Delta_Ricochet

by Cristin Harber

  It was a dinner, and there would be knives. She’d kill Gloria with whatever was available. Simple. Even if Javier recognized her, he wouldn’t be able to get to her in time.

  Could she really stab someone to death? It’d take a lot of strength, but Adelia had a lot of people to avenge on behalf of, and that had to give her an extra push. She raised her arm and chopped it down, but the foreign motion made her grimace.

  What if Javier was close by…? She bit her lip and then decided a disguised would help, grabbing extra clothes to pull over what she wore now. If her figure was off, and her hair and makeup weren’t how he’d expect it, she’d have a moment on Javier and his team.

  Make-up, hair ties, extensions, and scarves littered the counters, and now that she was dressed, Adelia perused her options. Dress-up wasn’t her forte. She and Javier weren’t allowed to play like regular children.

  Quickly, she smeared on dark red lipstick and wrapped her hair into a bun, adding a tightly curled ponytail hair extension. She darkened the shading around her eyes and gave herself a cute mole on her cheek.

  A studious look would have seen through her in a heartbeat. But she counted on poor lighting and an expectation that she wasn’t this bold or stupid. “One could always wish.”

  Staring at the semi-un-recognizable woman in the mirror, she trembled and hated what she was becoming. A destructor incarnate. A monster of a new making, no better than Gloria, making decisions about the life of another. Adelia scowled at the mirror. “Yeah, a monster’s life.”

  Get over it. There were no other options other than her decision of how. Strangling? That would take as much strength but longer. Someone could stop her—a twinge of relief teased Adelia, and God, now was the worst time to have a conscience kick in.

  Uneasy, she turned away and walked into a section of lockers. A woman stood near where Adelia had been and sang in like she had a microphone in her hand. This was New York. New Yorkers were peculiar. At least, according to Tex.

  She twisted, snapping off her mic—which was an old school cassette recorder—and glared. “Got a problem?”

  “No,” Adelia said.

  “Broke my concentration.” She rolled her eyes then pulled open her locker, tossing the recording device onto the top shelf, locked it with a small key, and stomped away.

  “Jeez. Tough crowd.” For living in a motorcycle compound a decent portion of her life, Adelia was feeling a little innocent and naïve—

  The recorder!

  Innocent and naïve scooted over for devious and creative. What it…? Adelia bit her lip, wondering if she’d gone soft, though if soft meant avoiding murder… “I could be a softie.”

  Loose strings of a possible plan started to gather in her mind, but she needed the record first. Thank goodness for Tex teaching her how to pick any lock.

  After thirty seconds of searching the ground for a hair pin or a hair barrette, she’d come up with several options, and the flimsy lock was no match for her Mayhem training. She had the recorder in her hands and opened the cassette holder. The tape label Dreams Can Come True. Demo Ideas.

  The Big Guy Upstairs was testing her, wasn’t he? Adelia wasn’t stealing a tape filled with hopes and dreams. But if this was one of those life test, it was better to steal from a dreamer than murder another.

  Or was it? Because Adelia wasn’t murdering another. She was second-guessing the consequences of her actions for stopping a human trafficker. Tex’s life lessons were failing Adelia now, and this wasn’t the kind of lesson a fortune cookie might teach.

  Dressed in layers of unfamiliar clothes, she didn’t know herself and backed until the wall stopped her. Her head hung down too heavy to hold up, just like her eyelids.

  “What am I doing?” she whispered. Mayhem would kill her, but she couldn’t kill a woman who deserved to die. Adelia longed for Colin, and sliding down the wall, she watched people come and go.

  A sickly woman scooted into the same locker area, eyeing Adelia on the floor, but said nothing. She dropped her purse on a bench and a paper bag. Shrugging off her coat, her frame revealed shoulders pinched and shivering.

  “Are you okay?” Adelia asked.

  She glanced down. “The flu.”

  “Yikes. Why’re you here?” Adelia could almost see through the woman’s pale skin and dark circles outlined her eyes.

  “Why does anyone work? Money. Rent. Food.” She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know about you, but I live paycheck to paycheck. I don’t work, I don’t eat, and I like to eat most times. Maybe not today though.”

  Sometimes, Adelia had no clue how good her life was. Regular meals and knowing where she was going to sleep at night had become a luxury, so much so that now, her mind wondered what was in the brown paper bag when she should get up and go do… something, or at least, focus her attention on the conversation.

  “Are you hungry?” the other woman asked.

  Adelia’s eyebrows arched. She hadn’t thought about food much, but now her mind was in overdrive. “A little.”

  “My man made me grab something on the way in.” Her nose crinkled in disgust. “I didn’t touch it and can’t stand the idea of eating when I feel like this, but I couldn’t tell him that since he spent the money on food I didn’t have to make.” She nudged the bag. “If you want—it’s just white rice from the Chinese place next door. It’s all I thought I could stomach. But really, I can’t.”

  Her stomach growled since Adelia was too slow to answer, and they laughed. “Are you sure?”

  “Promise.” She moved the bag closer to Adelia and sank onto the bench. “If I could swipe my badge and not work tonight, no one would even know. They’ve over hired like whoa for tonight. You know? I mean, have we ever worked together?”

  She bit her lip. “I’m new.”

  “Ah.” Her eyes closed as she swayed on the bench. “Eat and wake me up when it’s time for shift change.”

  Plain, white rice shouldn’t sound so good, but Adelia pushed up and took a spot on the far side of the bench as though maybe germs couldn’t jump that far—and then reached for the bag. It wasn’t like she would lick her hands or live long enough to get the flu, and with that in mind, she inhaled the lukewarm rice, returning the carton and plastic fork to the bag.

  A fortune cookie stared up at her before she could roll the top closed, and her heart squeezed. “Do you want your cookie?”

  The woman’s head barely shook. “Nah.”

  “It’s your fortune though.” Adelia couldn’t look away.

  “I’m too superstitious. You eat the food; you get the cookie.” A weak smile appeared only long enough for her to lull back to a sleepy, sitting state.

  That girl couldn’t work. Wow. Adelia pushed the empty carton aside, watching her new acquaintance wobble in a semi-comatose state, and took out the fortune cookie. Maybe it would give her life advice about becoming a murderer—something simple and to the point like don’t do it.

  The veins in her temples beat a quiet drum, pumping faster with the start of a stressful headache. Each second passing meant a second closer to whatever the future might bring. Decisions and death. For her. For someone else.

  Her throat hurt, and she tore the cellophane plastic away from the cookie. The crinkling wrapper echoed in her ears when she released it into the bag. She wished one last time that Colin had been there to make a joke or remind her that the last few weeks had been nothing more than a dream.

  Adelia cracked open the cookie and pulled the slip of paper from the crumbs in her hand.

  You know everything you already need to know.

  What? That did her no good. She needed specific advice! A fortune! With exact information, courtesy of the Chinese food gods. Was that too much to ask?

  She shoved the cookie into her mouth and crushed the fortune into her palm, then dropped her head into her hands.

  “Not a good fortune?” the woman quietly asked.

  Adelia snorted. “I was hoping for a miracle.”

&nbs
p; “And instead you got…?”

  “The usual. It says you already know what to do.”

  “Then you do.”

  Adelia tilted her head to study her bench mate. She should be home in bed, nursing the flu, sipping on broth, and asking her man to bring her tea with honey. Those seemed like things Colin might do for her. “So do you, but it’s not that easy.”

  She finally opened her eyes. “How so?”

  “You’re here, and you shouldn’t be.”

  A long sigh fell from her tired lips. “True. We do our best with what we have, I suppose. But at least I know.”

  What did Adelia know? She knew that Gloria Astor was a monster who had to be stopped, and she knew there was an expiration date on her own life. She had no idea how to do anything, get anywhere— “Hey.”

  “Hmm?” The woman’s eyes had shut again.

  “What if…” She bit the inside of her cheek. “What if I swipe you in? Just go home and sleep.” Adelia was taking a chance, but what was the woman going to do? Report her to human resources for suggesting the lie? At a job she didn’t really have? And it would give her access. Plus, hell, Adelia would do her job for her, at least for a bit until she found Gloria. And then, who knew. She’d have to figure that out quickly though. “Where do you work?”

  Her wary eyes studied Adelia as if she’d gone mad but simultaneously offered her a miracle. After what had to be an inner war, she quietly said, “Banquet and catering.”

  Adelia held the fortune between her fingers, waving it slowly. “You know everything you already need to know.” Her brows raised. “Go home and take care of yourself. You know you need it.”

  “Lady, I have no idea who you are.”

  She almost laughed. “Right now, I feel the same about myself. I’m a helper. I lived a shitty life until someone saved me from hell and a life that could’ve been a lot worse.”

  “Well, you didn’t come off like a killer.”

  Adelia drank in those words, realizing they were exactly what she needed to hear, what she knew about herself. And that was what the fortune cookie had meant. She was a superstitious believer now too. “You’re right. I’m no killer.”

  The woman took a minute to dig out her badge and gave Adelia instructions on where to swipe her in and leave it so that it could be found and turned in as lost. Hotel operations was big enough that they’d never notice if one person melted away this one time, and after an awkward thank you, with Adelia more grateful than the sick woman, she was left holding her access to Gloria Astor and the strong realization that she wouldn’t kill anyone tonight.

  The singing-and-dreaming lady hadn’t come back, and Adelia popped open her locker again, whispering, “I’m sorry.”

  But a stack of clear children’s blocks caught her eye. Adelia caught the locker door before it shut again, and taking a closer look, realized they were plastic wrapped cassettes. Blank ones.

  She had no idea how this would come together. But she didn’t see how her trafficking operation would grow like it had or how she would fall in love with Colin or meet a woman with a bag of rice. Sometimes, she had to take a chance, grab what she might need, and go down the road less—or un –traveled.

  Quickly popping out the dream demo tape, Adelia placed it in the locker and took the mini recorder and a blank tape. “I promise. I’m stealing for a good thing right now.”

  Then armed with an employee ID and a voice recorder, Adelia left to stalk her prey.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Acting like Adelia was supposed to be somewhere was an all-access pass. So long as she kept her head up, smiled, and walked like she was late, no one bugged her. She followed others as they left the locker room, swiped in, and then fell behind those dressed like her with two concerns on her mind. Her name badge had to be tucked in a way to obscure the name and face, and the tape recorder she’d lifted was easily accessible to stop and start without fuss.

  Her plan was scarily easy to enact, and a life lesson she quickly picked up now served her in every inch of this hotel. Act like she should be there, and no one would stop her.

  She didn’t recognize the security that occasionally swept by in the back hallways and didn’t see any of Delta team. No one stopped her. Hell, no one talked to her. Her first supervisor ordered her to work, until Adelia found a new job to slip to, getting into the action of the ballroom, and then, her second supervisor passed her a tray, directing her to a quadrant of the large dining area.

  Still no Delta team, and that somewhat reassured her. She excelled at her job, making sure she did the best she could without making a memorable impression, all the time, eyeing the team that served the head table.

  Adelia hadn’t had the strength look at the front of the room yet. If she saw Gloria in person without having a strong handle on her reaction, the plan might destruct before it really started.

  A speaker took the podium, and as small talk and laughter began, she took her cue from other servers and stepped to the side wall where she finally laid her eyes on Gloria Astor.

  Adelia’s heart didn’t race. Her pulse didn’t punch. Nothing that Adelia prepared for happened. Instead, a wildly comforting certainty settled over her as she readied for her target.

  The speaker concluded to a round of applauses, and Adelia swiftly moved to the head serving table’s staff, smiling confidently as two other servers raised their eyebrows at their new addition.

  “Lenora said to head this way,” she offered, giving no explanation of who that was, but they smiled back, clearly already aware of the smile-like-you-know rule.

  Together, they moved to the raised platform, bussing the hors d’oeuvres plates, and Adelia glided past Gloria, not taking hers, but the ones on either side.

  A thrill of excitement caught fire in her blood. She checked the room. No one approached her. Not Delta team. No one. They had no idea, and she reached into a nearby bin of replacement cutlery, letting her hand find a dinner knife, and slid it in to her pocket, then followed the two others. They lifted trays of beautiful salads, carrying them next to the platform, and set up their spots.

  The room bustled with activity and voices. People milled and ate, forks clattered on plates, and drinks were refilled. She turned on the recorder and two her salad plates, leading their group this time, and she moved to the guest of honor, Gloria Astor.

  Adelia leaned down as she placed the salad plate in front of Gloria, encroaching on her personal space and drawing an aggravated scoff from the haughty woman as she leaned away. But Adelia wasn’t backing down. “It’s nice to see you in person.”

  Gloria straightened, touching her hair, then casually glancing to her side. Her eyebrow raised, but it was a whisper from under her breath that murmured, “Do you think this is the right time for us to meet?”

  Adelia inched back as casually. “Does that matter now?”

  “What do you want?”

  “A conversation. I think you owe me that much.”

  Just like a Fifth Avenue princess schooled in manners and etiquette, she calmly smiled as though this was a conversation she wanted to have. “That won’t happen now, but my staff would love to meet you—”

  Adelia leaned close again. “It’s a shame your thugs didn’t finish their job, isn’t it?”

  “No idea what you’re talking about, young lady.”

  “Let’s go talk,” Adelia offered again. “But if we can’t talk, I’ll kill you. I really don’t care.”

  “You’d be dead before you could get to a door.”

  “So what?” Adelia tsk-ed. “Mayhem will kill me before the night is over. I’d rather your people do it, and I can go out a martyr.”

  “Martyr?” Gloria’s eyelids twitched at the corners. “Spare me the theatrics.”

  The gentleman next to Gloria nudged his tuxedo-covered elbow into Adelia’s conversation. She recognized him from newspapers but had no idea who he was, other than rich and famous.

  “Is everything okay over here?” he asked.r />
  Adelia stepped back for Gloria to decide. One way or another, whether she knew it or not, her life would change. Waiting, Adelia pushed her hands into her pockets.

  He eyed Gloria, checking her salad as though Adelia had brought the main course instead of what was expected or some other one-percenter horror, and then his gaze turned upward. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  She tilted her head to Gloria. “I always preferred an audience—”

  “She’s one of the families I’ve helped.” Gloria’s chair inched back.

  Adelia bit her tongue. Nothing the monster could say would get to her so long as she stood up and stepped aside.

  “How nice,” he offered, still not turning back.

  “I’m going to see if there’s something that can be said in the program.”

  Adelia clamped her molars together and steppe back so that the shipping heiress and woman of the decade could excuse herself.

  “I’ll only be a minute.”

  In her peripheral vision, Adelia saw suited bodyguards shift their position at a table. No doubt, there was a fury of conversations being had into wrists and through earpieces. “Wave your security back.”

  “They wouldn’t be doing their job,” she said condescendingly, “if I did that.”

  Adelia glanced at the podium and thought back to Gloria’s twitch over the word martyr. “What’s more dangerous? Walking to the side of the room for a quick conversation or me walking away, alone, but stopping at that microphone.”

  “No one would believe you—”

  “You don’t even know what I know,” Adelia snapped. “But you’re worried enough that you’re still talking to me. You’re evil but not stupid. I’ll give you that.”

  With a casual flick of her wrist, Gloria held off her protective detail and gestured for Adelia to walk with her. They stepped off the dais, a far enough distance apart now that they didn’t look uncomfortably close. Most guests were deep in conversation, well served with semi-expensive wine, and enjoying their salads. The clatter of forks on the plates and cocktail chatter mixing together was the perfect backdrop for Adelia’s distraction. “Stop here.”