by Huss, JA
I look up at the old sign. It’s been there since the sixties. We’ve had it repainted many times, but it’s looking a bit weathered right now. And maybe for the first time ever, I feel ashamed that I work here. It’s true I’ve never enjoyed it. Much, anyway. The blood, it really bothers me. But I’ve always been proud of what I do. I’m talented. I have clients come from all over the country to see me. Maybe we don’t have our own TV show, but we’re a good shop. I’ve always been proud of my family’s strange talent.
But now, sitting here on a ridiculous motorcycle, all dressed up in yesterday’s rebellious biker clothes. I feel… stupid. And small. And pathetic. Used-up, good-for-nothing trash. I don’t answer Bobby. Obviously that question was rhetorical—I’m a tattoo artist and I’m sitting in front of a tattoo shop. This is where I work.
I grab my stuff, fish my keys out of my backpack, and get up to go open the front door. When I get inside I flip the sign from closed to open and break for the hallway that leads to the tattoo chairs. Bobby Mansi follows me.
I walk to the back of the building where we have a little break room. It’s got a TV, a table that seats eight, and a small kitchenette on one side. On the other wall there’s lockers. I dial the combination on mine and open it up. I grab my phone from my backpack and stuff it in my pocket, then shove the bag in the locker and slam the door closed.
Bobby Mansi is waiting for me in the doorway, his hands propped up on either side of the door jamb. “Sorry,” I say as I duck under one arm and walk back to my tattoo room. “I’m not very good company right now. I’m here alone for the next few days and I have a client due in about thirty minutes, so I need to get things running.”
I glance at him when I turn into my room. He’s still in the door, but he’s looking at me over his shoulder. “Something wrong, Veronica?”
I sigh as I look at him. God, this man is bordering on beautiful. I don’t normally like the beautiful ones. Ford is sorta beautiful in his scary weird way, and his brand of handsome has never appealed to me. But Bobby Mansi. He’s a definite maybe.
“Not exactly, no.” I reply. “I’m just…” I have no idea what I’m feeling. All bad things. All things I’d rather not share with a handsome stranger.
“You’re just… sorry you turned me down for dinner last night, aren’t you?”
I laugh a little at his cleverness and look him over properly. He’s grinning at me and his green eyes even have a little mischievous twinkle in them. “I didn’t exactly turn you down, remember? I told you I have to work until eleven, so dinner is just not possible.”
“Why do you have to work until eleven? Do you have appointments all night?”
“No, but we get walk-ins.”
“But you own this place, correct?”
“Yeah. Well—it’s family-owned.”
“So close early. Close early and come have a nice dinner with me.”
I sigh again. If only it was that easy. But then, he lives a comfortable life. He probably has no idea the struggles we have as a business. But I don’t really know how to explain this to a guy who owns entire buildings, so I use an easy excuse. “I have no nice dinner clothes because my apartment was condemned. I don’t even have time to go find some.”
“We’ll stay in. Have a nice dinner at my place. Wear what you have on, I have no complaints.”
My stomach does a few flips at his suggestive tone. I feel a little guilty for even considering his offer, but then again… all my best friends did just leave me sitting in the coffee shop like I’m nobody. I mean, seriously—it’s obvious that Ronin and Ford were worried about Rook and Ash. But me? No. Spencer could give two fucks about me. All he wants is the idea of me.
Why should I deny myself a nice dinner in the company of a good-looking man?
“OK,” I finally say. “OK, I’ll come. But I can’t close too early, we need the walk-in business. Nine, maybe. Is that too late?”
“I’ll be back at nine to escort you home.” And then he flashes me one more smile and walks back down the hallway. The bell jingles his exit and I let out a breath.
Calm, Veronica. Be calm.
But I can’t be calm, because I just accepted a date with Bobby Mansi. And even though I did go out with Carson a couple months ago, it’s not even remotely the same.
Carson is not my type. My type has always been Spencer. Even before I knew Spencer, my type was Spencer. And Bobby is not really my type either. I’ve never been into the rich guys. I don’t know how much money Spencer has—more than me, but that’s not saying much. He seems comfortable. I’ve never heard him complain about money, so I’m sure he’s not sweating the downtown FoCo rent every month like we do to keep our shop running. But he comes off as a working guy. I like the blue-collar guys. They’re very hot. That’s my type. Working men.
But maybe it’s time to explore new things.
Maybe it’s time to let Spencer go. Maybe I’ve been holding onto this dream of being with him because that’s all I’ve known for the past few years. Because we did so many cool and intimate things together and it was hard for me to accept that all that fun was over.
But just because I always do what I’ve always done doesn’t mean I have to keep living life that way.
Yeah. I feel better already. I’m turning over a new leaf. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I’m gonna reinvent myself.
So goodbye Spencer and hello Bobby.
Chapter Fifteen - Spencer
I drop the girls and Ronin off at Ford’s place, then Ford and I exchange my Shrike truck for the unmarked van we use to transport bikes. The same van we drove back to Chicago to save Rook last summer. We drive in complete silence across town to the apartment Ford has been renting since season one. He keeps some sensitive stuff over there.
As do I.
I glance over at him as we drive down College Avenue. Fort Collins is pretty spread out for being a small town. And it’s not close to the freeway, the town itself is a good fifteen-minute drive west of the freeway, and since Ford’s secret place is about as southeast as you can get and still be considered Fort Collins, it’s a nice thirty-minute drive in lunch-hour traffic.
His fingers are flying over the laptop keys. I’m not sure what he’s looking for, but ever since he came back from dropping Ashleigh off at the cinema, he’s been eerily silent. Just tapping away on the one thing that keeps him totally sane. Access to information no one else has.
Ford has never filled Ronin and me in on what happened with Ashleigh and her baby, but he told Rook. She told Ronin, and Ronin told me. If Ford wanted it kept a secret, believe me, his mouth would’ve stayed shut. But he told Rook, and that means it’s considered Team knowledge.
This whole mess is getting more and more complicated by the day.
“You finding anything helpful on there, Ford?”
“Lots,” he huffs back. “But I need access to get answers.”
He continues his typing and I give up on the conversation as I turn into his apartment complex. I head over to his building and park in an empty spot I know belongs to him. As soon as I put the van in park, he’s out. I jump out after him and follow him up the stairs to the third floor, then walk through once he unlocks the door and enters.
The apartment is very generic. Just some basic furniture—couch, chair, lamps, tables—and that’s pretty much it.
Ford heads straight to the bedroom where he hides the hard drive that holds his hacking scripts and I head straight to the one that holds what I came for.
The guns.
I have almost fifty of them here and this makes me happy in the same way bike sex with Veronica does. All the rifles and shotguns are propped up against two walls, lined up like good little soldiers. After that Boulder job went FUBAR I told myself I was done with the guns. I meant it too. I was done. But luckily it took me about five minutes to come back to my senses. You need three things to pull off the shit we used to do.
Access to information. We got that with Ford.
A tight-as-fuck alibi. We pull that off with Ronin.
And security. That’s me. When we’re on a job I’m the lookout with Ronin. And I protect us at all costs.
I do that last part with guns.
Guns are the only real equalizer when you’re up against criminals as big as the ones we were fucking with in the past.
Ford was appalled when I started unloading all the guns last year. Especially after I killed our target. But that’s precisely why I have so many guns.
The Boulder Mistake, as we call it now, was a life-changing event. Killing someone is not something I take lightly. I’m not an angry, violent man. I don’t fight much, only when provoked or when Ronnie’s brother gets on my ass too hard. I’ve tussled with Ford and Ronin a few times, of course. But that’s just what guys do.
I played football in high school, I can take a beating. I’m not afraid to fight. I have no problem pummeling the shit out of people. But it’s not a habit I’ve developed. I’m pretty easy-going most days. And if I could go back and talk to my twenty-year-old self and tell him he’ll be killing someone in the very near future, I’m pretty sure my twenty-year-old self would laugh his ass off.
I feel very little guilt about actually taking that asshole’s life. Especially now that we know that motherfucker was as dirty as they come. He really was directly tied to all the human trafficking shit Rook was involved in back in Chicago. Even if we did manufacture most of that story she told the police to cover our asses and take most of that particular branch of the crime ring down, these people deserved to take the fall.
And call me God for making that decision. Call me self-righteous. Or morally superior, or smug. I don’t care. I am.
I am better than those assholes we took out. My whole team is better than those assholes we took out.
So no, I’m not gonna feel guilty about killing that motherfucker. It was me or him.
I chose me.
And once we cross-checked the names of those guilty of buying and selling sex slaves out of Rook’s unassuming suburban Chicago barn and found him on it, I felt even more sanctimonious.
It happened and I live with the consequences. But guilt isn’t one of those consequences.
Looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life is.
And Ronin’s. And Ford’s. And now Ashleigh and Rook are included in this group too.
Sure, I fucked up. Given the choice, I’d choose to not have to kill people. So yeah, we fucked up.
And now that shit has come back into town to remind us. Give us a little homecoming queen wave from atop a parade-day float. ‘Hello, boys,’ that shit says. ‘Remember me?’
Hell fucking yeah, I remember.
Three and a half years ago
Ford and Ronin flank me as we get out of the van and walk up the driveway. They are calm. Not me. I’m a fucking mess of nerves. I feel funny. Not like how we usually feel before a job, all amped up on the adrenaline of knowing we are about to commit a crime that will net us millions of dollars of untraceable digital money.
No. That’s not how I feel at all.
I feel… wrong. “I feel wrong,” I say out loud for the twentieth time.
“Just relax,” Ronin whispers. “The father’s out of town on business, the mother’s up in Idaho Springs at some spa day thing. And Jennifer’s in class and work after. She told me all this yesterday.”
I know this. Ronin has said it over and over this morning, but I have this sick, sick feeling.
The beeps of the security alarm jolt me out of my unease and bring me back to what the fuck we’re actually doing.
We’re wearing work clothes for one. With the power company’s logo on them. Our white work truck has a large magnetic logo on the side as well.
But even this is wrong. There are no teams of three in the power company. Not all in the same truck. It’s a sloppy cover that I didn’t think about until we got in the truck an hour ago. But now that it’s popped into my mind, I can’t stop thinking about it.
This is not what we normally do. We do not break into homes to rob people. We access bank accounts. We steal our money virtually. We cut our teeth on the stupid kiddie con scams we pulled out on the 16th Street Mall back in high school. And we knew that first drug dealer we took out over Mardee. But other than that, we’ve never even seen any of the marks in person.
“I want to abort,” I say. But no one even hears me as the alarm beeps again when Ford disengages it.
A few seconds the door clicks open. Ford ushers us through, then closes it behind him.
Too late to go back now. At the very least we have to find the security room and get rid of the footage. That’s about the only thing Ford could do virtually. Troll security company databases trying to find out which one monitors this house.
But it turns out none of them do. Sure, there’s three signs in the front yard declaring they have a service with each one. But Ford looked good and hard until he finally concluded they have a private system. Which means all the footage is on site.
The house is impressive. Ford’s loaded, so I’m used to old money. And Ronin’s family owns Chaput Studios, a massive industrial building, so I know big time. But this house in the Boulder hills is something else altogether.
Old money says refined taste. Working money says nothing but the best as long as it’s practical. New money says opulence.
This place screams extravagance.
“Jennifer mentioned once that his office was near the billiard room.”
“Where the fuck is the billiard room?” I ask. “Next to the candlestick in the library? Do they have a Mrs. Plum here too?”
“Shut up, it’s probably in the basement. That’s where we have our game room,” Ford snaps.
“And it’s Professor Plum,” Ronin adds, as he warily looks around for the basement entrance.
Ford finds it first. It’s not behind a door like most normal houses would have it. No. It’s a full-on grand staircase that has a slight spiral to it. The banisters are highly polished wood, and the stairs are soft carpet.
At least that muffles the sound of our boots as we descend.
“Ah,” Ford says as we turn left at the bottom. “I knew this bastard would have on-site security.” He points to a room that has a plethora of flatscreen monitors. We pass by those. “I’ll come back on the way out and fuck it all up.”
Yeah, I feel so much better now, knowing we’re definitely on camera as we approached the house.
Ford finds the office and he and Ronin get to work on the accounts. I watch the hallway and try to shake off my unease. Ronin usually doesn’t do this stuff, but he’s the one who knows the girl who lives here. She’s the reason we’re doing this. We pick and choose our victims carefully. Only scumbags get the Team treatment. And according to his daughter, this guy has been molesting her since she was a little girl. Ronin said the girl, Jennifer, didn’t share explicit details, but he got the impression it was graphic. She was drunk one night, Ronin was working his player magic, just trying to get laid, I’m sure. And this chick started spouting off some serious shit about her daddy.
Ronin let her talk until she passed out and then left. He said she pretended nothing happened that night, just passed it off as being out of her mind drunk—
The cocking of a shotgun blows my thoughts out of my mind and the stench of whiskey permeates the room.
All three of us whirl around and come face to face with the pedophile.
“In the corner,” he spits, saliva dripping out of his mouth, his feet shuffling along the carpet as he approaches me.
He’s wasted.
I put up my hands and back away, moving closer to Ford and Ronin. “We’re from the power company—”
The thundering boom of the shotgun makes all three of us react. My hand goes to my gun, Ford and Ronin duck as part of the ceiling comes down on top of them, and then in the next moment, the drunk and I are face to face. His shotgun pointed at my chest, my 9mm pointed right at his h
ead.
We squeeze at the same time. He flies backward from the kick, and I duck as the plaster crumbles off the wall behind me. This shit happens so fast I can’t even register that I just blew the guy’s brains out.
I slump against the wall, then slide down. The next thing I know, Ronin and Ford are standing next to me. “Ronin, you wipe everything down. Spencer, you go to the security room and locate anything that looks like a hard drive. I’ve got the money transferring now, I’ll be in in two minutes. We’re out in five.”
Ronin and I just look at Ford, struck dumb.
“I’m not talking to myself, move your fucking asses.”
Ronin goes into the adjoined office bathroom and grabs a towel, then starts wiping things down. We all have gloves on, but we came in here to get codes to steal money. We did not come prepared to clean up after a murder.
Murder.
“Move!” Ford yells in my face. “You can think about how bad you fucked up later. But right now we need to complete the job.”
I walk out without looking at the dead guy on the floor. But I don’t need to. Because the hole in his head and his brains splattered all over the beige carpet are etched in my memory forever.
I’m not even sure what happens after that. We do get the footage, and the money transfers all complete. We get back into the car and we’re back at Chaput Studios before I snap back out of it. I don’t even know how we got here.
I look over at Ronin. He’s sitting in the middle between me and Ford, his expression as blank and empty as I feel.
I’m the official driver in all jobs but right now, Ford is behind the wheel. And I’ve never been so happy that he’s the cold, emotionless asshole he’s always been.
He’s always said the detached getaway is his signature move.
And I guess he was right.
“You ready?” Ford asks as I realize I’m sitting in front of the rifles in his FoCo apartment, just staring off into space. “I’m done and I’d like to get back to Ashleigh and Kate.”