Four Seconds to Lose ttb-3

by K. A. Tucker

  I have to admit, the idea was tempting.

  Her fingers reach for my tie, adjusting it. “You look dashing tonight, boss.” She smiles, holding her arm out. I take it and let her lead me out with a knowing glance over my shoulder at John.

  “You know where to find me,” he mutters with a groan as he gets to his feet.

  * * *

  “Congratulations, man.” I throw an arm over Dan’s shoulder in a loose hug. I truly do mean it, despite my personal turmoil. Seeing Storm under that gazebo today, wearing a white dress and a beaming smile, gave me a moment of respite.

  “Thanks,” Dan offers with a chuckle as he glances over at his bride, posing with Kacey and Livie—her bridesmaids—out on the beach. It’s just the two of us, standing off to the side, as a crowd of guests mingle and laugh. He pauses, as if he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Finally he asks, “Have you heard from Charlie at all?”

  “No.” They all know she’s gone. Even Ben has gone out of his way not to antagonize me, and I doubt it has anything to do with trying to impress the cute date from his law firm with his good behavior.

  No one knows why she left, and I’m sure as hell not telling my DEA agent friend.

  “And John hasn’t been able to find any trace of her?” Dan pushes.

  I sigh. Dan came by the club the other day to check up on me and John just happened to swing by. I introduced him as an old friend, visiting, but Dan had him pegged as an investigator within two minutes. He also figured out that John probably doesn’t use the most conventional, law-abiding methods to find the information he obtains for me.

  “She’s gone out of her way to make sure I don’t find her, Dan. Not much I can do now.” There is no trace of Charlie. She has quite literally disappeared.

  Dan nods slowly. When I turn to look at him, he averts his eyes. It takes him beginning to bite his lower lip to kick my instincts into gear. “What do you know, Dan?”

  Sliding a hand through his buzz-cut hair, Dan finally heaves a sigh. “I’ll come by Penny’s tomorrow afternoon, okay?”

  I fight the urge to grab him by his lapel. “What do you—”

  “It’s my wedding day.” Dan shakes his head firmly. “Tomorrow. Let’s get into this tomorrow. Not tonight. Nothing I know will be of any use to you in finding her, anyway.”

  I watch him walk away, wondering how the hell he has anything on her at all. How much does he know? How long has he known? Did he know before me and not tell me? The silent barrage of questions are still assaulting me as my phone begins vibrating in my pocket.

  “Is he on the move?”

  “No, but . . . something has come up.” A deep inhale into my phone tells me John has news for me and it’s not good. I turn and begin walking down the beach, away from the crowd. “I just got a call from my buddy. Human remains were found six months back in a national park outside Augusta, Maine. Results just came in. Dental records match those of Charlie Rourke from Indianapolis. Died approximately four years ago from blunt trauma to the back of the skull.”

  My stomach drops. I suspected it, but . . . now I have the proof.

  Charlie was never Charlie Rourke to begin with.

  I’m in love with her and I don’t even know her real name.

  “They’re trying to pin it on the father but so far, he’s not admitting to anything. According to the reports, he seemed shocked when they started questioning him. Says he remembers being at work the night his daughter disappeared. They’re checking into his alibi.”

  “So, Charlie . . .” I grimace. “My Charlie somehow ended up with the full identification of a dead girl.”

  “Yup. That’s not easy to do, especially as doctored as it was.”

  I glance over at Dan as he lays a deep kiss on his wife’s lips in front of a cheering crowd. What does he have on her? Will he even tell me? After all, I’ve never helped him when he asked for information. Fuck, I wouldn’t blame him for not telling me a damn thing.

  Tonight’s going to be the longest night of my life. For a split second, I think about going to Vicki’s house. I deleted her phone number but I know where she lives. I quickly dismiss that idea. I don’t think I could even get it up.

  And I have a better idea.

  “John. When you see my Nav pull up, drive around the block until I tell you it’s okay to come back, got it?”

  “Cain, that’s not the best—”

  “Got it?”

  * * *

  “What the hell happened to you last night?” Dan’s face pinches together as he stares at me, his hand testing the now-empty bottle of cognac that sits on my desk.

  “I didn’t get married last night, that’s for sure,” I mutter with a dry chuckle, stretching my arms over my head. I assume he’s talking about my black eye. Ronald Sullivan was faster than I’d expected. The fucker got one good hit in the second he opened the door. I probably should have made Nate stand out of sight. Then again, Nate shouldn’t have been there in the first place. He saw me take off after dinner and jumped into my passenger seat as I was about to pull away.

  Dan mumbles something unintelligible as he shifts my suit—strewn over the couch—and takes a seat. “Look, I don’t have a lot of time and I sure as hell shouldn’t be here in the first place. I could lose my job over this.” With a heavy sigh, he reaches back to pull out a white folder that’s tucked into the back of his pants, concealed. “Two weeks ago, I opened my front door to get my newspaper and found an envelope with my name on it, marked ‘Confidential, DEA.’”

  “Two weeks ago?”

  “Yeah.” Sheepish eyes flicker to me. “It was from Charlie.”

  I’m on my feet in a second, my voice suddenly blasting through my office. “You’re telling me now?”

  “Relax, Cain. Just . . .” His hand moves to rub the frown out of his forehead. “Sit down.” As easygoing as Dan is, he knows how to pull his authoritative mask on. I do as asked because I can tell by the stubborn set of his jaw that he won’t continue otherwise. “I didn’t know what to make of it at first. To be honest, I was freaked out. I mean, who the hell is dropping off envelopes at my front door in the middle of the night? I only joined the DEA a few weeks ago. Eventually, though, I opened it.” He pauses. “It was a note from Charlie to me, telling me I should be looking into a Sam Arnoni from Long Island, New York, because he’s bringing large quantities of heroin into Miami.”

  “Sam Arnoni?” The Sam that I talked to that day on the phone?

  Heroin?

  Fuck, Charlie!

  “Yeah. There were some other names included. First names: Bob, Eddie, Manny. Street names, no doubt. Useless.” He pauses. “But I started looking into this Sam Arnoni guy and . . .” Dan’s head falls back. “Cain, you have the worst fucking luck in the world.”

  I feel my brow pull together tightly. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “‘Big Sam’ Arnoni has been on the FBI’s radar for years, but they can’t nail him.” Rifling through the folder, he pulls out a small bundle of papers affixed together with a paper clip. He tosses it onto my desk without ceremony. “The guy has enough completely legitimate businesses—some inherited, some built by him from the ground up—to make it easy for him to launder his money and hard for the Feds to catch him. Plus, he’s smart. Smarter than most of these lowlifes. He’s kept his organization small. There’s no grandstanding, no Godfather power-trip crap.

  “Six years ago, the Feds thought they finally had an in. A guy by the name of Dominic was ready to turn. But he disappeared before they got any concrete information. Showed up dead a few months later. After that, this Sam guy buckled down even more.”

  Picking up the stack, I begin flipping through the pages. Mostly candid shots of a large, graying man in slacks and a leather jacket. “So, he’s small-time mob, basically?”

  Dan gives a half-nod, half-shrug. “Except I wouldn’t say small-time. Not anymore, by the sounds of it.”

  I keep flipping, looking for something of value
to me. “And how is Charlie involved in this? Are you saying she’s—” My words die as I land on a picture of the same man with his arm around a young blond girl as they walk down the sidewalk. She can’t be more than ten, and she’s smiling wide up at the man, an ice-cream cone in her hand.

  Dan pulls out a second stack of papers from the folder. “Sam Arnoni married a woman by the name of Jamie Miller twelve years ago. The picture on the top is her. She used to work at The Playhouse in Vegas.”

  The small hairs lift at the back of my head. That’s where Charlie said she had worked. I study the picture of the woman in a skimpy silver dress and instantly see the resemblance—same blond curls, same wide mouth, same doll face, hidden by layers of heavy makeup.

  Dan keeps talking, but I already know where this is going. “Jamie Miller died two years later giving birth to Sam’s son, who also died. She had a daughter.” I flip through picture after picture of Sam and the young girl. The two of them eating fries at a diner, him pushing her on a swing, him cheering her on as a medal is slipped over her neck, as she bows on a stage.

  And Charlie is smiling in each and every one of them. As if she’s genuinely happy.

  “So, this Sam Arnoni guy raised Charlie as his own daughter.”

  Dan’s mouth twists in a grimace as he pulls out the last stack of papers, handing it to me. “Her name’s not really Charlie, Cain.”

  “I know.” How many times had I cried her name out as I came? Did she even care that it wasn’t hers?

  My admission earns a high-browed stare but I don’t elaborate, accepting the paperwork from Dan with a deep inhale.

  What am I about to find out?

  My hand falters on the first page—a candid color photo of Charlie coming out of the gym, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her face clear of makeup, her eyes shining like a meadow of violets in the sunlight. Just like she looked coming back from the gym in my building every morning, right before we showered together.

  The painful lump in my throat that I removed earlier with physical violence and copious amounts of cognac is back with a vengeance. I’m about to ask Dan if I can keep this file when I see the copy of her driver’s license.

  The request dies on my lips.

  “Is this real?” I close my eyes tightly and reopen them, hoping for a different outcome.

  Fuck.

  He sighs. “At least you know she’s legal, Cain.”

  “Barely.” I’m eleven years older than her? “What does this mean? That she just graduated high school a few months ago?” I don’t remember high school; it was a lifetime ago. I don’t know which shock is hitting me harder, though: the fact that she’s only eighteen or . . .

  “She was a good student. Quiet, smart. Focused on gymnastics and acting. She was accepted to Tisch to start in the fall. Obviously the Feds had their eye on her but she was a minor, so tailing her was difficult. They mostly wanted to use her to gather information.” Dan is watching me carefully as he continues. “It wasn’t until the spring, after she turned eighteen, that they first suspected Sam of using her to deliver drugs. And then she just left. Apparently she had applied for a one-year deferral so she could travel to Europe. Her passport turned up being used at hotels in France, Italy, Germany . . . It looked legit. It seems Sam has really gone out of his way to hide her presence down here.”

  Someone must have tipped him off. He’d have to have an in with the FBI for that to happen. “So, someone is traveling around Europe under her identity, while she’s down here, going by Charlie Rourke and . . .” I lock eyes with Dan, waiting for him to confirm my suspicions.

  “She didn’t admit to anything in the note, so I don’t know her culpability. But she did explain how the drops are made, with fairly specific details.” There’s a long pause, and then I sense the air in my office shift. “How much did you know, Cain?” Dan asks slowly. “Did you know what she was doing when you brought her with you to my home? To my wife and unborn child and—”

  “No!” I temper my tone quickly, because I have no right to yell at Dan. He, on the other hand, has every right to punch me. Repeatedly. “I didn’t know.” I sigh. “I started suspecting it the day before she left. And then last night—” I stop, deciding whether I want to share all of this with Dan. After what he’s shared with me, though, I owe him this much. “There’s a guy by the name of Ronald Sullivan who may be of help to you. With enough pressure, he’ll talk. I have his address.” It took a dozen hits and a few broken ribs to get him to tell me what happened the night I ran into Charlie in the café. How some asshole named Manny held a gun to her head, threatening to kill her, and how Ronald told her to run because she was going to get herself killed. Even thinking about it now sets fire to my blood.

  “So, she’s really gone? She never mentioned where she was going?”

  I throw down the stacks of paper, hearing the accusation between his words. “I’m not hiding her, Dan! I wish I could find her, but she’s gone. And do you blame her for running? She’s probably given you all that she knows and you’re looking to drag her in to interrogate her.”

  “Hey!” Dan barks as he jumps off the couch. “I’m on your side here. I haven’t said a word about Charlie to anyone. No one knows she was working here, that she was dating you. If I had said anything, your life would be a circus right now.” Clearing his throat, he adds, “I could lose my job over withholding this kind of information.”

  “Sorry,” I mutter, pushing my hands through my hair. “I just can’t believe she was doing this the entire time I was with her.”

  “You’re not the only one. I can’t believe I had a drug trafficker in my own home and I didn’t have a damn clue.” He exhales. “Who uses their sweet little eighteen-year-old daughter like that? And who knows how long he’s been doing it! Things go wrong all the time with these transactions. Throw in a girl who looks like Charlie and it’s guaranteed that they end up raped or dead. Or both.”

  Cold dread slides through my body. Had Charlie ever been raped?

  “I wish I could help her, Cain,” Dan says with genuine concern in his voice, his righteous anger fading. “But I can’t if she’s gone. If I don’t know how much she really has on him. And if it’s enough.”

  I tap the stack of information. “And if it is? Is there really any protecting her against someone like this? If he’s what you say he is, if he likely killed his own best friend, what’s to stop him from killing her? He obviously doesn’t value her life. As long as this guy is in the picture, she’s never going to be safe, is she?”

  “Look, Cain, I know you haven’t had the best experience with it, but you have to trust in the justice system. We don’t know—”

  “If it were Storm instead of Charlie, would you say the same thing?”

  Dan hangs his head in response. That’s all the answer I need.

  And Charlie knows how much danger she’s in. She’s known all along, from the first day we met to the night she left.

  I’m probably never going to see her again.

  “This is serious shit, Cain. If this is the guy we’ve been hearing about around the city, he’s moving some major quantities and he’s pissing the cartel off. Anyone willing to do that is either really stupid or really dangerous. We already know he isn’t stupid. You need to keep an eye out,” Dan warns. “I don’t know what she told him about you. I hope to God nothing.”

  Maybe not. But I did. I gave him my fucking name. And that “uncle” of hers got a pretty good description of me. For all I know, he also got a picture.

  I’m not stupid enough to think they can’t find me.

  Or that they won’t.

  chapter forty-four

  * * *

  CHARLIE

  “Love, do you mind bringing table seven an extra order of gravy on your way by?” Berta asks in that heavy southern accent of hers that I could listen to all afternoon. Especially when she addresses me with one of a myriad of pet names. My shift just started an hour ago and I’ve already been called �
�Honey,” “Darling,” “Sugar,” and “Sweetie.”

  Some people might find it annoying, but I absorb each one of them like a flower yearning for sunshine.

  Because none of them sounds anything like my old pet name.

  “Sure thing!” I wink at Herald the cook as I scoop up the food-laden plates from the counter.

  “Oh, Katie, you’re such an angel,” the heavyset brunette croons, patting my shoulder as she grabs three plates. “I knew my instincts about you were right.”

  Flashing my stage-perfect smile, I saunter over to the tables to deliver their orders. It was only two weeks ago that I sat at one of these very tables for hours, reading through paper after paper, hungry for any news coming out of Miami, wondering all kinds of things.

  Was Sam there?

  Was he looking for me?

  Was he looking for Cain?

  I hoped that the information I left for Dan on his doorstep, just hours before I got on the bus, was enough. It wasn’t much, but it was really all that I had. If I had been smarter, if I had ever believed that I’d be stabbing Sam in the back, I would have saved the pictures of Bob and Eddie before they vanished from the draft folder.

  After my third cup of coffee, the middle-aged waitress with a long braid reaching down to her ass and a name tag labeling her as “Berta” had asked me what a pretty girl like me was doing all alone.

  I wasn’t in the mood for idle chitchat or making up lies, so I very bluntly announced that I needed a job and a place to live. She asked where I was staying and, when I told her, her face pinched up with disgust. “Oh, that just won’t do.”

  Now here I am, serving tables at Becker’s Diner and renting out a room above Berta’s garage, one block away.

  It was almost too easy.

  The room is small, but it’s clean and safe and comfortable. Most of all, it’s private enough that no one hears me cry myself to sleep every night.

  Berta is sweet. She’s a thirty-eight-year-old single woman who inherited the family diner and has been struggling to find good evening-shift help after a string of disastrous attempts. I don’t completely trust her not to snoop, but my gun and my knapsack are hidden inside a vent, so I figure I’m fine.