Half Life (Russell's Attic Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

important your money is to you. Forget I said anything.” He levered one of the wheels on his chair to spin himself toward his monitors, saying forlornly, “What did you say you need? Hopefully I can find it for you before the Hole burns to a crisp with me inside. Probably even odds there, so you only need to give me half up front.”
    I groaned. Very loudly. “Fine. Stop whining; I’ll help you. Under duress.” That last was a little bit of a lie. I still wasn’t sure how this whole “friends” thing was supposed to work, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to let a friend get a hit put out on him. It didn’t mean I couldn’t be annoyed about it, though. “Give me the details, then. Who’d you cross?”
    “Gabrielle Lorenzo,” he answered, cringing a little.
    “Wait, seriously? Mama Lorenzo?” The Los Angeles Family had been fading into impotence before Gabrielle Lorenzo had married in and dragged the whole operation up by its bootstraps. She had reorganized organized crime until it reached a might that steamrolled any police effort to make the slightest dent. She ran a tight, clean operation, inspired devout loyalty, and came down with the wrath of God on anyone who put a toe on her turf.
    You did not cross the Lorenzo family. Not if you valued your physical well-being. Checker hadn’t just poked the Mob, he’d pissed off the Mob’s supreme deity.
    “What on earth did you do?” I demanded.
    Checker twitched. “I, uh, may have, uh…she may have a favored niece, who, I hasten to point out, I did not know was her niece at the time, and the young lady and I may have…enjoyed a night of pleasurable activities together,” he finished very fast, mumbling to the side.
    Of course. If there was one thing Checker could be counted on to do, it was flirt with any attractive young woman who crossed his path. The man was a menace. But I didn’t see why that would mean he was in hot water with the Lorenzos.
    “But why would—I mean, it was consensual, right?”
    Checker choked. “Cas! Honestly! What do you think of me?”
    “But then why’s Mama Lorenzo so bent out of shape?”
    “Uh, you may not have noticed, being the complete social recluse that you are, but the world is not always entirely logical when it comes to sex.”
    “Hey! This isn’t about me.” I snapped my fingers at him. “Back to your screw-up, Romeo.”
    “Well, her aunt objected to our, uh, liaison, and things may have escalated. Badly,” Checker admitted. “I was just contemplating the dilemma when fortune brought you to my humble abode. You see, it turns out that Gabrielle Lorenzo has people.”
    Saying Mama Lorenzo had “people” was like saying the Dirichlet function had a few discontinuities. The Lorenzo family had access to an army if they chose to use it. Great. “Fine, I’ll see if I can resolve this. Where is she right now?”
    He punched a key and one of his many screens unblanked itself to show a program running. “Their estate in the Hollywood Hills. The address is hitting your phone.”
    I stared at the screen over his shoulder. “You are downright creepy.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Okay, I’ll take care of this. In the meantime, you shouldn’t be alone, just in case. I’ll ring Arthur.”
    “No! I mean, please don’t.”
    “Why not?” In addition to being business partners, Arthur and Checker were solid. They went back. And Arthur was a dab hand with a gun when he wasn’t trying to be all moral. “If Mama Lorenzo sends someone—”
    “I’ll go somewhere else and lie low,” he promised. “I’d rather not—uh—Arthur doesn’t have to know about this, okay?”
    I looked at his earnest expression. To be honest, I could understand wanting to keep Arthur out of it. Arthur might not be the type to think less of you for screwing up, but you still didn’t want him to see when you stepped in it. “Okay,” I said. “You need a place to go? I can give you one.” Like a truly paranoid person, I