I stopped three feet in front of him.
“Move out of my way, Garrett,” I ordered.
“So,” Merry said softly, “considering Tanner set Ryker on your church lady, meaning he had things to do, I’m guessin’ Ryker wasn’t in J&J’s to shoot the shit over a beer at high noon.”
Oh fuck.
He’d figured it out.
How much—in other words, the Carlito business—I didn’t know.
I kept silent.
Merry felt chatty.
“I’m guessin’, in an effort to convince yourself of the bullshit you’re tryin’ to convince me of—that you’re happy spinnin’ your wheels, lettin’ Denny Lowe interrupt your life for good and hunkerin’ down in that fortress of yours until the day you quit breathin’—you made a call to the only man you know who could help you out and collect on his debt in a way you could pay.”
How I got taken in by Denny Lowe telling me that he was a cop, I had no idea. Lowe might have had computer smarts and criminally lunatic genius that kept him free to chop his way through half the United States of America, but he was no cop.
Cops were far more intuitive and it took them no time at all to connect dots.
Then again, back then, I didn’t know any cops.
Now I did.
Which meant I should have known better.
Crap.
“Move out of my way,” I repeated.
“So,” Merry said, “you were good to let him in on what was goin’ down with you. And since you know Ryker’s history and your shit involves shit that might be happenin’ in a church, you knew you’d get him fired up. And since you are far from stupid and know how tight Ryker is with Tanner, firing Ryker up, you’d put it together that he’d throw every resource he had at gettin’ what you need. So he’d fill in Tanner.”
To be honest, I wasn’t as smart as Merry thought. I didn’t forget that the horrors that almost happened to Ryker’s Alexis had originated when a con man infiltrated the Christian church in order to recruit girls for hideously nefarious ends. I just didn’t put it together that if I mentioned a church being involved, Ryker would go all out. The only thing I was thinking was that I didn’t have to ask for a favor I couldn’t really repay.
He could scratch my back, I could scratch his.
I didn’t share my train of thought with Merry.
I demanded yet again, “Move out of my way.”
Merry didn’t move out of my way.
He kept going.
“Which means you were good with sharin’ your shit with Ryker and, by extension, Tanner.”
That was enough.
“Yeah,” I bit out. “I was. I was good with sharin’ my shit with whoever I wanted. What I was not good with was you decidin’ who to share my shit with, and I did not hide that from you, Garrett. I told you straight up the way it was gonna go. You made me a promise and you broke it knowin’ the consequences. Now move…outta…my way.”
“You’re right, I broke that promise. So, honey, now you gotta know just how pissed at me you should be, ’cause Ryker got a smell of somethin’ he didn’t like and it was somethin’ he couldn’t sniff out fully. So he pulled in Devin, and Devin decided he had to pull in Vera to get the job done right.”
Devin was not only the crotchety, old-guy member of Tanner Layne’s ragtag team of crazy people investigators, he was also Tanner’s father-in-law, recently married to Tanner’s mom, Vera.
In other words, as I suspected, Merry shared and my shit had spread, and it had done this wide.
In that moment, it occurred to me for the first time in ages that alley had seen the grisly murder of a woman who’d caught the edge of Dennis Lowe’s ax.
So it was too bad someone was going to have to hose down the skull and brain fragments of my head exploding.
When this didn’t happen instantaneously, I was able to force out, “Say what?”
Merry ignored my question.
“Now, diggin’ deeper, Ryker got to the bottom and surface proved true—Faith Saves is what it is,” he told me. “They got a mission, and while it might be irritating to some, they just wanna do good, even if not everyone agrees with how they’re goin’ about it.”
Since I clearly had no other choice but to hear him out (because he wasn’t giving me one), I planted my hands on my hips, beat back the urge to attack him with my purse, and settled in.
“I was also right about the fact that’s where Peggy met Trent. They got to talkin’ outside an NA meeting and things went on from there,” he shared.
“Fascinating,” I said acidly when he quit talking.
That left side of his mouth curved up again, but then his humor disappeared entirely in a way that I was no longer settled in.
I was worried.
“And you were right, sweetheart,” he said softly. “She wants Ethan.”
I swallowed, getting the sense that wasn’t all of it.
I was right.
Merry kept speaking softly.
“Feelin’ safe, sittin’ in a park while her daughter’s playin’, cuddlin’ her son, a nice, chatty lady sits with her, cuddlin’ her grandbaby, Peggy Schott let fly. They got a problem with gettin’ her husband’s kid from his momma ’cause they don’t have any money. Trent makes shit, so she’s got a job that helps out but not much. She wants to be home full-time for her babies and so she can begin the work of raisin’ her man’s son right.”
His last words were sticking in my craw, choking me, when finally he pushed away from the door of my car, but not to let me get to it.