The big boy shrugged and scratched his balls. “Said to make it spotless. The mess was contained to the pool house. He said something about not fucking up his marble floors.”
It sounded like Boss all right.
“Where is he? He pulled a code black.”
Spade pointed to the bedroom when Lola came in the front door, stepping over debris, dragging a mop and bucket with her. “I just clean, Shadow. Ask someone else.”
Lola passed by, winking at him. “When you taking me on a date, Shadow?”
“Not going to happen, Lola. I have a woman now.”
“Promise I’m better than her,” she said.
“Ain’t gonna happen.”
“Shit, are none of you still single anymore?” she complained as she moved to the bedroom, cursing when she saw the disaster in the other room. “Spade, you need to call Mikey. This is going to take a while.”
As soon as Lola mentioned a date, Shadow’s thoughts immediately went to Riley. He still owed her that date he promised, and she was cuffed to a radiator.
Shadow was confused as hell. The bloodbath in the pool house was courtesy of Boss, he had no doubt about that. So where was he? Where was Killian?
Until he knew more, he’d head home, then contact Maurice and see if he’d dug up anything on their locations. At least he had hope that Boss had made it out of this alive.
They cautiously made their way back to the main house. The alarm was no longer whining, and the lights were on. Shadow had his gun at the ready. Bain moved in front.
El Diablo was in the front foyer, a bloodied knife in his hand. “I want my money,” he said, tossing the knife on the tiles.
Viper and Bain rushed in, ready to bring El Diablo down. Chains approached him. “You make that mess out back?”
“What mess? Boss said I’d get paid for every head. Since there’re five in my trunk, I’m here to collect.”
“Where the fuck have you been?” asked Chains. “You left without a word.”
“Cleaning up this guy’s mess.” He nodded to Shadow. “And now I’m done.”
Shadow gave him the middle finger.
“Boss is MIA, so until we find him, there’s no payday,” said Chains.
El Diablo ran a hand through his hair, blood smears on his arm and cheek. “I saw him this afternoon. He told me where I could find the last half dozen.”
“You said you had five.”
“Boss wanted me to let one live, so that pinche culero only has gunshot wounds to the kneecaps. This Boss of yours is one twisted fuck.”
Shadow couldn’t stick around. He needed to get home, wanted to get home. Riley would be waking up soon, and he didn’t want her to panic when she found herself bound.
“I’ll contact Maurice,” said Shadow. “He must have picked up something on Boss or Killian by now.”
He took a breath once seated in the driver’s seat of his car, calling Maurice on his cell phone.
“Maurice, did you track anything?”
“Killian’s with Boss. They were at the docks an hour ago. I picked them up on the CCTV cameras,” he said. “They’re usually there to dump bodies.”
“Well, his pool house looks worse than a slaughterhouse. Why would he call in a code black if he had things handled?” Shadow asked.
“I don’t even pretend to understand that man. I can only speculate it was part of his strategy. He’s only human, Shadow, like you. Maybe he just needed to know his men had his back.”