Livia Lone

15-NOW

The cell phone metadata Livia had harvested at Billy Barnett’s funeral was an absolute who’s who of Hammerhead-not just the numbers of the phones themselves, but also the numbers the phones were used to call, as well as when and where the calls were placed. She knew it would be a boon to the G-unit, though probably they had come up with reasons to collect their own. But while she was always happy to help the G guys, she was looking for something special-a lever long enough to dislodge Weed Tyler. And after a frustrating few days of analyzing the data, she was pretty sure she had found it.

She hadn’t managed to turn up anything interesting about any of the regular cell phones, the ones gangbangers used for their personal lives. So she turned her attention to the burners that were relatively easy to associate with the regular cell phones because their owners were too lazy not to carry around both at the same time. But even that offered nothing she could use.

The final step was the ghost numbers-the ones she couldn’t immediately place alongside those of specific personal phones. She knew the ghost phones belonged to Hammerheads because the units had been at the cemetery when Barnett was buried. But figuring out which ghost phone went with which gang member was laborious.

One burner, though, stood out. It had been purchased five years earlier. That in itself was interesting-five years was far longer than even the most operationally lazy gangbanger would hold on to a phone he’d purchased for purposes of anonymity. But the phone was interesting, too, because it was used only in connection with one other number-another burner, naturally. Livia focused on the movements of the two numbers. One of them changed position only late at night, typically between the hours of one and five o’clock. The other rarely budged. A classic booty call pattern, except these booty calls were happening regularly, and went back a long time. Whatever was going on, it was a safe bet the participants were trying to keep it quiet. Which would explain why they each had a burner they used for nothing but each other.

The first phone spent most of its time in a Shoreline apartment rented by Michael “Mech” Masnick. She knew Masnick from her days with the G-unit. He was one of the up-and-comers, a popular guy with a lumberjack’s beard and the stature of an NBA forward. Despite his size, he was considered to be one of the saner Hammerheads, though not someone to be fucked with, either. The “Mech” was short for “Mechanic,” a nickname Masnick had earned for his facility with motorcycle repairs.

The second phone, the one that rarely moved, was associated with a house in nearby Bothell, owned by a woman named Jenny Jardin.

Who just happened to be Weed Tyler’s wife.