Unfiltered & Unlawful (The Unfiltered Series)

by Galvin, Payge

  Three rooms.

  I was going to live in the desert in a three room house with Adam. How in the name of all that was holy was I supposed to do that? I shook my head.

  Three rooms. One bedroom.

  My first reaction should’ve been shock or fear or anger. It wasn’t. I walked over to the bedroom to look closer. A double bed, night stand, and dresser were the whole of what was in there.

  I pushed my suitcase up against the wall in the living room. Then I went back out to the Explorer. I made several more trips while Adam moved the bike and trailer into the garage.

  I’d brought in my essentials, the bag of cash, and the groceries we’d carried from his place. I didn’t make a big deal about the bag of cash. I wasn’t exactly hiding it from Adam, but I didn’t want to plop it on the floor and announce “look, stacks of money!” either. He hadn’t asked how much cash, and I hadn’t volunteered. It wasn’t a lie because I said I’d taken cash, but an omission because I wasn’t sharing unnecessary details.

  When my hand came down on the bag of things from Tommy’s place, I stopped. I couldn’t handle that. I pushed it aside. There was a garage. It, and several boxes from my place, could go in there with the Harley.

  “What else do you need?” Adam asked as he approached.

  “Nothing.” I stepped back. “Whatever you need. The rest can go in there.” I gestured toward the garage, unable to meet his eyes.

  He nodded. “I’ll get my things.”

  Mutely, I turned back to the house.

  He followed with two bags in hand. I went to the kitchen and began putting away groceries. Trying to sound casual, I said, “If I could have one drawer, that would be great.”

  Adam frowned. “I don’t need any of them. It makes sense for you to take them since you’ll have the bed.”

  “I can take the sofa.” I met his eyes briefly. “I’m smaller.”

  “It’s a pull out bed, Sasha. Take the bedroom.” He didn’t phrase it like there was any room for discussion.

  “If you, um, need privacy at all while we’re here, I can…”

  He laughed. “I can take care of what I need in the shower if I get too desperate.”

  My expression must have been as stunned as I felt because he added, “Welcome to being roommates, sweetheart.”

  “I just meant that… I don’t know. I just didn’t want you to think you had to change because you got caught up in my mess,” I said, hoping my face wasn’t as red as I feared it was.

  “I’m not,” he said evenly. “I pretty much stopped bringing girls to my bed four months ago.”

  “Four months ago?” I echoed.

  “I thought I met someone I could be with for real.” He gave me a sad smile. “It didn’t work out like I wanted, so yeah, four months… with only one exception, but even then… I couldn’t have real sex with her. She wasn’t the one I wanted.”

  I wracked my brain for anything he’d said about any other girl. Would he have told me? Or was this more of the things he said at Sinners Ink? Was he trying to flirt to make me feel better? I wanted that to be the case almost as much as I wanted it not to be. I looked away. There was nothing else I could do.

  “Let me lock up the truck,” he said quietly, drawing me out of my musing. “Then we’ll get settled in for the night… or we can go out to eat, if you want.”

  “I want to stay here.”

  He nodded and went back outside.

  I didn’t want to want him like I did, but I couldn’t shove it all away as easily in this tiny house. We were trapped together for at least a few weeks. If I could convince him to leave me here, I could hide out for a while. He could go home. Everything would be okay. He’d be safe from me, and I’d figure the rest out after that.

  Chapter 9

  Adam debated what to tell Sasha. He knew that she was still trying to cling to the illusion that Tommy was going to change. Part of him wanted to let her, but the rest of him thought about the call Tommy had made the day before he died. Adam hadn’t told Sasha about that.

  Tommy had let Adam know that he had scored four kilos of coke, and that he would be busy all day so he asked him to “check in on Sugar.” Now that he knew from Sasha that she had given Tommy two keys, Adam knew that meant Tommy had cut the coke and then tried to pass it off as worth more than it was. Even with a solid forty thousand dollar deal, Tommy had to get greedy. That was what got him killed. Instead of keeping it simple, he had to try to get just a little more out of what was already a risky deal.

  While he was out checking about work, Adam had stopped by the Joshua Tree library. It was a tiny place, but he was able to get online and see if there was any news in the digital edition of the Verde View. The only other option was Coyote Corner—which had free wi-fi, showers for hikers, climbing gear and sundries for sale. Adam didn’t have a laptop though, so the library was his only recourse.

  It didn’t take long to find and print the article. Seeing Tommy’s name in the news wasn’t new. He’d been arrested a few times, nothing he couldn’t plead down or squirm out of usually. This time, there was no pleading out: He was dead and soon to be in the ground. Seeing the article made that truth seem worse.

  The Rio Verde Police Department released the identity of a body found on Tuesday behind the Fry’s Grocery on Ocotillo Street.

  The body of Thomas ‘Tommy’ Holloway, a 25-year-old resident of Rio Verde, was discovered at about 1:30 a.m.

  “It appears Holloway had been shot to death,” Officer Michaels said. The Rio Verde Police Department has declined further comment.

  The unemployed Holloway had a record for misdemeanor drug possession, drunk and disorderly, and resisting arrest.

  Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Rio Verde Police Department Homicide Unit.

  Adam wasn’t ready or able to speculate much. It didn’t really matter. He and Sasha had left Rio Verde. If they needed to move on from Joshua Tree, they would. There were literally hundreds of tiny towns where they could hole up under the radar until the mess in Rio Verde shook itself out. There was no reason for either of them to head back there ever again, and unless someone caught wind of where they were now, they would be safe.

  The problem was that Adam wasn’t sure how motivated anyone would be to look for Sasha. She had stolen two kilos of coke and what she called “a lot” of cash. He needed more information before he could decide just how likely it was that anyone would come looking.

  He stopped in one of the only tattoo shops in town, Mezcal Johnny’s—which was actually owned by a veteran artist called Drunk Dave—and told Dave that he wanted to work off the books for a few weeks. The weathered old artist, who hadn’t ever had a single drink in all the times Adam had walked into a bar or cafe with him, simply nodded and asked, “You need a place to bunk?”

  “Already handled.”

  Dave nodded his head and turned away. His black and gray braid was decorated with tiny bright blue feathers that made Adam’s eyes widen. “That’s new. The feathers…”

  “One of my granddaughters is staying with us for a while,” Dave explained. “The wife thinks I should let her treat me like a doll of some sort, so I have feathers and beads and glitter in my hair some days.” He shrugged. “What can you do?”

  Adam grinned. Dave was unabashedly dedicated to his family. He lived out here along the edge of the park, still climbed and went bouldering despite his advanced age, and was securely under the thumb of his wife. His kowtowing to her was enough that a lesser man would’ve been embarrassed. Dave was still sporting the kind of muscles that made quite clear that he was anything but weak.

  “Day after tomorrow good for you? I can take the girls over to that shopping place they like.” Dave looked at the book. “I have a regular here tomorrow.”

  Shrugging, Adam said, “Whatever shifts you have to spare.”

  Regular clients were the better paying, more interesting jobs. They were the ones who got a bigger piece of work, like a full
back or a sleeve or in some cases even a body suit. They were the Michelangelo jobs, the ones that made an artist memorable. The walk-ins were the daily wage work. It was sometimes still satisfying, but not like the big pieces. Those were the kind of thing that made an artist stay a little longer in a town.

  Schedule sorted for now, Adam turned to go, but before he had gone a few steps, he heard, “I’m guessing you might leave as sudden as you arrived, so let’s play it by day.”

  Adam looked back at him and nodded. “Probably a good idea.”

  “Nothing around this time of year but the tail end of tourists and locals who don’t get into other people’s business,” Dave added. “If I hear anything you might want to know, I’ll tell you.”

  “Anyone asking questions about anyone from Rio Verde,” Adam told him. “My cousin got himself shot a few days ago.”

  Drunk Dave bobbed his head once. “Sorry about your cousin. He the one who was all mixed up in the junk?”

  “That’s Tommy. What got him killed, I suspect.”

  “Nasty business.” Dave might have said more, but the shop phone rang and he turned away then to answer it. “Mezcal’s. Dave speaking.”

  He lifted his hand in a farewell gesture, and Adam left the shop.

  ‡

  When he got back to the house, Sasha was pacing. She didn’t look as bad as he’d seen her when she’d first gotten clean, but there was an edge to her that he recognized far too well.

  “Are you holding?” he asked.

  She stopped and leveled a glare at him. “If I was, I’d have used it already.” With visible effort, she took several calming breaths and then added, “Sorry. I’m a little tense.”

  He quirked a brow at her.

  “And I had a bump the night of the… the last night I worked. The night before I saw you at your shop.” She rubbed her hands up her arms like she was cold. “It’s not like I’m in withdrawal, you know? I’m just edgy over everything and it kind of hit me when you were out.”

  There weren’t any words that would make what she was feeling any less awful, so he didn’t bother trying to find them. She looked so lost, her bright green eyes dull with worry that he ignored all of the warning signs he’d put up and he closed the distance between them, pulling her into his arms, quietly inhaling the scent of soap and flowers that he always loved. He hugged her and held her tightly. That was the best answer he could offer. Stroking her reassuringly wasn’t very helpful when she was acting like she was craving drugs. He sure as hell wasn’t going to go score anything for her. That left physical distraction… and he didn’t think it was a good idea to offer to help her forget by warming the sheets with him.

  After a few minutes, she stepped away.

  He hated how empty his arms felt without her in them. He didn’t want her there because she was craving coke or because she was upset. He wished she was in his arms because she wanted him, but he’d given her enough clues, practically come out and said that he loved her, and she still wasn’t going for it.

  “Thank you,” she murmured. Then she went to the sofa and sat with her legs curled under her. “I unpacked and organized the cupboards. I figure we’ll need to find the grocery, but I couldn’t go on my own so—”

  “How much money?”

  “What?”

  “How much cash did the corpse have?” he clarified. He sat next to her, but he resisted the urge to touch her so he could comfort her.

  “A trunk full,” she said. “We each got about a hundred and ten thousand dollars, and then there was the coke.”

  “How many people?”

  Twelve.”

  Adam did the math and stared at her for a moment before saying, “Almost one and a half million dollars.”

  She nodded.

  The fear of what that could mean for her was enough to make him want to push her towards accepting his feelings for her faster than he was sure she was able to handle. Adam sat on the sofa and stared at her for a moment.

  “I told you I was trouble to be around,” she whispered.

  “You should’ve left town the night it happened,” he said as levelly as he was able.

  Then a horrible thought hit him. “Did they all walk away with two kilos and the cash?”

  Mutely, she shook her head.

  “How many?”

  “Just me,” she admitted. Her face flushed in guilt as she added, “I couldn’t walk away from it. They had no idea how much money it was worth, and I don’t think most of them had any connections to sell it, and…”

  “And you’re an addict who was faced with a huge temptation,” Adam finished when her words faded. “Seeing that much coke in one place had to have been hard.”

  “I only had the one line, though,” Sasha said.

  “And nothing since,” he added.

  He knew her, knew that she wasn’t using anything now. He’d seen her and Tommy both enough when they were high to know exactly what she was like when she was using. She and Tommy had cut open the brick and spent the night high and naked. Adam knew that without having to hear her admit it. That was the glue that kept her with his cousin: drugs and the way Tommy used them to lure her back when she got free of him.

  He pulled out the article and handed it to her, stopping any chance of hearing the admissions that would be a knife to his gut. “Here.”

  She read it to herself, stopping after the first few lines to glance at him but otherwise motionless. When she was done, she said, “Do you think they’ll find the people who did it?”

  Adam had thought about it enough to be able to answer promptly. “No. He wasn’t important enough, and with his record, they’ll assume it was because of a drug deal gone bad. No one cares about criminals killing criminals unless it spills over to the rest of the town.”

  It wasn’t a pretty answer, but in the real world, police were overworked, understaffed, underpaid, and if some punk with a gun was going to eliminate another bad seed, it wasn’t necessarily a priority investigation. First came crimes against the taxpayers who supported the police or any co-ed whose injury or absence would make national news or hurt enrollment at ASURV. The university brought jobs and revenue. Crimes against small-time dealers weren’t a priority.

  “So do you think the police will do anything about the other guy? The one who died at the Cave?” Sasha asked.

  Adam shook his head. “The only way that would happen is if someone there talked or the body turned up where there’d be bad press if they were ignoring it.”

  “The body won’t turn up.”

  “You can’t be sure of—”

  “It was cremated,” she interrupted.

  For a moment, Adam was speechless. “No body. No money. No drugs. What about the car?”

  “Someone got rid of it.”

  “So unless that's found and somehow tracked back to the shop, no one at the P.D. should come looking for you. They’re not the problem.” He glanced toward the darkening desert sky outside the house. “But almost one and a half million dollars and two kilos of cocaine? Someone’s going to be looking for that.”

  He pulled Sasha close so she was nestled against his side. Adam tried to ignore the warmth that radiated from her body and did very inappropriate things to his imagination.

  “We wait it out, Sash. I can keep you hidden for as long as we need,” he promised her. “We start over. A new life away from there, and we watch the papers to see if anything happens to any of the others.”

  “I don’t know all of their names.”

  “So we write down what you do know so we don’t forget. It could be months or years or never until this is all resolved.” Adam stroked her back, trying to help relax her.

  “It seems like there should be something else we can do,” she murmured. “Tommy died because of this.”

  That was it, the opening he couldn’t resist. Gently, he told her, “No. He died because he cut the coke and tried to sell four kilos. He got greedy and tried to add a con. He died because he was… w
ho he was.”

  She stared at him with tears shining in her eyes as he told her what he knew, and when he was finished, she said, “He wasn’t ever going to stop, was he?”

  Adam shook his head. “He wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t ever going to be the one to give you that little house with flowers in front and road trips to Coachella or the music festival at Telluride.” He stroked her cheek and added, “You can still have those things, though.”

  He didn’t add that he wanted to be the one to give them to her, but he hoped she would figure that out when she was ready.

  Chapter 10

  I jotted down what I could remember from the night of the shooting. Some people were easier. I knew them and worked with them. A few others were regulars.

  • Cass: barista, motorcycle fan (speed not Harley; in debt; not likely to talk).

  • Dillon: voice of an angel (minds his own business; low risk).

  • Drunk co-eds: Callie? Sally? Allie? (drunk; high risk) and Violet (funeral home; got rid of body; low risk unless someone asks questions because of body).

  • Blake: ASU Rio Verde Jock (incentive not to spill; seemed decent).

  • Senator’s Kid (incentive not to spill; would not take blame though; publicity fears; mid risk).

  • Lauren: co-ed, uses the shop wi-fi (no idea of risk here).

  • Hope: religious, guilt issues. (High risk because of guilt; prob wouldn’t out us though).

  • Jess: pulled the trigger; studies a lot. (Guilt? Risk similar to Hope).

  • Hippie: medium risk (issues with authority, but got rid of the car somewhere).

  • The guy who didn’t talk much, no clue what his deal is (Risk).

  Adam read it, suggested I hide it, and then we went about living together in our rental house, hoping that trouble didn’t follow us along the highway to this little outpost in the desert. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but short of turning everything over to the cops and hoping they could keep us safe, there wasn’t a better option. I didn’t know whose drugs and cash we had, didn’t know the name of the dead guy, and didn’t know who killed Tommy—or if it was tied to the murder or Tommy’s trying to con whoever he was selling the coke to. I thought about the things that had happened, but it left me worried and stressed so I tried to forget Rio Verde and everything about it.