Risk It All (Risqué #2) (25 page)

‘We’ve got this,’ he said. ‘We’re going to be a family again, you and me.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, swallowing to moisten her mouth. ‘We are.’

Slipping out of the apartment, she got out of the building on autopilot, this was a quiet street and she had to walk to the end of the block before she had any hope of finding a cab, but she needed a cab now, quickly, before she could rethink what she was about to do.

The adrenaline kept her going through the cab ride and when she eventually got to her destination heat was permeating her pores. She wasn’t going to back out, and she wasn’t going to sleep on it. It didn’t matter that it was the middle of the night, almost daybreak in fact, sleep wasn’t going to slow her down.

Running up the stairs into the building the cab had brought her to, she went up to the front desk and waited for attention.

‘Can I help you?’ the desk attendant asked.

‘I’m Brianna Wilcox,’ she said. ‘I need to speak with Detective Hoburn.’

As if Blaser didn’t have enough on his mind, when he got back to his apartment after closing up Risqué, Mattie was sitting in his car in the parking lot waiting for Blaser to return. For years, he hadn’t seen anything of his cousin and now he was becoming a regular feature in his life. He hadn’t seen Mattie with this kind of frequency since before he did time in prison.

‘What do you want now?’ Blaser asked, unlocking his apartment and going inside without waiting for Mattie.

‘I heard the cops were here,’ Mattie said. ‘As soon as I heard I got in the car.’

The place was still a mess, but Blaser retrieved a bourbon bottle from the kitchen unit and two glasses. If Mattie was here anyway, there was no point in Blaser being rude. He poured two measures and slid one across the kitchen table to Mattie, though both men remained standing.

‘Looks like I’ll be going away for a while again.’ Blaser emptied his glass in one gulp and resisted the urge to pour another measure because until Bri was back, he was going to remain on alert.

‘I’ll get you a lawyer, a decent one, not like last time, and this time you won’t be pleading guilty. You’re going to fight this.’

‘What’s the point?’ Blaser asked. ‘If they’re going to get me for it anyway I might as well try to cut a deal and all I have to give them is a guilty plea.’

‘Self-pity is what you’re going with?’ Mattie asked, swirling the liquid in his glass. ‘What does Bri say?’

‘We haven’t had a chance to talk about it. But she knows there’s a chance… they could come for me anytime, it all rests on the ballistics. If that gun is the one that killed him…’

‘She won’t let you take the fall,’ Mattie said. ‘I’ve got a few cops on the take, we might be able to—‘

‘What? Get me in deeper? Get me on bribery charges too?’ Sucking breath through his teeth he tipped his head back and lifted the glass, ready to pitch it across the room, but he couldn’t let Bri come back home to that mess. This could be the last opportunity for them to spend a night together and he didn’t want to spend it fighting.

‘You’re family,’ Mattie said, sliding his glass onto the table though the alcohol remained untouched. ‘You know that I’ve always had a soft spot for you, why do you think I was so eager to have you on my side back in the day? You’re smart and you’re loyal, two things that a guy like me needs on his side.’

Mattie wasn’t here out of the goodness of his heart. His words were kind enough, but Blaser knew his cousin too well. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that I can make this go away.’

‘How would you do that?’

Shrugging, Mattie displayed a humble smile that wasn’t quite convincing. ‘All it takes is a few witnesses.’

‘We’ve got those, witnesses who say I had beef with Rafe and they were right. I did.’

‘No one needs to know that, and it’s easy to shut guys like that up. Then all we’re left with is the gun and that can be explained as a plant, or we make it disappear from evidence. What I’m saying is, there are ways around these things, how do you think a guy like me has stayed out of jail for this long?’

‘Why would you do that? Why would you use your money and influence to help me?’

‘We’re family,’ Mattie said. He must have known that Blaser wouldn’t buy that because he carried on. ‘You know Marshall?’

‘Gary’s friend Marshall?’

‘Yeah, he’s been in my employ for a while. He’s a sort of informant for me, an ear to the ground with the underclasses. I heard about Bri’s trouble with Rafe, thought for sure that you’d come to me.’

‘Is that why you asked her out?’

‘I asked her out because she’s hot,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I thought she might ask for help. I didn’t know that you two were back on.’

‘You wanted to win her over because she never really warmed to you. You knew that she was the reason I didn’t accept your offer to join your crew, so you wanted to know if she’d changed? If she was open to your kind of business now?’

‘Something like that maybe,’ Mattie said, then took a deep breath. ‘I asked her out because I needed to spur you into action. I knew that another guy making a move on her would force you to counter and make your own move on her. Yeah, I thought I might have gotten some sex out of it first, but what I really wanted was you two back together.’

‘Why would you care about that?’

‘Because when you’re with her, you’re willing to consider anything. You’ll do whatever it takes to look after her. I already knew that Rafe was giving her trouble and if you two were together, well, I thought you’d be open to working with me.’

‘All of that effort just to get me onto your crew?’

‘What effort?’ Mattie asked. ‘Going on a date with a beautiful woman? I didn’t even need the date, just asking her out was sufficient enough to piss you off, and you moved in on her, just like I wanted you to. My work was done.’

‘Congratulations,’ Blaser muttered knowing that he had walked right into that one. Mattie was known for being conniving in order to get what he wanted. Blaser had acted exactly as Mattie knew he would when someone tried to annex Brianna from him.

‘I was right about you doing anything to protect her. But when I heard about the fight night, I really couldn’t believe it… That was… it was something, Blase. You showed that you still had the same spirit, the same smarts that you’d always had. I sent Marshall along to keep an eye on it, even he was impressed.’

‘Well that’s why I did it, cuz, I just wanted to make you proud.’

‘You did,’ Mattie said, ignoring Blaser’s sarcasm. ‘And now it’s my turn. I will get this murder charge off your shoulders, I can make it disappear. You can have the girl and the freedom.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Maybe not just like that, all I want from you is the club, just like we talked about.’

‘You want me to sign Risqué over to—‘

‘Not sign it over, she’s yours, that club is your baby. But talk to Dax, get the fight night set up as a regular feature—‘

‘Not a chance,’ Blaser said, shoving his empty glass onto the kitchen counter.

‘It’s a small price,’ Mattie said.

‘You want the fight nights happening in a club that’s under my name so that all of the liability lands on me when the cops hear about it.’

‘I’ve proven I can take care of you.’

‘For your own gain, you want to protect your lifestyle. You’d throw me to the wolves if it protected you.’

‘It’s human nature to want to protect ourselves and those we love,’ Mattie said. ‘Isn’t that what you were thinking when you took care of Rafe?’

‘I didn’t kill him.’

‘No,’ Mattie said, his certainty didn’t waver. ‘Gary did.’

His thoughts cleared and for a few stunned moments, he said nothing. ‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do, Gary told Marshall everything, and Marshall brought it to me. I know that Gary killed Rafe with the gun that the cops found in your bedroom tonight. How long will it be before the ballistics are confirmed? You’re right, you will do time, you will go away because without my help there’s no way to explain why that weapon was here. You would be lucky if the cops listened to you when you denied ownership and are you really going to drop Bri’s brother into the mess? He’ll go down for life, will she forgive you for putting her brother behind bars?’

Processing this revelation, Blaser tried to maintain his cool. Throughout the night, he’d tried to calm himself by convincing his subconscious that the gun wasn’t the murder weapon. If the gun that the cops found here, in his place, wasn’t the gun used to kill Rafe then Blaser would get no more than a slap on the wrist if the cops even bothered to take it that far. He’d petitioned the court for the right to have a gun at the club, but he’d never used it and never planned to.

‘How can you be so sure about this? Maybe Gary—‘

‘Marshall has never lied to me,’ Mattie said. ‘Gary told him everything, including his plan for the future. He’s going on the run tomorrow, moving down Mexico way to stay with some relatives of Marshall’s…and his sister is going with him.’

‘No,’ Blaser said. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’

‘She’s over there right now making plans,’ Mattie said.

‘She doesn’t know anything about this,’ Blaser said, rounding the table. ‘She doesn’t know anything about the murder or what Gary did… We don’t even know that he did it, the prick mouths off about—‘

‘About things he did,’ Mattie said, unintimidated by Blaser’s proximity. ‘Gary’s not smart enough to lie, he told that cop the truth. It was you who lied about him shooting you to cover his ass. Just like you always did. You went to jail for stealing a car that you didn’t steal! You could’ve dropped Gary in it, but you kept your mouth shut, you took the heat… We’re all grateful for that.’

‘Yeah, as long as your secrets are safe, right?’

Passing his cousin, he went into the living room and collapsed to sit on the couch. Resting his head against the back of the couch, he closed his eyes and contemplated how his life had managed to turn to shit so quickly.

The gun tied him to the murder and unless he ratted Gary out to the cops, he had no way to get out of the charge that would fall on him. And with the history that he and Gary had, it would be easy for Gary to call Blaser’s statement lies in a bid for revenge. Gary was an idiot, he never thought things through, and his impulsive actions were usually predicated around someone disrespecting him. Maybe that was why Gary had felt the need to assert his masculinity by putting a bullet in Rafe.

‘I run this town,’ Mattie said from the kitchen. ‘Rafe was a bastard who stepped out of line, you took care of it, took care of your woman in an admirable way.’

Claiming Bri as his own and declaring to Gus that he was going to protect her would have sent a shockwave through the family. Mattie would have been one of the first to hear about the development. After that, finding out what trouble Bri was in wouldn’t have been much of a stretch for Mattie, given his contacts.

As Mattie said, he’d expected Blaser to come begging for help, except he hadn’t. Somehow by taking care of things in his own way Blaser had piqued Mattie’s respect again, which encouraged Mattie to make another attempt at getting Blaser into the inside of his gang.

Blaser couldn’t figure this out. He didn’t want to be that guy anymore, didn’t want to be scared of the law because he operated outside of it. Yet, he wanted to be free, out in the world with Bri, building a life and starting a family. If he was in jail that wasn’t going to be possible and Mattie was offering him a way to avoid being incarcerated. Except Mattie was also telling him that Bri was about to ride off into the sunset with Gary, leaving him in the dust.

‘The fight night changed everything,’ Blaser muttered.

He could never have gone to the cops about Rafe hassling Bri, it wasn’t in his nature, in fact, it went against it. They had no evidence of any trouble anyway. Dropping Rafe in the shit would also have meant dropping Bri’s friends into it as well. He had tried so hard to protect Bri from the messes that followed her around that he didn’t see himself getting dirty in the process, not until it was too late.

‘You’re an entrepreneur, I should have seen it before,’ Mattie said, sauntering into the living room to stand in the centre of the space. ‘Now with your connection to Dax and all of his associates—‘

‘He won’t do it,’ Blaser said, lifting his head. ‘Dax won’t get involved.’

‘Arrange a sit down for me, I think I can persuade him if you provide the introductions, after that all we need is the club. It’s the perfect place, it provides excellent cover. The cops have raided it and they found out it was clean, they’re not coming back, not for a long time. They’re still living down the humiliation of believing a low-level criminal like Gary. A guy that low down in the pecking order is always looking for ways to break through… I guess now, after Rafe’s murder, he’s going to think he’s made it.’

‘Except he can’t enjoy it because he’s going to run.’

‘Yeah, and while he’s sunning himself the cops will be knocking down your door. How long will Risqué last if you’re serving a life term for murder? Do you think that Bri will wait twenty-five to life?’

‘It wasn’t premeditated, if—‘

‘You don’t know what it was, or what they’ll pin on you. You had motive and opportunity, that’s all the prosecution need. They already have the murder weapon and the body, this is an open and shut case. You’re a felon, how much time will they spend listening to your reasoning?’

Having committed murder, Gary would have an over-inflated sense of his own importance, he probably felt invincible right about now. But if he got away, if he left the country tomorrow, he’d be long gone before Blaser tried to pin the murder on the rightful perpetrator. The cops wanted someone behind bars and he would be the only one left behind to take responsibility.

‘I’ll have to think about it.’

His body was too tired and his mind too fried to make any sense of what was going on. The odd thing was that other than discussing it with Bri, the other name that kept coming to mind was Colt. He had to wait and see what Colt could find out from the cops tomorrow, but if he waited until tomorrow, that would also mean he’d have to go to the station for questioning, just like he’d promised Hoburn he would.