoned by thought, Lacey appeared from a second entrance to the kitchen, one that gave access to an adjoining utility room and back door. Pinky tensed as he stumbled in and had to catch his balance against a counter.
‘It’s OK,’ Tess told him, ‘that’s Stella’s father.’
Pinky studied him for a beat, then looked conspiratorially at his friends. ‘He looks in worse shape than I am, him.’
‘Back door was forced too,’ Lacey announced, ‘and there’s no sign of Stella.’ He was so pale his skin was almost translucent, but for deep smudges under both eyes. His greying hair was dark with sweat, which also dripped from his jawline. He lacked the strength to stand unaided for long. Tess was torn between Pinky and going to assist the older man. He returned her concerned look. ‘Forget about me. Where’s my daughter?’
‘They took her,’ Pinky said needlessly. ‘I fought for her best I could, but a bitch with a bad attitude and the face to match got the drop on me.’
‘Fucking Megan Stein,’ Lacey growled. He touched his cheek. ‘Scarred here?’
Pinky nodded. ‘She was with the tall dude you warned me about, Nicolas. But tell the truth, I think the bitch was the more dangerous. She was all for kicking me to death before her pal brained me with that pot.’
‘She’s twisted, but Hayden James is the most psychotic fuck I ever met. If he took Stella …’ Lacey wobbled towards them, but his attention was on the door.
Po stood and grabbed him by an elbow. ‘Slow down, partner.’
‘I have to get my daughter back.’
‘We all do,’ Po reassured him. ‘But we can’t do much with two walking wounded to contend with. We need to get you both to a hospital.’
‘No way!’ Both Lacey and Pinky spoke simultaneously, and with equal force.
Lacey peered down at Pinky. Took in his swollen face, the blood, and the wreckage of the fight around him. ‘What did they do to her?’
‘Just some manhandling,’ Pinky told him. ‘Don’t know what happened after I was knocked cold, but I doubt she was harmed. They wanted her alive, and I’m betting she’ll stay that way till they get their hands on you.’
There was no other reason for taking Stella other than to force a trade. Tess eyed the man; whatever his response was might forever determine her opinion of him. He held up his hands in surrender. ‘They can have me.’
Tess shook her head. ‘No, they can’t.’
‘You can’t stop me,’ said Lacey.
‘Bra, you want me to get you in a headlock?’ Po warned, still gripping Lacey’s elbow to support him to stand. Lacey curled a lip at him, but thought better of getting in a tussle he couldn’t win.
‘I don’t have anythin’ else to offer them,’ he groaned, ‘so if it’s a case of Stella or me, they can have me.’
Again Tess shook her head. ‘You’ve already seen what lengths they’ll go to. These guys aren’t playing around anymore. If you hand yourself over to them they’ll kill you, and what are the chances they’ll let Stella go, huh? They’re trying to cover something up, right? They won’t want anyone left behind who knows their secret.’
‘Stella can’t tell anyone anything … she doesn’t know anything.’
‘She can tell the police she was kidnapped and what they’ve done to you. They won’t let her do that.’
‘Bastards, if they—’
‘What you need to do is tell us why the hell they took her. What is it you have on Elite they want back so badly?’
Po interjected. ‘Listen guys, as much as I want to hear it too, we should get outta here. Somebody’s bound to have heard the ruckus and called the cops.’
Stella’s street was residential, and while most of the inhabitants probably held jobs in the city, there might be stay-at-home parents, or retirees, in earshot. Ordinarily the area would be quiet this early in the day, and the sound of a door getting kicked in – even if the subsequent fight inside escaped them – wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. They were fortunate a patrol car hadn’t already arrived to check things out. Calling the cops themselves would be the sensible course, but doing so might sign Stella’s death warrant. They all knew they had to leave, and as quickly as possible.
Lacey shrugged free of Po, energized by his need to free Stella, and it allowed Po to assist Pinky to stand. They trooped out of the apartment and down the steps to where Po had abandoned the Mustang. There were neighbours on the street, watching, some with their heads together in conversation as they noted the bloodied aspect of two of them. There was little they could do to dissuade the witnesses from speaking to the police, so they didn’t bother. Once they’d squeezed Pinky and Lacey into the back seat, and Tess was once more ensconced in the passenger seat, Po set the muscle car rolling.
‘Mr Lacey,’ Tess said. ‘So we know exactly what we’re dealing with, tell us why Elite want you so badly they’ll resort to violence and kidnapping.’
‘They’re covering up a murder,’ he stated.
‘Who’s murder? Ethan Prescott’s?’
Lacey grunted in scorn. ‘Prescott was collateral damage, Jacob Mathers too.’
‘Who was Mathers?’
‘He was the son of a bitch that shot me. I killed him in self-defense, and had to do the same with Prescott when he tried to slit my throat. No, they died as a consequence of the cover up of a previous murder that I learned about and decided to—’
‘Make some money from,’ Tess finished for him snarkily.
Lacey thought about it, and shrugged. ‘Yeah. It’s pointless lying. I intended blackmailing Elite.’
‘It’s the only reason you’ve sat on the evidence as long as you have.’
Lacey nodded. ‘I planned on throwing my employers to the wolves, but I had to be practical about it. I mean, I’d be effectively putting myself out of a well-paid job, right? I was gonna demand cash for my silence, but, well, fuck ’em, once they paid up I was gonna send copies of the evidence to the cops and the papers. It’s why I went to Si Turpin, who made the copies for me, before betraying me and setting the trap back there at his workshop. He said he’d added some kinda self-destruct virus to the copies if anyone tried opening them, and told me to come back so he could put things right. It’s a good job he ran away, if his nose wasn’t already broken, I’d flatten it again for the lard-assed bastard!’
Po perked up at the description. ‘He’s a fat guy with a flattened nose? He didn’t happen to be wearing a New York Jets football jersey?’
‘Huh? Yeah. You know him?’
‘Nah, bra, but I did run into him in the street.’
Po chuckled at the private joke that only Tess would appreciate, except she was too distracted by the import of Lacey’s confession. He’d killed in self-defense – twice – and was a would-be blackmailer, but he’d also planned on putting things right by ensuring justice was done: he wasn’t all bad, she decided, especially when it appeared that his daughter’s welfare was most important to him. All things considered, she couldn’t think too badly of him, albeit he wasn’t the kind of person she wanted as a potential father. She shook off that final thought. She thought back to when Stella told her about whose protection detail Lacey had worked, and immediately discarded Beyoncé as a suspect. ‘This is to do with Jon Cutter, isn’t it?’
‘How’d you figure that out?’
‘When you first ran away, it was from Cutter’s home in West Roxbury. You were chased by his protection detail – Mathers and Prescott among them – and that’s how Prescott ended up in the river at Mattapan. Why did you go to his house, to get the evidence?’
‘No, with some inside help I’d already pulled the evidence from Ben Holbrook’s server. I went to see Cutter ’cause …’ He faltered, unprepared, or unable, to go on.
‘You initially thought you could bribe him directly?’ Tess suggested.
Lacey sighed. ‘No, initially I only wanted to kill the sick bastard who’d molested and murdered his little sister.’