by Trixie More
He shook his head. She stared at him.
“You underlined extremely. Very hard.”
He shrugged. It sounded like the man he’d been back then. Arrogant, demanding. He remembered Marley, certainly. He knew he’d given her dozens of large tips and back then, he used his name for leverage everywhere he went. He sighed.
“Well, I kept that card. An’ when I was in the hospital, I showed it to the doctor. I said you would come find him if he didn’t take first-class care of me. I showed that card to anyone I could. And you know what?”
He blinked. He could guess what that card would have done for her, especially if she was in one of the several hospitals his company had made donations to. Tax deductible donations.
“They treat me like a queen. I get a room of my own, I get the best prices, I get to have Karito right in my room with me, to stay an extra day to recover, notes for my employer. Everything.”
“Marley,” he said gently. “I think they do that for everyone.”
She slapped at him. “No!” She shook her head. “I have friends. I have a lot of friends, like me, who don’t have the money, who don’t have insurance.” She glared at him. “They pay the most expensive for doctors. More than the rich people. More than anyone. The full ride. They pay the full ride.” Her face softened. “I didn’t have to, Doug. I paid just what you would pay.”
He looked at her and swallowed. Had he done that? Had he been good to someone? Even accidentally? “I’m glad, Marley. Really glad.”
She nodded. “You should be,” she said, so confidently that they both started to laugh.
“So you love Sophia?” she asked.
The change of topic startled him. He’d been so enthralled by seeing himself through Marley’s eyes and so thirsty to see himself in a good light, he’d forgotten why he was here. He was here because he’d fucked up another woman’s life. Sophia.
“I’m not sure I love anyone,” he said.
“There’s no maybe,” Marley insisted. “You love her or you don’t love her, maybe yet. For now, it’s still no.”
“Then I don’t love her, maybe yet,” he said.
“So what was that in the alley?” Marley looked genuinely confused. If she was confused, then Sophia would be doubly so, he expected.
“Look, I like Sophia. A lot. If we end this, right now, she gets to keep her family, her friends,” he said. “I just didn’t expect her to look so hurt.”
Marley studied him. “So you do maybe love her. That’s good.”
He rolled his eyes. Who could understand women?
Marley looked down. Her eyes sad. “You’d think it would feel better.”
He wondered who she loved and couldn’t have.
“Why did you come to Allison’s Kitchen?”
“I wanted to know if Sophia was still at Mastrelo’s. I wanted to tell her why I did that. I don’t want her thinking I don’t care about her.”
Marley shook her head. “She left right away.” Again, the brown arm whisked forward, gesturing ahead.
He nodded. “Then I guess I can go.”
Marley smiled at him softly. “I’m sorry.”
It was his turn to shrug. “Happens.”
“You lonely?”
He thought about it. “Very much.”
She put a hand on his arm and fiddled in her apron pocket, pulling out a green order pad and a pen. She wrote MARLEY in large, looping script and a phone number under that. She ripped it off and handed it to him like it was a check.
He smiled. “Thank you. This means more than you know.”
She patted his arm. They were back in front of her shop again. “I know, muchacho. I know.”
It took precisely zero minutes for Marco Junior to hear his phone ringing. It was after eleven p.m. and it was his landline. Something was wrong. He picked up on what he thought was the third ring, his voice already free of sleep.
“Yeah.”
“Marco?”
“Yeah.”
“I gotta problem.”
“Well?” Marco already knew it was Samuel, one of the four bodyguards he employed full time.
“A dude reached out to me, wanted to meet with me. I knew it was bullshit, but I said, like, sure. You know, to check him out.”
Marco grunted, squinting into the dim light of the bedroom. There had to be a reason Samuel wasn’t waiting until the sun came up.
“Yeah, so I met wit’ him, but the thing didn’t go down, you know? The dude saw someone coming and left before we met.”
“Do you know who this guy was?”
“Yeah, I just figured it out. It was the same guy Lucky roughed up in the joint.”
Marco silently ordered Samuel to watch his mouth. Do not say the name Doug Lloyd, he willed.
Marco felt his blood pressure actually go back down when Samuel remained silent.
“Yeah, well,” Marco said. “Lucky always was a dumb fuck.”
“True dat, boss,” his bodyguard agreed.
“Okay, well, nothin’ to do with us. Probably just some ex-con who thinks he can work for me. Nothin’ to check out there, Samuel.”
“Cool,” came the reply. “Sorry to wake you, jus’ bothered me is all.”
“Right. Bye.”
Fuck me, he thought. Tom Kretlow was supposed to be keeping Lloyd in line.
How the hell had Lloyd found Samuel?
Tomorrow, he’d have Samuel clean up this mess. Tomorrow, he’d also call Jacob and let him know he’d better be sure he’d covered his tracks when he’d moved all the funds off of Colton Gerrimon’s server.
To that end, Marco figured he’d need a little insurance. Perhaps now might be a good time to remind Jacob that he owed Marco a favor. Remind him that everything he had was due to the very significant fact that Marco hadn’t turned him over to the thin blue line.
He turned off the light.
Time to remind him that he had the bad manners to kill a man in my driveway, thought Marco.
Chapter 13
The good news was, no matter how crappy your day off was, there were always people out there breaking the law. Sophia tugged on her boots, the only shoes she had with her, and finished the last of an awful cup of hotel coffee. After crying her face off last night, she was ready to get to work and kick some cyber-criminal butt. Since she couldn’t kick Doug or Ben or Derrick, she figured this was the next best thing.
For once, she didn’t wish she was back at the Bronx DA. She was just glad to have a job to go to. The day looked like it would be beautiful again, just a few clouds, and not too windy. She wandered back into the bathroom, avoiding the big mirror over the sink. The room came with one of those pull out magnifying mirrors and she found she liked using it to put on her makeup, even if her eyes were still puffy. Her purse contained just the bare essentials, some mascara, some liner, lip gloss and a small stick of blush. As she worked on lining her eyes and setting her face, her mind wandered back to yesterday afternoon. The excitement of tailing a suspect, and then Doug, pulling her out of sight on the platform. She’d touched him, laid her hand on his face and felt the prickly whiskers of his beard beneath her palm. So, really, she’d started it.
She turned her face to the side, checking that the liner met correctly at the corners of her eyes and then went to work on her lashes. If she wanted to be honest, she’d started things when she pulled her chair next to Doug’s in the diner and hugged him.
She stopped, the mascara tube loose between her fingers, the brush dangling from her other hand. She’d hugged him. Like a giddy school girl. She stared off into space. Exactly like a teenager—happy, excited, knowing that it was daring and maybe wrong to be so forward, a strange mixture of feeling safe, secure, and pushing boundaries. When had she ever been that silly?
She frowned, but didn’t notice it, and sat on the closed toilet seat. The last time she’d felt that way had been the day of the Renaissance Fair. She’d been thirteen. Derrick and Ben had been seventeen, their last summer of high
school. By the next summer, Derrick would be gone, moved into George Connelly’s garage, apprenticed to the steelworker union.
She’d had a girlfriend that summer. She didn’t always have friends growing up, she’d been shy and half of her classes had been accelerated, so she was often in with kids that were older than her. The boys stared at her and the girls gave her nasty looks. That summer was different, she and a girl named Colleen had spent a lot of time together. Back then, Derrick had been a cute guy, dark shiny hair, big dark eyes. He’d been tall and geeky; he was always paired up with Ben, who looked like a bit of a surfer to Sophia, puka shells around his neck, sandy blond, and tan. They were a draw. Girls wanted to befriend her so they could be close to her brother.
Sophia rubbed at her temple absently, and then looked at the makeup in her hand, slightly surprised to find she was still holding it. She stood up, closed the mascara and finished off her makeup chore, her mind flipping through that summer day. The Renaissance Fair. Sophia had borrowed Colleen’s dress, determined to get in and find her brother. She’d giggled with her friend as they got dropped off in the parking lot by Colleen’s mom, assuring her that Derrick would bring them home. The borrowed dress didn’t fit Sophia right; the neck kept gaping and the sleeve would slip off her shoulder, so she started just clutching a wad of it in her fist, hand at her chest, holding the dress on as they walked. Colleen was shorter than Sophia, broad-shouldered might be the way of describing her, but they still got lots of attention from the boys as they wandered through the booths.
“Let’s get mead,” Colleen said.
“We’re not old enough.” Sophia giggled.
“Who could we get to buy it for us?” Colleen asked. She was daring that way. “I bet they’d sell it to Derrick if we could find him,” Colleen said.
Sophia tilted her head. “He’s not old enough, either.”
“He looks old enough,” Colleen said. “Hey, how about that guy?”
Across the way, an older boy, far older than Derrick, more of a man than a boy, was staring at them, staring at her.
“He’s totally into you,” Colleen hissed.
Sophia remembered her face getting hot. It always did when men looked at her, or even women. Anyone. Her face was forever causing her trouble.
“Go ask him,” Colleen said.
Sophia remembered the knot in her stomach. Having a friend like Colleen, who was accepted by all the cliques, was a gift, but Sophia wouldn’t ever actually do something wrong on her own. Drinking, underage drinking, was clearly wrong—it was against the law, it couldn’t be more evident than that. Saying that she didn’t want to break the law seemed so—babyish. A lot of kids drank or talked about it, or smoked pot or worse. One plastic cup of mead at a fair didn’t seem like such a big deal. So, she’d prevaricated.
“I don’t know him,” she said. It sounded lame even as she spoke the words.
Colleen eyed her up. “Look, he won’t do it for me, I can tell.” She glanced back at the man, who had abandoned his slouched posture and was standing up straight, burning a hole in her with his attention. “But he will definitely do it for you.”
“I don’t think so, Colleen,” Sophia had said. She’d started to walk away, her back to the too interested gaze that was making her feel ill. “I think I’ll see if Derry will buy it.”
Colleen didn’t follow her. “I’ll be over there.”
“Colleen, no!” Sophia knew, in the way both of them knew, that Colleen would be safe talking to him. He hardly spared her a glance. Sophia also felt sure that any contact would lure him closer. Apparently, Colleen thought so too.
In the hotel bathroom, a dozen years later, Sophia’s forehead broke out in a light sweat.
“I’ll tell him you want to ask him something. Then you tell him to get us two drinks.” Colleen stuffed ten dollars into Sophia’s hand and trotted across the dusty causeway.
The man’s hands were out of his pockets, and he watched Colleen now but flicked a glance at Sophia. Sophia turned and walked further away but was stopped by the need to not leave Colleen. What if he did something to her? Sophia hesitated at the corner of a tent. She could see a portable generator in the space between the tent and the brick wall of some outbuilding. They were at the edge of the fairgrounds. The shed was locked and empty. She could duck into that gap. Stopping, Sophia risked a look back. Colleen had changed places with the man—now it was she who stood aimlessly waiting and watching and it was he who traversed the distance.
Sophia had turned and hurried, further along, passing the locked up building and turning down the small alley between the ragged edge of the carnival and the beginnings of a wooded area. She didn’t want to start running through the woods like a ninny. If she could have a magic wish, it would be that she would turn back to the fair and Derrick would be there, she’d run right into him, he’d catch her and then ask the man what the fuck he was doing.
This wasn’t a perfect world, and she couldn’t see another path to the midway. Behind her, footsteps crunched on gravel. Maybe Colleen was coming too. Sophia glanced over her shoulder. He was much closer than she expected and, as she’d known, Colleen wasn’t there.
“Did you want to talk to me?” His voice was gentle. Sophia stopped, turned sideways, left side toward freedom and the forest, the right side toward the stranger. He was nice enough looking, not as tall as Derrick, not many guys were. Brown hair, a bit long, thin-faced, smooth shaved, the young man had the look of a runner. He wasn’t all that into the event, he hadn’t dressed for it, wearing modern clothes, a leather vest over a white T-shirt, blue jeans.
“No,” she said, but no sound came out. “No.” She cleared her throat, gripping the front of her dress. “I didn’t.”
His brown eyes were calm, interested, and he had a slight smile. His voice was still gentle and he took another step toward Sophia as he spoke.
“That girl back there said you had a question to ask me.” He stopped before Sophia and reached very slowly toward her face. She felt frozen. She knew that her eyes must have been round and stunned. She remembered having no thoughts in her mind, feeling as if she were encased in cement. He’d tucked her hair back behind her ear. “Did you?” he asked.
Sophia shook her head no, slightly.
All these years later, she still didn’t curse her inaction. The total numbness that day had been so profound that even now, as an adult, Sophia knew she could not have moved. The stranger leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. She’d been stiff and still, eyes wide in what must have been fear but had felt like prison. He’d put a hand on her hip and leaned in again, moving his mouth over her frozen lips.
“Did you want to trade?” he’d asked gently. His voice had been quiet and calm, nothing like an angry attacker, but his actions assaulted her, nonetheless. He’d pulled back and looked at her. She’d never forget the mocking laugh that he let out as he took in her stark fear and stiff body. Humiliation roared through her. He grabbed the back of her neck, and the hand on her hip started to slide down her leg, finding the hem of her dress, folding the fabric up, his fingers warm and horrible as they traveled across her thigh.
“You’re a very pretty lady.” he said and laughed again.
I’m too young for this, she’d thought, her brain finally starting to work.
“Did you want to trade?” he’d asked again.
No.
His fingers slid around the inside of her leg, pushed between them, moving upward. Pushing her hair behind her, he gently loosened her grip on her dress as he pressed his mouth to her bare shoulder.
No.
Had she whispered that? Sophia wished her younger self had said it, but she knew she hadn’t spoken a word. The dry fingers had traveled up, pressing against her vulva, pulling her underwear to the side. Frozen, her brain stopped working, her lungs stopped their endless movement. He pushed into her. She was dry and it burned. She jerked at the pain and began to tremble, eyes wide and unblinking, her face frozen in shock. He
stared at her in detached curiosity, removed his hand and gripped her shoulders, literally picking her up and moving her six inches to the left like a wooden board. He looked amused and shook his head at her, then he laughed again and just walked away, not bothering to hurry. Sophia stood frozen, not even able to close her eyes in mortification.
“Soph!” Ben’s surprised voice was the next thing she heard. “Whatcha doin’ here, mouse?”
Her thirteen-year-old self had been praying for something and she’d found it in the lean, suntanned form of her brother’s best friend. She hadn’t bothered to answer him; instead she flung her arms around his waist and hid her face against his chest.
He stood there, mirroring her stiff shock from moments before, one arm held out awkwardly to his side and the other sort of patting her shoulder.
“Um, I’m sure Derrick is around here somewhere,” he’d said.
Standing in the hotel bathroom, Sophia shuddered. She could still feel the hairs on her neck standing up, the creepy-crawly sensation on the skin of her back, the dry intrusion into her unwelcoming body, the sense of being paralyzed this close to something dark and terrifying. She’d never told a soul.
#Metoo.
The thoughts of the past had been folded and put away by the time she’d had her second coffee of the day, safely seated in her cubicle, her work spread out before her. Work. That was her happy place, even if she wasn’t in the Bronx.
“Feeling better?” Jacob asked.
Again, the choice was between honesty and what would just be easier. Sophia wanted to just say yes, and leave it at that.
“Thanks for being thoughtful,” she said. “I wasn’t out sick, just taking care of some personal business.”
Jacob looked at her for a moment, his eyes flat. When he got that expression on his face, Sophia felt uneasy, but the expression and her reaction passed quickly.
“They passed sentence on the money launderer with the silly bookkeeper yesterday.”
Doug again, she thought. He’d been in the courtroom that day, intent on the proceedings, wearing his leather jacket, the one he’d traded for a hat so he could follow her. “She wasn’t silly.” Sophia did a web search for the case to take a look at what the online reporting had to say.