by Shel Stone
It was a fair deal, as long as she came through with the product.
Leaning back on the sofa he stroked down the back of his neck. She wasn’t a stupid girl. Her smiling picture stared at him from the TV. There wasn’t a trace of her on any of her social media. There hadn’t been a post since before she left Miami.
Getting the coke back wasn’t going to be enough. She needed to be punished. Even if what she said about not being part of it was true, she’d still run off with his coke and gold. She’d still intended to make money on stolen loot. Those things weren’t simply forgiven. Besides, she would claim her innocence, wouldn’t she?
More likely she’d been a part of it, but had lost her nerve, just as she had on the phone just now.
“Where are you?” he said to the still picture on his TV. “I’m going to find you.”
Right then, he wished he could do something active, but the wounds made him feel like a pensioner, unable to move except for the slowest pace. Going to Buffalo had wiped him out, even if he’d just sat on a plane and then in a car. He’d done practically nothing and it had wiped him out after. But it had been worth it.
And she couldn’t cut the line of communication, because she needed to close this deal more than he did. The loss of the product and even the gold didn’t debilitate him—it was more of an annoyance. But he couldn’t let slip someone who stole from him. It was an unforgivable offense.
Getting up, he moved around his apartment, swearing at his lack of mobility. He didn’t make a good invalid. It would still be dark out for quite a while and he couldn’t sleep. His body clock was as messed up as it ever had been. He slept a lot and then couldn’t sleep when he was supposed to.
A beer would be nice, but alcohol messed with his healing, and right now, that was his priority. As opposed to others, he could waylay his wants and desires for what he needed to do. To heal was the only thing he needed, and to deal with this girl. She was a part of this nasty little chapter, and he wanted it closed.
At the bar, he pulled a juice out of the fridge and took a deep swig. The merest hint of dawn was on the horizon. Miami had the best sunrises in the world, the sun a glowing orb of gold coming out of the sea—the most glorious show on earth.
Taking his juice outside onto the balcony he sat down to watch. The air had a coolness to it, but it wasn’t cold. Around him, the early risers were starting to stir. Lights came on in apartments as people ran off to their cross fit or pilates classes. Mornings had never been his thing. Evenings were usually for work and he worked late.
Tiles were cool under his feet, but maybe it was his body that was hot. He’d been running a temperature since he’d been shot. A consequence of plain trauma. Getting shot sucked. Emotionally it didn’t devastate him, but he was fucking angry. Perhaps he channeled the emotional consequences of it into his anger.
Behind him his phone rang and he swore. Should have brought it with him. Now he had to get up and walk over there, and he had a fairly good idea who it was. No one else would call him this time of day unless shit had hit somewhere, and there was no reason it should have.
With a groan, he got out of the chair and slowly collected the phone. He answered it before he put it to his ear.
“Are you there?” he heard when he finally did. As expected, it was her. It was quiet around her, so she wasn’t on the street anymore. Took her around ten minutes to get home. Another fact he filed away.
“I move pretty slowly, these days,” he said accusingly.
There was silence down the phone for a while and he wondered if she’d hang up again. “As I said, if you promise to never go near my mom, I’ll tell you where to find your product, and your gold.”
“Alright,” he said. His word was normally something he stood by, but then he didn’t get shot all that often. Still, torturing the innocent wasn’t really his thing. Only the deserving warranted it.
In the distance, he saw boats heading out to sea, their lights flashing as they set off in the fading darkness. Pleasure boats and the odd professional fishermen.
“It’s at the Orlando intercity bus terminal. In one of the lockers.”
Could she be in Orlando? Clearly she didn’t have the product with her, but how long ago did she stash it? Just now, or did she do it before hopping on a bus? Could be she’d been running for an early morning bus about ten minutes ago? Most cities had no or only the barest of buses running at night, which suggested she was either in this time zone or out west.
“Orlando, huh?” he said, just to see how she’d react. She didn’t.
“I’ll text you the code.”
His guys had been watching all transport hubs, including the Miami Bus Station, but they hadn’t expected her to go to Orlando. That had been a smart choice. She’d outmaneuvered him there. But now he had his product back. His gut feeling was that she’d stashed it before taking off, which meant she hadn’t run out on the street to sell it. Perhaps she’d been trying to find a buyer for the whole lot, but that would be out of her reach. “Out of curiosity, what had been your intentions for it?”
“Exactly as how I used it,” she said.
“Collateral.”
She didn’t say anything. “So now we’re done. You have your shit back.”
“Oh, we’re not done. I might have agreed to leave your mother out of the equation, but we’re nowhere near done.”
“Whatever, asshole,” she said and hung up. The lightning flash of anger simmered in his blood, but he breathed it out as that annoying end of call ringing pierced his ear.
His money was on her being out west. LA, maybe. Somewhere where she could get lost in the crowd. And she worked late. Sliding into another strip joint.
There would be no profit for her in this now that the product was his again, provided she hadn’t lied, which he wouldn’t put it past her. Obviously, he couldn’t go pick it up himself as there would be cameras all over the bus terminal. Had to send someone innocuous, but not terminally stupid. Exactly the kind of jobs he would consider for the lowlifes that had turned around and shot him. There still needed to be punishment meted out down the line for bringing those cretins to his apartment. Carlos had probably taken care of it. The details were not important to Palmer.
But this girl, Alicia Murray, he would deal with personally, because it was personal.
As he sat with his phone beside him, it beeped. The code for the locker. Picking it up, he rang Carlos, who answered promptly, but Palmer could hear in his voice that he’d been woken by this call. “I need someone to go clear out a locker at the Orlando bus station.” He relayed the code. Carlos would know it would be a surveillance-heavy site, and would organize someone appropriate, and ultimately unconnected to the business, to go retrieve it.
His product back, he could turn his attention to what was left. Her. And if his estimation was correct, she was probably somewhere in the Pacific time zone—California, Oregon, Washington or Nevada. Would someone like her run north to Seattle or Portland? Less likely. More likely, it was LA, San Francisco, San Diego, or Las Vegas.
Inadvertently, she’d narrowed down his search considerably. There were probably a thousand strip joints in those cities combined. It was too large a task to search them all, but sooner or later, she would fuck up and narrow it down further for him.
Unfortunately, she still wasn’t posting anything on social media. But being on the run wasn’t as easy as people thought, particularly when there were people after them who knew how to find people on the run.
Chapter 12
NOOK SLEPT BADLY that night. The unshakable feeling that she’d given away the one thing that kept her safe had chased her into her dreams. Even in her own mind, he chased her. It was just after ten in the morning and there were people fighting down along the building.
Sitting up in her bed, she grabbed her cigarette pack and lit one. The sun was shining outside her Venetian blinds. It was going to be a scorching hot day.
The treacherous phone sat on the bedsid
e table. Even looking at it was scary. Her collateral was gone in exchange for a promise. It might be the dumbest thing she’d ever done, but what choice did she have? It was her mother, and with Palmer having her phone, Nook had no way of reaching her. It was highly unlikely her mother would remember her phone number.
Even an old-fashioned letter was out of the question because the postmark would reveal where she was.
Maybe she could reach out to an old friend from Buffalo and have them go over there, but she had no numbers and she didn’t dare go on social media. Those apps were way to sharey with info.
Getting up, she boiled some water and made a cup of coffee. It was awful, but she badly needed to save some money. It wasn’t really something she’d had to worry about before. Money went as quickly as it came. Getting paid had never really been a problem. No, she might have to flee at any time. It sucked, but what choice did she have? Go back and appeal to Palmer’s sense of mercy? That was not a dude with mercy.
With a sigh, she sat down on the bed and slowly sipped the coffee. It was hours before work and surprisingly it was hard to kill time in a city where you didn’t know anyone. It wasn’t like she wanted to go wandering around the casinos, or shopping.
Turning on the TV, she got back into bed, placing her coffee cup down beside her phone. Absently, she watched some reality show with rich people complaining about their lives. Intermittently shadows crossed her window as people walked past outside. She wondered where they were going. This wasn’t the kind of place tourists stayed at.
Maybe she should get dressed and walk down the street to the convenience store, but she didn’t really need anything, and she’d only come back with lots of crap food she shouldn’t have—and an emptier wallet.
Taking her cup, she took another sip, almost spilling it on her sheets as the phone rang. For a moment, she stared at it. Her mom’s number. Not her mom’s anymore—Palmer. Why would he be calling her? Lay down more threats? Enough time had passed so he’d probably collected his stuff from the Orlando bus station.
Sliding the cup onto the table, she picked up the phone and stared at it for a moment. Curiosity got her. Perhaps she should see what he wanted. Wasn’t it better to know where he was at mentally?
“Hello,” she said cautiously.
“Where are you?”
“Someplace where I’m not stupid enough to tell you,” she said tartly.
“You know you’ll end up telling me one day.”
“And why would I do that?”
“How’s life on the run? Loving it?”
“Loving the breathing part.”
There was silence down the line. None of the ‘I wouldn’t hurt you, baby,’ which she appreciated. There was something honest about him, and the fact that he wasn’t promising not to hurt her. Proved her right. These steps she was taking were totally necessary.
“I retrieved my missing assets.”
“Everything is there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, I didn’t steal your artwork on the way out.”
“It’s quiet where you are. I take it you’re at home. Not time to go to work yet?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Yes,” he said flatly. “I would.”
“Bye, Palmer. We’ve got nothing else to discuss.”
She was just about to hang up. “So who were these guys to you?”
“What guys?”
“The dead ones.”
Memories of that night flooded back and she shivered. It had been the craziest thing she’d ever been a part of, and she didn’t like thinking about it. “Just guys I partied with.”
“One of them your boyfriend?”
“Hardly. No. Dudes are dicks, didn’t you know?”
“Someone hurt you?”
Was he pumping her for information? Yeah, well she was hardly going to run back to her douche bag exes. “This guy named Riley. I just can’t get over him. He’s so mean, but I love him. I’m actually trying to find him right now so I can whine about why he doesn’t love me. Don’t look him up, okay?” Her voice was as whiny as she could make it.
“I know who your exes are. You have bad taste in guys.”
Her pulsed spiked at the lengths he’d gone to find out things about her. “Screw you, Palmer,” she said, but that nervousness bit in her belly. He’d investigated her, which couldn’t be a good thing. And neither was chatting to him like she was right now. What the hell was she doing? “Feel free to do anything you want to them.”
With that, she hung up and put the phone down, half worrying that he’d call her right back. Maybe she really should get rid of that SIM card.
A frown clenching her eyebrows, she stared at the phone, but it didn’t ring again. Unable to sit any longer, she got up and paced. Even with his stuff back, Palmer was still coming after her, and he wasn’t promising not to hurt her.
Walking over to the phone, she took the battery out and exposed the SIM card so she could tear it out, but something stopped her. It was such a final step, removing any way for her to negotiate with him. Not that she wanted to negotiate with him, but it would sever the link and she’d have no way of reconnecting if she needed to. Palmer would be absolutely unreachable if she lost this number—unless she fronted up to his building and waited for him to come out. Even then, he would be unreachable. There were people around him who wouldn’t blink twice at making someone disappear.
“Fuck,” she yelled, wanting to pick up her phone and throw it. Better the devil you know, the saying went.
Then again, if she just cut ties with him, would he eventually forget about her. Yeah, especially as he had reminders burned into his chest every time he looked in the mirror. Palmer was not going to forget. She had to be careful—about everything.
Getting dressed, she walked out of her room and down the road to the convenience store, buying herself an ice cream. It always made her feel better when she was stressed. When she’d been a kid, it had been the ultimate treat. Mostly a guilt bribe, though. And now she felt guilty and worried, but for a moment, she could feel like she was having something she really wanted.
A guy was eyeing her up, making appreciative whistles. She gave him the finger and for a moment, it looked like he wanted to punish her for it. Well, he’d get this fucking ice cream stick in his eye if he tried. She had bigger problems to deal with than some twerp fuckface like him. “Fuck off,” she growled.
The guy retreated, figuring he could find easier prey elsewhere. Guys like that always went for the weak, and tucked tail and ran if it looked like an actual fight. There were some real toe-rags in the world. Growing up, her mom had dated most of them. Being tough had always got her by, but now she was dealing with someone a hell of a lot tougher than her, and she was still freaking out about it.
No, she would destroy the SIM when she got back to her room. Clean cut, and then just lay low—forever. Surely someone else would try to shoot Palmer eventually. Hopefully, they’d do a better job of it and he would never be that shadow that chased her again.
A groan escaped her lips. Even after everything, it felt wrong to wish him ill. It wasn’t in her to truly wish someone ill. Obviously, most people could go fuck themselves, but to actually wish someone hurt, that was just a step too far—even with Palmer.
Again, how had absolutely everything become so screwed up? With her fingers, she stroked across her eyebrows, trying to think what she could do, how she could protect herself even more. Maybe leave the country, but go where? Mexico? No, she’d stick out like a sore thumb in Mexico. And if you were hiding from a drug dealer, it wasn’t smart to go where most of the drugs passed through.
Now, she needed to focus on getting a new identity, and to bury herself in it. Part of that would be cutting ties with her mom, at least for a while. It would keep them both safe. Her mother couldn’t be trusted with a plant, let alone her identity. This was only going to work if she had no weaknesses, because Palmer had proved he was searching f
or them—had firmly believed she’d fuck up one day. She could not afford to fuck up, this day or any other.
Chapter 13
DRUMMING HIS FINGERS on the table, Palmer sighed. This meeting was taking time, or it just felt as though it was taking longer than they normally did. By his insistence, they happened every week. Samson, the young and hungry business analyst he’d hired was concluding his recount of the sales figures for the week before. Samson could have gone into any corporation in the country, but he chose a career that rewarded him well.
They were sitting in the boardroom of his flooring business, having a regular operations meeting. It was swept for bugs or surveillance equipment every week, and so far, they’d never found any.
“There’s a huge medical conference in town this week,” Rosa said, tapping the ball of her pen on her folder. “We need to divert some product to cater to it.”
You would think a medical conference full of doctors would be a no-go area, but it was the opposite. No one cut loose like people who normally had to be somber, upstanding people. Coming down here to a conference was a break from their lives and they embraced partying like spring breakers.
“What else?” Palmer asked.
All of the week's events in the city was discussed and detailed, ensuring distribution was matched to the needs that week. They knew roughly how much would be needed in which sectors, and they were experts at catering to events and special occasions. Running out of product was unforgivable. People didn’t come down to Miami to party and then be told there were no goodies for them. Bad for business, and it made the channels start questioning if they should go elsewhere.
Then they discussed anything else they needed to be aware of, and anything they needed to deal with on the strategic front, which was mostly his job. Relationships had to be maintained and strengthened. This wasn’t a business where loose cannons were appreciated. Everyone wanted to know everything was cool and the money still flowed. To run a good business in this industry, it was primarily important to keep the calm. And recent events had spooked some, which required Palmer to get his face around and assure everyone that outstanding things had been taken care of.