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what you’re saying is that you don’t have the money you owe me. Correct?” Scott steepled his index fingers and fixed his piercing blue eyes on his target. But the eyes didn’t snag Blake’s attention—the hands did.
    Blake had always said manicures were for pussies, and his friend was a huge fan. Naturally, his stance on the issue instigated more than a handful of arguments—a few fistfights, maybe—and Blake usually walked away the victor. The ribbing, both verbal and physical, kind of got his ego off.
    He couldn’t wait to dig into Scott about his new “gloss.”
    The sweating holy dude in the fancy chair wriggled and mopped his brow with a black sleeve. He cut a line through the air with a shaking hand. “I don’t have it right this minute, no. But I’ll have it tomorrow. I swear.”
    Scott nodded to Blake, who descended like a murderous hawk. A simple grab and twist of the neck, and Brah St. Francis was doner than a barbequed soul trapped in the flames of hell’s broiler.
    Jerk. Snap. Dead.
    What could he say? He had a gift. One of many.
    Blake snatched the cigarillo perched behind his ear and stuffed it between his lips. He hit the flint on his Zippo and lit the neatly cut end with a sharp suck-inhale combo. A long, puffy white stream fled his nostrils. Smoke pilfered the clean air, stealing its freshness.
    “What’d he do?” Blake glanced at the dead guy.
    Scott leaned back and switched on his expensive, didn’t-work-for-shit air filter. He waved a girly hand through the haze. “Tried to sell me out to the DEA, the fucker.”
    Priests were supposed to be the ultimate secret keepers, but tattling on a drug dealer like Scott for doing what he did best wasn’t necessarily grounds for neck-pretzeling by a hitman. “That’s it?” Blake frowned. “I’m gonna have to up my fee.”
    Shrugging, Scott added, “He might have molested a couple little boys in confessional too.”
    Blake took another long drag and released the miniscule tinge of regret that had caught in his throat with a heavy exhale. Good. Perverts like that deserved what they got.
    “When are you gonna quit?” Scott gestured to the cigar and fake-coughed.
    Blake stepped around the dead guy whose slumped body was making some hissing and creaky noises as it settled into its new role as a freshly decomposing life form. He took the seat next to the corpse, kicked off his flip-flops, and heaved his bare, tanned feet onto Scott’s desk.
    “When are you gonna get therapy?” Blake said.
    Scott grunted and rose from his seat. He wandered to the window, tucked his girly hands behind his back, squared his shoulders, and stared across the ocean. The top-floor view was breathtaking. Blake would miss it when he left for Vegas in a few days.
    “I need a favor.” Scott’s cool voice echoed off the floor-to-ceiling glass.
    “Hit me.” The cherry on the cigarillo glowed with another puff, and smoke burned his eyes. As Scott’s “assistant,” Blake was contractually obliged to do whatever his boss asked. As his long-time friend and confidant, he’d do it without question. Especially since he was about to bail on work to go on vacation and marry the grift he’d been banging the last few weeks. What the hell was her name? Candy? Yeah, like Brandy, but sweeter and with less bite. He didn’t even know her last name. Didn’t matter. It would be Murphy by the weekend.
    “I got word there’s a new kid on the block on Maui.” Scott faced him, his expression neutral. Hidden drama soldiers battled beneath the surface, vying for a shot at breaking through the veneer of poorly constructed containment walls. “I’m thinking either a hostile takeover or a permanent shutdown is in order, depending on how cooperative they are. I’ll let you decide once you get a sense of who and what we’re dealing with.”
    Blake stabbed out his cigar on the top of the Coke can on Scott’s desk and got to his feet. “I’ll handle it next week.”
    Scott met