by Neliza Drew
I felt desired in a wholly different way than I was used to and it felt warm, inviting. And it made me want him. It made me wet and I wanted to share that with him.
“We should use protection,” I whispered into his ear before tasting the softest part of his lobe, licking the sweat and salt from our afternoon at the beach.
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbed against my shoulder. “Do you have a condom?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer him. Did regular girls carry those? If I said yes, would he see me as practical or slutty?
Craig pulled back, his eyes searching mine. “Are you sure you want to do this? We don’t have to. We could just make out. Talk.”
I took his hand and put it between my legs, already half spread with one foot on the floor and the other inches from the still wet crotch of my swimsuit.
A teenage boy, he didn’t need too many more hints and his fingers slipped inside as soon as his lips touched mine again.
I suppressed the sound of pleasure I’d faked for years, even though this time it was real, and ran my hands through his hair until I forced him to come up for air. “There’s a box of condoms in my bag.” When I pulled free and stood, I untied the side of my bikini bottom so that it slid to the floor as I crossed the room to my backpack.
When I turned, his eyes were huge and hungry.
I held up the box. “I bought these when we first started going out. I knew a girl once who got pregnant.”
He nodded, and looked confused. “It’s open.”
I smiled, played goofy. “I may have taken a couple out to experiment with. You know, try that whole banana thing that teach you in health class.”
He shook his head. “Banana?”
“Take off your pants. I’ll show you. Maybe they don’t do that here. I mean, it’s kinda weird. Everybody laughs at it and the teacher turns a million shades of red.”
He squirmed out of his swim trunks and sat on the damp spot they’d left on his comforter. His penis was clearly interested and he folded his arms awkwardly like he wasn’t sure he wanted me to know.
I came over and pushed him back against the bed. “You won’t think I’m a slut if we do this. Right?”
He shook his head.
I grinned because I knew he’d agree to just about anything at that point, but I crawled up next to him anyway.
Craig’s hands roamed. “Are you sure you want to?”
I nodded. I couldn’t explain to him how much I wanted to. It had been almost a year since the last time I’d had sex, but that felt like part of another life. This new Davis wanted the geeky kid who did well in biology and skipped school to surf when the swell was good.
I took a condom out of the box and rolled it onto him. I let him push me on my back and guide himself inside before wrapping my legs around him and pulling his face close to mine.
The phone rang while I watched Craig sleep. I pushed talk before the third ring.
“What’s up, Tom?” I whispered and slipped out of bed. I wasn’t dressed because I’d been curled up next to Craig, who exuded warmth, physically and emotionally. I pulled on a thin sweater and thong before slipping out into the hallway and down the back stairs. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Actually, no. I was worried about you. This Zellner character is dangerous.”
I rubbed the scar behind my ear. “Yeah.”
“I spent most of the afternoon working on your case. There’s nothing in a database that will explain why Lane went to Sally Guthrie’s house.” He sounded a little drunk. It wasn’t like him to do much of anything to excess, and certainly not alone.
“What’s wrong?” I ran myself a glass of tap water and wandered in to check on our captive. He stirred in his sleep like a dog chasing a rabbit.
“I can’t say for certain, but from what Chip could dig up—”
“Hack. He’s a hacker. He hacks. You dig.”
“In other words, it wouldn’t stand up in court, which is why I don’t do it.” He paused, but if he was drinking he did it away from the phone. “Chip says those two aren’t solvent on paper. That the fish business is breaking even at best. Wright’s lawyer, though? He deposits and pays out a lot more money than one might expect for a small-town attorney. They’re also renting dock space and storage down in Wilmington, but they’re doing it through a series of shell companies.”
“Drugs?” I thought about what I’d seen in Lane’s room.
“There’s money coming from Mexico and China. Marilyn says all but one of the bags are older-style fakes. Like, from seasons maybe six years ago. The other’s a much better knockoff.”
“Say hi to her for me.”
He grunted. “China makes sense for the bags. Mexico could be either, but it’s probably drugs. Wright does own an import business with water access.”
“He’s importing cheap fish and passing it off as local, but that doesn’t sound like a big money maker.” I shut my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Davis, this isn’t some movie. You’re supposed to be helping your sister. That’s all.”
I leaned against the counter. “I’m trying. She seems to be at the heart of this.”
“Try to stay safe.”
I put my water glass on the counter and headed back up the stairs. I paused at the sixth bullet hole and ran my finger around the edges of it. Safety.
Chapter forty-one
I woke to pounding on the front door, followed shortly by yelling from the downstairs guest.
I slipped out of bed, still in the panties and sweater. Craig stirred and sat up. I put my finger to my lips and mouthed, stay here.
He looked suspicious, but nodded.
I took the back stairs, tense and ready for battle. By the time I hit the kitchen, I heard Charley screeching on the front porch and relaxed a bit.
“Let me the fuck in my own damn house!”
I flung the door open as she swung her fists to pound again and caught her wrists mid-air. “You’re going to wake the neighborhood.” I noticed a cab in the driveway, its driver smoking idly like he was a little stoned.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?” She tried to slap me and I caught her wrist again. “Where’s Nik? I told her to come by. She said she was on her way.”
“When was this?”
“When we stopped for smokes.” She noticed the guy tied up on the couch and sauntered over. “Oh, you got me a pet.” She tickled him under the chin like a cat.
I pulled her away from Wallace. “Whose clothes are you wearing?” Hospitals didn’t typically discharge people after midnight and she had on a tee shirt two sizes too big, and scrubs.
She looked down. “I borrowed some from some lockers. Not really my thing.”
“And where’d you get weed?” Her breath smelled like a frat house.
She smiled and pooh-poohed me. “It wasn’t very good. But the liquor store was closed.” She seemed shocked by this development.
“How’d you pay for it?”
She batted her eyelashes at me over her shoulder. “My charm.” She made a quick sucking motion.
I planted my face to my palm and shook my head. “How much do you owe the man?”
“Little more than a suck. Little less than a fuck.” She grinned and did a soft-shoe move.
I then noticed she was wearing shoes, black pumps no less. I chose not to ask about where they’d come from. “I’ll go get my purse. Don’t go anywhere. Do not untie him.” I pointed at Wallace.
“I can’t play with the puppy?”
“No. He bites.” I went up the front stairs and came back with fifty-four dollars’ worth of combined resources and Craig, wearing Charley’s old bathrobe.
Charley looked at Craig and licked her lips. “Mmm…”
“Down girl.” I shoved her into a sitting position on the couch next to Wallace and went outside to pay the cabbie.
He sat upright and flicked his roach on the lawn. “Well, hello sweet thang.” He showed off his crooked,
yellow teeth.
I realized I was still mostly naked when the cold bit into my skin. I threw the cash through the open window. “You can leave now.”
“Hey, the fare’s seventy. That’s a long drive and I hadda wait.”
“You also helped a drug addict score. So let’s call it even.”
He opened the door and unfolded himself in the way of tall men who wanted to seem imposing. “I want the rest of my money, bitch.”
I crossed my arms against the cold. “You got all you’re getting.”
“The little lady said I’d be getting more.”
“She’s the only junkie whore here, so if you didn’t get it from her, you’re out of luck.”
Seemed obvious to me.
He ran a finger down my cheek and eyeballed my fashion statement. “I don’t think so, sweetie.”
I grabbed his finger and twisted to the side. “You’re so high, you probably can’t even get it up.”
“Bitch!” He raised his other hand to slap me and I snapped the finger I was holding out of its joint.
The screen door banged open and Craig came charging out. I knew it was him because of the footsteps, but I didn’t turn. Instead, I used the cabbie’s surprise against him and pulled the rest of his arm behind him and up, applying pressure on his elbow and shoulder. “Get back in the car and be on your merry way.”
I shoved him as I released. He yelped and held his finger in his other hand before glaring and threatening legal action.
I stormed past Craig and back into the house.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Charley slapped me. “That is no way to talk to the aging matriarch of a proud Southern family. Just who do you think you are anyway?”
“You’re from San Francisco.”
Craig reappeared beside me and rubbed his eyes.
Wallace stirred.
“Oh, good, my pet’s awake.” Charley clapped and skipped down the hall.
I glanced at Craig. “This is fun, right?”
He raised an eyebrow and pointed at the stairs. “I’m gonna go find some pants.”
I looked back at Wallace. “What the hell?”
“I don’t gotta talk to you,” Wallace said.
Charley returned with her stash box. She plopped next to him. Party time. “What’choo want, Andy?”
“You know him?” I asked.
“Andy’s okay.” She pulled a sandwich bag of weed out of her borrowed bra and proceeded to pack a bowl. She looked over at him. “You holdin’?”
He nodded at his pocket and she rooted around in it until she came up with a bag of whitish-brown powder. The two of them relocated to the floor.
Since he answered to it, I tried, “Andy, why are you here?”
Charley dumped some powder on a spoon and some more on a mirror.
Andy glared at me.
Charley looked over. “He ain’t gotta talk to you.”
He smirked.
Charley started untying him. I considered stopping her, but didn’t. Andy leaned over and snorted the line of powder off Charley’s mirror while she flicked her Bic under the spoon.
His eyes grew glassy and he jumped up to pace, his head twitching and his face twisted. He blinked at me and Charley until his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Hey, you okay?”
He fell backward, cracking his head on the floor. He lay there for a moment, grinding his teeth.
“Craig!”
Andy’s breath grew shallow.
“Craig!”
By the time Craig got back downstairs, Andy’s heart had quit. The acrid smell of heroin cooking hung in the air. My hands compressed Andy’s chest again and again.
Craig took over for me. “Check his airway.”
I tilted Andy’s head and listened, but heard nothing, felt nothing against my ear.
Charley ignored us and dug out a used syringe.
I reached out and slapped the spoon away from her.
“What the hell?” She grabbed my arm, indignant and angry. She noticed what Craig was doing and lunged at him.
I held her, dragged her back by the waist.
She clawed at my arms. “What are you doing? Stop hurting him.”
Time stretched and slowed. It felt like hours since Andy had collapsed, like I’d been battling Charley my whole life.
When I saw the tears in Craig’s eyes, I knew. Andy Wallace was gone. He didn’t stop, but I knew he knew.
I dragged Charley to the overstuffed chair in the corner and spun her. “Sit.”
“No.”
I grabbed her face with both hands and willed my voice to be calmer than I felt. “He’s gone.”
“He killed him!”
I shook my head slowly. “The heroin killed him. Where’d he get it?”
She let loose a horror movie scream.
I waited. “Charley, it could’ve killed you, too. Where’d it come from?” Again, reasoning with an addict; I just couldn’t learn.
She shrugged and whimpered. “Why’d you hurt him?”
I gave up. When I turned, I realized Craig had given up, too. He was sitting next to the body, crying.
“Check his pockets for more of that junk.” I walked over and grabbed what remained of the bag he’d handed Charley.
“Nothing else,” he said.
“Untie his feet.” I headed down the hall to flush the bag. When I got back, I squatted in front of Craig. “Get dressed. We’re leaving.”
“Without her?”
“Yes. I’m calling the Sheriff. He’ll arrest her for possession. With her record, she should get a little time, some detox.”
He shook his head, his cheeks still wet. “You can do that?”
I put out a hand to help him to his feet. “Sometimes it’s the best thing for her.”
“What about him?”
I lowered my voice. “You weren’t here.”
He nodded, but his face said I was wrong.
Chapter forty-two
The waterfront in downtown Morehead was deserted. The breeze coming off the water was cold, but the docks and restaurants were somewhat buffeted by the barrier island visible on the other side of the channel. The ancient brick post office stood deserted next to a converted house that sold general store type tourist crap and saltwater taffy. Many of the seafood restaurants had “closed for season” signs out front. The whole area had a post-apocalyptic feel, with blue skies and the crisp air still smelling faintly of fried shrimp, diesel, and briny water.
Craig’s boss had asked him if he could go fix a central air unit Downeast. I’d encouraged, perhaps even shooed him on his way so he wouldn’t think he needed to get involved in my next crazy action. I still had no idea what I was doing, but everything else had turned out dangerous. Craig seemed safer with the pipes and electrical problems.
I parked in one of the numerous empty spaces beside the Sanitary Restaurant. In the middle of the parking lot, a large map encased in scratched Plexiglas showed tourists the shoals and wrecks of the Graveyard of the Atlantic. A side note said the waters off the coast of North Carolina had proven deadly for many sailors over the centuries, much to the delight of pirates like Blackbeard.
“Great, omens.” I looped my purse across me like a messenger bag and headed for the docks.
Tom might have wanted me to start with John Taylor’s boat problems, but I had other ideas. Billy Guthrie’s death had caused a lot of the mess I was in, so Billy’s boat-fairy yacht seemed like a good place to start. The boat fairy part might have explained why a guy named Billy had a charter yacht named Jimmy’s Daydream.
No one was around so I hopped aboard the open deck area in the back and sauntered up to the cabin like I knew what I was doing. The door was locked, but the lock was cheap and looked like it had previously been tampered with. I jimmied the broken lock and stepped down into the cabin, pulling the door shut behind me.
With the door shut, I could no longer see the deck outside. When built, a row
of windows across the top of the back wall would’ve let in light, but someone had coated them with black spray paint and smeared on dirty grease. It made the place seem extra gloomy and smelly.
The wind outside rocked the boat gently. Urine from an unflushed head joined the diesel fumes, mildew and fish permeating the air. It smelled more like a jail than a charter boat. I opened a couple of drawers and lifted papers, shifted junk. I found the sort of flotsam I associated with Tom’s friend, Rubelli, at home. The kind of odds and ends a guy who used his boat for fishing and getting away from the wife would have.
Sweatshirts, tee shirts, dirty jeans, half-eaten bags of Doritos and Funyuns, and what looked like bloated Lucky Charms covered the floor of the galley. I opened the nearest cabinet. More chips, a spilled bag of Skittles, Cap’n Crunch, the rest of the Lucky Charms. Munchies. Pothead food. Teenager food.
I stepped on a cheese curl and it crunched. Guthrie had been dead for nearly a week; it wasn’t his. On the fold-down table near the stove sat a couple of pots with mystery residue that was still gooey and an oddball collection of high-end fish-finding and navigation equipment. I peered at the screen, which showed a shallow area in what looked like Raleigh Bay just off the Cape Lookout National Seashore. A dot in the upper corner blinked.
Something moved in the front hatch.
I stepped closer, hand slipping into my messenger bag for the revolver. A thin folding door at the bow of the cabin rattled slightly.
My chest tightened. My breathing slowed. I pushed open the door from the side, gun ready. Inside, a blonde, young but maybe a few years older than me, naked and goosefleshed, had been handcuffed to a low, wooden rail running the length of the compartment. She lay on a brown, upholstered bunk bed, stained and frayed at the edges.
The woman in the second email. The second “mistake.”
She appeared to be sleeping. I leaned over and checked her pulse, carefully in case she woke and lashed out. It beat out a steady but slow rhythm. Her legs kicked, as though involuntary.