Surviving the Mercers

Chapter 10 of RoS in Justice's POV

I didn’t do call handovers, something Ray and anyone else who worked under me knew very well.  Too bad he seemed to have forgotten that tiny detail, because it wasn’t Ray who answered me.

“Montoya?”

I frowned all over again.  “Mycha?”

“Yeah, hey, sorry to bother you and all, I know you’re probably pretty busy doing… well, whatever it is you do with your time, but uh, well, I just kind of had a question, or maybe, uh, I’m not sure -”

“Mycha, what’s wrong?” I asked, cutting off his rambling.

From the house, I could see a curtain move the slightest bit, and I knew I was being watched.  A glance at my watch also told me I was now two minutes late, something that wouldn’t go unnoticed.  If I wanted to salvage today’s meeting, I’d have to get my ass in there now, before Callahan got really impatient with me.

“I don’t know,” he said, and I barely resisted the urge to start cursing.  Of course when I didn’t have time for run-around shit, it all seemed to land in my lap.

“Uh, okay,” I said, already starting up the path.  

“Well, how do you know if someone’s following you?” Mycha asked, and I stopped dead in my tracks.  “I mean, they were following us last night, that much I could tell.  What I mean is, how do you know if they’ll do it again, or if it’s just a one off.  Or, how do I stop it from happening again?”

I blinked, momentarily speechless.  Who the fuck had Ioney pissed off this time and how?  For God’s sake, I had someone watching her at school, and when she wasn’t there she was too busy looking after five brothers and sisters to get up to no good, wasn’t she? 

And then something else occurred to me.  “Does your sister know you’re talking to me about this?”

Mycha scoffed, though he sounded a little unsure of himself when he spoke.  “Of course not.  Do you really see her giving me permission to talk to you right now?  No offense, but she thinks you’re the devil.”

Even though it wasn’t news to me, hearing how much she hated my guts, again, affected me more than I wanted it too.  My chest tightened ever so slightly, and impotent anger hit me hard.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, forcing my voice to remain even.  “Look, I have to go, but I’ll stop by later -”

“They were watching us while we were in the Laundromat last night,” Mycha interrupted, and I could hear the thread of panic in his voice.  “Look, I know you don’t owe us anything, and I wouldn’t have called you if I thought it was nothing.  Ioney’s already dealing with everything else - the TLF, Mom off binge drinking, Kalen, Tanner not talking.  I just didn’t want her to have to take this on by herself either.  I‘m pretty sure she knows more than she‘s letting on, but she won‘t talk to me.”

Shit.  Shit, shit, shit.

I looked at Callahan’s front door and knew I was about to make a big mistake.  But as I turned sharply on my heel and headed back for my SUV, I didn’t regret it one bit.

“Alright, I’m on my way to the school.  I’ll see if I can talk to her.  Let’s just hope she doesn’t take my head off before I can say more than hello.”

I was five minutes away from Callahan’s place when my phone rang again.  God, how tempting it was to just throw the thing out my window.  At least I didn’t have to check the caller display to know who it was this time.  No, Callahan had his very own personalised ring tone.  As a joke, Kalen had programmed the Star Wars theme song to Callahan’s number, on account of him affectionately nicknaming my adoptive father Darth Vader.