Delta_Ricochet

by Cristin Harber

  Adelia jumped up and wrapped her arms around Lenora. “Thank you.”

  “Cut it out.”

  She squeezed tighter. “In a minute.”

  “That Colin guy is adorable, by the way,” Lenora said for no purpose other than to make Adelia stop hugging.

  “Don’t use his cuteness against me!”

  “I don’t think Tex will shoot him.”

  “Lenora!”

  “Then again, your Pops almost killed you, so what the fuck do I know?”

  Adelia would’ve hugged Lenora again but thought better of it. The last thing she needed was soft, mushy feelings getting in the way.

  Lenora clucked. “I’m parked back here. Let’s go.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  Lenora spun on her and tried to wrap Adelia in a chokehold. “Thank God, Cupid’s arrow didn’t turn you into a pansy. You’d be a pain in the ass to go hunt a monster with.”

  “You have no idea how comforting it is that you never change.” She strutted off so that Lenora couldn’t accuse her of going soft again. “Let’s go before someone we know sees me and blows my head off.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Is this the mother-daughter trip we never saw coming?” Lenora led the way off the cramped flight. The last minute, one-way ticket from Iowa to Baltimore had been dirt-cheap and provided the worst seats available. But Adelia didn’t care. It was the most comfortable place she’d had able to sleep since Tex told her to scram from the Mayhem compound.

  Even after she woke, Adelia didn’t care that both her seatmates evil-eyed her for flopping her arms over the seat dividers and probably snoring. A girl needed her beauty sleep, especially when she had been running from a motorcycle gang that knew her better than anyone.

  “I’m sure this is the trip you’ve always dreamed of—taking me to hunt down someone in our network.”

  “Well, this is more likely something I would’ve wanted over say…” Lenora waved her hand as they merged into the airport’s traffic of business professionals and travelers with roller bags. “Hell, I don’t know. My mother never did anything cutesy with me.” Her upper lip snarled. “And I didn’t want her to either.”

  “You know you always wanted to do mani-pedis.” Adelia looked at her metallic purple polish. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t tell anyone if you took a moment to relax from the raging bitch act.”

  Lenora pointed toward concourse signs, and they merged with a different flow of people. “Aren’t you a sweet child?”

  Lenora’s cell phone rang from inside her black leather bag, and she pulled open the silver-studded flap to quickly check the caller. “It’s for you.”

  “Me?” Adelia took the phone and noticed Lenora’s matte gray nail polish. Maybe a mani-pedi wasn’t off the table, but she had no plans to talk to Tex right now. “No way.”

  “It’s your —”

  That was a D.C. number. Adelia tugged the phone back and swiped to take the call, pressing it to her ear, breathless and conscious of Lenora’s scrutiny. “Colin?”

  “Where are you?”

  With a question like that, Adelia expected it to be sharp or angry. But Colin’s voice carried a breath of relief, and even though they were walking through a packed airport, her eyes slipped shut. She could picture his head dropping back and broad shoulders relaxing. “I need to take care of a few things —”

  “That’s not a location.” His voice rumbled, so deep and determined that the palm of her hand vibrated. Mayhem might have been hunting her, but Colin would find her unless she begged him off.

  “I talked to Lenora, and what the hell is going on with—hell, I don’t know—Mayhem’s banks?”

  Adelia hooked her arm around Lenora’s elbow, mouthing, “What did you tell him?”

  She waved Adelia off. “Whatever I needed to.”

  “Adelia,” Colin snapped, “stay with her. I’m coming to find you. Then we’ll talk, sort everything out. It’ll be fine.”

  There was no way that would happen. What could he do? Ask Mayhem to stop? Even if she and Lenora learned something from their meeting with Silvio, Adelia didn’t plan on leaving much in terms of actionable information for a group that walked the line like Delta. She was Mayhem, through and through. That wouldn’t change, even as they were coming to kill her. Colin had so much good to do. He didn’t need to be mixed up with the likes of her.

  “Why the hell aren’t you saying anything?” he asked.

  Her eyes pinched shut when he grumbled in that way that warmed her heart. “When the hell did you get so bossy and grumpy?”

  “Since the girl I couldn’t get out of my mind left me hanging.” He grumbled. “Whatever you two are up to, whatever shitshow you’ve got yourself into, I promise you, I have seen worse, done worse.”

  “You haven’t.”

  “Feels like you’re trying to protect me from something, sweetheart, and I’m telling you. Don’t.”

  Colin was a mind reader. Lucky her. “How about this? I’ll call you later.”

  He snort-laughed. “How about this? Bullshit. I’m coming to find you. Stay with Lenora, and I’ll see you later.”

  “No—”

  He hung up, and she scowled, double-checking the screen, hating to admit that the bossy, protector act did a little something for her. Mayhem was filled to the brim with bossy protectors. But Colin was different. She didn’t know how or why, but he made her feel good.

  “Taxi stand, over there.” Lenora angled them past baggage claim and into a short line.

  Adelia was still floating from her conversation with Colin when they slid into the back of the cab and Lenora directed the driver to the Baltimore docks.

  “No, ladies, you pretty broads don’t wanna go there.” The man twisted in his seat and ignored the taxi honking behind him “Gimme someplace else to drop you off or get another cab to take you there.”

  Lenora grabbed her leather bag and pulled out a wad of cash. “Yeah, that’s where you’re taking us. And not that anyone will ever ask, but you never saw us.”

  “So it’s going to be like that.” He held up his hand then grasped the dollars smacked into it. “And away we go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The cabbie screeched off with a warning that they were morons, and Adelia placed her blind faith in Lenora, who seemed unfazed by the dilapidated office buildings on one side of the broken road and the rusted fence enclosing the ominous docks on the other.

  “This is the trip you said you always dreamt about.” Adelia hoisted her bag over her shoulder and followed across the faded, pocked asphalt.

  “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  She would’ve laughed and maybe even had more of a wild time enjoying this craziness if there wasn’t a MC with her head on their hit list and if she had a little idea of what they were doing, besides searching for the elusive monster. “Is this like a final meal?”

  Lenora’s badass boot heel caught on the sidewalk, proving the woman semi-infallible as she caught herself from falling. “How so?”

  “My final hurrah. We both know I’m dead meat, so you’re out here helping me accomplish the one thing I really wanted.”

  Lenora paused, crossing her arms over her hip-length black jacket. “Like a cancer kid’s Make-a-Wish project, except for you’re a MC’s target, but you’ve done a lot of good?”

  Adelia rolled her eyes. “There’s a reason I never called you Ma.”

  Lenora looked toward the heavens and muttered an offering to a biker god, finishing with, “You’re lucky you’re still walking.”

  The dirty glass door of an old office swung open, and a middle-aged man rushed out. His slicked-back hair didn’t stop the fly-aways. He reminded Adelia of a drumstick, skinny legs and a swollen waist.

  “Lenora! I didn’t expect to see you!” He waved them in, hugging her and kissing her cheeks. “And you are?”

  “A friend.”

  He didn’t miss a beat with the hugs and cheek-kisses. “We
love friends.”

  The hand waving continued, and the more his wrists flicked, the more obvious it became that his manners were less than polite and made of nervousness. “You should’ve called.”

  “Then how could we surprise you, Silvio?”

  “Love friends.” They walked into his 1980s wood-paneled office. “Surprises, not so much.” More wrist flicks ushered them into seats. “Have a seat. Coffee?”

  Adelia had glanced at the line of burned coffee pots on a receptionist’s desk, across from where a half-full pot sat with the light off. “I’m good. Thanks anyway.”

  “I wouldn’t drink your sludge if you paid me,” Lenora said.

  His ruddy cheeks flushed but not from the coffee jab. Sweat glistened at his hairline and at the bottom of his sideburns, though the office needed to have the heat cranked up a few degrees. “You kill me.”

  Ha, he wasn’t the only one up on the chopping block, though Adelia kept that to herself.

  “How’s business?” Lenora asked.

  “Same.” He steepled his fingers. “You’re here to talk about the family?”

  “Yes… and no.”

  Silvio bit his bottom lip, and Adelia knew he had to know the monster. But she didn’t know why he was acting this way. People in their line of work crossed paths with the unsavory. Her personal brand of despicable was human traffickers, but another person’s might be gunrunners or drug traffickers. This guy had to have seen them all. It was the nature of his business. She couldn’t imagine there was anyone he wasn’t exposed to.

  “Why are you so nervous?” Adelia stepped out of the shadows.

  His eyes jumped from Lenora, and the answer didn’t come smoothly. Instead, the denial stuttered past his lips, and Adelia knew that Lenora was correct about Mayhem’s last shipment. Something had been wrong with it. Even if their guess as to what was off, there had been a problem. Otherwise this tough guy wouldn’t be acting this uneasy.

  “This is what we’re going to do.” Lenora ended Silvio’s painful repudiation on his lack of nerves. “We’re going to cross the street.”

  “Why? You don’t want to do that.” He held his arms out. “We’ll talk. Catch up.”

  “The hell with that. I want to see where our last shipment came in.”

  The color drained from Silvio’s face. “Come on, Lenora.”

  “I’m curious how it works.”

  “You know I’m the middle man.”

  “I know,” she said coolly.

  “And you are our attorney.”

  “Again, I know. This means I need to understand all the moving pieces of this clusterfuck of a puzzle you’ve looped me into.”

  Lenora planted like stones on the fake, peeling wood. “I’m not giving you an option to say no.”

  “I can’t.”

  Adelia stepped forward. “Neither am I.”

  “And who are you again?”

  “Someone with nothing to lose.” She grinned. “A woman who’s in a much worse position than you.”

  “You look in those containers, your head gets screwed up.”

  Lenora had been correct. They were moving people in the same shipping containers as Mayhem’s guns from overseas. The bastards! She just needed to know if it was true. The need to unravel how this had happened without anyone knowing nearly overpowered her. “My head’s already screwed up.”

  Silvio sheepishly turned to Lenora. “I just sell the space. I don’t ask.”

  “But you knew, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t ask. I don’t know. I don’t do anything but book—”

  “Let’s go,” Adelia snapped. That was the weakest response from a criminal she’d ever heard.

  “You’re going to get me killed.”

  Lenora shrugged. “Every decision has a consequence.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He trembled. “And what’s yours? And yours?”

  “She’s already a dead lady walking, and me? My time will come eventually. But not before I get a name.”

  The man shook his head. “I’ll open it up, but I have nothing to say.”

  Sickened shivers rolled over her skin as he tugged on a long overcoat, leather gloves, and a scarf then stormed out his office. The dirty front door slapped behind him, all chivalrous gestures gone.

  They followed without much talk, and Silvio waited until Adelia walked out so he could lock the door.

  “Other than this headache,” Lenora said as they turned to cross the pocked street, “how’s freight booking lately?”

  “Peachy,” he grumbled.

  “Oh, come on now. You can’t hate me for doing my job.”

  He mumbled and glared.

  “I have it on good authority the Niners are moving a great deal of product with you.”

  Silvio waggled his shoulders, clearly softened by their mutual business contacts, and Adelia was lost to the rusted-out scenery and harsh clanking sounds as they slipped into small talk.

  The brick-orange, rusted fence scraped a worn path along the weed-spackled concrete when Silvio unlocked the gate. They waited for him to re-chain it before walking along a concrete alley made of stacked freight containers.

  The old metal containers looked like children’s building blocks from far away, but up close, they were each the length of a semi-truck and looked as though they could attach to them or slide onto a train car. Some were newer than others. All had rust and wear and tear on their metal bodies. They smelled of the oceans and the lands they’d come from. Graffiti marred the sides of many in languages hadn’t seen spray painted before. Maybe Arabic and Chinese. Or Hindi or Urdu. Adelia didn’t have a clue.

  Graffiti was a worldwide thing. That had never occurred to her before. She found it interesting how similar the tags were. The company painted over them, only to have them tagged again.

  Cranes operated high overhead, and they walked across the shipyard. Silvio waved to men in hardhats and vests with clipboards, who used their cellphones as walkie-talkies, but still yelled at others nearby.

  They walked for what felt like miles, past ports where large ocean freighters had crane operators dragging off their containers. Some were lifted by forklifts and eased down, while others seemed unsteady and were moved less carefully. Adelia wondered how their weapons were unloaded, how the shipments were monitored—or not—and who knew what was where.

  Silvio managed so much of that information here and around the world. He knew many people’s secrets and simply put things into boxes and move them places without causing a problem for the shipper or receiver.

  Adelia looked around. What’s behind the walls of each container? Her stomach dropped. “Lenora?”

  She didn’t slow down, and Adelia quickened her pace.

  “Hey, Lenora—”

  The slightest headshake said not now, and Adelia’s stomach lurched again. They were monster hunting, and everywhere Adelia looked, she could only see ocean liners’ freight containers.

  This wasn’t how she saw people transported, and she’d seen hell—girls shoved too tight to breathe into the back of a truck. Conditions were harsh on the road over what could be days.

  Bile sloshed in the pit of her stomach. She grew nauseous. Memories of the auction block where her father had stood her, surrounded by cars for sale and a donkey rang clear in her mind. She was nothing more than them. A truck had garnered a better price.

  They peeled away from the main alley and set upon a confusing path only wide enough for machines to drive through and lift containers or open doors. The sun didn’t reach them. The containers were stacked too high on either side, closing them in shadows, casting a colder blanket on an already chilly day.

  “This way.” Silvio came to a stop.

  The containers were stacked four high, and each looked older than the last.

  “Open it,” Lenora ordered.

  “It’s empty.” He crossed his arms, studying his shoes.

  “I didn’t ask about its contents. I want to see inside.”

&nbs
p; He shifted his stance and tilted his head. “Why?”

  “Why the fuck do you think?”

  Adelia watched their interaction, curious how much they could tell from an empty container.

  “Lenora, if you two don’t get out of here, and I swear to Christ, we won’t call you to represent my family. Never again.”

  “Open the goddamn container, Silvio.” Her muffled voice had been eerily quiet, and her expression blank until she turned to Adelia, tilting her chin. “Have you ever heard where your east coast girls come from?”

  “Her?” he asked.

  Adelia blinked, shocked that Lenora would mention her network near a stranger. “No.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Lenora pushed.

  Adelia flicked a quick glance at Silvio, who tamped down his reaction. “I’m low level.”

  Lenora pursed her lips as though that answer might hold up to the sniff test then pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse. “Low level.” She lit the cigarette, inhaling and let the smoke drift out with deprecating laughter. “You have no idea how successful you’ve been.”

  “Okay.”

  Her index finger tapped the ash off the cigarette. She rolled it between her thumb and finger like a joint. “When we hear about girls in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, we know. The Southwest is cut and dry.”

  Adelia agreed. “We know.”

  “New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, the Carolinas, Florida?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Silvio?” Lenora’s brows arched until she took a drag. “Have anything to say?”

  “Does my attorney think I should?” he quipped.

  Lenora dropped the cigarette, stomping it out. “Silvio’s bringing them in on top of someone else’s merch.”

  He didn’t disagree, and that was all the confirmation Adelia needed for the bile in her stomach to slosh. The container ships surrounding them seemed to close in. “In these container ships?”

  She smirked at Silvio, challenging him again to disagree. “See another transport option?”

  “Those shipments can take weeks.” Adelia gaped at him and thought about the little she knew of overseas shipping routes, how they re-routed depending on the change in circumstances, and the environment of even a dockyard. “Even under the best circumstances, the shortest distances for the freighters—”