“I can pay you extra in cash if you can wait here for an hour,” she told the cab driver. He nodded and turned up the basketball game. When she got out of the cab, she walked right in and reserved a room on the fifth floor, just in case they needed to get lost really quick. Now, how was she going to get close enough to Maurice and LeDeya without WIC seeing her? She didn’t know yet, but she was damn sure she’d figure it out. She pressed three in the empty elevator, and suddenly she didn’t have to figure it out. WIC stood in front of the elevator doors as they opened to the third floor.

“Greetings, future entrepreneurs—”

Liza pulled him in by both arms and forced the elevator doors closed. His phone bounced and cracked on the elevator floor.

“What the fuck?”

Impatiently she pressed the button for the fifth floor. She needed to buy enough time for Janae to move the money. “We’re going to my hotel room.”

WIC’s eyes twinkled. “Well, Liza, I’m flattered but—”

“Don’t be. Tell me where LeDeya is.”

The elevator doors chimed open.

WIC made no move to get out of the elevator. “What is wrong with y’all? Swooping in one by one. Deya is a grown woman and she can do what she wants.”

Liza pressed the elevator hold button. Holy shit. Liza blinked. WIC was an idiot. A plan unfurled in her mind. “I have a cop waiting in my room upstairs. Deya is sixteen and traveled across state lines.”

WIC froze. “Fuck no, she’s not. Her ID says she’s twenty-one.”

“The scar on Beverly Bennett’s abdomen says different.”

“Liza. Please. This ain’t my style. I don’t fuck with children. I make money. That’s all I do.”

“You use young women and only care about how useful they are to you. Do these women know about your wives in Idaho?” Liza’s voice shook with emotion.

The stupid look of shock on his face collapsed into pleading. He was going through the five stages of grief in ten minutes. “Liza, look, I have a problem. I started picking my mother’s lottery numbers at six years old. When I’m hot, I’ve won hundreds of thousands of dollars. I could live like your boy Dorsey for a day. But it takes so much to keep up.”

“WIC, my baby sister? You stole money from a child. You’re the worst kind of user.”

WIC’s nostrils flared. He was cycling through emotions wildly. Liza suddenly wished she had packed a weapon. He sneered, “And what are you, a saint? You’re the worst kind of wannabe. Wannabe an activist, you got memed. Wannabe a voice in the community, you got fired. Wanna snatch Dorsey fucking Fitzgerald—impossible even for a much better-looking woman—and you got side-chicked.”