Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

my name?”
    “Hell no, brother. Hell no.”
    “If I find out you did …”
    “I promise!” Tony’s voice went up a few octaves. “Lookit, man. I ain’t no snitch. I’m tellin’ you straight up.” He used his free hand to dig into his back pocket. “Look, all right?” He pulled out a wad of cash. “This is all I got for the van. You take it, all right? We’ll call it even. Okay?”
    Will took the cash. It was moist, which he tried not to think about as he counted out the bills. “Six hundred bucks. That’s all you got?”
    “That’s more than you thought you’d get last night.”
    Will grunted. Bill Black would be satisfied with the amount.
    “Lookit.” Tony scratched his arm again. “Big Whitey’s a businessman. We can go talk to him. Try to reason with him.”
    “There’s no way I’m—”
    “Just listen to me, hoss.” Tony kept scratching, even though he’d drawn blood on his arm. “I told you I got a pill thing going here. You and me could double it up and—”
    “No,” Will said. “My PO got me this job. Who do you think they’re gonna look at when a ton of pills start going missing?” He loomed over Tony again. “What’d you say to the police when they rang your doorbell this morning?”
    The furtive look was back. “How’d you hear about that?”
    “That nurse. She’s probably told the whole damn hospital by now.”
    “Cayla,” Tony provided. The soft way he said her name rang a bell. Cayla Martin was the girl Tony wouldn’t shut up about on the drive to Lena’s last night. It made sense that a pill freak would want to hook up with a pharmacy nurse.
    Tony asked, “She say anything else about me?”
    “No.”
    “Are you sure?”
    Will was getting tired of this. “She offered to cook me supper.”
    Tony took the news harder than Will anticipated. He tucked his chin down to his chest. “Are you gonna go?”
    “Tell me what you said to the cops this morning.”
    Tony didn’t answer. “I thought you were my friend, Bud. I can’t believe you’re going out with her.”
    Will couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. “What’d you tell the cops, Tony? Don’t make me beat it out of you.”
    He still sulked, but answered, “That the car musta been stolen. They asked me to come down to the station and file a report.”
    “You stay out of that station,” Will warned. “They get you in there, you won’t ever come out.”
    “I ain’t tellin’ ’em nothin’.”
    “You think that matters? Two cops were almost killed. They’re gonna pin this on the first idiot they can find.”
    “They got the idiots,” Tony said. “Them two guys from last night—one’s dead. The other one can’t even move, and they’s no way in hell he’ll open his mouth. I keep tellin’ you—Big Whitey, he’s got reach. He’ll take ’em out in the hospital. In the jail. In the prison. Ain’t nowhere Big Whitey can’t get to you. Trust me, man. He’s a bad dude.”
    Will gritted his teeth. Every conversation he’d ever had with Tony Dell tended to turn down Big Whitey Way at some point. Something about that didn’t feel right, and Will’s instinct was to shut it down. “Whatever, man. Just keep me out of it.”
    Tony sensed he was losing his audience. “We could talk to him. Let him know we ain’t gonna rat. Maybe get on the payroll.”
    “No.” Will picked up his helmet off the floor. He wiped the scuffs with the back of his sleeve. He tried more biker talk. “I gotta kid to pay for, my PO’s up my ass. I don’t need to be looking for more trouble.”
    “It don’t gotta be like that.”
    “Whatever, bro. Just keep my name out of it.”
    Will yanked open the door to the locker room. The space was empty. Blue lockers ran down the walls and divided the room into three sections. He waited a few seconds, wondering if Tony Dell would follow. When the door stayed closed, Will headed toward the lockers on the back wall.
    Bill Black’s name was written on a piece of masking tape stuck to his locker. Will had used a Sharpie to cross it out and write BUD. Three letters. It wasn’t pretty—Will’s handwriting had never been stellar—but it beat the locker next to his, where someone had drawn an ejaculating penis that had only one ball.
    Will assumed it was an inside joke.
    To secure his locker, Will had bought a luggage lock instead of a combination dial. Left and right had never been easy, but Will was good with numbers. He spun the four digits to the