As Mo was saying this, Hawk joined them.
“A word, Mag,” Hawk said low, then walked up the steps and out of view of the conference room.
Mag followed.
When he stopped, Mag stopped with him and immediately said, “I’m good.”
“No, you’re not,” Hawk replied.
“You gotta know, you can’t take me off this, Hawk,” Mag told him.
“I’m not gonna take you off this, Mag. I’m gonna tell you, your mind doesn’t work like theirs.”
Mag didn’t know what to say because he didn’t know what Hawk was trying to say.
Hawk explained.
“You can think you got everything covered, but you don’t got in you the dark they got in them so you can’t ever know what they’re gonna pull.”
Now, he understood.
He just didn’t agree.
“I was vacuuming, Hawk.”
“You were armed. You had Evie and her girls working in the back, so you were her line of defense. And you couldn’t begin to think some jackass would open fire on a Saturday afternoon in an apartment complex in Platt Park.”
“I should have been prepared.”
“You were.”
“He got the drop on me.”
“He got a lucky shot in, and if he didn’t have that luck, he’d be handcuffed to a hospital bed. That’s not the way it went down and you gotta shake that off so you can have your head in the game.”
It sometimes seriously fucking sucked when Hawk went guru.
Hawk got close. “You know, Mag. You’re pissed and kicking yourself in the ass, and I’ll tell you, I’d be the same. Feel that and set it aside. Get outta that headspace, because you know. You know it’s not the measure of a soldier the battle he finds himself in or the chaos that becomes of that battle. It’s how he comports himself in it. I’d say don’t let me down. I’d say don’t let Evie down. But what’s important here is you not letting your emotion get the better of you and letting yourself down.”
They locked eyes and they did it a long time.
Mag broke it by nodding.
Hawk nodded back and carried on.
“Goes without sayin’, Brock and Mitch are all kinds of interested in finding the gun that killed their brother and linking it to Cisco. That guy’s off the street, his operation in disarray will be a big win for the DPD, not to mention the citizens of Denver. So it’s done clean, they want this punted solely to them and I’m of a mind to agree.”
Mag opened his mouth.
Hawk lifted a hand.
Mag shut his mouth and ground his teeth.
“It’s theirs. This is their brother, think on that,” Hawk said quietly.
Fuck.
Again, he was right.
“That said, the cops are not gonna turn down some friendlies having their ears to the ground. And word has to get out that Evie has nothin’ to do with this. But Brock and Mitch don’t have to know how close to the ground we’re gonna get to have our ears to it.”
And finally, Mag’s bad mood started lifting.
Slowly, he grinned.
Hawk’s lips twitched and then he said, “Let’s get in there.”
Mag agreed by turning and walking down and into the conference room with his boss.Evie“Evie! Sunshine of my life! What’s shakin’?” Dad asked in my ear.
“Well, my apartment was tossed on Wednesday,” I replied conversationally while pacing Mag’s condo with my phone to my ear and six pairs of eyes following my movements. “I lost nearly everything. And that bag of drugs was stolen from my car, after someone jacked my trunk to get to it. Oh! And today, I was kidnapped and the man I’m seeing was shot.”
Dad was completely silent.
I let that last for several beats before I continued.
“You didn’t ask, but just so you know, Mag’s okay and so am I. I had to be rescued by a team of commandos who threw smoke bombs and also got shot at. But they saved me. After, you know, Snag tied me to a chair and hit me while he interrogated me.”
“Evie, my darlin’,” Dad murmured, and I had to give it to him, he sounded mortified.
But he said no more.
“And Snag had some fun things to share while we were enjoying our time together, Dad. Including you and Mick being in a competition to be the worst drug dealer in Denver. Which leads me to ask, does the dispensary know you’re still dealing, Dad?”
“Evan, now—”
“No!” I snapped. “I was kidnapped at gunpoint today!”
My father again fell silent.
I did not return the favor.
“Now, you get on your goddamned phone and you sit down with your loser friends and you share that I do not have that bag. I didn’t want that bag in the first place, but now it’s gone, and it’s got not one thing to do with me. You do that and you spread that wide and you ask them to keep that message rolling through the underbelly of Denver and I keep silent about your extracurricular activities so you can continue to hang with your brethren at the dispensary. You don’t do that, I’ve had occasion to meet a number of policemen during the Adventures of Evie this week. And I think they’ll be very intrigued to hear how my loving father makes his cash.”