Read Online Only the Brave by Mel Sherratt - Free Book Online Page B

to play safe, use his contacts, wait for the police to do their stuff and then go out once it was dark. He could use his charm, try out his persuasive tactics. Better still, he could us e his fists.
    At least he was good at something.

    Steve knew his next visitor wasn’t going to be so easy to pacify. Craig had been gone less than twenty minutes when Ryan arrived. The door reverberated off the wall as he pushed it open with force.
    Steve came round the desk towards him. ‘Ryan, I’m sorry. I’ m –’
    ‘I’ve just been consoling my mother – organising a fucking funeral!’ Ryan tore across the room. ‘I told you to warn him off, not fucking kill him!’
    ‘Keep your voice down!’ Steve held up his hands, noticing some of the lads looking round at the sound of raised voices again. He closed the door behind Ryan. ‘I didn’t have him killed. You know it wasn’t part of the deal.’
    ‘Someone stuck a knife in him, and when I’m finished with whoever it was, they’re going to get the favour returned.’
    ‘Believe me, I’ll find out who did it.’ Steve rested a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. ‘But we have another problem. There was only twenty-five grand in the bag.’
    ‘I packed that bag myself.’ Ryan eyed him suspiciously. ‘There was thirty-five grand in it.’
    Steve picked up the holdall and unzipped it. ‘Does it look like it’s all in there?’
    Ryan stretched the opening with his hands and looked inside. ‘There was thirty-five.’ He frowned. ‘Who did the job?’
    ‘Elliott.’
    ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Ryan kicked out at the leg of the desk.
    ‘He says he didn’t stab Jordan. He beat him up, just like we planned – just like he was paid to do – and then he legged it with the bag.’
    ‘And he didn’t count the money after he’d picked it up?’ Ryan stared at him incredulously.
    Steve raised his eyebrows. ‘Would you have stood in the middle of that path and counted it out?’
    ‘I would have counted it when it was safe!’
    Steve shook his head. ‘If he does have it, his days are numbered. If he’s given it to someone else to keep safe until this has blown over, I want it back first and then I’ll deal with Elliott. Or maybe someone did take it. Either way, he’s in a lot of fucking trouble.’
    ‘What’s he doing now?’
    ‘I’ve told him to put out feelers.’
    Ryan’s hands clenched into fists and he stepped closer to him. His eyes were dark, a vein popping in his temple. ‘I trusted you to do a job.’
    ‘I did the job!’
    ‘You didn’t do it very well!’
    Steve folded his arms, wondered if what he was about to say was a good idea or not. But he had to know.
    ‘How are you so certain that your little brother didn’t siphon some of it for himself?’
    ‘You bastard!’ Ryan threw a punch, catching Steve on the chin. ‘You killed my brother and now you’re trying to fool me into thinking he stole the money, too?’
    Steve stepped back and raised his hands in the air. ‘Calm down and think rationally, will you?’
    ‘My brother’s dead!’
    ‘How long have we worked together? Do you really think I’d be double-crossing you after all this time? We’re friends, Ryan. I have your back.’
    ‘Jordan had my back.’
    ‘Really?’ Steve raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re so certain of that?’
    Ryan paused for a fraction. ‘He had my back.’
    Sensing the younger man was calming down a little, Steve continued. ‘The woman he was knocking off . . . It wouldn’t be anything to do with her?’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘Do you know her?’
    Ryan shook his head.
    Steve thought for a moment. ‘Well if you don’t have the money and I don’t have the money, then who the hell does?’

9.45 A.M.
    Ryan screeched off the forecourt of Car Wash City. There was no way he was giving Burgess the name of the woman whom Jordan had been seeing. If she had no involvement in his murder, he didn’t want to hurt his mother if anything untoward came out. Betty