Holding Smoke by Elle Cosimano

Author:Elle Cosimano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2016-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

When classes let out, I head straight to the yard. It’s a mess of orange knots amid piles of melting snow. I find Holmes playing hoops with his buddies and see Ben standing among them, watching the game, safe within their circle. This will work, I tell myself. It has to.

I wait for Holmes’s eyes to swing to mine, then I pull him off the court with a look.

“I can get you the list you want by tomorrow. Wednesday at the latest,” I tell him when we’re alone.

“Libro told me you were on vacation. What changed your mind?”

“I need something….” I begin. But there’s no time for nickel-and-dime bullshit. “I need an advance.”

Holmes licks his lips and looks pointedly at the bruises on my neck. A knowing smile creeps over them. “That’s unfortunate. I don’t do advances, Smoke.”

I look around the yard, trying not to come off as desperate as I feel. Every shadow seems to stretch in my direction, reminding me how little time I have to make this right. “The way I figure it, you owe me.”

Holmes folds his arms over his jumpsuit, a gesture that probably appears relaxed to the guards but looks like a wall going up to me. “Yeah? How the hell you figure I owe you?”

I weigh my words carefully, reminding myself we are not “friends.” “There’s a waitress at that club you had me look into. She’s run into some trouble since you came down on Panagakos for those freebies I told you about.” I don’t come out and say Panagakos is involved, because I don’t think he is, or that Pink was the one to roll Panagakos under the bus, because she wasn’t. Instead, I let Holmes infer what he will, hoping his rigid sense of loyalty will sway him to keep an informant safe. “You have people outside who can keep an eye on her. They can protect her. That’s all I want in exchange for the list.”

Holmes shakes his head and reclines against the wall, one leg propped behind him until we’re eye level. I can picture him on the outside, leaning on the hood of some expensive car. His brother has money. Contacts. People who owe him favors. Enough pull to pay for the pricey attorney who’ll probably keep him here, shielded under a mountain of legal documents and red tape until his twenty-first birthday. “That’s a ballsy request on a day like today, Smoke. People are second-guessing the reliability of your source after what happened to Simpson. How do I know you’ll make good?”

The memory of Simpson’s mother clawing at the glass gnaws at me, tearing away the thick skin of the person I was before. But I can’t let it show. Can’t let him see that I’m second-guessing myself, too.

“You don’t.”

Holmes surveys the yard, wincing against the late-afternoon sun. He pushes off the wall and straightens up slowly, his decision made. He looks down at me, a palpable shift in the balance of power when he finally speaks.

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