Chapter 1:
Jack leaned against the brick wall, making sure to hide himself in the shadows as best he could. He couldn't scare the kid. That wouldn't bode well for his cause. The grim look on Jack's face remained until he spotted his target walking down the street. Only then did a faint, sinister smile appear on his face. That was the only kind of smile Jack had let on to his face since Angel. Ever since he had started losing brothers, nothing was funny or satisfying anymore. Jerry and Bobby had started to worry when this affliction, as they called it, fell upon Jack, but Jack didn't care for their worries. He brushed them off and insisted he was fine, pushing them away day by day. Now, Jack only wished one of his brothers was breathing down his neck, worrying about him.
"Mr. Greeley," Jack said after reaching out his hand and pulling the kid into the alleyway. It seemed like one of those moves from the movies, but Jack had seen Bobby do it many times and he was proud to say he could do it just like his big brother.
"Mr. Mercer," the young lawyer said in return. Jack could hear the nervousness in his voice.
"There's something I wanna talk to you about," Jack said simply, eyeing the boy with malice. He hated the kid for not doing his best work. He hated him for hating Bobby and losing the case on purpose. Even more, Jack hated him for moving on to save numerous other people from jail. People that were guilty, unlike Bobby. Maybe Bobby had done something to this kid to upset him and by letting Bobby go to jail, he got his revenge. Or maybe someone paid him or threatened him to let Bobby go to jail. Either way, Jack was going to fight it or be killed trying.
"I don't think I have anything to say to you Mr. Mercer," Greeley said.
"Cut the crap, punk," Jack said, getting tired of being nice. Sometimes Jack felt like he was turning into Bobby in certain ways and this was definitely one of them. "You and I both know you didn't do your job when my brother was on trial. I should kill you for it, but my brother's innocent and I need you to tell me why you lost the case on purpose," Jack growled.
"I-I didn't!" Greeley said as his eyes shifted to the mouth of the alleyway.
"Don't even think about calling for help," Jack said as he caught wind of what the kid was trying to do. Jack moved the two of them further into the alleyway and hid them behind a dumpster. Then he pulled out a pocket knife and pressed it to Greeley's neck. "Maybe I was stupid coming into this but you're helping me learn. Now tell me what I want to know."
"I… your brother… I," Greeley said nervously.
"Someone paid you off," Jack said, his stormy eyes narrowing in anger.
"Y-yes," Greeley replied before biting his lower lip. "But if I tell, I'll die!" Greeley exclaimed.
"You probably will, but the question is when. I could kill you now, or you could have the chance of running away and not being killed by the guys who paid you off," Jack replied as he shifted his grip on the blade's handle. Back when Bobby, Jerry and Angel were around, Jack was the one who stood back and hide his face while his brothers did the beating and the killing. But after all the fresh trauma in his life, Jack lost his fear, lost the sheltered innocence his brothers had created for him and lost his conscious. He would do this without losing a wink of sleep if he had to.
"They'll find me," Greeley whined. He wasn't even questioning Jack's ability to kill him. He could see the anger in his attacker's eyes which caused Jack's grim smile to deepen.
"I'll kill you," Jack threatened. "Your choice."
"Alright, alright, some guy, said he worked for Sam Nickels. He said Sam would be grateful if I would just get Bobby Mercer convicted and if I didn't, I should watch my back. He handed me an envelope, winked at me and ran off," Greeley said as beads of sweat started to form on his forehead. His eyes were trying to looking down at the knife that was pressed up against his neck.
"What did the guy look like?" Jack pushed as his smiled turned to a frown. Who was Sam Nickels?
"Big guy," Greeley said. "He didn't look like a thug or anything. Blonde hair, blue eyes. He had a suit on. He was cleaned up very nicely. Whoever Nickels is, he takes good care of his men. He had a piercing thought. His right earlobe. There was a charm hanging off of it. I'm not sure what it was," Greeley explained.
"Alright then, you better start running," Jack said as he let the dirty lawyer go. The last thing Jack wanted was to be talking to that filth any longer. Not to mention that Greeley had given him a lot to think about and he needed a drink to help him mull it over.
Jack sat hunched over at the end of the bar. Hiding in the shadows seemed to be a new favorite of Jack's. While waiting for his drink, Jack tried to piece his new information together. Some guy named Sam Nickels. Sam Nickels. Jack even said it out loud to try and figure out who that was.
"Nickels?" the bartender asked curiously. Johnny's bar had burnt to the ground not long after Bobby went to jail. Johnny moved somewhere else, Jack never bothered to find out, but this bar went up in the old one's place.
"Yeah," Jack replied. He didn't know the owner of this bar, nor the bartenders. They knew his name though. How could they not? He was the last of the Mercers. The name still carried weight even if the brothers weren't all there.
"I know the name," the bartender said, shrugging her slightly broad shoulders. "Rumors fly," the girl said, shrugging again as she handed Jack his drink.
"What rumors?" Jack asked, his attention turning to the girl in front of him. She wasn't your regular female bartender from Detroit. She was wearing jeans, a high necked, long sleeved shirt and she wasn't slight in any sense of the word, not that she was fat. She just wasn't one or the other. But her face, the kindness in her face, that was something to look at. Her face was round, slightly from the extra weight, but mostly not. She had auburn eyes, brown hair that had red tints in it and a carefree smile that told Jack that perhaps she wasn't from Detroit.
"Just that Nickel's isn't your regular mob boss. More than a thug, you know? I don't know much about all this. I'm new here, from Florida. Only came because my cousin needed help getting his business started and I always wanted to know what seasons were like and what it was like to not have to rebuild my house with my mom after every hurricane season," the girl explained.
"Right, well, I'm looking for the guy. Or at least trying to figure out what I can about him. If you could help…" Jack trailed off with a small bit of hope in his voice. He tried to keep it out, but he couldn't seem to. This girl knew something that he wanted to know. Or at least she could potentially know something that he wanted to know.
"I could," the girl said with a small, shy smile. "I'm Rachel Allen, but they mostly just call me Rach or Kid."
"Jack Mercer," Jack said with a nod. Jack could only hope that she didn't know his name even though all the bartenders did. He didn't have such a fantastic reputation and the guys in the bar wouldn't want this sweet girl hanging around him. But he needed her. It might be a terrible thing that he was using her, but he needed his brother. Then again, he didn't care what she thought about him, just so long as she would help him.
"Nice to meet you Jack Mercer," Rachel said, nodding her head with a sweet smile. Sweet, this girl was too sweet for Detroit. She should get out and go back to sunny Florida before she gets killed or something like that.
"Same," Jack said as he dropped his head and started to drink. Rachel nodded her head again, realizing that Jack wasn't the kind of drinker who liked to talk. She walked off, back down the length of the bar to rejoin the ruckus of the bar. The ruckus Jack was apart of with his brothers. His brothers. This wasn't the same bar but in his mind's eye he could see them with him, sitting at a booth, getting piss drunk. Bobby and Angel teasing him about being gay and Jerry trying to get all of them to stop chugging down drink after drink. He would give anything to have his brothers calling him gay again.
But he couldn't keep reminiscing. He had to figure out who Sam Nickels was.
"Rachel," Jack called down the bar as he finished off his beer.
"Hello Mr. Mercer, how may I help you?" Rachel asked.
"'Nother beer. Maybe a tab for the night. And a promise you'll call me a cab when I'm drunk and I insist on walking home in the dead of night," Jack requested.
"Now, Mr. Mercer, I won't discourage you from giving over some well needed money to my cousin's establishment, but do you think getting plastered on a Tuesday night is the answer. Besides, it seems like you're on some sort of mission here," Rachel said as she bent over and propped herself against the bar with her elbows. If her top had been cut out, Jack would be getting a nice view of her chest right now. Not that there was much of it. She was one of those slightly heavy girls whose breasts didn't grow along with her stomach, butt and hips.
"Sometimes a guy needs to get piss drunk," Jack said with a shrug.
"I never had much respect for a guy who gets drunk like that on a week night or any other night for that matter. The guys here, they're either disgusting or old. You, you have something going for you. This isn't a place you should be hanging out in," Rachel said with a frown on her face. It was almost as if she thought that Jack would change his mind because he was interested in her. Then again, he was. Maybe he should keep her respect for the time being if he wanted her to help him properly. But wouldn't that lead her on? Did he really want to do that to someone?
"Then I think you should get me a soda," Jack said with a very fake and forced smile.
"Alright then," Rachel said, her 100 mega watt smile spreading across her face as she walked off to go get the soda Jack asked for. Forget that the girl hadn't even asked him what kind of soda. He probably wasn't going to drink most of it anyways. Perhaps he would wait until the ice melted and then pull out the money that was weighing down his pocket, slap it down on the table and leave before he could pull himself deeper into a relationship he shouldn't have instigated. He should have just taken the beer, but he needed the information this naïve out-of-towner could provide him. None of the other guys in the bar would tell him anything from fear of pending death, but this girl, she would tell him everything he needed to know because she didn't know any better. Hopefully when Nickels found out she was leaking information, he would go easy on the poor girl.
Jack sat in the bar until closing time, contrary to what his plans were. Not another drop of alcohol touched his lips, much to his displeasure. Rachel had him drinking water and soda all night along with tossing peanuts up into the air and catching them. The pair even had a game of darts. Rachel had spent all her down time with the youngest Mercer and Jack couldn't pretend her didn't enjoy her company. Perhaps at first he was going to use her to find out more about Nickels, but if there was a fuck involved, who was he to protest?
"Tonight was great," Rachel said as she wiped down the bar and everyone except or Rachel, Jack and another guy who worked at the bar was filing out.
"Yeah, it was," Jack grunted. He was tired, sober and he wasn't any closer to getting Bobby out of jail than he was when he left Greeley earlier that afternoon.
"You should come by more often. I get the night shift during the weekdays and Sunday night. On Friday and Saturday I get the morning shift. Jess doesn't want me around when the real rowdy drunks come by on the weekends and Sunday afternoon for the games. He says it's too dangerous, but I got the weeknights down, so maybe he'll let me into the big leagues soon. I could use the tips," Rachel explained before ducking down to grab her purse from under the counter.
"I agree with your cousin," Jack said honestly. "You probably shouldn't even be in Detroit."
"I can manage. I've walked home on my own every night this month after the night shift," Jack said proudly.
"Not tonight. When I ducked out back for a smoke 'bout twenty minutes back when you had that last minute rush I saw some creeps there. You ain't walking home with them around. They'll be sure to get you," Jack explained.
"Get me? What, do I have out-of-towner written all over me?" Rachel asked with an amused look on her face.
"Yeah, in neon lights. And if that's not enough, you got innocent written underneath the out-of-towner bit," Jack teased in good humor. That's probably the friendliest he'd been since his family fell apart.
"Alright then, Mercer, lead me home, I live on the corner of Birch and Bleaker," Rachel said simply as she shrugged on her coat. It was getting cold just as it always did in November. Snow would come soon. As would ice and hockey. All this caused Jack's heart to ache even more. The Mercers were known at the ice rink, but not this year. Not when there was only one of them around. Maybe with two or three they could scrimmage with another group or pair up with someone else, but it was only one and one was good for nothing.
"Come," Rachel whined as she appeared on Jack's side of the bar and grabbed his arm to try and get him to move. "I'm tired," Rachel explained when Jack gave her an odd look. I wasn't every day a grown woman of 24, as Jack had found out that night, acted like that.
"And don't pretend like I shouldn't whine because it makes me sound like a child. You're my age exactly and I remember you getting upset over a game of darts that I won fair and square," Rachel said, as if she was reading his mind. Jack's jaw dropped in shock. "What? I'm good at reading people," Rachel said with a shrug as she skipped ahead of Jack. "Being from Florida doesn't make me a hick or a redneck!" Rachel teased. Jack just shook his head and followed the retreating form the girl who had caught his attention for her knowledge and perhaps even her kindness, but Jack wasn't about to admit it.
"This is me," Rachel said as the walked up to an average sized house with an average sized walk way and an average sized porch that had your average porch swing hanging off the awning of the porch.
"Pretty average," Jack commented lightly.
"It suits me," Rachel said with a shrug. "But I'm not average," Rachel warned, a tone in her voice was almost tempting Jack to kiss her, drag her into her house and screw her till the sun came up.
"You can prove that to me another night," Jack replied. He didn't want to sleep with her tonight. He couldn't. That would be the end. Jack was very bad with keeping a relationship going after he ran out on a girl the next morning. He needed to keep this going so he could get information from her.
"I'd like that," Rachel said, her face glowing with pleasure. Rachel quickly stood up on her tip-toes and kissed Jack on the cheek before running to her house and unlocking the door with a key she must have pulled out of her coat pocket when Jack wasn't looking.
Jack shook his head as he turned to walk away. Jack pressed a hand to his cheek. That was the most affection he had received from anyone since his family fell apart. Sure, he had messed around with a few girls, but none of that meant anything. Rachel's kiss was so meaningful and pure that Jack was beginning to become confused.
Jack shook his head and took his hand of his cheek. He couldn't think about that until Bobby was out of jail.
