Boosting her back onto the counter, he kept kissing her, even as his inner corrections officer started sending up warning flares. She locked her legs around his waist, while her hands pushed the shirt off his shoulders. He responded by unzipping her sweatshirt—his sweatshirt—and found that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. She unlocked her legs and slithered down his front. Which caused a whole different set of warning flares.
“We could go,” she murmured, waving vaguely toward the bedroom.
His inner CO seemed torn between yelling about condoms and putting a stop to the entire situation. Did he even have any condoms? Yes. But where were they? Maybe he should ask her—she’d gone through the drawers more recently. Didn’t he used to be better at this?
Didn’t he used to be smarter than this?
Her phone rang, buzzing across the counter and illuminating, a picture of Treyvonne’s face.
“….Your phone.”
“Ignore it.”
The ringing stopped and then immediately resumed.
“It’s Treyvonne,” he said, and wished he could stuff the words back into his mouth.
He felt her body freeze. “Ignore it,” she repeated, but when he kissed her again, she turned her head to glance at the phone.
He stepped back. “Just fucking answer it.” The shock of air between them made him gasp like he was running. “That’s the job, right? And you always finish the job. Company policy.”
The expression on her face was more than he could take. He stumbled out to the balcony, ignoring the nip of October air against his skin and wishing he had a cigarette.
So she had a boyfriend, so what? What did it matter? She was an unnecessary risk at time when he was already risking everything. This ought to be a sign from the universe that it wasn’t meant to be.
But he was still standing on a balcony in October with no shirt on.
He went back inside. She was sitting at the table with her head in her hands. Sweatshirt zipped up.
“Did he call to tell you his uncle was dead?”
“No, uh…” She looked up, avoiding his gaze. Her eyes had a glassy look like she was thinking about crying. He refused to move to comfort her. “His mom died. He hasn’t heard about his uncle yet. He wants me to go his house and get some clothes and tell his uncle, because, you know, Tall Jimmy’s not answering his phone.”
Shark began to calculate the problems with this plan. “They won’t let you or him into the house while it’s a crime scene.”
“Yes. Not that I could tell him that.”
“With both of them dead, the house and the estate is going to go into probate. They’ll put him in foster care. If he does that then he can kiss that insurance money goodbye. Between shitty foster parents and the state, it’ll somehow disappear. He should file for emancipation immediately.”
“I have a lawyer in mind,” she said. “I’ll have to wait for an hour or two to call him. Meanwhile, I’ll go grab some clothes for Trey out of his locker at school.”
He ran his hands over his face. “I’ll put some clothes on and drive you.”
She bit her lip. “It’s OK, I called for a Lyft.”
No point in arguing. He retrieved his shirt from the floor. She flitted around the place, seemingly getting ready, but he saw it for what it was—removing all traces of herself. The sweats looked ridiculous with her boots and oversized sunglasses, but she wore them like it was couture.
Her phone beeped. “My Lyft’s here,” she said, collecting her backpack.
He followed her out to the hall, watching her go. She stopped, halfway out the door, and leaned her forehead against the edge of the door. “Tell me not to go. Tell me to stay with you.”
He shook his head. “You stay or you go, little bird. Don’t put that decision on me.”
She didn’t move.
“Besides, you and me, it’s a bad plan, right? We make for good allies, but bad liabilities. And we’re both too smart for that.”
She took a deep breath and stood up straight. His heart gave a peculiar lurch. “You’re violating the no foreign clothing policy,” he blurted out. She looked down at his sweats.
“Policies can be revised,” she said, looking over her shoulder.
“What if I want them back?”
“Better not lose my number, then.” She shut the door behind her.
24
Shark: The Warehouse
Shark was sitting on a $1500 Mies Van Der Rohe Barcelona chair in gleaming white leather. He felt pretty confident that he was not about to get shot. Marko stood close behind him.
Geier walked in with Dan, his personality-free, hatchet-faced accountant. “I’ve been having a little chat with Dan,” he said by way of greeting. “It seems he helped you deposit $150,000 into my offshore accounts this morning?”
“I recovered the, uh, back taxes from Big Paulie,” Shark said. The payment put his total take down to $750,000, but it was worth it to stay on the right side of Geier. And as long as no one else found out about it, he was golden.
“And this?” Geier gestured at the three duffel bags at Shark’s feet. Geier tried to make the gesture casual, but Shark saw the way his fingers curled possessively over the bags. Money, Geier always wanted all the money.
“This one is the cash Big Paulie had stashed. And these two are the take from the Ukrainians. Personally, I would take Big Paulie’s cash and redistribute it to the crews, but it’s not mine.”
“That’s right, it’s not,” said Geier.
Shark shrugged. “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”
Geier gestured to Dan, who knelt to inspect the contents of the bags. He glanced up at Marko. “Didn’t I send you with two guys?”
“There was collateral damage,” Shark told him.
“Oh. You want another one?”
Shark didn’t look at Marko. Never let them see that you like something. “Someone else to get themselves in the way? No, I’m good.”
Geier shrugged. Having completed his inspection, Dan whispered in his ear. Geier appeared to be considering, and then he gestured to the two Ukrainian bags, which Dan duly picked up and carried back to the office. “I’ve decided to take your suggestion. You should redistribute Big Paulie’s money to the crews.”
“I think we should let the next territory boss handle that,” said Shark.
Geier grinned, his teeth gleaming sharply.
“No,” said Shark. “You said if I handled this for you, we’d be square, and I could come back in.” He needed this to happen. He needed to be back in the city.
“And we are square,” Geier said. “But who am I supposed to give that territory to? I had Cassius in mind, but you kind of put a crimp in that when you shot him in the face.”
“I cannot be in the suburbs,” said Shark. “It’s weird out there and they’re total amateurs.”
Geier dismissed this. “Well, you can whip them into shape. Look, I’m planning on rotating Terrence—you remember him?—back in. But he needs another couple of months before he’s out of the hospital. You just have to keep the place going until spring. Think about it like a little vacation. It could be good. You could…” he seemed to be struggling to come up with suburban positives. “You could learn to bowl.”
Shark took off his sunglasses to stare at Geier, who laughed. “I know, I know. This is not what you had in mind when you got out. Look, it’s just a couple of months. You’ll get the territory fee, plus I’ll toss a bonus in.”
Shark assessed how far he could push Geier. “How much?” Money was what he should care about.
“Twenty-five K?”
“Fifty.”
“Thirty-five or the math doesn’t pencil out.”
“Thirty-five and I’m back in the city by March.” Maybe he could get away with a few months in the suburbs? He took ano
ther look at Geier. He had the feeling that this was the end of the road.
“End of April,” Geier said firmly with the flinty look in his eye that said he wasn’t going to be pushed further.
End of April? Hopefully they would be OK with that. Shark put his sunglasses back on and Geier grinned. “I’m glad you’re back, Shark. I missed your total lack of giving a shit.”
“Fucks,” said Shark, “I’m all out of ‘em.”
25
Shark: The Charger
Marko winced as he lowered himself into the Charger. “Do you think anyone noticed the arm?” he asked, attempting to use his un-injured hand to fasten the seatbelt.
Shark reached over and clicked Marko’s belt in place. “I don’t think anyone looked twice.”
“Good. I’ve known prisons that were more forgiving of weakness than that place.”
“Tell me about it.” Shark pointed the car back toward the freeway.
“So tell me again, why you want back in there? Geier made it sound like you could have walked away after you got out. And I heard you got a degree. Why are you back?”
Shark hesitated. He had expected this question on day one. But now, weeks in, he felt unprepared. “I could have a PhD,” he said. “No one is hiring an ex-con who was sent up for manslaughter, reduced from murder. And I’m sure as hell not working minimum wage. I like being independent, but I also like the idea of retiring at thirty.” A little truth to sell the big lie.
“Live the dream, kid,” said Marko. “I hope you make it. All I know is that getting out is a hell of a lot harder than getting in.”
He glanced at Marko. “You know a bit more than that.”
“I know a lot of shit,” admitted Marko. “But mostly, I know when to keep my mouth shut. Speaking of people who got skills, you going to see that girl again?”
“What girl?” The lie came automatically.
Marko rolled his eyes. “Didn’t we just establish that I know shit? The smart one with the sharp knife.”
“She’s got a boyfriend.”
“Pfft. Fuck that shit. Relationships are like paint stripes on the road—just the suggested guidelines.”
Shark laughed. “She’s also a teenager.”
“Yeah, but in crime years she’s like eighty-five. Plus, she’s speaks your language. That’s hard to come by.”
Shark pretended to be concentrating on the road.
“Eh. Think about it,” Marko said. “After all, you’ve got to do something with your time until April.”
Think about it? Sure, that’s about all he had been doing. And it was all he was going to do. Bodies? Cash? He could hide those. But a jailbait girlfriend? His FBI handler would notice that one. He was stupid, but he wasn’t that stupid.
Was he?
Shark’s Bite Sneak Peek...
ARRIVING APRIL 2018
Shark has been doing his time in the suburbs and doing his best to stay away from 17-year-old Peregrine Hays. But when Shark becomes the target of a crooked ATF agent, he has no choice but to call on Peri. But Peri has her own reasons for being interested in Agent Fowler—she suspects he may be part of the sex trafficking ring that killed her best friend. As they attempt to close down Fowler’s operation, Shark and Peri must contend with an angry biker gang, Shark’s smoking hot FBI handler, Peri’s alcoholic uncle, and their own undeniable attraction to one another. Shark walks a knife edge between his cover and the law to bring down Fowler and uses Fowler’s death to vault himself back into the upper echelons of The Organization.
Six Months Ago
Peregrine: Durrville
The three teenagers, barefoot, disoriented, and dressed only in lingerie stumbled down the road, pushed and herded at every step by Luciana and Isabella, both dressed in black. The asphalt pavement, still warm from the heat of the day and illuminated by street lights steamed as a light summer rain splattered down. At the top of the hill, above the road, seventeen-year-old Peregrine Hays stood at the entrance of the construction yard with her hands on her knees, panting and squinting through the rain. Below her the giant spool of electrical cable bounced and picked up speed, flames beginning to eat into the wood, wire, and gasoline that she had doused it with. Fiery whips of wire spun off into space like arcs of lightning, as the massive spool spun toward the three men pursuing her friends. One of the men looked up, and shouted, pointing at the now flaming wheel bearing down on them. The men slowed, then began to run back the way they had come.
But as she watched, two bikers, their jackets emblazoned with the red devil of the Vagos motorcycle club, rounded the corner and immediately began to skid as they hit the brakes on the wet road. The motorcyclists went down, their bikes continued forward into the hell mouth of the wire spool. The bikes were engulfed in flames and then exploded. The motorcyclists struggled to their feet and Peri breathed out a sigh of relief. Not waiting around to see what else could go wrong, she ran down the hill to the van.
“Get in the van,” yelled Peri.
“Fuck me,” gasped Isabella, as Peri ran up. Isabella’s dark chola style eyeliner was melting down her face in the rain.
“All of you, get in the van!” repeated Peri, shoving the girls at the open doors.
Luciana was already climbing into the driver’s seat as Isabella and Peri pushed the three shivering girls into the back. Luciana hit the gas and the van roared into life, tires squealing against the wet pavement before launching forward. Peri lurched with the movement of the van and climbed into the passenger seat.
“You know,” said Luciana, “when you called and said you needed to borrow my van, this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”
“I told you what we’d be doing. You didn’t have to come,” said Peri.
Luciana gave her a look. “We could have called the cops.”
“They would have been gone by the time the police got there. If the police got there. I told Isabella I’d get her sister back. You think I should have waited?”
“I think that could have gone really badly,” said Luciana.
“We got the girls,” said Peri, twisting in her seat to look at the three girls—they all looked varying degrees of high. “That’s what counts.”
“Sofia?” asked Isabella, grabbing her sisters arm. “Sofia, are you OK?”
Sofia turned away from the back window and the orange flames and focused on Isabella’s face as if seeing it for the first time.
“No,” she said.
“You’re going to be,” said Isabella, hugging her sister. “I got you back now. You’re going to be fine.”
Peri exchanged a glance with Luciana. They both knew the stats on girls who had escaped sex slavery. Fine was a relative term.
Read more in...
ARRIVING APRIL 2018
About the Author
Bethany Maines is a native of Tacoma WA, who is actually very much like her fictional heroines: she travels to exotic lands and has the ability to kick some serious butt with her fourth degree black belt in karate. And while her travels may not necessarily include fighting super agents of evil so much as eating spicy foods and hiking to the tops of mountains (okay, really big hills), her black belt skills are mainly employed in teaching karate to a classroom full of kids (although there was that one time in Paris…), and her day job is something she actually enjoys (graphic design is fun!), she’s pretty much a secret agent in her own right.
Find out more at:
www.BethanyMaines.com
FREE E-STORY
Start at the very beginning with the short story – The Shark Tank – and meet Shark before Peri, before prison, and before everyone wanted him dead. But not before he found the perfect couch.
Go to: BethanyMaines.com/Shark-Giveaway
2661 N. Pearl, #360
Tacoma WA 98407
This book is a work of fiction. Na
mes, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Bethany Maines
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Cover art by LILTdesign.com
CONTENTS
FREE Short Story
Prologue
Monday ~ October 9
Monday ~ October 16
1
2
Two Weeks Ago
3
Tuesday ~ October 17
4
5
Wednesday ~ October 18
6
7
8
Thursday ~ October 19
9
10
Five Years Ago
11
Thursday ~ October 19
12
13
14
15
16
Friday ~ October 20
17
18
19
20
21
22
Saturday ~ October 21
23
24
25
Shark’s Bite Sneak Peek...
About the Author
FREE E-STORY
Shark's Instinct (Shark Santoyo Crime Series Book 1) Page 12