“Good morning, Miss North,” he said, “I was hoping I might have a word with you today.”
It took every ounce of willpower in me not to turn and run. Instead, I worked up an apologetic smile and pointed to the duffle in my hand. “Sorry,” I called over, forcing my feet back into motion, “Busy at the moment, maybe another time.”
The car moved with me, stopping just ahead of me so that I was forced to pass him again. This time the passenger side door swung open, and when I looked inside he was holding up a cell phone.
“Get in the car, Avery,” he told me, moving his thumb to the screen, “You can talk to me, or I can call your parole officer and you can talk to him. I’m sure he’d be very interested in knowing where you are.”
My mouth went dry and I stared at him, frozen in place, listening to the sudden hammering of my pulse as adrenaline shot through my system at his words. Part of me knew the game was over when he’d used my name the day before, but I’d pushed it from my mind. Dismay filled me, along with an ever-increasing urge to drop my bag and make a wild dash for the nearest alley, but I knew I wouldn’t get far. I had nowhere to go, anyway.
I sighed in defeat and moved to the car, bending down to look at him. “How do I know you won’t call him anyway? Isn’t there some kind of cop-code that says you have to?”
His lips twitched up. “You’re from three states over, the code doesn’t reach that far. Get in.”
I hesitated, and he held up the phone again, and this time I could read the name of my parole officer displayed clearly on the screen: Dale Edwards. It wasn’t a bluff. “Okay, okay,” I told him, then threw my duffle on the floor mat and climbed in, slamming the door and shifting my body to sit against it, as far away from him as I could possibly get.
“Buckle up,” he told me as he pulled from the curb and started down the road, his gaze cutting towards the duffle at my feet. “What’s in the bag?”
“My dirty underwear.” I pulled the bag up and unzipped it part way to show him the jumble of clothes inside, “Are you into that? Want to take a closer look?”
“I’m not your enemy, Avery,” he told me, and I laughed bitterly. I didn’t reach for the seat belt. I didn’t want anything confining me more than the car and his presence already were.
“No, of course not. Let me guess,” I looked out the window at the buildings passing by, “You’re my friend, right?”
“I could be.”
He turned the car off the main street and onto a side road, the buildings thinning out to larger tracks of broken pavement and abandoned warehouses. I didn’t know where we were, but it seemed there wasn’t much variation in Dust’s landscape from any point on the map. My nostrils flared slightly at the desolation around us, a feeling of vulnerability growing with every boarded-up building and deserted field.
“Where are you taking me?”
He glanced over at me, then pointed down the road to a sign in the distance. “Betty’s,” he said, “It’s a truck stop diner. They do a damn good bacon and cheese omelet.”
My eyebrows rose slightly. “You’re taking me to breakfast?”
“I’ve been sitting outside your apartment building since six. I’m hungry.”
I gave him a sidelong glance but said nothing else as the diner came into view. Like everything else in Industry City, it had seen better times, yet the line of semi’s parked in the oversized lot was a sign that here, at least, business was still good. Ethan parked near the entrance and got out, slamming the door behind him and I followed at a slower pace.
A bell rang when we opened the door, and a redheaded waitress who’d likely been working in the diner since it opened waved us in, pointing to an empty booth near the back. It wasn’t a large space; faded and cracked maroon colored vinyl booths lined a bank of windows with a few tables scattered between that and a row of counter seating with matching turnstyle stools. It was busy, though—conversation hummed, dishes clinked and rattled, and a steady sound of steam and shouts came from the kitchen just beyond. Ethan looked satisfied with the seating arrangement, angling himself into the booth and leaning back when the waitress bustled up to drop menus, filling both our coffee cups without asking if we wanted any and pointed at the sugar and tiny tubs of creamer on the table before vanishing again with a promise to “be right back”.
Ethan snagged the sugar and poured an indecent amount into his cup before sliding it across the table towards me. I made a face and pushed it away, shaking my head as he began peeling the tops off three tubs of creamer. “What?” he asked me, stirring his coffee with a smirk, “Think you’re better than me because you drink yours black?”
“That’s not coffee, it’s candy.” He chuckled, and I smiled despite myself, opening a menu and propping it up between us to hide, though after a moment I tipped it down to look at him over the top. “You’re buying?”
“I’m buying.”
“Good,” I told him, lifting the menu back up. I heard him chuckle again but ignored it, taking my time pouring over every option until the waitress returned.
“I’ll have the bacon and cheese omelet with home fries,” he told her. She jotted it down and looked to me expectantly.
I gave her a bright smile. “I’ll have the lumberjack breakfast with steak and a side of biscuits and gravy, the Belgium waffle with whipped cream and strawberries and….” I scanned down the menu again thoughtfully, then pointed at Ethan. “His omelet sounded good. One of those, too.”
Ethan was staring at me, but the waitress didn’t even blink. “Right,” she scribbled on her pad, “I’ll be back then.”
“Hungry?” He asked me.
“Starving,” I answered, leaning back in the booth and fixing him with a narrow gaze. Now that there was no menu to hide behind, I figured it was time to get it over with. “So, what do you want from me?”
He sipped his coffee before answering. “Your help.”
“I don’t know anything about what happened to the guy in 9B.”
“I know.”
That answer caught me off guard, and I sat for a moment simply watching him across the table before leaning forward to try again. “How did you know who I was?”
“Your car,” he answered.
“It’s not in my name.”
“No,” he acknowledged, “It’s in your boyfriend’s name.”
“Ex-boyfriend,” I corrected him.
“Ex-boyfriend,” he repeated, his lips twitching up again. He was laughing at me. Asshole. “He reported it stolen three weeks ago and gave your name and a full description in the report as the possible suspect. All I had to do was run the plates.”
My mouth dropped open. “He reported it stolen?” I fell back against the seat as disbelief washed over me. “Fucker. That was my car, I paid for it!”
“It’s in his name,” Ethan shrugged.
I turned away from him, staring out the window at the parking lot and the trucks parked there. Most of them had sleeper cabs, meaning they were long-haul, meant for cross-country trips. I’d heard the stories of the men that drove them, and while I was sure not all truckers were the same, there would surely be one I could talk into taking me with him.
“I looked up your arrest record,” he continued, “And the sentencing information from your court case.”
I ignored him. There was a pause, and I glanced over to see him tapping something into his phone. “Avery North,” he read out a moment later, and I flinched, “Twenty-eight years old, twenty-seven at the time of your arrest. No priors. Five felony counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell. Sentenced to one year in a correctional facility, released after four months.” He glanced up and raised an eyebrow. “You must have been a good girl.”
I gave him a withering look, and he smirked, looking back down at his phone. “Your parole restrictions were pretty clear, you know. Weekly check-ins with requests needed to leave the county. Funny, it doesn’t say anything here about disappearing or crossing three state lines.�
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I opened my mouth, then closed it abruptly as the first round of our food arrived; buttered toast in front of Ethan, and a plate of biscuits and gravy for me. Ethan looked at his toast for a moment, then picked up his fork and reached over, cutting off a large bite of biscuit.
“Hey!” I pulled the plate in closer and wrapped an arm around it to keep him from diving in for more, “Get your own.”
He grinned at me, his professional demeanor dropping unexpectedly, and my breath caught, his blue eyes taking on a roguish gleam that turned his handsome, chiseled features irresistibly charming. I swallowed, wondering what the hell was wrong with me lately. I decided it was Alex’s fault—I was operating on an edge of need so dangerous I was about to start lusting after the cop who was threatening to turn me in. I buried myself in my plate then, deciding to eat my feelings, but glanced up a moment later to find him watching me in silence.
“What?” I looked down at my plate again, then sighed and pushed it towards him, “Fine. I’ll share.”
He didn’t move, and the laughter in his gaze had been replaced by a speculative look. “I looked him up too, you know. Your boy…ex-boyfriend. Ryan Hillman. You want to tell me what happened?” I shook my head. “I’ll guess then,” he continued. “He’s on his second strike, one more and they’d put him away for a long time. The drugs were his, and you took the fall for him. I bet he told you he was clean, and you believed him until they came busting down your door. He talked you into it—begged, even. And you did it because you loved him.” His tone softened slightly. “It happens more often than you’d think.”
I couldn’t look at him. “I guess that makes me an idiot, right?”
“No.” He picked up his fork then to re-launch his attack on my plate, “It makes you an easy target for assholes.” I glanced up at him, but he was concentrating on getting as much biscuit onto his fork as possible—probably in case I changed my mind about sharing. “So why’d you run?”
I didn’t say anything, turning my attention to his fork.
“You know, Avery, you should tell me if there’s someone after you. I can help.”
I shifted in my seat, still not saying anything, and he sighed. “Okay, I get it. Not my business.”
A silence fell between us, awkward for me—though I doubted he was as affected by it. “So why am I here?” I asked finally. “I already told you I don’t know anything about what happened to the guy in 9B.”
“And I already told you, I need your help.” He managed to get the massive bite into his mouth, then spent the next moments searching through his phone while he chewed and finally swallowed. “Your car was found abandoned at the Civic factory three days ago. Have you been back since?”
I gazed at him for a moment in silence, trying to decide what to tell him, if anything at all. I finally decided I’d get more answers from him if I told the truth. “Yes,” I said cautiously. “Once.”
He turned the screen around to face me, flipping through several shots of my car, most of them up-close images of the symbols and message in red paint. “And it looked like this when you were there?”
“Yes.”
He nodded and turned the phone back around, still looking through it. “You don’t know anything about what happened to the guy in 9B, I get that. But did you happen to take a look in his apartment?”
I swallowed before replying. “Yes.”
“Then you saw these,” he continued, the screen flashing towards me again, the red spray-painted walls scrolling past. “A match, wouldn’t you say?”
“I guess so.”
“A match,” he confirmed, “Same paint, same symbols. Except for this.” Once more the phone turned towards me, and I leaned for a better look at what I was seeing. It was a wall in the apartment—I could tell by the faded blue paint and the sliver of filthy green carpeting. Unlike the rest of what I’d seen, however, this wall did not show the symbols and scrawled words the rest of the apartment had been covered in. Instead, there was a large circle painted in black, centered in the middle of the wall. Inside the circle was a single word in red—GIVEN. I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck and I shuddered, pulling back from the screen. He was watching me. “I take it you missed that. Do you know where it was?”
I shook my head.
“The wall connecting your apartment to his,” he confirmed. “They know where you are. Those messages were left for you.”
I felt myself go pale. “They killed him?”
“No, he killed himself by falling over the railing. Someone came in after to decorate.” He paused as the rest of our food came, filling the table in front of us. I had three massive plates of food before me, but suddenly no appetite. Ethan didn’t seem to share that problem, already digging into his omelet. “Tell me what you know about the Templars.”
“They’re a cult,” I said tonelessly, watching him eat. “That’s all I know.”
“They’re a cult,” he confirmed, “And they’re also a well-run crime organization. They’ve forced their way into just about every corner of the city.”
“You mean like the mob?”
“Yes, I mean like the mob, only the mob breaks kneecaps and sets fires. The Templars are different. They’ve got something on these people, some way of controlling them, and I don’t know what it is. When I say they have every corner I mean they have every corner. Most organizations go after the money—they target businesses to force their cut, but the Templars aren’t stopping there. They’re going after the junkies, the hookers, the homeless. Everyone. They aren’t just after the money...they want the people, too. That’s why I need you.”
“What do you mean you need me? Need me for what?”
“It’s almost impossible to get information out of anyone connected to them. They have their people locked down tight, and the ones that aren’t seem to disappear. Plus, they have a wall of defense lawyers and the First Amendment on their side. No search warrant has ever made it past the judge. I need you to get behind their walls. I need to know what’s really going on in there.”
“You want me to be a spy?”
His lips twitched up. “I was thinking more along the lines of informant, but you can call yourself a spy if you want. They have you marked, that’s obvious, and as long as you stay in Dust they’ll keep coming after you.”
A shiver went through me at the word ‘marked’, but I pushed it aside. “Let me get this straight. You want me to become one of them, find out what they’re doing, and then be your snitch?”
“Informant,” he said again, “And trust me, you’re going to want my help. Once they get their hands on you, you’ll need someone to pull you out.” He reached into his pocket and produced a different cell phone, then slid it across the table towards me.
I stared at the phone without touching it. Gina and Alex hadn’t been able to pull London out, but then again, they didn’t have the law on their side. Maybe Ethan really could break me out from behind the fence if they took me. “What exactly is it you want to know about them?”
“Everything. Anything. I want to know what they’re doing, where they’re doing it and how they’re managing to pull so many people in.”
I could have told him, but the words sounded ridiculous. I couldn’t force myself to tell him that I was pretty sure they were using some kind of satanic mind control. “Why do you think they’re after me?”
“I don’t know. It could be because you’re new here and that makes you an easy target.”
“I could run,” I told him, and he smiled.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. Cop-code and all. If you don’t want to help me, I’m happy to put your parole officer back on your trail. I doubt it’ll take long for them to find you this time.”
“This is fucking blackmail.”
“Trust me, Avery. You don’t want to get sent to a holding cell in Dust while you wait for your parole officer to show. The Templars have the jail locked down, you wouldn’t last the night.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Probably,” he agreed, “But I’m an asshole with a job to do, and if you want to stay out of prison, you’ll do yours. Get me something by tomorrow.”
“Like what?”
“Anything. Just make it worth my while to keep from turning you in.”
I sat for a long minute weighing my options, then sighed and reached for the phone. “What’s the data plan like on this thing?”
“Unlimited,” he smirked, picking up his fork again and waving it towards the food in front of me. “Eat. Your eggs are getting cold.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
* * *
Ethan dropped me off in front of the laundry mat, and I pulled my duffle and three to-go boxes out of the car.
“Keep your phone on,” he told me just before he pulled away, “And be careful.” It was just a bit before ten, which meant I still had a chance at clean clothes if I hurried. The laundry mat was the kind of place that no one ever bothered to clean or lock up, and half the machines were duct taped shut or simply missing doors. I found two that looked like they might not eat my quarters and started sorting through the duffle, not caring much about lights, darks or delicates. At this point, I’d settle for not smelling like the trunk of my car. I started one load and moved to the next, then slipped off my jacket to add it to the pile.
“I wouldn’t wash that if I were you,” a voice said from behind me, “It might shrink.”
My eyes rolled, and I turned to glare at the figure leaning against a broken dryer near the door. He grinned at me before pushing off and stepping closer.
“Let me guess,” I told him, “It’s your laundry day, too.”
“Nah,” he said, “Mine’s tomorrow.”
“Right,” I answered, though it occurred to me then that he was wearing the same clothes I’d seen him in yesterday, the faded t-shirt and jeans seeming to be his uniform of choice. “So, you were just walking by and thought you’d pop in and say hello?”
“That works.” He looked down at my duffle bag where a pair of black lace underwear had landed on top of the pile. “Nice panties.”
Into Dust: The Industry City Trilogy - Book One Page 9