Checkmate: Checkmate, #8

by Finn, Emilia

I start my car with a sigh and pull out of the gym parking lot, and an hour later, I pull into a new parking lot that doesn’t look a whole lot different. Gravel. Gym-like building. I drive into the city for these meetings because my hometown is too small, everyone knows everyone, and sometimes, I like to keep my business to myself.

  I grab my purse and phone and, pulling the keys from the ignition, head inside. A few minutes later, we begin, and I find myself standing in a room with twelve other people.

  “Hi, everyone.” I study the circle and give a shy smile. “My name is Elizabeth, and I’ve been clean of my cocaine addiction for twelve years, seven months, and eighteen days.”

  6

  Theo

  Connections

  Two birds. One stone.

  I saw the inside of the gym I’ve been watching, I spoke to the owners, and got a glimpse of the curly-haired Frankston daughter, I smiled when they took my money, and nodded when the woman spoke about her limited knowledge on what she thinks I do for a living. She mentioned the very Bishops I loathe, as though I might be interested because we share an interest in technology and security.

  She has no clue Bishop blood runs in my veins.

  The woman was kind, she was knowledgeable about her gym, she was friendly, and not once did I get the feeling she was shady the way her money implies.

  Those fighters compete for tens of millions of dollars per bout.

  Well, not anymore; in the fight world, forty is practically old and long past retirement. Now they train new contenders and take their fifteen percent cut on title winnings. They invest their money in a way that, at least on the surface, appears to be legitimate. They own property, they run their gym, they have a massive merchandising set-up, one of the brothers plays with the stock market in his spare time, but he’s not laying down sums that seem out of the ordinary considering his surname.

  Interestingly, that guy who plays with the stock market is stepfather to the curly-haired blonde fighter, Evelyn Kincaid. I wonder if Evelyn knows she has Frankston blood pumping through her veins? I wonder if she knows of her biological father’s participation in my mother’s death?

  I don’t blame the girl. I don’t know her, and considering she’s just a teen, and my mother died twenty-two years ago, the blonde has absolutely nothing to do with the actions of her father the decade before.

  But it sure is interesting to me, all of these connections. Frankston blood. Bishop blood. Libby Tate. And a whole lot of money. All in the same town. All in the same gym.

  There’s no reason for anyone to suspect Theo Griffin is Gunner Bishop, so I don’t hide my face. I don’t hide my credit cards or ID. I stared into Libby’s dirty green eyes today – dirty, like the rainforest during a heavy rain – and she didn’t know me. Maybe, somewhere deep in her subconscious, deep in her soul, she thought she recognized me, but our meeting was too long ago, she was too young, our time together too short.

  She stared into my eyes just as long as I stared into hers, and then I walked out again and she had no clue.

  I could walk into Checkmate Security, and they wouldn’t know me.

  I suspect the fact that I never met them back when I was eleven was all part of an elitism that Colum enjoyed. He kept them separate, away from the help. For that, I’m thankful. I’ve never been bitter about their upbringing, I’ve never felt like they had it better than me because they had money and power. I’d rather Theodore, my old friend, and my pencils keep me company in a dirty alleyway, over having a murderous rat bastard for a father.

  I preferred the freedom I had, even if it meant uncertainty about my next meal, rather than worrying about overdosing on drugs by accident, or witnessing an innocent’s murder.

  The separation back then makes it so I can walk around this town unnoticed. I can walk straight through Checkmate’s front doors and speak to them.

  Soon. I’ll do that soon.

  But for tonight, for the second time, I let myself into Libby’s apartment to search. I pocket my pick set and glance back into the hall to make sure no one is watching. Olly sits on the outskirts of town, watching, waiting for her return after he followed her halfway to the city on my orders. I don’t know where she’s gone, and I don’t know why she drove an hour north to get there, but her absence gives me hours to search her home in the light, to not worry about being caught, to look under her mattress, if I wish, and to raid her fridge if my appetite demands it.

  I’ll have twenty minutes once she passes his checkpoint on the way back and his call comes, to remove myself from the apartment building. Loads of time to get comfortable.

  Gloves on, I head to her bedroom and start there. I’m not sure if I’m being objective about this woman; I’m not sure if I’m searching her room for proof of wrongdoing, or simply because I want to be around her stuff. I’m not sure why I went to her in the gym today. I mean, sure, she was struggling with that weight, but she was giggling, not screaming. She was fine, so why did I have to rush close enough to touch? Why did I speak to her, or stare into her eyes like an idiot?

  I could have blown everything if she’d recognized me. She could have called me out with the name she met me as, and within seconds, no doubt SWAT would have bulldozed walls out to speak to me. As I dig through her drawers, I ask myself, Why the fuck can’t I walk away?

  I’ve spent twenty of the last twenty-four hours searching Libby Tate’s digital life right down to knowing she went on a date in January. A fucking date that she bought heels for. She went to the hairdressers at three, bought shoes at four, caught a cab at six, paid for a meal at seven, and was home again by seven-thirty. The fact she paid for a meal was his first strike, but being home by seven-thirty means he struck out on home plate. A real man would never let her pay her way. He’d have noticed the hair and shoes, and he sure as fuck wouldn’t let her leave before dessert.

  Strangely, it makes me happy that it didn’t work out. But it also does things to my stomach that she was willing, and that she dressed up for him.

  Can a man still be protective of a girl he met more than two decades ago?

  I push drawers closed and move to the next. I don’t find anything that could be construed in any way but legal; no baggies of dope, no teaspoons in weird places, no rolls of cash stuffed into a duffel bag beside stacks of phony passports. What I do find are police uniforms. They hang in the closet, side by side like starched soldiers. Perfect pleats, stiff collars, shined shoes on the floor. I do find newspaper clippings about herself, not pretentiously hung on the wall, but folded into a scrapbook. A medal of valor she was awarded eight years ago for placing herself in a dangerous situation to save others. The child she saved when he slipped beneath the ice of a pond one winter. She was wrapped in thermal blankets, sitting in the back of the boy’s ambulance while they treated him. She wasn’t posing for a photo, but they took one anyway, and when it was run in the paper, she cut it out and kept it for herself. Another page mentions a charity baseball game between the police department and fire department. She’s the only female on her team, but the article speaks of her winning grand-slam, and the photograph shows her being thrown into the air by her colleagues.

  Her very male colleagues.

  Another article speaks of her good work buying up all the Girl Scout cookies to help out a local troop. Going by her hard cheekbones and the muscle I saw in her body today, I doubt she ate a single one. But she purchased them, posed with the kids, and the article speaks of how she’s their biggest sponsor every year.

  Much of this, I already knew. Every news article ever run these days is first entered into an electronic database. All it takes is a literal search function, her name, and voila, everything pops up until my eyes don’t know where to focus. But seeing an article on my computer isn’t nearly the same as reading it in a scrapbook… while I sit on her bed.

  Fuck, I’m sitting on her bed. Call me Goldilocks, because I want to lay back and take a whiff.

  I continue to flick through the pages, and though I
intend to stop before the last page and put it away, I still find myself pausing at the end as a surge of fury bubbles in my blood. Raymond Tate’s face, his mugshot.

  Small comfort comes in the fact she’s not keeping a family portrait in her scrapbook, but the article of his arrest.

  The four columns of information are detailed, they’re thorough, they speak of his crimes that span several decades. I let my finger stroke the grayed paper, not because I want to be anywhere near him, but because of the tear stain that smudges a little of the writing. Elizabeth sat reading this article one day, and she cried. Did she cry for him? Did she miss her father? Did she grieve his incarceration? Or did she cry because of what he did to her?

  Did he hurt her after I was gone?

  I wish I was stronger back then. I wish I could have taken her with me. Lord knows those days in an alleyway would have been an almost vacation if she came with me. I would have protected her, I would have fed her first, and taught her how to look after herself. If she’d come, she could know me as Griffin now. She wouldn’t have to be a filthy fucking cop, but sitting in an office beside mine, ruling the world with me, commanding her soldiers my way, rather than her father’s way.

  Instead, she went neither way. She went her own, and now she earns a pitiful salary, puts herself in danger on a day-to-day basis, lives in a walk-up, and has no clue some asshole lets himself into her home when she’s not watching.

  It’s me. I’m the asshole.

  I snap the book closed, and though I would give almost anything to take it with me, to study it, and perhaps keep it for bedtime reading, I put it back where I found it and continue my search.

  The whole time I spend here is a farce. I came wanting to know that she’s a clean cop. I needed to know she had no connection to our old world. And now I know; she’s clean, she’s legal, she’s beautiful, and had this been any other person, I’d have already finished my search and walked away.

  I search her closet, take down a pair of perfectly folded jeans and snap them out straight. This is the strangest search I’ve ever conducted, but I can’t stop myself. I can’t walk away just yet. I need to know her new world. I need to know what makes her tick. And apparently, I’m the creep that wants to know the size of her waist.

  She’s not the chubby girl from two decades ago anymore. She had fat dimples back then, curly hair, and no clue how to get two skinny bitches off of her. What I saw in the gym today was not the same person. No fat dimples, but pockets of muscle. No chubby knees, but thighs that could choke a man. No weak arms, but biceps that could almost, almost challenge me to an arm-wrestling match and make me look like a punk.

  The blue jeans in my hands are tiny, the waist is barely more than thirty inches around. She’s worked hard to make jeans look like heaven. I haven’t even seen her wear them yet, but I know what I know.

  Folding them again, I stack them back in place and make sure they line up exactly how she had them, then I continue my search until I find a gold gift box. It’s the kind of box Grandmas buy to shove a gift in, rather than wrapping it. Gold foil, twenty inches long, and topped with dust. Frowning, I pull it down and note the disturbances to the dust. It’s been in the closet for a long time, but it’s opened semi-regularly.

  The smell of rubber hits me before I lift the lid. That should have been hint enough, but I open it anyway and blow out a heavy exhale when my eyes stop on a dildo that makes me feel like a little bitch. Batteries roll around inside the box. A bottle of lube, used, but three-quarters full. The smell of rubber is stronger without the lid, but my senses have short-circuited on the sight of this dildo that has, at least once, known Libby Tate intimately. Very, very intimately.

  Put it away. Put it away. Put it away!

  My brain struggles to separate nine-year-old Elizabeth and thirty-one-year-old Libby. My brain knows the girl, but today, I met the woman. For two decades, I’ve thought of the girl with a deep longing, wondering how things turned out for her, and concerned for her well-being.

  I didn’t look her up in all these years. Not once, because I wasn’t ready to tell her my truths, and lying to the girl I’d made promises to was intolerable.

  But last night, I saw the grown version while she slept. Today, I saw her working out. And now, I see her stash of sex toys.

  “Fuck.”

  My phone vibrates in my pocket, my one and only warning to clean up and get the fuck out.

  Slamming the lid back on the box, I shove it all back where it goes and close the closet doors. I take a fast glance around her room to make sure everything looks the way it did when I got here, then I move through the rest of the apartment and do the same. I switch the lights out, and stop at the kitchen counter when I find a stack of mail. I quickly flick through the pile – electric, phone, building maintenance. Setting them back exactly how I found them, I rush through the apartment and make sure everything is perfect, then I let myself out and down the stairs with a heart full of adrenaline.

  The vibrating phone meant I had twenty minutes to get out. I took only ten, so there’s no reason to panic. No reason to rush. I push through the building’s front doors and onto the sidewalk. It’s dark out, windy and biting at the tip of my nose. I drop my hands into my pockets and watch my shoes as I walk to the corner and cross over.

  I don’t go far. I want to see her arrive home. I want to see her, period.

  Stopping just a block away, I back into the shadows of an alleyway just like I did twenty years ago, and wait for her headlights. These streets aren’t busy. The traffic is almost nonexistent; surprising, considering it’s a Saturday night.

  Did she go on another date tonight?

  Just seventeen minutes after my alert, she pulls around the corner right where I stand. Her lights flash over my shoes for a beat, but she continues on and pulls up against the curb outside her building. They don’t have secure parking, the way I do. There are no underground lots, no shelter for when she comes home in the rain.

  I mean, it’s not like she lives in poverty or anything, but the fact she lives in anything less extravagant than I do bothers me. She had the chance to live among gold and riches, but she chooses this. That proves her innocence in a way the scrapbook should have. Or the fact she became a cop. The fact her bank accounts prove the way she lives. The evidence to support the fact she’s not her father is overwhelming, but it takes her pulling up in the dark wearing jeans just like those inside, black sneakers, a ponytail, and a Dixie’s Ice Cream cup perched in her hands to slide the lock into place and let me trust her.

  She’s a cop, yes. And I hate those almost as much as I hate old man Tate. But I suppose if there was such a thing as a good cop, she would be it.

  Phase one of my trip to this shithole town is complete. Now I have to decide what to do with my ally from my past. What would she do if she knew it was me? What would she say if I waited ten minutes for her to settle in, then knock on her door? And what would be her excuse for not recognizing me today?

  I sure as fuck recognized her.

  Olly pulls up in the black SUV as though he knew I’d be in this alley. I could have been in the park. I could have been sitting on the bench under the trees across the street. I could have caught a cab back to the hotel. But he knows me. He knows me almost as well as I know myself, so he pulls up in the dark and waits for me to slide into the back seat.

  As soon as the door closes, he pulls out again and passes right by Libby’s building just as her living room lights come on. My eyes latch onto that light, my heart yearns to go back, but Oliver pulls around the corner and mercilessly drags me away.

  “What do you know, boss?”

  “She’s not in anyone’s pocket but her own.” I sit back and rest my head against the seat. Pulling in a long breath, I let it out again on a sigh. “She’s a cop.”

  “We hate those.”

  I smile and finger the diamond earrings in my pocket. I palmed them from her dressing table no more than twenty minutes ago. It’s a habit, a
compulsion to take something that isn’t mine. The diamonds aren’t gaudy, they’re not expensive. They would have cost a hundred, perhaps two hundred at the local jewelry store – not so much that I question where she gets flashy cash from. Not even so much that means they weren’t a gift. Perhaps her boss got them for her, or maybe she saved her birthday money.

  Now they’re gone, because I’m a thief.

  “We sure do hate that breed,” I agree. “But she’s clean. I’ve been in her home twice, and neither time makes me think she’s selling people to get a leg up. None of her files indicate anything suspicious. She’s living a thoroughly middle-class life. Fifty-K salary, and not a dime more. She works, and she works out.”

  “You going to approach her?”

  I nod, though I have no clue how to do that besides hope she drops the bar at the gym again. “Yeah, I’m gonna approach her soon. I’ll have to figure out how when we get back to the room.”

  “You okay with word getting out who you are? People have big mouths, boss. Chick at the gym could spill.”

  I shrug. It doesn’t matter if Theo Griffin is known. It would be easier if he’s not, but it’s still legions better than word of Gunner Bishop getting out. “It doesn’t matter. We won’t splash it about, but it doesn’t matter if word spreads. We might even be able to spin it to work for us.”

  Griffin Industries and Checkmate Security share interests, according to the woman at the gym, and I know for a damn fact that Griffin security systems are Checkmate’s preferred brand when wiring a home.

  The irony is sweet.

  “It’s fine. If word gets out, we can easily spin it. In the meantime, I need an in with Libby. She’s off shift till Monday, so let’s find out what she does in her spare time.”

  7

  Libby

  Ground Turkey and Casual Sex