by C. L. Stone
The entire edge of the lake had a concrete structure like a giant rectangular pool. At the four corners appeared to be small areas of green lawn park space. There were palmetto trees lining the long sides of the lake, and the short sides had sprawling live oaks. The concrete walking path surrounded the entire lake, with the occasional bench facing out toward the water.
The water lapped gently at the sides of the bank. Ripples eased over the surface, soft against the breeze. From our angle, the fancy Charleston homes on the other side reflected in the water with a wavy distortion of colors.
“It’s more like a big pond,” Corey said. He pointed across the water to the houses lined up, picturesque at the start of autumn, decorated with pumpkins and orange and red leaves. “They usually take the horse carriages around this way. I think it’s part of the normal tourist routes.”
I could see why. The view was okay if you liked to look at rich people’s homes, but I did like the view of the water. “Must be nice to live so close to the bay and the ocean, and then have a lake right outside to walk around.”
“Just wait until you see it around Christmas. We’ll take one of those walking tours then.” He rushed ahead of me a little, claiming a spot on the wide sidewalk that surrounded the lake. He stopped there and turned expectantly toward me, waiting.
It was crazy adorable. He didn’t even ask if I would, he simply assumed I’d be around during Christmas and would go with him. His happy nature was infectious, and I felt my own seemingly-constant inner anger ebbing away. I jogged over until I was standing beside him, allowing myself, for the moment, to get swept away.
He started walking and I followed beside him. For a while, he didn’t say anything. He walked close to me again, his arm brushing mine. He let me have the inside lane, so I could have the view of the lake, but he was so tall, he could see over my head anyway.
The lake dazzled my eyes, distracting me. The mirrored city and sky made it seem like I could fall in and be a part of a reflected world. The only distinction that separated it was the soft ripples, and occasionally those ripples sparkled under the sunlight, as if suggesting that reflected world was better than the one we walked in.
When I finally drew myself from staring at the lake, I found Corey smiling at me in the silence. His cheeks bunched up close to his blue eyes. “Don’t fall in,” he said.
I grinned back, unable to stop myself. “I bet kids love it. Is it deep?”
“I think you can wade out a little, if you want. It’s probably cold right now. During the summer, some kids usually sail little boats or use those electric ones.” He snapped his fingers. “We should get some of those. We could race them.”
“You haven’t done it before?”
“I hadn’t thought about it. I’m usually busy.”
“Doing what?”
He opened his mouth to answer when a voice called out. “Corey?”
We stopped. Corey turned, scanned the surroundings and then paused, zeroing in on an older gentleman running up. It looked like he stopped his car in a no parking zone near the street and had jumped out. The driver’s side door was still hanging open.
Corey darted until he was in front of me, as if to cut off my view. He frowned. “Stay behind me,” he said in a suddenly deep voice.
The edgy feeling I’d been fighting all morning crawled back through me. I bristled. Now what?
The man stepped onto the sidewalk, ignoring me, and addressing Corey. “I can’t believe it. I found you. We’ve been looking all over for you.”
“That’s too bad,” Corey said in a dry tone. “You’ve been wasting a lot of time.”
“Wait a second,” the man said. He had dark hair, wore a fitted suit, and there were a couple of indents on his nose like he normally wore glasses but recently took them off. “You haven’t even heard what I’ve come to talk to you about.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Corey said. “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”
“Do you have a few minutes?” he asked. He gestured to the waiting car. “I think you’ll be interested in what we have to offer. Whatever your current company is paying you, we’ll double it.”
“I’m not really ...”
“Triple. Really, whatever you want. If you just talk to my employers, I’m sure they could work out something.”
What was this? A job offer? Triple his current salary? I thought Corey giving him the cold shoulder meant maybe the job was with the mafia, but the man who was talking to him didn’t look dangerous. The suit looked expensive, and the car was shiny. The person talking to us appeared to be the driver. And his face seemed placid enough. I didn’t get weird killer vibes from him. I had pretty good intuition about people.
“It’s not the money,” Corey said. He drew his shoulders back. “Please, if you don’t mind ...”
The man coughed. “Wenn Sie nicht möchten, dass wir vor Ihrer Freundin darüber sprechen, würde ich mich freuen, mich später mit Ihnen kurz zu schließen.”
My eyes widened. I wasn’t sure what he said, but the language sounded like German, or close to it. The fact that he felt the need to change languages at all completely changed my perspective of this seemingly innocent deal. What foreign company wanted Corey to work with it? Despite the man’s eagerness, the fact that he wasn’t listening to Corey declining his offer irritated me.
I stepped out of Corey’s shadow. “He said no,” I said. Corey eyeballed me like he didn’t want me to say anything but I held my ground. “Maybe you should find someone else.”
The man tilted his head down at me, the shadows under his eyes darkening, making him look worn. Maybe he really had been searching a long time for Corey. “Who is she?” he asked.
Corey, slowly, threaded his arm around my neck. “My girlfriend,” he said carefully, as if testing it with me.
I allowed this, understanding. I weaved an arm around his waist, hugging him close. “Yeah,” I said.
The man looked at Corey and then at me and then back at Corey. “Like I was saying, if you don’t want to talk about it in front of her ...”
“She can hear anything you have to say,” Corey said. “But I’m telling you, I’m not interested.”
“Maybe I should come back later,” the man said, turning away.
“I wouldn’t waste the time,” Corey said, standing firm. His fingers massaged at my shoulder. I sensed he was telling me it would be okay. I’d been wrong about him before, about him possibly being a yes-man. He was sweet, but he held his ground when he really believed in something.
The man frowned, turned, and went back to his car. He sat in the car for a full couple of minutes, as if waiting for Corey to join him in case he changed his mind. When it was clear Corey wasn’t going to follow, the man turned the car around, driving off into the city.
Corey let out a slow breath. His arm loosened from around my neck. “Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “After all, I did the same thing to you yesterday. Fair’s fair.”
He perked up. “I guess you did.”
“Who was that? He had a job offer?”
He shook his head, his lips tightening in the corners. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“He was going to triple what you make at your job now. You didn’t want to hear about it? I mean, unless he was the mafia. Is there a German mafia?”
His face slowly softened and he grinned down at me. “You know German?”
“Not a word,” I said. “I just recognize the dialect, or the accent, or something. He seemed to assume you did. You know German, don’t you?”
“It’s on my resume,” he said. “I’m not fluent. I don’t get to use it a lot.” His face flinched and he picked out his cell phone from his pocket. I guessed it was on vibrate. “Raven’s looking for you.”
“What? Why?”
He shrugged, reaching for my hand, tugging once to get me to hurry along. He let go after, and I was sorry for it. It had been a while since I’d had any seri
ous friends. I suppose after high school, after my mother died, I blocked myself off from any of my old contacts. And after I started working, started stealing, I really didn’t want to talk to anyone. Corey’s easygoing nature had me yearning for that connection to someone else that I hadn’t realized I was missing.
I couldn’t shake my curiosity about the German visitor. As we rushed back to the Sergeant Jasper and up to the seventh floor, I knew I had to keep my eyes open. I didn’t think he’d give up so easily if they put this much effort into finding Corey.
RAVEN
Kayli!" Raven called from the bedroom the moment we re-entered the apartment.
"What?"
"Come."
I glanced at Corey. He shrugged. "He's mostly harmless."
I smiled at his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference. "Will I need a towel?" I headed to the bedroom door. I caught how Corey's blue eyes lit up when he realized I understood. That alone made my insides giddy.
Raven's bedroom was small with a tiny closet door that was closed, and with a bed shoved over to the back wall to make space. There was a fold-out table in the middle of the room. The top had been partially covered by a towel.
Raven had a handgun taken apart and in pieces in front of him on the table. He held a cleaning brush and the barrel in his hand and was scrubbing the inside. From this view with his shoulders exposed to me, I noticed more tattoos along his back and up his neck. It was a picture of some kind, but I couldn’t tell what it was yet. It was too covered by his tank top. I wondered how far down the tattoos went.
The power he held in his body, evident in his stacked muscles was almost overwhelming, too. His shoulders were as broad as Marc’s, but he definitely had more substance in the torso.
"Kayli," he called again.
"I'm right here," I said.
He twisted in his chair and looked back at me. He nodded toward the bed. “Do me a favor, little thief. Sit right over there.”
“Why?”
“Marc just called me. He wants you to stay within eyesight.”
“I was with Corey.”
“He wants you within my eyesight.”
I blew out my frustration in one heavy breath, marching over to the bed and sinking onto it, leaning back on my hands. “I wasn’t doing anything. We were just talking.”
“I don’t care. I’m just following orders.” He finished cleaning the inside of the barrel, putting the brush aside and wiping down the outside with a cloth.
There were a couple of other cases stacked nearby on the table, with Berretta and Smith & Wesson logos on the outside of them. The walls were covered with used targets, shots aimed at center mass or the head of a black cutout on a white background. By the wall was a dresser, currently holding two flak jackets and boxes of small arms ammunition stacked together neatly, sorted by size and type.
I scrunched my eyebrows together. I’d been around a handful of guns in my life, mostly old boyfriends who had been interested in them. This was the South, and half of the kids grew up hunting. “What’s with the artillery? I thought you said this was a simple job.”
Raven looked up, figuring out what I was looking at. He grunted and went back to cleaning the automatic. “Different job.”
“How many jobs do you have?”
“How many jobs will you give me?” he asked. He focused on piecing together the gun again. “These are just for training.”
“Training?”
His lips twitched, the lip ring protruding, while he finished assembly and put the gun on the table. He leaned forward, sizing me up. “What? You think I’m training these guys to kill? Is that what you’re worried about?”
Yes. “No.”
“Do I look like a killer?”
I lifted an eyebrow up. He really wanted me to answer that? “Where are you from?”
“Omsk.”
I stared at him. “Huh?”
“Omsk, Russia.”
I’d thought so before, but thinking and knowing were completely different things. Now I was nervous. No reason why, I supposed. Just too many Bond and Russian gang movies.
I leaned forward, folding my arms around my stomach. His room was cold, like a meat locker. “When did you move here?”
He grunted, and planted the gun into one of the cases, opened another, pulled out a .38 and started cleaning. “You ask too many questions.”
“You’re the one that wanted me in here.”
“Little thief, if I wanted you in here, I wouldn’t be cleaning guns right now. I’d play, but I’ve got a lot to do before tonight. I don’t really want you in here.”
“Why?”
“You’re distracting.”
“If you don’t want me to talk, give me something to do.”
He planted the gun on the table with a hard clatter, leaning forward again. His dark eyes focused on my face. “I didn’t mean you talking.”
“Huh,” I said in a non-answer. I hoped the heat on my cheeks was covered by make-up enough to hide it.
He cocked his head to one side. “You’re cold.”
“I’m—”
“You’ve got duck bumps.”
I raised my brows. “You mean goose bumps?”
“Duck, goose.” He waved his hand through the air and then stood up, heading to the closet. He left the light off, leaning in, and pulled out a thin cotton track suit jacket. He tossed it over the table, and I caught it. “Put it on.”
It felt like an order, although I wasn’t really complaining. I stuffed my arms into the sleeves. “Why do you have the room so cold?”
“It’s either too hot or too cold in this building. I’d rather it be cold.”
“Because you’re from Russia?”
He made a face, sinking back down into his chair. “Because there’s only so many clothes you can take off if you’re too hot. Eventually you’re naked and it’s still hot. At least when it’s cold, there’s always something else you can put on to wear and warm up.”
Made sense. I watched him clean the gun. I felt kind of stupid just watching him. Maybe it was thinking ahead to what they wanted me to do, and if I thought too much, I got nervous. I wanted to keep my hands busy. “Want me to do anything?”
He twisted his lips, glancing around the room. He pointed to the dresser. “See those boxes?”
“The bullets?”
He motioned to the pile of empty cartridges on his table. “Load them up. If you can figure out how.”
I gathered the bullets and the cartridges and returned to the bed, kicking off my boots and sitting cross-legged. I smoothed out the dark comforter so the boxes wouldn’t spill over. I opened one. The bullet heads were a gray plastic material. I held one up between my fingers. “I haven’t seen these.”
“You’ve seen others?” he asked, not looking up.
“A couple of ex-boyfriends used to go out to the woods and shoot.”
“Did you go?”
“Once, but he wouldn’t let me shoot. He was more interested in having me watch.”
He huffed, grinning. “No wonder he’s an ex.” He motioned to me without looking up. “Those are training rounds. Plastic. Cheaper. We can reload the cartridges with the bullets again and again. No need to waste the real bullets. They’re getting harder to purchase these days.”
“Do you have real bullets?”
“Do you really want to ask me that question? Of course there’s some here.”
“Who are you training? And why?”
He looked up as he stuffed a wire brush into the barrel of the gun. “We’re the good guys, little thief. Stop talking like you’re trying to figure out if we’re not.”
“Bad guys think they’re good guys, too.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Guess it depends on where your morals are, or which side of the law you’re on. You’ve been on the bad guys’ side too long.”
“I’m not—” I stopped short, realizing I was falling into what I was just telling him. “I had good reasons.�
��
“There’s always a reason,” he said. He finished his cleaning and started piecing the gun together again. “It’s why we have training, not just shooting practice.”
“There’s a difference?”
He placed the gun down in the case. “Training involves psychology, not just technique. For example, let’s say you had a gun.” He shoved the case across the table to the corner and within my reach. “And I have one.” He tugged one of the others toward himself. “Let’s pretend we’re at the grocery store.” He opened his, displaying a Ruger, bigger than I’d seen in person and I guessed it to be a .45.
I opened up the gun case. A .38 automatic was inside, a Smith & Wesson logo on the handle. The cartridge wasn’t in place, so it was clearly empty. His was, too. And since he’d just cleaned them, there wasn’t anything in the chamber. Still, I didn’t touch it knowing these things could kill.
He lifted his, pointing it toward one of the posters at the wall. “I’m robbing the store. I’ve got it in the cashier’s face. You’re in the line next to us. What do you do?”
I frowned, not really amused. “Run away?”
“Ernt!” He made a wrong answer buzzer noise. “I’ve already got my gun out pointed at someone’s head. But if I hear motion ...” He snapped the safety off the .45 and swung his arm until the end of the gun was pointed to one of the targets behind my head. “I’m already a step ahead of you. What do you do?”
I remained quiet, unsure.
“I’m robbing the store,” Raven said. He wriggled the gun toward the wall. “I’m getting all the money. People are scared, on the floor. I’m screaming at the nervous cashier. Kids are crying.” He got up, walking the long way around the table, coming to stand by the bed, the gun still pointed at his target. He loomed over me. “You’ve got an automatic in your pocket. You’re possibly the only other person in the store with a gun. What next?”
I frowned. I had an answer, but I didn’t like it.
“Come on, little thief,” he said. His brown eyes were intense and unrelenting as he stared at me. “Stand up. Show me what you can do.”
My heart pounded in my chest, and I rose slowly, leaving the gun on the bed. I stepped away from it so I was standing clear.