“But—”
She put a finger on his lips. “This is my club. I make the rules. And I say we’ve talked about James enough. No more. Okay?”
Nothing was making sense to Ford now. Sadie felt his mind reeling around, grasping at random snippets as he tried to find something substantial he could count on for support. “If you don’t have a job, how do you have a club?” he asked.
Plum laughed with real amusement, wafting it over the sound of the music. “I have rich friends.”
“Like a sugar daddy?” Ford’s mind got even more noisy, the technicalities of James dating a girl who was kept by another man boomeranging around.
Plum stopped him with a flick of her wrist. “I do not have a sugar daddy. I have a patron.” She gave him a coquettish look over a one-shoulder shrug. “A very generous patron.”
“What do you have to do for his patronage?” Ford asked.
She tapped him on the nose. “Nothing that would affect you, puppy.”
Ford said, “He really doesn’t care what you do?”
“There’s a vast difference between caring about me and caring what I do.” She walked her fingers up Ford’s chest on the last three words playfully, but something hard had come into her eyes, and Sadie had the impression Ford had struck a nerve.
Be careful, Sadie warned. Don’t provoke her.
“Why doesn’t he want you all to himself? Doesn’t he love you?”
Or you could provoke her.
Plum’s gaze became steely. “You really are just like your brother. You don’t do drugs, you get drunk on three drinks, and you think that the ultimate compliment for any girl is that a guy wants her to belong to him.” Plum shifted, moving away from Ford. “Your brother was going to rescue me from this,” she sneered, her hand making a wide gesture that took in the club, the chandelier, the beautifully groomed crowd, ending with the thick gold bangle on her wrist. “He was going to let me be his full-time girlfriend, pick me for his one and only, free me. As though he was doing me a favor.”
Ford’s mind was a windstorm of confused thoughts. He said, “When was the last time you saw James?”
“Before he died.” Plum snapped her fingers, and two women in leather pants, tank tops, and shoulder holsters took up stations behind her. “Mr. Winter isn’t feeling up to par tonight,” she said. “Please show him out the back.”
“I’m not done,” Ford protested.
Plum patted his face. “But I am, puppy.”
She slid down the couch toward her other guests and the two women flanked Ford. As they walked him down the stairs he stopped and turned back.
“Did you love him? At all?” he called, but Plum, busy nuzzling the neck of a girl with a purple pixie cut, didn’t seem to hear.
The question was so raw, so sincere, it caught at Sadie and made her heart ache a little. How do you keep doing that, Ford Winter? she wanted to ask. Have me swallowing back a lump in my throat one minute…
CHAPTER 10
And rolling my eyes the next. “I don’t have a sugar daddy, I have a patron,” Ford repeated in a terrible approximation of Plum’s voice as he relieved himself on the wall next to the “rear VIP entrance” of the Candy Factory.
There were no VIPs there that night, so Ford had the whole alley to himself, and he was running through all the things he wished he’d said to Plum, an alarming number of which seemed to begin with “Oh yeah, well,” when Sadie felt his senses go on alert and his ears prick.
There were shuffling footsteps and whispers coming from the darkness farther down the alley. A voice rang out sharply, “Careful with that!”
A voice Ford recognized. Linc’s voice.
He stood stock-still, listening.
“Put some pep in that step pronto, we don’t have all night,” another familiar voice said. Willy. “Hate to have to tell the Pharmacist we got us a bunch of slackers.”
Willy’s voice was good-natured, but there was definitely a threat beneath it. You should go, Sadie told him. Whatever is going on down there is none of your business.
As though he’d heard her, Ford buttoned his pants—
Excellent.
—and started down the alley thinking, Good, it’s time we all had a little chat.
No, Sadie admonished. His motor skills seemed dulled by the drinks, and he wasn’t entirely steady on his feet. Not good. No chats. Chats in dark alleys fall squarely into the “don’t do anything stupid” category your mother was talking about. You should go in the other—
Something crashed. Linc’s voice boomed, “Idiot,” and the sound of a kick connecting with hard bone echoed off the walls.
Ford’s mind flashed with images from childhood, a cookout with James and Linc and Willy, building a raft at the lake, playing cowboys and outlaws, telling ghost stories. Over it she heard his thoughts slurring, Got to talk to them, find out what happened to James.
“What are all of you looking at? Get back to work. Wouldn’t want my friend to have to do any more damage,” Willy said, still lighthearted, now even more threatening.
This is bad, Sadie pressed. You need to go.
Ford stumbled forward. Why’d they lie about Plum? his mind asked now. Supposed to be James’s friends, but they lied about every—
The alley suddenly went quiet.
He kept going, taking another step, and another. His head was noisy, but the silence in the air was raw and unnerving. As if something is waiting at the end of the alley, Sadie thought. Something you don’t want any part of. Unhappily she felt for the panic button, just to know it was there.
Ford stopped walking. Sadie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
And then he stepped into the middle of the alley and hollered, “Hey! Hey, guys.”
Are you insane? she yelped. This is idiocy. You’re going to get—
A bright light flashed in Ford’s face, a hand grabbed him by the neck, and Linc’s voice growled in his ear, “Tell me what the hell you’re doing here and I might not slit your throat.”
Ford’s mind froze. Sadie pushed the panic button. From somewhere far away she heard a computer voice say, “Alert system on standby. Press to proceed to Ready.”
Linc’s arm was on Ford’s windpipe, pressing him against the hard brick wall of the alley. Ford twisted toward him, to try to see his face, but Linc was wearing a headlamp like a miner, and the brightness was blinding.
Ford’s eyes veered off, giving Sadie a glimpse farther into the alley. There was a panel truck with four guys standing motionless in front of it. They had computer boxes in their arms, clearly in the process of unloading them into the building opposite Plum’s club.
“I was over there,” he managed to choke out finally, gesturing across the alley with his chin. “Heard—your voice. Wondered why—”
Linc’s arm pressed harder against Ford’s windpipe, cutting off his air. “Don’t wonder. Don’t think. Don’t ask any questions. Do you understand?” His eyes, below the light, bored into Ford’s. They were calm and deadly.
Ford started to nod, but the pain of trying to move made him realize the question was rhetorical.
“I haven’t beaten the crap out of you because you are James’s brother,” Linc went on. “But that ends now. You are going to turn and leave. If I see you around here, if I see you, period, I will beat you so you can’t walk for a week.”