by Claire Adams
I looked around. I’d been so enamored with my latest act of self-immolation I hadn’t even noticed I’d almost walked straight into the woman who had asked the question. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“I need to get a message to Dean Carrick, and I understand you’re the person who can help me out with that,” the woman said. I’d never seen her before, and I would have remembered if I had. She was tall, probably 5’9” or 5’10”, and had thick locks of straight, black hair draped over her shoulders like it was grown for the purpose of the sense of elegance it evoked. Her eyes were dark, fixed right on mine. She smiled. “Do you think you could do that for me, Marcy?”
My throat was dry in an instant and I struggled to breathe, let alone speak. “How do…how do you know my name?”
“I know a lot of things,” the woman said, flashing a smile at me. “I want you to tell Dean Carrick that he hasn’t outgrown us yet, and this is the last time we’re going to remind him of that fact. Do you think you could do that for me, Marcy?”
I stared at the woman. I didn’t dare move my eyes away from hers, but near the bottom corner of my eye, I could just pick out a bulge against the woman’s hip and under her jacket. I didn’t know for certain it was a gun I was looking at, but I was frozen in place. “Who should I tell him is sending the message?” I asked.
She laughed so loud it made me uncomfortable. With her head thrown back, I finally permitted myself a glance down to her side. I hadn’t seen the strap, but what I saw as a bulge out of the corner of my eye was actually a purse. Either she was hiding a gun or she knew she wouldn’t need one. So much for Dean’s impenetrable security, I thought.
“I’m sure he can figure it out,” she said finally. “Oh, one more thing.” I got the sense she was waiting for me to say something before continuing, but I was scared dumb. “Okay,” she said, “you need to breathe or you’re going to pass out right here in the parking lot and I ain’t catching you.”
Like a good, overgrown princess, I said, “What’s the one more thing?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Tell him he knows what happened the last time he went against us and unless he wants history repeating itself, he’s gotta learn to do what he’s told. “
“Listen, I don’t know anything, and I really don’t want to get involved with whatever’s going on.”
“Ask your boyfriend what happened to Jenna. She didn’t want to get involved, either.” The woman put her hand to one side of her mouth and whispered, “She did, the hard way.”
My fight or flight response was stuck deciding which was the more realistic option, but neither seemed like a good idea. I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “Okay.”
“Good. Now, you have a good night, and don’t forget to tell your boyfriend Izzy says ‘hi,’” she said and started walking away. I didn’t move; I was afraid to move. She got a few cars into the lot before turning around, her feet still taking her. “Oh, and I like how you’re wearing your hair longer now. That chin-length cut wasn’t working so well.”
She turned again and casually made her way to the stairwell leading up to the street. No, she didn’t have to tell me who she was any more than she had to decode her thinly-veiled threats.
Dean had all that money, all that security. He said he was untouchable. All I knew as I regained control of my legs was I wasn’t untouchable. The woman made that very clear.
I got to the car and locked the doors. The ignition on, I quickly realized just how not okay to drive I was. My hands were numb and shaking. I was lightheaded and well on my way toward passing out as I hyperventilated in the driver’s seat of my brother’s car.
“Call Luke,” I breathed.
Thank God for Bluetooth.
“Do you have any idea what time it is? Some of us have shit to do in the morning, you know,” Luke said.
“I need you to come get me,” I said. “I need to get out of here right now, but I can’t drive and I don’t know if she’s still out front and I don’t want to leave your car here, but I have to get out of here, Luke.”
If the woman was going to kill me that night, she would have done it. She could have taken me out without my ever knowing she was there, or she could have rigged my car to blow. I wished I’d thought of that before firing it up, but as I was still in one piece, I didn’t bother shutting it off again. Even knowing all that, I couldn’t imagine getting out of the car now that I was in it.
“Are you okay? Where are you? What’s going on?” Luke’s voice had gone from churlish to frantic.
“I’m at Dean’s. I’m in the parking lot in your car. I have to stay in the car. I think I’m going to pass out or something.”
“Can’t you go back up to Dean’s, or is he what’s wrong? Can’t you get a taxi? I can come get you, but it’ll take me a while to get there even going as fast as I can. Are you in any danger? Marce, what’s going on?”
“Just please come get me.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said and hung up.
I leaned the seat back as far as it would go and I just stayed there. I felt like an idiot, but I physically couldn’t do anything else. Living in the city, you deal with a lot of things, but I’d never had someone actually come out and threaten me like that before; not in a “go ahead, see if I’m joking” kind of way. She was gone. She’d asked me to deliver the message, but I’m the one who consumed it; rather, I’m the one it consumed.
By the time my phone started ringing through the stereo speakers, I was sitting back up again, but I was in no way ready to go anywhere without an escort. My hair hadn’t been chin-length since junior high. That woman was letting me know not only could she get to me whenever and however she wanted, but that she already had. Now I’d roped Luke into it.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I said to myself then, to the car, “Answer. Luke, are you here? Where are you?”
“Where are you?” he asked. “I just pulled into the parking garage, but I’m not going to drive around this thing all night.”
“I’m on the first parking level, about halfway down the first row to the right of the entrance.”
“’Kay, just a sec.”
About half a minute later, I heard the engine and saw the headlights. I turned my car—Luke’s backup car he’d let me drive—off, got out, locked the doors, and ran over to Luke’s passenger door. I got in and just said, “Drive.”
I felt so stupid now that Luke was there, but have someone from the mafia threaten you to your face and see how rational you can be.
“What’s going on?” Luke asked. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“One question at a time,” I said, trying to look out my window without looking like I was looking out my window. I’d survived the parking lot, which had to mean I was going to survive the night: knowledge which changed nothing.
“The first one. What’s going on?”
I told him what happened, starting with when I got to the parking lot. There was no conceivable reason to tell him about the argument with Dean or what led up to it.
“I never thought they’d get that far. Dean has about twenty kinds of security around that place, and those are just the kinds I know about. You may not know it, but because of him, the Sobu is the safest building in the city.” If he was going for “comforting,” he was using the wrong approach.
“If the Sobu is the safest place in Manhattan, there’s nowhere they can’t get to me,” I muttered. The bare city was passing outside my window, but I couldn’t focus on any of it.
“You know what you have to do—what we have to do. You’ve got to end things with Dean and leave town. I don’t know if it’s better for me to go with you or not, but we can figure that out.
“Fuck, I knew those guys had something on Dean, but as long as I’ve known about his connections, I’ve never known them to go farther than a phone call. Also, you can’t work at the company anymore. If they know who you are and got to you at Dean’s buil
ding, they won’t have any trouble finding you at F&T.”
My addled mind was finally starting to relax enough to think more clearly, though Luke’s attempts at problem solving had made the process more difficult. “I think she was just trying to rattle me to put pressure on Dean. If she was going to hurt me, she would have hurt me. I mean, nothing was stopping her.”
“You’re not leaving the house until we can find a safer place for you to be.”
I sighed. It didn’t make a lot of sense to fight. If Dean and I were doing well before that night, I’d managed to throw a tree branch between the spokes and hardly knew why. Most of all, I didn’t go back up to the condo or even dart back into his building. I didn’t want to go back up there and somehow let her and whoever else might have been in the parking lot in where they could get to Dean.
That was my noble reason if, indeed, such a thing existed outside of wishful thinking in hindsight. What it really came down to was I was in no way prepared for this. Sure, Luke had played things down too much, but Dean had warned me.
“I froze, Luke,” I told my brother as we pulled into his garage. “I mean, I could not move. I was just stuck there, vulnerable, weak. She could have done anything to me and I wouldn’t have been able to stop it.”
He pressed the button to lower the garage door. He looked over at me. “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”
“No, but the fact is now it has and-”
“You can watch a movie or read a book or see a news story about something, but that doesn’t mean you have any idea what it would be like to actually experience it. The fact is you’re alive, you’re here, and you’re safe. All things considered, I’d say things went pretty well for you tonight.”
Chapter Thirteen
That Thing with the Lights
Luke only had one rule after I got out of his car that night. “Don’t leave the house or open the door for anyone under any circumstances.”
It was only one rule, but it was a pretty big one. He was just trying to look out for me the way siblings are supposed to do. After a few days of doing absolutely nothing and going completely nowhere, though, it didn’t feel so much like protection as it did imprisonment. It was four days until I finally snuck out.
Luke was adamant Dean and I split up, saying that if I had no personal connection with their mark, they’d have to move on from me, no hard feelings, right? Sure, from what I’d heard, the mafia’s totally cool about that sort of thing. My brother was, indeed, a very successful, very intelligent man when it came to finances or petty larceny—I never minded that; he hooked me up with a lot of cool stuff when I was back in junior high in exchange for me keeping my mouth shut about it—but when it came to matters of common sense, he was a prize-winning moron.
Besides, I hadn’t seen Dean since that night in the parking lot.
“You’re not eating,” Dean said to me, sitting across the table. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, stress-eating doesn’t seem to work with this kind of stress,” I told him. “What can we even do except give them what they want? What is it that they do want, anyway?”
“Money, influence—translate that as power. The same thing everyone, criminal or humanitarian, wants just as much. Difference is, these people are willing to go a little farther to get it. Did you want to tell me what was going on before you left my place that night?”
“Can we focus on one thing at a time?” I was halfway to a smile when a gunshot went off somewhere behind me. I hit the floor. I didn’t know if the bullet had gotten me, Dean, or anyone else. In those five seconds, I couldn’t hear anything around me, just the thick heartbeat in my ears like my head was underwater.
I was exposed there on the ground, but there was nothing I could do about it. The tablecloths didn’t reach nearly far enough toward the ground for me to hide beneath one, and I’d just spoil any remaining dignity I had in trying. I didn’t want to just freeze up again, though. It still wasn’t clear who was hit or how bad it was, or even if I’d taken a bullet myself, but I got about halfway to my feet, staying as low as I could, and I looked back in the direction of the shot.
When Dean and I planned to meet up that night, I had insisted we go somewhere very public and well-lit, somewhere we’d be as close to safe as possible. As I looked back over the restaurant, I realized that was a mistake. Dozens of eyelids were gaping, but the eyes on me weren’t fearful. Eyelids wide, brow furrowed—it looked a lot like confusion. Finally, my heart slowly receded back into the recesses of my chest and I could hear someone saying my name.
“Marcy?” Dean asked, now out of his chair and crouched next to me. He whispered, “It was champagne, Marcy. Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?”
“Champagne?” I whispered, looking up at him. “So, I have a short conversation with a stranger and now I’m a cliché. That…” I said as I picked myself up from the floor, “that is just too perfect.”
“Are you sure you’re all right? You really dove there.”
“I’m fine. Let’s just move on and act like it didn’t happen.”
“All right, but I can have the waiter bring over some ice or something if you—”
“Dean, I’m fine. Please stop talking about it. It was a mistake. It happened. It’s over. Let’s move on.” Those must have been some magical words, because the moment I spoke them, I wasn’t the only one at the table looking around, hoping people had just gotten back to their stupid meals already. “You know, I wish you had told me that things were all up-close-and-personal. The way you described things, it sounded like everything was over the phone. Next thing I know, this freaking woman’s threatening me, and she doesn’t say she has any ties to-”
“Marcy,” Dean interrupted in a hurried whisper, “we can speak over the specifics of our situation when it’s back to just you and me.”
“I need to know that I’m safe.”
“I’ve told you before, of course you’re safe.” He didn’t look quite so certain.
“We both know that’s not the case.”
“I’ve stepped up security around my building, around me, and yes, around you, too,” he said. “I’m not going to get you mixed up in all this and not make sure you have people watching your back.”
“Just common courtesy, right?” I sighed.
“Like I said, we can talk about this after dinner. This really isn’t the place.”
“Well, I’m done eating for the night. How about you?” I asked. In front of me was half the restaurant, behind me the other half. I could see one half in its entirety. Dean, I imagine, could see the other. I was wondering if he would notice all the people dropping utensils as cover to gawk a bit more in our direction.
“Are you sure you want to do this now?” he asked. “You’ve said you have a tendency to get lightheaded when confronted with something really bad.”
“I think I worded it in a way that made it sound less crazy, but yeah, I guess. Why? What really bad thing haven’t you told me about yet?”
“If we’re going to go now, we should just go. I’m not talking about this anymore here. We could always stay for dinner and have a more normal conversation while we’re here.”
I just glared. Dean turned his head, spotted our waiter, and drew a check mark in the air. The waiter came over a minute later with the receipt for the plate of appetizers, with which only the restaurant’s staff had come into any meaningful contact. Dean paid and we finally got out of there.
“I don’t know why you wanted to go out to dinner in the first place,” I told him as we crossed the sidewalk to Dean’s waiting town car.
We got in the backseat, and as we were pulling away, he said, “There are some things I didn’t tell you—some things you’re not going to want to hear. I hoped it would never have to come up, but if you’re going to hear it from anyone, it should be me.”
“What? Is there something I can be doing? I remember asking how I could help when you first told me about this, but all yo
u seem to want to let me do is stay hidden away. That’s the worst part of all this. I just feel so powerless. Maybe if I could be doing something-”
“Marcy, there’s something I probably should have told you a long time ago. Before I do, I want you to know that things have changed a lot since what I’m about to tell you, and I want you to hear me out completely before you jump in—and I know you. You’re going to want to jump in after the first sentence or two, but just let me get this out. It’s not something I really like to talk about.”
At that point, I honestly didn’t believe I could be surprised by anything he might say. “It sounds like you’d better talk fast.”
He took a breath. “I know you probably know this already, one way or another, but I was married once before.”
Okay, I was surprised, but I kept my mouth shut and just let him talk. All the while, that five seconds when I realized I was humiliating and not protecting myself on the floor of the restaurant was replaying itself in my head.
“Her name was Jenna—”
That’s as far as I made it before interrupting. “Jenna was your wife?”
“Yes,” Dean said. “You already know about her?”
“Not really. I’d heard that you were married, and the lady who threatened me told me to ask you about Jenna, but that’s all I know.”
“I tried to cut ties with them once before, like I told you, but I didn’t tell you the whole story,” he said. “Jenna and I were friends growing up, but it wasn’t until junior high that I started really noticing her. It was well into high school before she noticed me back.”
“I find that somewhat hard to believe,” I told him.
“I wasn’t always a billionaire,” he said. “So, she and I started dating and things got serious. She knew I used to make drops for those people, but she also knew I was trying to get out. There wasn’t a lot we kept from each other.”
“Sounds nice.” I wasn’t sure if I meant that sincerely or as a dig, but there it was.
“Joe’s employers failed to follow through when I’d hired them to recover the program my former employee stole, so I stopped answering his phone calls.”