Chapter 6 - The Golden Boy of Bradley
The man with the toothpick was Trent Brody. I recognized him from the Bradley lacrosse team roster I had memorized on my phone while waiting outside the dean's office. Broad-shouldered, thick-necked, six-foot-two, with the unmistakable swagger of an athlete who had spent his entire life being told that consequences were for poor people.
The two behind him were campus enforcers—fraternity muscle, built in high-dollar private gyms, carrying the heavy, nervous energy of boys who thought violence was something you practiced without cost.
"Marcus," Trent shouted, taking slow, deliberate steps across the concrete floor, dragging the tip of his crowbar along the ground. Screeech. "Julian is really disappointed in you, man. You were supposed to be smart. You take the pictures, you get your little stipend, and you shut your mouth. Instead, you drag some old townie down here to hold your hand?"
Marcus was shaking so hard his knees were clicking together. "Daniel... they're going to kill us."
"Get behind the pallets, Marcus," I said calmly. "And keep your hand on that camera card."
Trent stopped ten paces away. His two friends flanked him, spreading out into an amateur tactical wedge. They thought they were terrifying. They thought three young, athletic men with heavy tools in an abandoned building were the apex predators of Peoria, Illinois.
They didn't realize they were standing in a room with a man who had cleared compounds in Fallujah while their fathers were still paying off their luxury country club memberships.
"Look, old man," Trent sneered, shifting his weight. "I don't know if you're Marcus’s uncle or some private eye his family hired, but you need to drop your phone, leave the kid's bag, and walk out that door. If you do, you get to drive home. If you don't, you're going to end up in the same hospital ward as that Mercer bitch."
The word bitch hadn't even cleared his teeth before I moved.
In combat, hesitation is fatal. You don't talk. You don't posture. You eliminate the primary threat with overwhelming, asymmetric violence.
I closed the ten-foot gap in two explosive strides. Trent swung the crowbar in a wild, horizontal arc aimed at my ribs. It was slow, telegraphing from his shoulder like a billboard.
I ducked beneath the swing, stepped inside his guard, and drove the heel of my combat boot into the medial side of his left knee.
CRACK.
The sound of cartilage tearing was loud in the empty shed. Trent screamed, a high-pitched, wet shriek as his leg folded sideways at an unnatural forty-five-degree angle. He collapsed instantly, the crowbar clattering across the dirt.
The guy on the left lunged forward, raising a lead pipe. I didn't give him time to set his stance. I grabbed Trent’s falling collar, spun him into the path of the pipe, and drove my right palm upward into the second kid’s nasal septum.
The bone gave way with a sickening crunch. Blood exploded across his lips, and he dropped to his knees, clutching his face, sobbing uncontrollably.
The third kid stopped dead in his tracks. He dropped his crowbar. His chest heaved, his eyes wide as dinner plates, staring at Trent writhing on the dirt, screaming and clutching his ruined knee.
"Pick him up," I commanded. My voice was a whisper, but it froze the third boy where he stood.
"W-what?" the kid choked out, raising his trembling hands.
"I said pick him up."
The kid scrambled forward, hauling the screaming Trent Brody upright by his jacket until Trent was forced to lean against a rotted wooden post, his face grey with agony, tears and snot smearing across his cheeks.
I stepped up to Trent until our foreheads were four inches apart. The smell of his expensive cologne was swallowed by the sour stench of pure terror.
"You like breaking bones, Trent?" I asked softly.
"Please," he wept, his hands clawing at my jacket. "Please, man... Julian told us to do it! Julian paid for the car! He said his dad would make everything go away!"
"Where is Julian right now?"
"He's... he's at the Vance Estate in Peoria Heights," Trent sobbed, his eyes rolling back as another spasm of pain shot through his torn ligaments. "They're hosting the campaign gala tonight. Five hundred people. Senators, judges, the district attorney... he's untouchable, man! You can't touch him!"
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the handwritten index card Lily had hidden behind the radiator, and held it in front of his eyes.
"The secondary ledger," I whispered. "The one you were supposed to sell Lily before you betrayed her. Where is it?"
"In Julian's safe!" Trent screamed, terrified I was going to touch his knee again. "In the pool house behind the main mansion! The code is 0-4-1-2! His birthday! It's all there—the USB drives, the payoff logs to the campus chief, everything! Just don't kill me, please, God, don't kill me!"
I grabbed the front of his jacket, pulled him down, and looked directly into his dilated eyes.
"You're going to call an ambulance for your knee," I said. "And when the Peoria police ask you who did this, you tell them you tripped on the railway ties. If you mention my name, if you mention Marcus, or if you call Julian Vance before noon tomorrow, I will come back for the other leg. Do you understand me?"
"Yes! Yes! I swear to God, yes!"
I let him go. He slumped into the dirt beside his bleeding friend.
May you like
I turned to Marcus, who was pressed against the pallet wall, staring at me as if I were a ghost.
"Come on, Marcus," I said, picking up his camera case. "We have a gala to attend."
