Luke: A West Bend Saints Romance

by Paige, Sabrina

  "You don't owe us anything, Silas," she said, shaking her head. But I could see her eyes welling up, her resolve weakening.

  "Yeah, sure, I don't owe you anything," I said. "Just my life. I don't care what you say, the money stays here. If you don't want to take it, then you can put it away for Cara." I knew that the mention of her daughter's name would make Deborah cave.

  She looked at me for a long time before she finally nodded. "Thank you, Silas," she said. "You too, Trigg."

  Trigg smiled. "Don't look at me," he said. "This is all Silas' doing."

  ***

  CHAPTER SIX

  TEMPEST

  "I'm glad it's daylight," I said. We hadn't even reached our destination, and the neighborhood was becoming increasingly dangerous-looking.

  Iver was distracted, his gaze focused on our surroundings. "Yes," he said absently. "We'd probably get shot here at night."

  "The GPS says we're in in the right place," I said. "This is the address Emir pulled." Emir could get virtually any information we needed about the marks and the people we were helping, but there was just something about checking things out in person that always made me feel better about a job. Emir laughed at me, called me superstitious, since his information was never wrong. And in this case, he had pictures of the neighborhood where Iver's housekeeper and her family lived, easily obtained on the internet. But there was just something about seeing it with your own eyes that couldn't be replaced.

  Usually I did this kind of thing at the beginning, when we were verifying a victim's story, before we even started a job. But this time, I'd been trying to break old habits, telling myself my compulsions weren't reasonable. When it came down to it, I was a creature of habit. Iver knew it was driving me crazy, the fact that I hadn't already done my drive by. So he'd agreed to come with me.

  "Just so you don't get killed," he said. "I've seen the photos from Emir, and I know Deborah. The story is genuine."

  I slowed down at the end of the street, within viewing distance from Iver's housekeeper's place. "Did she suddenly come into money?" I asked, nodding toward the shiny Mustang parked in the driveway.

  Iver's brow furrowed. "Is that one of Coker's cars?"

  I shook my head, mentally running down the checklist of Coker's known vehicles. I had a memory for details like that. "Not that I know of."

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, the car engine idling, until Iver spoke. "I'd have brought champagne, if I'd have known we were going to be on a stakeout."

  I laughed, recalling the first time Iver and I had worked together. We had been under surveillance, brought on us by a bad deal of Iver’s. But, in typical Iver fashion, he wasn’t worried in the least.

  ***

  “Chin up, lassie,” Iver said, with a fake Scottish accent and a wink. “It’s not the end of the world, you know.”

  I stood at the side of the window, looking down at the unmarked utility van outside of the hotel, the same van that had been sitting there for hours. I didn’t say anything, paranoid that the room might be bugged.

  Then Iver turned on his heel, walked across the room toward the bar, and took a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket. Grabbing two champagne glasses, he passed me without a word.

  “Champagne? Really? It’s noon, and I hardly think the occasion calls for it,” I said.

  “Oh, darling,” Iver said. “It’s not for you.” And he left the room, the door closing hard behind him.

  Momentarily stunned, I wondered what the hell he was doing. I watched from the window as he walked toward the utility van, brandishing the champagne bottle and glasses as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  My breath caught in my throat and my hand came to my mouth as he knocked on the back of the utility van and the door opened. He handed the agents the champagne. He said something to them, then walked away as if nothing unusual was happening. Even from where I stood, I could see him whistling as he walked.

  When Iver returned, I stood there, open-mouthed, before I started laughing. “What did you say to them?” I asked.

  Iver smiled. “I was simply congratulating them on a job well done,” he said. “It’s important to recognize civil servants. They’re often underappreciated.”

  ***

  The door to the housekeeper's house opened, and I drew in a breath sharply as two men exited the building and walked toward the car.

  "Guests," Iver said, looking at me. He paused. "And...wait a minute. You know who they are."

  I shook my head, and swallowed hard. "I don't."

  "Don't lie to me," he said. "Or have you forgotten I can read people? The expression on your face says it all."

  "It's nothing," I said. "No one." I put the car in drive, ready to blow past the two of them and out of there, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it. Instead, I just sat, my gaze fixed on Silas. I watched him pull open the driver's side door and get inside, and the tail lights came on. When the car backed out of the driveway, I paused.

  The little voice inside of my head, the reasonable one, told me it was a stupid idea to follow him.

  Don't do it, I thought. Let him go.

  "I can see what you're about to do," Iver said. "And if you think for a moment I'm going to let you tail someone who's not involved in this job because of a personal reason, without knowing all of the sordid details, you don't know me well enough at all."

  I ignored Iver and rolled the car down the road slowly, far enough behind Silas that he wouldn't see us.

  If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was tail someone.

  It was one of my lessons when I was growing up. By the time I was eight, I was skilled in the art of pickpocketing. My father had taught me his card tricks, and by ten, I’d mastered poker and could hustle a game of pool. I’d been involved as a prop in most of my parents’ cons, but by adolescence, I was actually good at it.

  Really good.

  My parents were proud. Deception and evasion were second nature to me. Evading a tail was as instinctive as breathing. Tailing someone without being seen took a little longer.

  My upbringing hadn’t exactly been normal. It had been highly unusual. And by unusual, I meant pretty fucked up by most people’s standards. While other kids learned to read and write, I learned the Three Card Monty and the art of pickpocketing.

  Some kids learned the Golden Rule, I learned the Grifter's Code.

  ***

  My father’s hand flew up to my wrist, as quick as lightning, and he looked down at me with a grin, his gold tooth glinting in the sunlight. "Gotcha."

  "Crap." I yanked my hand back, and tucked it in the pocket of my jacket, tattered and worn.

  "Hannah Wilde," he said, looking at my mother. "Your child just made an excessively clumsy attempt to lift my wallet."

  "My child?" My mother was in front of the house, sitting in a rocking chair, newspaper held up close to her face. She folded down the edge, then peered over it at us. "Tempest's pickpocketing skills are more similar to yours than to mine."

  My father looked down at me and winked. "Better luck next time," he said. "You need more practice. You're already eight years old. You should be smoother than that."

  I sighed and kicked at the pebble on the ground under my shoe. "Come on, dad," I said. "When can I try it, for real?"

  "You can try it when you're ready," he said. "And only then. If I can catch you, it means you're not ready."

  I followed him up to the front porch of the house where we were staying. It wasn't our house, of course. It was a scam. We were squatting, pretending to be the relatives of the owners. We'd been there for two weeks.

  "Dad?" I asked.

  He sat down on the porch, then pulled out a deck of cards and began shuffling them, the cards flying through the air in a blur. I sat in front of him, mesmerized as I always was by the movement.

  "I like it here," I said.

  He didn't respond, just kept shuffling, his fingers flying.

  "Could we just stay here?" I asked
.

  My mother looked over her newspaper at me. "You mean, like regular people?"

  I nodded, the thought of being a regular person - someone with a house and friends, someone who stayed in one place - like something out of a dream.

  "You're not meant to be a regular person, you hear me?" my father said, pausing his card shuffle. He laid three cards out on a small table between us, then gestured toward me. "Sit. You're a grifter, understand that? It's your birthright. You want to work for someone else your whole life? Be a slave to the system?"

  I exhaled heavily. "No," I said. I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded bad. "But we could stay in one place. We wouldn't have to move so much."

  My father gave me a long look. "And what? Find the Queen,” he ordered, pausing for a moment while he waited for me to pick a card, which I did, incorrectly. “You put down roots, you die. It's as simple as that. There's no staying in one place for people like us. You're a wanderer. It's in your blood. The people that work for the man, they're getting conned. The people that own the businesses, they're the real cons."

  I pointed to the middle card.

  No roots. Traveling was in my blood.

  Right now sitting here with my parents, was deceptive, a lull in what was otherwise a chaotic life.

  The problem was, I liked the lull. It was comforting. Safe. I wanted to stay in one place.

  But I knew it was temporary, that something bad waited just around the corner. It always did.

  "Watch the card," he said. "This life isn't something you choose to do. It's something you're born into. You're a lucky kid. All these other people going about their lives? The marks? You're smarter than they are. You're learning how the world works. You con or get conned, you understand that?"

  The problem was, I didn’t want to see it that way, as us versus them. Even then, I wanted to belong. Being on the outskirts hated by everyone, was no life. That was what I understood.

  He tapped the table, his finger near the cards. "Now," he said. "Where's the Queen?"

  ***

  Silas' Mustang wasn't exactly hard to follow - a bright blue car like that stood out like a sore thumb, especially as we wound through the roads in the shitty little neighborhood.

  "You're distracted again," Iver said. "I can only assume that you're preoccupied with thoughts of one of the men in the car. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m afraid I'll have to point out that this little detour will need to stop, because we must meet with Coker."

  Coker.

  Damn it, I thought. Get your head in the game, Tempest.

  I was acting like some love struck teenager, following Silas down the road. Stalking him. It was madness.

  What the hell was I going to do, even if I found out where Silas was staying? It was stupid, and I was smarter than that.

  "Now," Iver said. "Spill the story."

  "There's nothing to tell," I said, watching as Silas turned down a street. I had to practically force myself to keep the steering wheel straight, to avoid veering down the road and following him. From my peripheral vision, I saw the blur of the blue car fade into the distance, and I exhaled. "He's just a ghost from the past, is all."

  Iver harrumphed. "That boy didn't look like a ghost to me. Judging by the expression on your face when you saw him, I'd say he's very much a part of your present."

  I didn't answer. The last thing I needed right now was for Silas to be part of my present. He was past tense, and that's how it was going to stay. I'd left him behind in West Bend.

  Silas and I were ancient history.

  ***

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SILAS

  Trigg hung up the phone. "Abel is out of the hospital," he said. "He was discharged last night. He's good to go."

  "That's a relief," I said. Just the thought of what that shitbird Coker had done to Abel, and to three of us now, was killing me.

  "We're going out for beers," Trigg said. "It'll be a celebration. Abel's going to meet us."

  "Yeah," I said. "It's a fucking celebration, Abel getting put in the hospital because of that asshole."

  "All right, pessimist," Trigg said. "Or how about we'll celebrate the fact that he's going to be fine, and you can stew and be pissed off and figure out how to kill Coker."

  I grunted. "That sounds better."

  Please just tell me you’re not going to shoot the guy when you see him. Not in broad daylight anyway.” Trigg reached into the backpack he'd stuffed on the floor of the car, and opened a bag of potato chips.

  "Come on, man," I said. "Not in my brother's car. You're going to be the one getting shot in broad daylight if you get crumbs all over the place."

  Trigg ignored me, popping a chip into his mouth and chewing loudly, then wiping the corners of his mouth while continuing to eat. "I'm starving, man," he said. "I have to eat."

  “Anyway, did I shoot him when I saw him last, mom?” I asked.

  Trigg narrowed his eyes. “No,” he said. “But that was at the fight.”

  “So?” I asked absently. The fight. All I could remember about the fight was Tempest, standing there beside Coker. Looking like sin in that outfit she was wearing, the skirt that hugged her curvy ass.

  "You were distracted," he said. "And besides, witnesses."

  “Are you saying he doesn’t deserve to get shot?” I asked. “After what the hell he did to me? To Johnny? Now with the hit and run, the way he messed up Abel?”

  “That's not what I'm saying at all, and you know it,” Trigg said. “Coker deserves worse than getting shot. Screwing with fighters the way he’s done? I’m just saying, don’t do something in broad daylight, that’s all.”

  “I’m not a dumbass.".

  “I didn’t say you were a dumbass, Dumbass,” he said. “I just want to know what the hell’s going through your head.”

  “Shut up and eat your chips, Trigg,” I said. “I didn’t invite you along so we could talk about our feelings. Coker is a goddamned safety hazard. End of story.”

  “So was Jade,” he said.

  I laughed, the sound bitter. I hadn't heard that name in a while.

  “Jade.” I spat out her name.

  Jade was my ex-girlfriend, the one who betrayed me. Betrayal was too kind of a word for what she’d done. Attempted murder was more accurate. I didn’t know if she’d ever given a shit about me, or if she’d just been Coker’s lackey from the very beginning. Coker knew I was too paranoid for him to do something to me himself, so he’d used her. She was the one who’d slipped me something at the fight, laced my drink.

  Jade could go to hell as far as I was concerned.

  “She’s nowhere, you know,” he said. “Fell off the radar. She's probably out in the desert somewhere.”

  I already knew that much. Jade had disappeared after that fight, months ago. I'd tried to get a handle on where she'd gone before I left, but I couldn't. I didn’t know if Coker was protecting her or if she was dead. To be honest, after what she’d done to me, I hoped it was the latter.

  “Good riddance,” I said. "The same shit should happen to Coker. We could leave him out in the desert."

  Trigg looked over at me from the passenger seat, a grin on his face. "Yeah, sure, we'll just kill him and leave him out there. No problem." He paused for a beat. "A pretty boy like you should do well in prison."

  "Shut the hell up before I punch that fucking smile off your face," I said.

  "Seriously, though," Trigg said. "A couple of friends of mine are with a biker club out here that does some fighting, run bets and stuff for some of the rich folks out here. The Inferno MC. I'm sure they could make Coker disappear."

  "Or we could do it ourselves."

  "Have you ever disposed of a body?" Trigg asked. "It's not that fucking easy. This isn't a damn TV show. Do you know how much forensic shit there is to think about?"

  I laughed. "You've been watching too much CSI."

  "I'm not joking, man," he said. "You're the fucking genius. You should know that."<
br />
  "Why do you think I haven't taken care of him?" I asked.

  Trigg shrugged. "I don't know what you got going on in that big fat brain of yours," he said. “I really just thought you'd up and left Vegas for West Bend."

  "I need to go back," I said. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, thinking about all the crap I needed to deal with back home.

  "Yeah. What happened with your mom was some bad juju," he said, shaking his head.

  "I guess so." I didn't have anything else to say about it. I'd been pondering my mother's suicide since it happened. Overdose by pills and booze just didn't seem like her style. It wasn't that I doubted she was capable of killing herself. But there were reasons she wouldn't. Like the fact that my abusive asshole of a father was finally out of the picture. It made no sense to kill herself now, after her tormentor was finally dead.

  "We'll get some beers, dude. Take your mind off things." Trigg's voice broke through my thoughts. "Tonight. One of the guys from my gym has a girl that's bartending at one of the fancy hotels here. She'll hook us up - we won't even have to pay."

  "All right," I agreed. "Tonight. Hey, did you ask around about the girl that was with Coker at the fight?"

  Trigg chomped on another chip. "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you," he said. "She's been into some of the gyms around town. A television producer, deals with Chinese fights or some shit like that. A private channel. Maggie something. James? Jameson. Maggie Jameson."

  "Chinese fights," I said.

  Trigg brushed chip crumbs off his lap and onto the floor. I made a mental note to get the car detailed before Elias saw it and had a heart attack. I could already see him, clutching at his chest before keeling over at the very thought of crumbs in the seats of his car. "I don't know," he said. "Middle Eastern maybe? Something like that. Who knows? Foreign channels - I mean, really, who the hell cares?"

  So Tempest was calling herself Maggie. She was an international television producer. Or posing as one, more likely. The thought almost made me laugh. What a bunch of bullshit.

  Elias had called earlier, undoubtedly wanting to know where the hell his car was, but I ignored it. I hadn't checked in with Luke or Killian, either. I didn't even know if they were still in town. I needed to go home. Nothing was keeping me here now that the fight was done.