by Reid, Ruby
Alex picked at his burger, but discovered that he was not hungry all of a sudden, not even after the long ride out here.
“All of this is really just a hunch,” Alex said. “One huge, freaky coincidence. And I am hoping that man that was killed was not Stephen Randall. I thought you might be able to tell me.”
“Sorry, man. I have no idea. I don’t even know who the goons were that Jameson sent in to do the job, but there might be someone I can call to get all of that information.”
“Who?” Alex asked.
Chester smiled. “You have things you can’t tell me and, in return, there are things that I can’t tell you. Let’s just say that a man with Jameson’s short fuse and shitty business sense has made a few enemies over the years, and enemies can be a vital source of information.”
“Thanks,” Alex said. “Do you know when you might be able to find out?”
“I guess within a day or so. Is this important information? Do you need it the moment I get it or can it wait?”
“I’d like to have it the moment you find out.”
“Agreed,” Chester said. “Now… if that concludes the business portion of this meeting, why don’t you tell me how things have been going for you?”
From that point on, the two of them shared small talk. Alex found it refreshing to speak to a man that had dutifully served the Unknowns for nearly five years and then made it clean as he came out on the other side. Chester now worked as the manager at a Jiffy Lube—not the most prestigious job, but much better than running drugs and constantly watching for blue lights in your rearview mirror.
They stayed there for another hour, catching up and sharing stories about their time with the Unknowns. When it was over and they walked out into the small dusty parking lot, a sudden clear thought struck Alex that made him happy and uncertain at the same time: this was the longest period of time he had spent away from Amanda since coming to her house that first morning. He couldn’t wait to get back to her even if he would be carrying the harrowing news that he might very well know who killed her husband and why he had been killed.
Of course, he wouldn’t even consider telling her any of that until he knew for certain.
He and Chester shook hands as they parted ways, Chester leaving in his very basic Honda Accord and Alex pulling out to the comforting growl of his Harley.
He hit the road and was reminded once again of why he had joined the Unknowns in the first place; scaling the road on his motorcycle felt like flying in a way, particularly on the often deserted secondary roads along the stretches of Nevada desert that he had come to know as home.
Now that he was in a different part of the country, he was relieved to find that it felt the same. With a woman that he cared about waiting for him along this stretch of road, it made the ride all the more pleasant.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was just after seven o’ clock when Alex pulled his bike alongside the curb in front of Amanda’s house. It was nearly dark, and he wondered if she had worried about him. When he had left, he had not given her a time that he would be back, and she had not asked. He assumed it was far too early in their relationship to be setting such boundaries if this was in fact a relationship.
It felt like one, but it had been so long since Alex had been involved, that he couldn’t tell for sure. What he did know was that when he walked in through the front door, he was beyond glad to be back. The smell of something cooking greeted him. Music was playing somewhere, and he could hear Amanda singing lightly along with it.
He walked through the living room and into the kitchen when Amanda was standing by the stove, stirring something and swaying her hips back and forth to the music that was coming from the iPod dock on the counter. She heard him come in and turned to see him, slightly embarrassed.
“I’m not the best singer in the world,” she said.
“Or the worst,” he added.
When he walked to her and kissed her, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
“I got wrapped up in work and almost forgot that I’d have someone here for dinner,” she said. “So it’s quick and simple tonight. Spaghetti and salad.”
“Sounds great,” Alex said. And it did; having skipped over most of his burger, the ride back had made him ravenous.
He helped her with finishing up and setting the table. As they did, she filled him in on her day. She’d spent most of it chatting with clients and working on one project that might have the potential to take her to the next level. While she was doing slightly better than scraping by, she was also very aware that she could be doing much better. This job might do that for her. Her excitement was evident in the way she carried herself around the kitchen. Alex was happy for her and noticed how, in her excitement, she took every chance she could to touch him – placing a hand on his hip when she passed by him to get to the silverware drawer, running a hand through his hair when she stood next to him while he washed his hands, placing a hand on his chest when they nearly bumped into one another while he got the plates out.
“You know,” Alex said as they were halfway through dinner, “you don’t have to keep feeding me.”
“I know. But I always liked to cook — even something as plain and simple as spaghetti — and it’s nice to have someone to cook for again.”
“Well, thank you. It’s delicious.”
“It’s spaghetti,” she said. “A dunce could have made it.”
“Quiet. This is a big deal to me. Other than my mother, I can’t remember the last woman that cooked for me.” The mention of his mother brought up memories of his father as well. With that, the weight of his big secret loomed in his mind: the thing he had done at thirteen that still scarred him to this day.
How many secrets do you intend to keep from her? He asked himself.
This question stayed on his mind as they finished dinner. It was still there when Amanda said something that caught him off guard and made him realize that he cared a great deal for her.
“Tell me,” she said as they washed the dishes together. “Is it totally a teenage-type thing for me to want to ask where you went and what you did today? I don’t want to know in an obsessive way, but… well, can I be honest?”
“Of course.”
“You’ve told me the sort of work you did with your club. I don’t know that it would change anything about what we have right now, but if you were still doing that sort of stuff, would you tell me?”
“I would,” he said. “I don’t mind. And to ease your mind, I haven’t actually run a job for almost four months. I only need to push about six jobs a year through to make good money.”
“And now that you’re not in the club, what sort of work will you do?”
He chuckled. “I honestly don’t know. I guess it’s something I need to start thinking about, huh? I’m automatically going to assume that a used car lot is out of the question.”
She laughed, but it was a thin laughter. He had told her most of what his job entailed – buying stolen cars from gangs or other criminals and selling them whole or bit by bit to the highest bidder. She’d taken it well, and as he told her about it, he had even come to understand just how shady the whole thing was. How had that not bothered him before?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t have a right to be asking you things like this. I hate that I feel the need to know what you did today, and it –”
“I drove out to a small town named Dunning Creek to meet with an old friend,” he said, interrupting her. “His name is Chester. He used to be in the club but left to be a family man. I hadn’t spoken to him in a while, and I wanted to know how his life had been after leaving the club.”
“Oh,” she said, unable to contain her smile.
“I don’t mind telling you what I’m up to,” he said. On the heels of that was the guilt of not telling her the real reason he’d met with Chester.
“Still,” she said, drying the last of the dishes. “It’s none of my business.”
; He took her softly by the arms and pulled her close to him. He brushed some stray hair away from her forehead and kissed her there. “It sort of is your business,” he said. “I don’t know what this thing between us is, but I’d like to keep building on it. So yes, it is your business as to what I do when I’m not with you.”
She smiled and kissed him on the mouth, lingering for a moment and placing her hands on his lower back to pull him closer to her. “You have no idea how badly I needed to hear that.”
They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment and leaned in slowly. When their mouths met, it was like electricity. Alex felt his heart beating throughout his entire body as their bodies pressed together. Her hands softly trailed up and down his back, and before he was aware of what had happened, her hands were under his shirt, her nails softly raking down his sides.
Grinning beneath her kiss, he bent his knees a bit, placed his hands under her hips, and lifted her up. She laughed, their kiss still not breaking, as she wrapped her legs around his waist. They kissed softly and deeply as he walked her into the living room. He gently lowered himself to his knees, allowing her to sit on the couch. She reached down to the tail of his shirt and lifted it up over his head, their kiss finally breaking.
When it was removed and discarded on the floor, she kissed him softly along his collarbones, moving slowly down to his chest. Each kiss sent a shiver through him, and he could not believe how badly he wanted her. He could simply kiss her, he could have slow and passionate love with her, or they could go at it like animals. In that moment, he just wanted to be with her.
That being the case, he let her lead. She trailed her kisses back to his mouth and started working at his pants next. Taking the cue, Alex removed her shirt and unclasped her bra. When those items were on the floor with his shirt, he took one breast in his left hand, caressing it, and placed a series of kisses on the other one.
She sighed against him and resumed working on his pants. Their mouths found each other again, and Alex’s world went dizzy and spinning for a moment. His pants came off, but he was barely aware of it. Hers followed suit, and he didn’t know it had happened until she was pulling him onto the couch with her, positioning him into a sitting position. She then straddled him, facing him and placing one arms= around his shoulder and the other along the back of the couch.
She raised herself up just a bit and then waited for him to guide himself into her. When he did, she sat down on his length excruciatingly slowly, locking eyes with him as he filled her. They both gasped, and then they were kissing again.
What happened next was slow and beautiful, more involved and passionate than any other time they shared. Their hands interlaced as they rocked against one another, and when their mouths weren’t attached to one another, their eyes were.
It was over quicker than what they had been used to over the last few days, but the end result was much more powerful. They shuddered as they came together, and when Amanda collapsed against him, he hugged her tightly to him. He ran a hand through her hair and kissed the side of her neck lovingly.
I have to tell her, he thought. This isn’t right.
But everything about it felt right in that moment, and he couldn’t destroy it. They sat there on the couch like that for several more minutes before Amanda got up to walk to the bathroom. Alex watched her go, appreciating her naked form as she crossed the living room and disappeared into the hallway.
As he watched this, another thought appeared in his mind, unexpected and absolutely jarring.
Oh my God, am I falling in love with her?
The question rang in his mind, and it terrified him.
CHAPTER NINE
When the vibrating noise stirred him awake, Alex opened his eyes quickly. For a moment, nothing in his life had changed. His sleepy mind thought that he was still very deeply involved with the Unknowns and that the vibrating was his phone. It would be Jameson, calling him to send him on some job that needed to be undertaken in the late night hours.
But then he remembered that he was no longer in his apartment. He was sleeping in Amanda’s bed, and all of his belongings were in a U-Haul somewhere in Chicago.
As quietly and as quickly as he could, Alex rolled over and took the phone from the bedside table. He saw the contact information on the display window and felt those hot rocks in his guts again.
Chester.
Alex got up out of bed and ran to the adjoining bathroom. By the time he closed the door behind him and cut on the lights, the phone had stopped vibrating. Alex waited a moment and then returned the call. He also cut on the bathroom’s exhaust fan, hoping it might mask his voice and keep Amanda from waking up.
The phone only rang once before Chester answered. “Hey, Alex,” he said.
“Hey.”
“Sorry to call so late, but you said that you wanted the information as soon as I got it, right?”
“Yes, absolutely. What did you find out?”
There was a very weighted pause on the other end before Chester started talking. In that silence, Alex realized that he already knew what was coming. Still, it made the following few minutes no easier to endure.
“The name of the systems analyst at that bank was indeed Stephen Randall. He’d been working as an analyst for the bank for three years. A bright guy, from what my source can find. On his way up the career ladder. He was married, so he left behind a wife. The cops never pieced it together, and his murder was never solved which — since you and I know it was a job from the Unknowns — really isn’t much of a surprise.”
Alex felt as if he had just been run through with a sword and the attacker was twisting the blade.
“You still there?” Chester asked.
“Yeah,” Alex said, his voice shaky, He ran a hand over his face, as if trying to wake himself up from some delusional dream.
“Want to tell me what this is all about now?” Chester asked.
“No. I’m sorry, man. Maybe some other time. But not now. This is the information I needed.”
“And from the sound of it,” Chester said, “it’s not the news you were hoping for.”
“No, but it’s what I was expecting. Thanks, Chester.”
“Hey,” Chester said quickly. “Before you go, there’s another interesting little twist to all of this.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah. So, Jameson is taking the club to Chicago, as you know. Now, from what I am hearing, Marco O’Brien got his ass handed to him the other night. You know who that is?”
Alex’s heart went cold as he lied. “I know who it is, but that’s about it.”
“Anyway, it’s assumed that Jameson sent someone to deliver a message. ‘Leave us alone. This our turf now.’ That kind of thing. Anyway, Marco spent some time in the hospital but was released pretty quickly.”
“What’s that have to do with Tulsa?” Alex asked.
“The three goons that Jameson sent…one of them was Marco O’Brien.”
Alex nearly dropped the phone to the floor. He was aware that Chester was still talking, but most of it went unheard.
“Marco, as you know, did a lot of the grislier work for Jameson. As it turns out, this was one of the first jobs Marco ran for Jameson. It seems that by taking out the security guards and this Stephen Randall character, he stood out to Jameson. Some say it’s the job that convinced Jameson to keep working with him. The Tulsa job, after all, ended up putting about seven hundred thousand dollars into Jameson’s pockets.”
Alex wanted to say something just so he wouldn’t seem so startled, but he didn’t trust his voice. He was far too shaken.
“You okay?” Chester asked.
“Yeah. It’s just… shit.”
“Look, I know you said you can’t tell me about what this is about, but if you need someone to talk to, don’t hesitate to call me. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Alex said absently. “Thanks again, Chester.”
Without waiting for Chester’s reply, Alex killed the call and fought the u
rge to throw the phone across the bathroom.
He took a moment to collect himself and then tried to cover his tracks. He flushed the toilet, hoping that if the call had awoke Amanda up that the flushing toilet and running exhaust fan would maybe fool her. He waited a few more seconds before shutting the fan and the light off. He then stepped back out into the bedroom and got into bed as quietly as he could.
He had been laying there for no more than ten seconds before Amanda spoke softly beside him.
“Do you always take your late night calls into the bathroom?”
There was some accusation in her voice, but most of it wounded like nothing more than annoyance of having been stirred awake.
“Sorry,” Alex said. “Damn club stuff. There are some people that aren’t really happy with me for leaving the way I did.”