Page 55 of Thug

“Why?” I asked. “You got a couple Edwin McNealy’s in there?”

He gave me a stupid look.

“Five-twenty. Four-four-seven. One-zero-three-five.”

“Looks like it was a Kyocera Dura XV,” he said. “Does that sound right?”

“I’m not a phone guy,” I said. “I don’t have any idea what it was. It was black. If that says it was a whatever whatever, I’ll say it’s probably right. Just hurry the fuck up, would ya?”

Five exhausting minutes later, I had a phone just like my old one and it was ready to go. There was one problem. There were no phone numbers programmed into it.

“Can you load all my phone numbers on this little fucker?” I asked.

“Did you upload them to your cloud?” he asked.

I glared. “My what?”

“Your cloud?”

“I’m guessing not.”

He fucked around with the computer for a moment, and then gave me a look of disappointment. “Sorry. Doesn’t look like we have any options. Maybe one day you’ll find your old phone. That’s one advantage of having a—”

I nodded toward his computer. “Google Chin’s Chop Shop, would ya? Give me the number when you get it.”

“In Marana?” he asked.

“No, it’s in Hono-fucking-lulu, Hawaii.”

He stared.

I gave him a shitty look. “Yeah, Marana.”

He tapped his fingers against the keyboard and then looked up. “Five two zero four four seven two one two five.”

Pacing the store, I called Chin and got the phone numbers I needed. Then, I called Panzer. He reminded me that he didn’t have Gray’s cell phone number. He also confirmed that he had yet to see her, even though he’d made two trips to her bar.

I turned toward the counter. “Will this automatically get text messages? Ones that were sent to my old phone?”

“From the point in time it was activated, yes.”

“Not from last night or this morning?”

“Afraid not.”

“What about voicemail?”

“It should have any voicemail messages you’ve saved or haven’t listened to.”

“But not text messages?”

“Sorry, that’s just how they work.”

I listened to a dozen voicemail messages, all from Brisco, and all a few weeks old. I stomped out of the store and got on my motorcycle.

It was mid-afternoon, and I’d heard nothing from—or about—Gray. Given my obsession with finding out what happened to her, it was increasingly clear that she’d somehow managed to inch her way into my life.

Frustrated that my desire to find Gray was my top priority and that my resources to do so were limited, I started my bike and blasted out of the parking lot. Two miles down the I-10 frontage road, a police officer shot out of a strip mall and pulled up behind me.