by Dallas Cole
“Why don’t you go and relax?” Tyler says. “You can rent a movie, if you want. I’ve gotta head in to the office for a while, but you should just make yourself comfortable.”
I offer him a weak smile. “That sounds great.” I sink into the couch, suddenly exhausted. I forgot how very stressful just existing around Tyler could be. Making sure my every word and expression matched what he wanted out of me, ensuring nothing I did could possibly set him off . . . It takes a lot out of me. And now more than ever, when I’m planning to use it against him.
But knowing I have a secret—that I have a plan—gives me strength. I can do this. I’ve endured so much worse.
Tyler presses a kiss to the top of my head, then pauses in the doorway, looking me over. Like he’s admiring a painting he’s just hung. Something beautiful to call his own. I make myself smile back at him as I reach for the TV remote. Please, just leave . . . leave me alone. I grit my teeth, trying to will him away from me.
“I’ll be back soon as I can.”
The door clicks shut behind him, and I let out a long-held breath. I turn on the TV, but mute it, and listen for the sounds of him departing. His footsteps head back down the stairs, then the truck door slams, and the engine starts up. Finally, it fades into the distance as he drives away.
Time to get to work.
I flick through the channels a few times until I find something that looks appropriately Sophie—some neuroscience documentary on the public access channel. Then I slide down out of the couch to the floor. The couch’s back is to the camera. I can’t be totally sure about the angle of the camera Tyler set up, but I’m pretty sure all it can see is the high back of the couch, and not where I am; it can’t see the narrow sliver of carpet between the couch and the doorway to the bedroom, so I belly-crawl my way across that gap as quickly as I can, out of the kitchen camera’s view. A quick study of the bedroom shows me that it’s camera-free.
I scan the bedroom. A few folded stacks of clothes, my suitcase, a pouch of tobacco on top of the dresser . . . everything here smells like Tyler. It’s overwhelming. That musky, sickly-sweet tobacco scent and the deodorant he wears and his shampoo and body wash, all mingling together into an overwhelming cloud of nightmare memories. I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts. I can’t focus on the past. I have to find something I can use right now. Tyler’s ID cards, some evidence of what he’s mixed up in—anything that can prove he planted the coke on Jagger.
I spend a few minutes digging through the drawers, but it’s just clothing and a few toiletries. The closet only has a lone dress suit hanging up in it. Nothing hiding on the shelves. There’s nothing. Not a goddamned thing. I lean against the dresser with a sigh.
And hear a soft thump from behind the dresser.
I whip my head toward the wall. Was it someone in the adjacent room? But the thump doesn’t repeat. It was the sound of something sliding behind the furniture, not coming through the wall. I force myself to be still for a moment longer and strain to hear outside the hotel—listen for any sound that might be Tyler’s truck coming back.
Nothing.
I wedge the dresser back from the wall.
There’s a canvas-covered ledger book, like a banker’s book, flat against the wall that tumbles to my feet. It must have been what I heard shift behind the dresser when I leaned on it. Then I look at the back of the dresser. The whole back is covered with small stacks of bills, taped against it with clear packing tape. No. Not just bills. There are two handguns taped there, too. I cover my mouth to stifle a cry. Oh, my god. What the hell is Tyler mixed up in?
I start to reach for the ledger, then think better of it and pull the sleeves of my sweater down over my hands. Tyler’s just paranoid enough to check for fingerprints, or to have some other sort of booby trap system set up. I can’t leave any trace. Once, he’d sprinkled baby powder in front of our apartment door so he’d know if I left, then when I called him on it, he blamed it on the neighbor’s cat. I scan the corners of the ledger, but it appears safe to open. Careful not to let my skin touch the book, I peel back the lid.
Columns and columns of tightly written numbers, all in Tyler’s terse handwriting. At first, I think each set of numbers is attributed to a name, but the names are actually a mix of numbers and letters, and if there’s a pattern to them, I’m not seeing it.
I set the book on the floor and ease my phone out of my back pocket. Working quickly as I can, I snap photos of the pages, flipping through with my sweater-covered thumb, then hastily replace the book facing the direction I found it. I take one more picture of the back of the dresser, then scoot it back into place.
I have to get back to the couch. I can’t let Tyler know I ever left.
Once more, I belly-crawl my way back to the couch, then make a show of standing up and walking from the couch to the kitchenette to get some water. I smile right into the camera’s lens as I wait for my glass to fill up. Then I walk back to the couch and lie on my back, trying to figure out what to do.
Drazic and his crew might be able to help, if I get the pictures to him. I’m scared to send them via my phone—Tyler’s somehow been able to read text messages I’ve sent before—so I set the phone to airplane mode. How long do I have until Tyler returns? I need to think of some ruse to get the phone to the crew.
Then I sit up with a smile, and head to the room phone to call Tyler’s cell.
“Hey, babe,” he answers, and I can hear a lot of chatter in the background behind him. “I’m a little busy. What’s up?”
“Oh, I just wanted to see what time you thought you’d be done with work,” I say, coiling my finger through the phone cord.
He’s instantly suspicious, just like I expected. “I’m not really sure yet,” he hedges. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, well . . . never mind. I thought it could be a surprise, but it’s okay.”
Tyler clears his throat. “Thought what could be a surprise?”
“Well, it’s not a surprise if I tell you, now, is it?” I ask.
“C’mon, babe. What is it?”
“Well . . .” I sigh and make a show of looking away from the camera. “I wanted to do something nice for you. So I thought I’d go to the grocery store and make us a really nice dinner.” Stroke his ego. Make him feel important. “Like maybe that Bolognese pasta you love so much . . .”
I can imagine Tyler working his jaw on the other side of the line, trying to decide. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, babe. It’s kind of a walk to the grocery store.”
“I could use the exercise. Better than just being cooped up around here,” I say. “Plus. I thought you’d like me doing something nice for you. While you were at work, you know? Something disgustingly domestic.”
He laughs, that awful fake-laugh of his he does when he’s indulging me. “That’d be really hot,” he admits. “I like it when you play at being domestic. Maybe you could wear an apron. And nothing under it.”
My stomach turns. “Or maybe if there’s a lingerie shop near the grocery store . . .”
He laughs again, much darker this time. “All right. Just be careful, okay? And call me if you run into any trouble.”
“You got it.” I hesitate, but I have no other choice but to press my luck. “What time do you think you’ll be home? So I’ll know when to have dinner finished.”
Tyler hesitates, too. He always likes to keep me on his toes, and lies about when he’ll return. Like he thinks he’ll catch me at something. But his love of my Bolognese spaghetti wins out. “I’ll be home by eight.”
“Perfect. I’ll have it ready then.”
I grab my purse and both my burner phone and my now-disconnected smart phone that has the photographs on it and rush out the door.
It’s over a mile walk toward downtown Ridgecrest and the garage, but I pass a grocery store on the way, and I can use the grocery store as my cover. I practically run the whole way there. Drazic is standing on the driveway as I approach, helping Elena ease a car down off of the
lifters and roll it into a parking spot alongside the adjacent warehouse building. As soon as he catches sight of me, his whole expression darkens.
“Drazic.” I wave toward him, panting for breath. “I need to show you something.”
Elena slams the car door shut and shoots me a filthy look. “I think you’ve done enough.”
“No. Please. This really might help.” I glance around the shop. Cyrus is inside the garage, typing away at his computer, but there are no signs of Jagger anywhere. “Where’s Jagger?”
“He’s meeting with his lawyer,” Drazic says. “One of your sister’s friends, I think, as a matter of fact. She used to be a corporate lawyer for Cartwright Industries but struck out on her own. Not the best, but it’s the best I can afford right now.” He grimaces and looks away.
“How are they framing the case?” I ask. “He’s pleading not guilty, right?”
Elena and Drazic share a hard look. “Look . . .” Elena folds her arms. “Unless we can get some proof that he was framed . . .”
I pull the smart phone from my pocket. “Well, I have something. I’m not sure what it is yet. But I’m hoping it can help us make a case against Tyler.”
Drazic tilts his head to the side. “You think it can? Jagger could be going to prison for years and years, Sophie. We need something a little more certain than that.”
“Let’s see it.”
It’s Cyrus, the quiet, hulking figure I’ve always seen on the periphery of the crew. But he’s regarding me now with hooded eyes and a determined set to his jaw. I smile weakly and hand the phone to him.
“It’s in airplane mode,” I say. “In case Tyler got some sort of tracker enabled on it, or . . .”
With a few quick flicks of his fingers, Cyrus’s smile widens. “There we go. He won’t be tracking you ever again, or accessing this phone.”
I exhale slowly. “Thank you.”
“Now, let’s see what we have here . . .” Drazic and Elena crowd around him to look at the photographs. “Huh.”
Elena wrinkles her forehead, concentrating hard. “Looks like it could be a transactional record. It might be in code, though.” She points out the order of the numbers. “The numbers might not be exactly the numbers he wrote down, though given how many he’s had to write, it must not be too complicated a system.”
“That’s good, right?” I say. “That should make it easy to crack.”
“Potentially. It’s still a code, and we have no context for it, no way to say for sure what he’s using it for—oh. Shit.”
I press toward them. She’s flipped to the photograph of the guns and piles of cash taped to the dresser’s back. “That looks a bit more incriminating to me,” Elena says.
“Potentially, yes. But it’s still very circumstantial,” Drazic says.
I sigh. “Not good enough to hold up in court, you mean. Especially for someone like Tyler, who’s got his hooks in goddamned everyone in the entire judicial system . . .”
Drazic rubs at his stubbly chin. “There’s got to be something we can do with it, though. Maybe if we knew someone in law enforcement who could break the code, or who could back us up from the inside. Then it might hold more weight. Coming from a bunch of a nobodies—us—it’s useless, but if someone were able to speak out from the inside . . .”
Cyrus clears his throat. All eyes turn toward him. “Actually,” he says, “I might know just the guy.”
18
Jagger
I arrive at the garage from meeting with my attorney to find Drazic, Cyrus, Lennox, and Elena huddled around Cyrus’s computer, pointing and talking in hushed tones. Then my heart leaps. Sophie’s with them, too. What is she doing here? “What the hell’s going on?” I ask, approaching them.
Sophie looks at me with haunted eyes. “Jagger.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “It isn’t safe.” So many emotions are warring within me right now. The lawyer, eager though she was, didn’t offer me much in the way of hope. The easy thing is to blame Sophie for my problems. For getting me into this mess. But even if I go to prison, I suspect it would only be a taste of the hell she’s lived in with Tyler.
“I had to. I had to see you,” she says.
I hold my arms open to her, and she nestles inside, trembling.
“I’m so scared,” she murmurs against my chest. “I’m trying so hard to pretend with him, but it’s terrifying.”
“If he finds out you’re gone . . .”
“I’ve only been her maybe thirty minutes—and I’ll leave soon enough. I was careful. I have a plan.” She looks up at me with those deep blue eyes. “But I’ll need everyone’s help.”
I look at the faces of my friends. None of them are smiling. Each looks haunted, from Elena’s dark sad eyes to the painful, knowing set of Lennox’s jaw. He knows exactly what I’m facing, with prison time. He knows that you never truly come back.
I shake my head at Sophie. No. I can’t risk her getting hurt even more in all of this. And I can’t risk hurting the crew. My attorney will do what she can; I can get out of this on my own. I have to.
“I’m sorry, babe. I can’t. I’m toxic now—and I can’t risk letting that spread to you. Or to the rest of you.” I glance back at the crew. “I’m facing a very, very long prison sentence, and I can’t risk any of you getting caught up in whatever story Tyler’s going to sell.”
“Please.” Sophie squeezes my hand. “Let us help.”
I glance toward Drazic. “Help with what, exactly?’
Drazic gestures toward Sophie and me. “I think you two should talk. Privately,” he adds, the faintest hint of a smile in his tone.
Sophie looks back toward the crew. “Don’t you need my help?”
Drazic shakes his head. “Cyrus, I think you can handle it from here, right?”
Cyrus nods. He was sitting so quietly, concentrating so fully on the screen before him, that I nearly forgot he was there. “You got it, boss.” I know full well the look of determination on Cyrus’s face. He’s the sort of guy who latches onto an idea and doesn’t let it go.
So I lead Sophie upstairs to my apartment.
It doesn’t feel the same after Tyler went through it. Everywhere I look, I wonder if Tyler’s been there. Did he rub his nose against the sofa, smelling Sophie’s scent against the fabric? It gives me the fucking creeps to think about.
Sophie slips onto the sofa and curls into a tight ball. I sit down next to her, knees wide, hands clasped between them. “Well?” I ask. “What’s this glorious plan?”
Sophie swallows. “I found something in Tyler’s stuff. Back at the hotel.”
“What kind of something?” I ask.
“Incriminating something. Potentially,” she adds hurriedly, seeing my eyebrows shoot up. “But Cyrus knows a guy who he thinks can help us. Thinks we can use it to catch Tyler in the act.”
“In the act of what?” I ask. “He already framed me. That ship’s fucking sailed, I’m afraid.”
Sophie reaches for my hand. “Well, he had to get the coke from somewhere, didn’t he?”
I tilt my head, considering. I hadn’t even thought about that. I guess I assumed he got it from the DEA, but that, too, seems like an awfully illegal proposition for him. If he was buying five kilos of cocaine—that we know about—from a dealer, if he had those sorts of contacts . . .
“What exactly did you find?” I ask.
“Money. Lots of it,” she says. “Guns. Not his agency-issued sidearm, either. And then a notebook of some kind. Like a transaction record.”
I stretch my legs in front of me. “Sounds like a whole lot of trouble,” I say. “But it also sounds like what my lawyer called . . . what was the phrase? Oh, yeah. ‘Highly circumstantial and inadmissible in a court of law.’” I wince. “That’s what she called my claims about Tyler’s beef with me over you.”
“But this goes beyond what he’s done to you. Who knows who else he’s framed? What other bullshit like this he’s pulled?
It’s bigger than just one petty revenge scheme. I remember it well—the way he’d disappear sometimes in the middle of the night, and when he came back, he’d obviously showered. He’d never bring back the same clothes he’d left in. I thought at the time he was cheating on me—but now I wonder if it’s something else.”
“Something else like what?” I frown.
Sophie ticks off the possibilities on her finger. “He could be mixed up with the Zetas, for instance,” Sophie says. “They’re in Ridgecrest and down at the university both, I know that much. Cutting deals left and right, making sure his friends get let off easy while his enemies get locked up for a long, long time.”
I shake my head. I want desperately for her to be right, I feel that same burn in my chest that I imagine she feels, but it seems too optimistic. “Sounds like wishful thinking to me, Soph.”
“You don’t know what I’ve seen.” Her voice wavers; her eyes are watery.
It kills me to see her look this way. I wish I could erase her pain, stop those tears. I sling my arm around her and pull her into an embrace. “C’mon, babe. What’s going on? You’re safe now. I won’t let him hurt you.”
She shakes her head. “I was like a prisoner in his house. And I don’t think it was just his paranoia. He always wanted to know where I’d gone, who I was talking to, what I saw . . . I thought it was just him being a control freak, you know? And I think that was part of it, for sure.” Sophie swallows, her face going tight. “He wanted to control my life. But I also sensed some kind of panic in him. Like he—like he was almost expecting something to happen. Someone to be following me.”
“Wait a minute. Let’s think this through.” I tap a finger against my chin. “Maybe he was scared someone would find out he was a dirty cop,” I say. “And that they’d make you a prime target.”
“You’re right.” Sophie nods against my shoulder. “It makes a lot more sense.”
I ease out of the embrace and grip her by her shoulders. Look into her eyes—really seeing her, really drinking her in now. Trying to take away her pain. “Sophie . . . If this is true, then you’re in even more danger than I thought. I can’t put you through that. You have to stay safe. That’s the most important thing to me.”