Chapter 21 · Dinner With Vito

Vito's driver pulls up in a black SUV twenty minutes after the text arrives.

No please. No negotiation. Just coordinates and a time.

Locke's jaw is tight enough I can see the muscle jump. He hasn't said a word since we dumped the cargo van three blocks from the safe house and walked back through alleys that smelled like piss and rotting produce. Devin's in the basement now, passed out on a cot with his shoulder wrapped in gauze that's already bleeding through.

Locke made the call to his family doctor—some guy named Sal who doesn't ask questions and doesn't bill insurance.

I'm upstairs in the kitchen, staring at my phone.

"You're not going," Locke says.

I don't look up. "He didn't invite you."

"Then you're definitely not going."

I pocket the phone. Turn around. Locke's leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, shirt still stained with Devin's blood and someone else's. There's a cut above his left eyebrow that's stopped bleeding but hasn't been cleaned. He looks like he went through a meat grinder and came out angrier.

"Vito wants the lockbox key," I say. "He's not gonna stop until he gets it."

"So we give him nothing.