Wicked Break

Thirty-nine

Malia’s name exploded inside of my head.

“Malia Moreno?” I asked, making sure I’d heard him correctly.

“Deacon Moreno’s sister,” Linc said. “Yeah.”

I couldn’t come up with another name that would’ve surprised me more.

“How did you know her?” I asked, trying to gather my thoughts.

“I went to make a drop to Deacon at their house a couple of months ago,” he said. “She answered the door, Deacon wasn’t there, and we started talking. She was going to State, too. It just sort of fell into place.”

A gigantic knot formed in my stomach. I’d already dropped the news about his brother on him. Now I was going to have to do the same about Malia.

“You were dating her?” I said.

His eyes iced over. “We weren’t just dating. I was in love with her.”

The way he said it made me feel dumb for suggesting any less. “Did Deacon know?”

“We thought we were being careful.” His eyes softened as he chewed on his lip for a moment. “But then Malia was pretty sure Deacon had heard her talking on the phone with me. He started asking who her new boyfriend was. She didn’t tell him, but I immediately started getting calls from Deacon and Wesley that didn’t feel right. They wanted to meet me at different places than normal. I got freaked and that’s when I went into hiding.” He rubbed his chin. “And then when Rachel was shot, I knew he knew. It was a message to me.”

“Have you been here the whole time?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. A guy I know, he’s doing a semester abroad. But he kept the lease on the house because he didn’t want to lose it. I knew it was empty and I didn’t figure anyone else knew about it.”

“You said Rachel getting shot was a message to you. How do you know that?”

He sighed and sank back into the couch. “Dana told you about me and Rachel?”

“Yeah.”

“It was before I met Malia. I swear to God.”

“Okay.”

“When I started selling the guns, Deacon and his guys didn’t know me. So I had to act friendly with them. Hang out, talk shit, and all that, so that they’d trust me.” He shook his head. “Rachel walked out of her apartment one day when we were hanging out in the parking lot and they all went crazy, talking about how hot she was and everything.”

It was starting to come together.

“And you told them about having sex with her?” I said.

“It validated me with them,” he said, his voice straining. “It was dumb and stupid, but it worked.” He paused and I thought he was going to cry again. “And even after Rachel and I were done, I kept telling them that we weren’t.”

“So Deacon didn’t like the idea of you and Malia being together and he may have thought you were cheating on her?”

He blinked rapidly, tears clouding his eyes, and he nodded.

It seemed like every time Linc had tried to do something right, he’d made things worse.

He used the heels of his hands to dry his eyes and said, “I was there that day you came to her house.”

“What?”

“I was the one behind the door,” he explained. “She told you she was studying with a friend. It was me.”

My gut had tried to tell me that day something wasn’t totally right. His explanation confirmed it.

He started to say something, but it caught in his throat. He swallowed hard, tried to compose himself. “And I was there yesterday, too.”

Linc was full of surprises.

I shifted uncomfortably in the chair, remembering the scene. “You were?”

“They made Malia call me and tell me where to meet them.” He swallowed hard. “I’d been out there a couple of times before when I was with my dad.”

“You were the other shooter,” I said.

He nodded, his eyes oozing pain.

“Why did they take Malia?” I asked.

“They knew she and I were together.” He hesitated for a moment. “Lonnie saw us together a couple of weeks ago. We were having lunch at the pier in Imperial Beach. We were walking back to the car and I saw him with Mo at the other end of the lot. I tried to duck out of sight and thought maybe I had, because they didn’t follow us out of the lot.” He shook his head. “But I knew it. I felt him looking at me.”

I remembered the look I’d gotten from Lonnie at Peter’s house. It was enough to make anyone uncomfortable.

“She was supposed to call me after her first class yesterday. She didn’t, and I knew something was wrong. When she finally did call, she was crying and screaming,” he said, his voice wavering. “They’d been waiting for her in a parking garage at school. Lonnie got on the phone and told me if I didn’t show up, he’d kill her.”

I gave him a minute before asking my next question, the one that had been in my head since I’d stepped into Peter Pluto’s home.

“What did Lonnie want from you?”

His jaw went rigid. “I owe them money.”

“From the gun sales?”

“Yeah.”

“Here’s a question. Why the hell would you steal their money?” I asked, unable to keep the bewilderment out of my voice. “Both your aunt and your brother told me about your trust fund. Did you blow through it?”

“My trust fund only covers school and what I need to live on,” he said, irritated. “And that’s it. Tuition goes straight to the registrar and I get a monthly stipend deposited into my checking account. It can only be used for that stuff until I’m twenty-five.” He paused. “I didn’t take the money for me.”

I was skeptical that a kid who had recently lost both parents couldn’t pull more out of his trust fund if he needed it. “You couldn’t get more money from it after both of your parents passed away?”

He shook his head adamantly. “No. I tried. But there were no exceptions to how the trust was drawn up.”

I nodded. “Okay. Who did you steal the money for, then?”

He put his hands over his eyes again, pressing his palms into them, like he was trying to force whatever he was thinking out of his head.

He pulled his hands away and folded his arms across his chest. “You saw Malia’s house. Her neighborhood. Her financial aid didn’t cover everything. She was out of money for tuition. She wasn’t gonna be able to finish her last semester. If I could’ve used my own money, I would have. But I can’t. Couldn’t. So I took the money from the last sale I made, gave it to her, and told her it was from my trust. She didn’t want to take it, but I finally convinced her.”

The money explained why Lonnie and Mo had been looking for him when I’d run into them at Peter’s house. They killed Peter as a warning for Linc to pay up. And they’d killed Malia because they wanted to stick it to him, since they still hadn’t seen the money. And, probably, simply because she was a black girl dating a white guy.

Linc squeezed his hands together tightly, his fingers turning bright red. I wondered whose imaginary head was between his hands.

“Even if I had the money to bring out there, they were gonna kill us. But I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t figure out how to get her out of there. And then it was too late.” He shook his head, the misery clenching his features. “I’m so stupid.”

I didn’t know where I stood on Linc’s stupidity. On one hand, he had attempted to help Malia and escape what he realized had become a situation that had spiraled out of his control. But on the other hand, the one that I wanted to slap him with, he had taken the worst route possible to try and make those things happen.

“Why were you back at the apartment this morning?” I asked.

“I wanted to get the guns I had left,” Linc said. “I’d already brought some of them here, but I wanted to get the rest. To get rid of them. I was gonna try and find someone else to sell them to, so I’d have some money to get the hell out of here. But they were gone. So I just grabbed my clothes and bailed.”

I was glad I had told Wellton about the guns in Linc’s apartment, because I felt confident that Linc would’ve somehow screwed up getting rid of the guns.

“So now what?” I finally asked. “You said you need my help. You want to escape? Get away from these guys?”

His head snapped up, anger back on his face. “That’s what you got from all this? That I’m just some scared kid who doesn’t want to get hurt?”

I said nothing because that was exactly what I thought.

He stood. “I don’t wanna hide from them anymore, you asshole. Those fuckin’ skinheads killed my brother and they killed Malia. As far as I’m concerned, they killed my father, too. Fuck them and their money.”

“What do you want, then?” I asked.

“I want you to help me finish this,” Linc Pluto said, his voice full of anger, back to where it was when I’d first sat him on the couch. “Finish them.”