The club hung there in silence while John weighed up his options, the pause between tracks, everyone wondering what the next song would be.
“Alright, let them through,” John said, relenting.
He had sway, because the men parted like a rough sea. Butler didn’t hesitate and led her through the gap before Big John could have second thoughts. These men might have consented to let her go, but Con felt their eyes on her, ferocious in their appetite and fury. They muttered familiar slurs under their breath, and some new ones.
“We’ll be coming for you, zirc,” a voice hissed in her ear. She flinched but kept her eyes fixed on the front door, feet moving.
They passed through the gauntlet and out the door into the parking lot of a prehistoric strip mall. Vacant signs hung in the windows of half the storefronts. Whatever painted lines had once separated spots had long since faded to spectral outlines, and the jumble of old cars were parked haphazardly like a mouthful of bad teeth. A pale half-moon hung in the night sky. Con looked back at the bar they’d just vacated. It was called the Fencepost, which Con thought was a better name than it deserved.
“Well, that was a disaster,” Butler said, looking rattled and pale. He signaled to a sleek white Mercedes, which flared to life and pulled up alongside them. “I had to promise that jackass a seat on the steering committee to get you out of there in one piece.”
“Why?” Con asked, relieved, and a little surprised, to be breathing fresh air.
“Everyone has their price,” Butler said. “John Highsmith wants respect, which he has no prayer of earning on his own. I don’t know if he believed my story that we couldn’t afford to alienate Virginia police, but he knew he had to play along. His body would be found in a ditch if he cost the chapter the meth trade.”
As if on cue, men began to pour out of the bar, laughing and jeering, restless with the need to inflict harm. All it would take was a spark. They might have allowed her to go, but she’d seen men feed on each other this way before, inciting themselves toward a violence that they weren’t capable of alone. A beer bottle arced over the car and smashed on the concrete. The men roared and surged forward, emboldened by their own daring. Butler implored her to get in.
Con didn’t.
“Are you kidding me? Get in the car!” Butler said, getting in himself before he turned around and pleaded with her. “I didn’t shackle myself with John Highsmith to watch you get dismembered on a sidewalk.”
“Where are we going?” she asked. Now she was out of the bar, she was much less inclined to blindly follow Butler.
“To get some answers. That’s what you came to Virginia for, isn’t it?”
It was, but Con still didn’t budge. “How do I know your answers will be my answers?”
“Because my donor knew John Highsmith had you before I did. I’m being paid handsomely to get you out of there. Aren’t you curious how and why?”
She was. And if Butler was being honest, then his anonymous donor and the individual who’d hired John Highsmith to dispose of the dead bodies at the town house were likely one and the same. That was the person Con needed to meet. Looked like she was sticking with Butler a little while longer. She bundled into the back seat beside him.
“Emergency,” Butler told the car.
The doors locked, and the car peeled out of the parking lot so fast that Con had to hold on not to be thrown against Butler. No, thank you, there wasn’t enough soap in the world for that. The front seat was empty. Butler had come alone, clearly prizing secrecy above security. He was braver than she’d given him credit for being—either that or more desperate.
Beside her, Butler was already on his LFD.
“It’s done. I have her. Yes. Yes. Yes,” he said, becoming angrier with each affirmative. When he finally came to a negative, he said it with the pleasure of cutting into a perfectly cooked steak. “No, change of plan. I’m doubling my finder’s fee. Yes, doubled. And I want to meet.”
Con listened to herself being haggled over.
“I don’t care what we agreed. Do you know how much political capital I squandered today playing your errand boy? I looked like a fool in front of my own people. I don’t give a damn about your precious anonymity. This is nonnegotiable. If you want her, then bring me my money. Tonight. Otherwise, I’ll drop her right back where I found her, and those boys will have themselves a barbecue right there in the parking lot.”
Butler listened intently and then hung up, regarding Con with newfound curiosity.