Free Half Life (Russell's Attic Book 2) by SL Huang

counter-ambush there.
    I called Warren and left a message for him, too, telling him I’d confirmed he probably had a case and we therefore needed to discuss my fee. He was lucky I had principles about children, otherwise I would’ve been dropping his investigation like it was diseased until that good ol’ cash-in-hand moment—but Liliana deserved someone figuring out exactly what was going on here. Then I turned off the damn cell phone, pulled the battery again, and hoofed it away from Venice Beach while I churned through the options on my Mafia problem.
    Maybe Dino had hared off on his own, or maybe Mama Lorenzo had been testing me, but one thing was certain: the people after me from now on wouldn’t be inexperienced kids. I’d be dealing with Lorenzo family hitmen.
    Well, what did you expect when you deliberately made yourself a target? I’d bought myself little bit of time and had my one lucky break—I needed to come up with a better way out now.
    What I needed was some sort of leverage. Mama Lorenzo hadn’t gone for bribery, which left blackmail, threats, or maybe my own plan of outright violence.
    I could flip onto the offense and just start killing members of her family until she gave in. But that would mean I’d have to tell Arthur I’d broken my streak and restart my count, and something about that felt twitchy and unsatisfying, even though I didn’t have a moral problem with capping Lorenzos. Besides, there were an awful lot of them, and starting to take out their ranks might lead to the same problem I’d have if I assassinated Gabrielle Lorenzo herself—escalating this into a war with me as the sole target, with no way out and no going back. Right now, I still had the option of finding a better solution, but that wouldn’t be the case if the Family went mad with blood and vengeance.
    Violence might not be such a good idea after all. Who knew Arthur had a point about these things?
    I filed “Lorenzo assassination spree” under Plan B. Threats were hard to make work if I wasn’t planning to back them up, which left blackmail.
    I would have put money on Mama Lorenzo herself having a spotless record—she was the type who demanded just as much out of her own leadership as she did from her family. But were all the people around her so squeaky clean? If I could gather enough dirt on the Lorenzos’ activities…find a handful of good tidbits valuable enough to trade silence for our lives…
    Checker usually would have been my first resource on such fact-finding, but I was still pissed at him, and more importantly, I didn’t want him knowing how far I was from finishing off his Mob problem. I’d gather some intel on my own, hopefully starting with tonight. And if the meet happened to be a legitimate client, well, I’d just have to put “break into Lorenzo estate” on my to-do list for afterward. In fact, I’d do that anyway.
    Blackmail it was, then. Damn, having a plan in place was a relief.
    And since I couldn’t do anything on that plan till dark, I’d use the remaining daylight to conduct a civilized visit. Swearing colorful curses at Checker and his refusal to violate Denise Rayal’s privacy, I boosted another car and started for her house in Altadena.
    Going west to east across LA during rush hour is the seventh circle of hell. It took me over two hours to traverse the city, and I might have left more than a few pissed-off drivers in my wake.
    I pulled up outside the address Checker had given me just as the sun was setting. Denise Rayal was renting a pleasant-looking, ivy-covered clapboard cottage on a little spot of land nestled at the foot of the mountains. I parked in the driveway, climbed the steps onto the porch, and rang the bell.
    No one answered.
    Well, hell, I’d fought rush hour traffic to get here; there was no reason to waste the trip. I thought about kicking the door in, decided that was slightly rude, and went around to the back, wishing I’d brought something to pick the