“Now what?” Finn asked.

“Now we wait for Bria to take McAllister to booking,” I said. “Maybe if we ask nicely, Bria will send us a copy of McAllister’s mug shot. I think that would look marvelous matted, framed, and mounted on one of the walls in Fletcher’s office or maybe even at the Pork Pit. Don’t you?”

Chapter 33

33

Life more or less went back to normal, although Jonah McAllister’s arrest and alleged involvement in the Briartop heist dominated the news. The media didn’t exactly convict the lawyer, but they raised enough questions to get all the crime bosses good and interested in exactly what had gone down that night and who had hired Clementine and her giants.

McAllister put some of Mab’s embezzled money to use to pay his three-million-dollar bail. I saw him on the news a few times, giving press conferences where he proclaimed his innocence before quickly ducking back into his house. The lawyer looked pale, thin, and shaken, and even his thick coif of silver hair had lost its normal shiny luster. Even when the cameras were fixed on him, his eyes always darted back and forth, as if he expected a hail of gunfire to ring out at any second and put him down for the count.

Good. Let the bastard sweat. He deserved it. Actually, he deserved worse, but this would do—for now. Like I’d told Finn, if McAllister managed somehow to wiggle out of my trap, I could always come up with a more permanent solution. I sort of hoped he would, just so I could finally kill him myself. Time would tell.

Three days after McAllister’s arrest, I was in the Pork Pit, chowing down on a cheeseburger that I’d made for my own supper, when the bell over the door chimed, and Bria stepped into the restaurant. She glanced around the storefront, looking over the diners. It was four in the afternoon. Too late for lunch and not quite time for the dinner rush to start, so there were only a few people sitting in the blue and pink vinyl booths next to the windows. The waitresses were in the back, taking a break, although Sophia Deveraux, Jo-Jo’s sister and the head cook at the Pit, was standing at the counter that ran along the back wall, slicing sourdough buns for the rest of the day’s sandwiches.