Shrugging him off, I shot him a glare and moved closer to Leo. “Are you with me on this?”
“Of course,” he replied immediately, looking confused about the question and why I’d be asking him it. I
if I’d been feeling even remotely rational instead of pissed, it might have dawned on me that this was because his mom was lying in ICU, her outlook unknown at that moment, and his granddaughter’s life was hanging in the balance all because of his daughter, and the second he’d found that out any lingering loyalty he had to her had disappeared in a cloud of dust. I wasn’t rational, though, so all I saw was a man who might stop me from getting the information out of Effie, so I didn’t trust him one bit at that moment, which was why I’d laid it out. Another reason I’d done it in the way I had was so that DB could stop him if he went to grab the phone from me.
Hitting the number on the screen, I held the phone to my ear, my eyes not leaving his once. When no one answered the number, I rang it again and again, putting it on speakerphone so DB and his men could hear it. Finally, on the fourth try, she picked up.
“What the fuck?”
“That’s the wrong way to answer right now, Effie,” I clipped.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“Right now your grandmother is clinging to life by the skin of her teeth after being attacked by an acquaintance of yours who took Elodie. This means that your daughter is most likely terrified out of her tiny little mind and my mother is missing because he took her, too. And it’s all because of you.”
There was the sound of rustling and then she snapped, “How’s that my fault? I’m not even there.”
Jesus Christ, she hadn’t even asked about Maude or sounded worried about Elodie even after what I’d laid out. Why the fuck are people like that in the world?
“Because the man responsible for all of that and putting your cousin Katy in hospital after beating and choking her, says you’ve got something of his. His message to you is that if he doesn’t get it back, he’s going to kill your daughter,” I hissed, stressing the last word to try to trigger some level of human decency and compassion in her shriveled black heart so she’d give us the information we needed.
There was a pause and silence on her end, and then she asked impatiently, “And who’s saying all of this?”
There was no fear or sadness in her voice. It was empty and uncaring, just like her, and sounded almost like she was bored by it all.
Glancing quickly at Garrett, who’d shifted to stand closer to where I was and mouthed the word calm to me, I took a deep breath before I replied to the bitch. “Shane Perkins is saying this. He passed the message on while he was assaulting Katy and your grandmother was lying on the floor fighting for her life.”
I’d expected her to hear the name and realize how serious this was and that it wasn’t a game, regardless of the information I’d already laid out for her, which should have triggered her into offering up information immediately but hadn’t. But, proving she was an even bigger piece of shit than I thought she was at that moment, she snorted. “Shane? Really? He won’t do anything.”
Looking away from her dad and staring unseeingly out of the window of the waiting room, I asked incredulously, “That’s seriously your answer? I tell you that your grandmother - that Maude - might die, that your cousin who’s helped look after your daughter is in hospital after the man you claim wouldn’t do anything beat and choked her, that your daughter’s life is in danger, and that another woman – my mother – is missing, and you laugh and dismiss it?”
Not picking up on the barely banked fury in my voice, or just not caring about it, she replied, “Yeah, ‘cos it’s Shane.”
Those four words broke the fragile hold I had on my anger.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I roared into the phone. “Tell me what he’s looking for, Effie, or I swear to God I’ll make your life a living hell. The dealers that you go to will send you away or give you flour to snort, the tricks you’re turning to fund your habit will dry up, and the people you hang around with will lock their doors on you. You’ll be dried up and strung out, living on the streets like the piece of shit you are.” I stopped and then lowered the tone of my voice to a level of sinister I didn’t even know I was capable of. “Don’t think I won’t make that happen. You don’t know who I am, but I promise you, I know who you are.”