“I just needed a place to sleep. I’ll go. Just don’t…”
I lowered my gun, and Dax did the same. “Has anyone else been up here? Have you seen anyone come or go from downstairs?”
He shook his head frantically.
“If you do, don’t mention we were here.”
“Nah, man. I won’t say a thing. Is that really a monkey?”
Tony hooted loudly.
“No,” I answered and turned to go. I was confident the man was on something. I doubted he’d even remember us once we were gone.
Dax and I backed out of the place and shut the door behind us.
“Blackjack and I came up with a few other ideas, places where there’s been recent activity,” Dax said.
When we reached the last location on the list, I left Dax in the car on a call with his twin, Ambrose, and approached on my own. A few moments later, I returned to the car.
“Find anything?” Dax asked.
I shook my head.
“Fuck.” Dax slapped the dashboard as I sank into the driver’s seat. “I’ll call Blackjack and see if he’s come up with anything new.”
“You know he would’ve let us know if he had.”
“I can push him to—”
I held up a hand. “Wait.”
“What?”
It was a little crazy, but something told me I was onto something. “What if the fucker is hiding in plain sight?”
Dax’s expression brightened. “Keep talking.”
“He would know where Remy’s guy lived, right?”
“Sure. But what…” Dax suddenly smiled. “Oh. You mean—”
“Where better to hide than the house of the man you killed, pretending to be a grieving family member?”
“If you’re right, he might not be alone.”
I wasn’t letting that stop me. “He could have had company at any of the locations we checked out.”
“I’m calling in backup,” Dax said.
“We don’t need—”
“Lance, we’ve got to move carefully, or we’ll start a war we can’t win.”
“Who says we can’t?”
“Remington, for one, and you know he’s right.”
I did, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. “Right now, maybe, but I want to take them all out.”
“That’s for the future. Let’s make sure we’re all there for it. You wouldn’t want Julian left all alone, would you?”
“They’ll come for him too. You know they will. That’s why we have to—”
Dax laid a hand on my shoulder. “I know, okay? I get the protective instinct.”
“Who are you protecting? Your brother?”
Dax shook his head. “Ambrose can take care of his damn self, you know that.”
“He can most of the time, but…” Ambrose suffered from PTSD, and I knew some days were worse than others.
“When things get bad, he calls me.”
“Then who are you protecting?”
He shook his head. “That’s not important.”
I studied my cousin before I pulled out into traffic. Something was definitely up with him. I itched to keep prodding until he told me, but I needed to focus on clearing this shit up and keeping Julian safe.
We parked a few blocks from Andy’s house. The closer we got, the more my gut told me we were on to something. I peeked through a slight gap in the back fence, but I couldn’t see anything interesting, just a patio with lawn furniture and a grill. It looked like an average person’s backyard.
“Dogs?” Dax asked.
“Not outside.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
I glared at him. “You’re the one who said to take it slow.”
“Not this slow. Let’s get in there and see if we can find the bastard.”
After a few moments of fiddling with the latch on the gate, Dax swung it open and ushered me through. We stood at the edge of the yard for a moment, making sure my assessment that no one was around, human or canine, was correct. Nothing moved but a few birds flitting around a feeder.
“You’d never know the dead guy was part of a family as powerful as the Carlottis,” Dax said.
“Would anyone know who I was?”
Dax chuckled. “Fuck yeah, if they thought for like two seconds.”
I supposed that was true enough. We moved slowly toward the house, weapons at the ready. Fortunately, the privacy fence was tall, and there didn’t seem to be any nosy neighbors around.
When we reached the back door, we looked through the windows, but we still couldn’t see anyone. If we were approaching from the front, I might have simply tried knocking, but who knocked on a person’s back door unless they were a friend or an expected neighbor.
I attempted to open the door, but this time I wasn’t lucky. It was locked. Once again, I let Dax do his thing. He’d always been faster at picking locks than me. That didn’t bother me. I had other skills.
We eased the door open. Fortunately, it had been well maintained, so it didn’t make a sound. I led, and Dax covered me. We paused once we were both inside, and that’s when I heard it. The clink of ice in a glass, the shuffle of feet.