"California," Jack said, staring down at the paper his brother handed him once they got into the house. For some reason, he thought the answer to the puzzle would be more than a couple of innocent looking words typed on a sheet of white paper. As it was, he wasn't surprised to find the answer lay thousands of miles across the country. That was just par for the course.
"That was quick," Angel said as he appeared at the top of the stairs. He disappeared for a minute and reappeared, tugging on a shirt as he made his way down the flight of steps.
Bobby flopped down on the couch next to Jack. "Yeah, cleaned out her desk, checked her files. Found what we needed."
"Cops on your tail?" Angel asked with a grin.
"Yeah, the S.W.A.T. team is outside right now. They're after Jackiepoo's Chia Pet."
Angel laughed. "His what?"
"Nothing." Jack rolled his eyes and propped his leg up on the coffee table.
"So what did you guys find?"
"Mommy Jack lives in sunny California. Her name is …" Bobby glanced over Jack's shoulder to read the sheet of paper he was holding, "Susan Vaughn. That's all we got."
"California's lookin' pretty good right about now," Angel said as he sat on the empty end of the coffee table. Hanging his head, he sighed heavily and Bobby laughed.
"Long day?" Jack asked.
"And getting longer," Angel grumbled. As if on cue, Sofi appeared at the top of the stairs.
"There you are," she said brightly. "You both disappeared this morning before I had a chance to talk to Jack."
Jack felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up at the mention of his name. She sounded cheerful - too cheerful - and a big smile was plastered across her face. Something was up and he felt apprehension wash over him.
She practically skipped down the stairs and bounced her way over to the couch, forcing her way into the meager cushion space between Jack and Bobby. Jack moved over to make room, while Bobby kept his elbow firmly planted in her side.
The mask she was wearing dropped for a second and her eyes grew cold as she glared over her shoulder at Bobby, who wasn't budging an inch. She scooted further into him and flipped her hair, smacking him in the face.
The smile was firmly back in place when she turned her attention back to Jack. He was trying not to laugh as Bobby made sputtering noises as he pulled strands of long black hair out of his mouth.
"Your bitch gave me a hairball, Angel."
Her eyes narrowed but she took a deep breath and forced an even bigger smile, if that was possible. Jack could see her gums and probably could count her cavities if he wanted to. She tilted her head and reached out, touching his arm. He tried to move further back in his seat without making it too obvious, but the floor was really the only available space left to escape to.
"Jack," she said softly, almost like she was purring. "I need a favor – muy pequeño, very small, I promise."
"Uh …" he started, not really sure what to say.
"I need help," she said and Bobby snorted a laugh.
She tossed her hair again, catching Bobby dead center in his face. "My sister, Isabella, is going to be my maid of honor, only she is in Puerto Rico and can't be here for the planning. And Angel isn't much help."
Jack shot a glance at Angel, who shrugged and muttered, "Sorry, man."
"And I figured that since you are Angel's best man …"
Well, that was news to him.
"Uh, yeah, Jackie - wanna be my best man?" Angel asked.
"Sure, whatever …" Jack started, but was drowned out by a sudden outburst from Sofi.
"You didn't ask him yet?" she practically shouted, forgetting for a second that she was trying to attract the Mercer boys with honey instead of her usual vinegar. "You're not taking this seriously."
"Baby, I forgot. A lot has been going on."
"Yeah, a lot of you sitting on your ass and ignoring me."
"I've tried. It's just --" Sofi held her hand up, cutting him off - it was a swift, well practiced move. Angel's shoulders slumped in defeat and Bobby started to shake his head.
"This is seriously the most fucked up relationship I've ever seen."
"Bobby, don't start in on that now," Angel sighed.
"Yeah, Bobby, stay out of things that don't concern you," she agreed, keeping her back to the oldest Mercer.
"It concerns me when you try to turn my baby brother into a fucking bridesmaid." Bobby shifted in his seat, making sure his elbow plowed deeper into her back.
Sofi dug her heel into the carpet and braced herself as Bobby tried to surreptitiously force her onto the floor. "As I was saying," she said through gritted teeth, "I need some help and I thought I'd ask you seeing as how you are the only member of this family with an ounce of creativity."
"She's sayin' you're a fairy, Jack," Bobby said dryly.
"I did not say that," she said but then turned her gaze on Jack and bit her lip. "But if you are, I have no problem with that. My brother is gay; you know you might --"
"Ugh," Jack groaned and sunk lower in his seat, hoping to disappear or at least wake up. This whole conversation was starting to rival some of his worst nightmares. "I am not gay. How many times do I have to say it?"
"Apparently a couple more. Real fucking nice, La Vida Loca, you ask a favor and insult the kid at the same time." Bobby was shaking his head in mock disappointment.
"¿Por què no te callas, pendejo?" she shot back.
Bobby grunted. "Poor Kay, my ass."
"Exactly," Sofi said triumphantly and turned back to Jack.
He held his hands up in surrender. "Fine, fine, whatever. I'll do it."
"Oh, gracias, Jack," she said, squealing with delight as she leaned over and gave him a sudden kiss on the cheek before sprinting back up the stairs.
"Shit," Jack said, absentmindedly rubbing his cheek, "what the hell did I just agree to?"
Bobby stood up and clapped a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Good luck, Cracker Jack. It's been nice knowin' ya."
"You're not going to leave me here with --" Jack shuddered.
Angel made of show of looking at his watch. "Damn, how did it get so late? I got, uh, stuff I need to do."
"Stuff?" Jack repeated, rolling his eyes.
"Yeah, stuff," Angel replied. "You remember, Bobby? You were gonna help me with that stuff."
"Oh, shit – yeah, I almost forgot."
"Nice, guys. Way to abandon me." Jack crossed his arms and glared at his older brothers.
"Ah, I'd love to stick around and help you pick out color schemes and gay shit like that – but you know how Angel can get when it comes to his stuff," Bobby said with a laugh.
XxXxXxXxX
Jerry entered the house and was surprised to find his youngest brother passed out on the couch, surrounded by bridal magazines and all sorts of other bits and pieces of crap. Jerry wasn't exactly sure what all of it was – but one thing was for certain, there was a shit load of pink involved. Nothing put fear in a man's heart quite like the sight of pink lace.
Sofi was on the floor, paging through some big notebook-like thing, stopping every couple of pages to write something down. She didn't notice him and he managed to slip by without disturbing either of them.
He wandered through the house until he found his two other brothers, sitting outside on the tree stump, drinking a couple of beers and apparently not doing a whole lot else.
"What is with the pink pow-wow in the family room?" Jerry asked as he stepped through the backdoor.
"Sofi christened Jack an honorary bridesmaid," Bobby started to explain.
"So Bobby and me got the hell out of Dodge before we got roped into trying on flower girl dresses or some shit like that," Angel finished for him.
Bobby reached down – there was a six-pack on the ground next to his feet and he grabbed one of the remaining bottles and tossed it to Jerry.
"What did you find out?" Bobby asked, his expression somber as he changed the topic.
Jerry sighed and twisted off the cap to the beer. He'd spent the better part of the morning talking to Evan, grilling him for any information he could think of. Evan used to work with him in construction, back before Sweet started to control half of Detroit. Lately, they'd been working together as Jerry tried to put his plans for luxury condos back into motion. Leave it to life to rear its ugly head just as things were getting back on track.
At the mention of the name Roy Sweet, Evan had blanched and turned twitchy and panicked. Evan filled him in on what he knew – none of it good.
"You ain't gonna like it," Jerry said.
"Try me."
"Victor's daddy is a hundred times worse –"
Bobby snorted as he took a sip of his drink. "Right."
Jerry ignored him and started to pace. "He's a hundred times worse than his son. Detroit is small potatoes to this guy – he's one of the baddest of the bad in New York. We're not talking fire bombings, Bobby. We're talking people cut up into little pieces and never found again. We're talking whole families wiped out. We gotta take this serious."
"Never said we weren't, Jerry," Angel said, his face hard as he took in the information.
"There's more." Jerry hesitated, debating whether or not he should continue. This next little piece was going to set Bobby off, and when Bobby was angry, there was no telling what would happen.
"Well, spill it. We ain't got all day, Jer," Bobby said impatiently.
Figuring it was best to just rip the bandage off a wound quickly, Jerry sighed and reached into his back pocket. He tossed the thick envelope he'd been hiding to Bobby, who easily caught it one-handed.
Bobby opened it and pulled out the contents. A thick stack of photographs fanned out in front of him.
"Fuck," he ground out between clenched teeth.
"Things just got a whole lot worse," Angel said steadily, looking to the grey sky as he finished his beer.
XxXxXxXxX
Usually when someone 'saw red', it was a figure of speech. But not for Bobby Mercer. Everything in his line of sight was bathed in angry crimson. He shook – not from fear but from anger. It took all his willpower to not tear each picture into tiny shreds.
"Found that in my car after I got through meeting with Evan. It was lying on the driver's seat and the car was still locked. Creeped me the fuck out, Bobby," Jerry explained, his voice low and his eyes worried.
Someone was watching them. More exact – someone was watching Jack. Picture after picture of his baby brother – on the way to physical therapy with Bobby driving, getting out of the car, walking slowly into the hospital, leaving it – he could make a fucking flip book out of the typical Jack Mercer day if he wanted to. Shit, there were even some pictures inside the therapy room as Jack worked out with his therapist.
Bobby shoved one of the pictures at Jerry. "He was fucking inside the hospital."
"They're tryin' to get us riled up – they're tryin' to get you riled up, Bobby," Jerry said as he grabbed the picture and handed it to Angel, who looked equally pissed as he took in the scene.
"Yeah, well, it's fucking working."
"Why bother with pictures?" Angel asked. "Why not just take him out?"
"Because this is a game to this guy. Like I said – small potatoes; he's toying with us." Jerry started to pace again. "He's going to keep us on edge for as long as he can."
Bobby was still going through the pictures, when he came upon a set that were of Jack sitting on the porch steps out front. Bobby fought the urge to start looking around the property, overturning stones and peering around corners. The bastard wanted them to think there were people hiding in the bushes and he wasn't about to let the asshole drive him into paranoia.
"What the…?" Bobby took a closer look at the pictures. Jack had been outside for a while in a couple of them. Being cooped up all day was driving him stir crazy and he liked to sit outside with a book now that it wasn't quite subzero weather anymore. Of course, he'd been reading the same damn book for weeks now and had barely made a dent in it.
In one of the pictures, some teenage guy was talking to Jack. Bobby recognized him from a couple of the pick-up games he'd managed to take part in over the winter. He was a good, solid player – not the hardest hitter in the world, but that was skill that only came with practice. In one of the pictures, Jack was handing over what looked like a couple of bills. Bobby's hand tightened on that picture, any number of possibilities running through his head. Jack had been clean for years, but he wouldn't be the first person to turn to drugs because of an injury.
There were some more shots of Jack just sitting there, staring off into space, the book lying on the step next to him. The guy came back and was handing something over, something Bobby couldn't quite make out. He shuffled to the next picture and ground out a curse.
"Fuck that little shit. I'm going to kill him," he said suddenly and Jerry stopped pacing, a look of alarm on his face.
"What is it, Bobby?" Angel asked, looking over his older brother's shoulder.
"That little fuck is smoking again." Bobby shoved the picture at Angel who started to laugh. Jack had a familiar pack of red Marlboros resting on top of his book and a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a telltale trail of smoke hanging in the air around him.
"It ain't funny," Bobby argued and Jerry sighed heavily.
"Can we focus on the bigger picture here for a second? Please."
"We need a plan," Angel said. "A real plan for a change."
"What we need to do is tell Jack," Jerry reasoned and Bobby started to shake his head.
"No - that's nonnegotiable," he said, his voice flat and his eyes hard as he silently challenged his brother to argue with him.
Jerry kicked at the ground, sending a rock skidding into a nearby tree. "Well, what do you suggest we do?" he asked angrily. "He's gonna realize somethin' is up. He ain't stupid."
Bobby looked at Jerry, the lines growing deeper between his eyes as his mind raced, trying to come up with something. He always did this shit better on the fly, when he didn't have time to think things through, let alone worry he was making a wrong decision. His brothers would never admit it, but instinct had gotten them out of more scrapes than careful, calculated planning.
Suddenly, an idea came to him and a sly smile spread slowly across his face.
Angel groaned and Jerry's shoulders slumped. "No, man …" he started to protest.
Bobby tossed the beer bottle on the ground and stood up, throwing an arm around his brother's shoulders. "We're wingin' it, Jerry."