Collateral

by Callie Hart

  “Of course you can,” I tell her, swinging the door closed behind her. “You’ve been telling me for weeks now that I’m in a dangerous situation. That someone’s going to get killed. Well, guess what? You were right.” Out of habit, I head straight for the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. It was always our ritual whenever we visited each other—tea was top priority.

  “I’m not here to say I told you so, Sloane. I’m here to be your friend. I know I have a lot to make up for, but…but I really want to try. If you’ll let me?”

  I place two teabags in two cups, focusing on the rote movements necessary to complete the task. That seems about all I’m capable of doing. I can’t even think about all the shit Pippa pulled right now—how badly she betrayed me—because none of that seems important. Only Lacey. Only Zeth. Only my heart breaking into multiple pieces. “Can we talk about this another time?” I ask. “I’m too tired right now.”

  “Of course.”

  I finish making the tea and Pip and I sit on the couch in silence. Ernie watches us with his little Schnauzer eyebrows twitching every now and then. “Whose dog is that?” Pippa asks.

  “DEA Agent Lowell’s.”

  Pippa just nods her head, as though the fact we have Lowell’s dog is completely normal.

  “Why did he text you?” I ask.

  “Who? Zeth?”

  “Yeah. He hates you.” I don’t sugarcoat it for her. “Why would he text you and send you over here to take care of me? If he knows I’m as fucked up as he is, why the hell isn’t he here looking after me himself? Or at least letting me look after him?”

  Pippa purses her lips at my first statement, staring at the pale, untouched liquid in the mug she’s holding. “You know him better than I do, Sloane. You know what kind of man he is.”

  I narrow my eyes at her, ready to kick her ass out if she even so much as breathes a bad word about him. She instantly holds one of her hands up—the one not holding onto her mug. “He’s been alone in the world for as long as he can remember,” she says. “He’s never had someone to care for before. And he’s never had someone to care for him, either. It’s going to take some time for him to come to trust that. Knowing his profile a little better now, I’d probably hazard a guess he’s afraid to rely on you for that. Good things have never lasted long in Zeth’s life. With Lacey gone now, he probably expects you’ll disappear in a puff of smoke, too.”

  “So you’re saying he won’t rely on me because he thinks I’m going to die? That’s very reassuring. And what do you mean, knowing his profile a little better now?”

  Pip’s already shaking her head before I’m done talking. “Not die. Maybe…just leave him. In his head, you’ve seen that he couldn’t protect his sister. Perhaps he’ll expect you to leave him because you don’t feel safe. And after the very strange session we had the other night, I do have a better understanding of him, Sloane. And, while I’m not entirely sure of him, I do trust him a little more now, too. I know…I know he’s doing everything he can to keep you safe. That’s all I ever wanted for you.”

  I’ve heard that speech before, except this time Pippa’s words aren’t said with malice or contempt. I hear the ring of truth in them. That’s not what I’m concentrating on, though. He went to see Pippa? For a session? I had no idea—he never told me he’d done that—but from the look on her face, Pippa doesn’t know. I keep my face straight, not wanting to show my surprise.

  “So…you don’t think I’m crazy for being with him, then?”

  “I never said that,” Pippa replies. “What I’m saying is, while the situation’s rather crazy, I can see why you’re in it. Why you won’t leave him. And I respect that. I swear, Sloane, I will never breathe another word about you and him again. Never. And I’ll do my best to help him overcome all the crap that’s happened to him, too. Just please…can we try? Be friends again? One day when you don’t have DEA agents breathing down your neck, you’re going to need someone to share a coffee date or two with, right? I haven’t been to Fresco’s in so long.”

  I’m still angry with Pippa, but I’ve lost so much over the last few months. Perhaps our relationship will never be what it used to be, but if I don’t have to lose her entirely, then maybe that’s something I can hold onto. I try out a smile; it feels forced, but it’s a start. “We can try,” I tell her. “But the moment you start interfering, that’s it. We’re done.”

  There’s nothing forced about Pip’s smile. She grins, and for a moment she looks like she’s going to hug me. She doesn’t though. She just sips her tea, still smiling at me, eyes crinkled at the corners. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “I know I don’t deserve this, but I’m going to make it up to you, I swear.”

  I really hope she can. After everything that’s happened over the past few days, a friend would be pretty amazing right now.

  I. Can’t. Eat.

  Michael told me what he said to Sloane. He told me she was worried about her safety when he left her, and she was right to be. Just shows she’s a smart girl. But Michael was also right—a power vacuum now exists in Seattle, and nearly every single gang in the city is going to be battling it out, vying for the territories that recently came up for grabs. The guys who used to work for Charlie don’t give a shit about Sloane. She’s safer right now than she has been for a weeks.

  Me, on the other hand…I am not so safe. I may know the truth of the matter, but Charlie implied I was his son when he paid Julio, the fat bastard, to leave me alone. At the time I’d taken that news as irrefutable evidence that the old man was my father. Now I know he only did it because he didn’t want someone killing me before he got the chance. A severe case of I can hurt, break, kill my toys, but if anyone else tries to…

  Charlie implying he was my father to Julio was tantamount to telling every criminal organization on the western seaboard. And if Charlie’s boys believe I was his son, and the heads of countless drug-running, arms-dealing, skin-trading gangs believe the same thing, then there’s undoubtedly a price on my head. The only way to let these people know I’m not interested in Charlie’s empire is to make a stand. Prove a point. Make it very clear I don’t give a shit who takes over from the mad English bastard.

  I drive out to Hunt’s Point, not thinking about Lacey. Not thinking about Michael and Sloane slowly positioning my sister into a restful pose so that she could be buried. Not thinking about the dirt that I had to scrape out from underneath my nails, the scalding hot water of the shower stripping layers of skin from my back as I tried to wash away the memory of the last twenty-four hours. Because I don’t want to. Remember, that is. I want to forget Lacey ever showed up on my doorstep eight months ago, and I want to forget I ever had a living blood relative. I’ve found blocking her out, banishing her from my head, is the only way I can recall how to breathe without feeling like my rage is going to eat me alive.

  I pull up outside Charlie’s old place around mid-afternoon. The building looks abandoned, but you can bet your ass there are people watching it. Charlie bought the place in cash thirty years ago before there were such strict money laundering checks when purchasing property. Since no one is going to announce Charlie’s dead and no bank has an interest in his sprawling mansion, it won’t be long before someone else moves in. Just takes over the place, like the change in ownership doesn’t need to be recorded. Possession, famously, is nine-tenths of the law, after all.

  There’s no one inside the place to buzz open the gates, so I park the crapped-out Volvo I’ve legitimately borrowed from The Regency Rooms on the street, and I vault over the fence to the side of the property. Brings back memories of when I was a kid, sneaking back in after a night out partying. I’m taller now, so the fence poses no problems whatsoever. I don’t have keys to get into the main building, but who the fuck needs keys when you have a pair of size eleven boots and you’re in a seriously shitty mood?

  Splinters of wood explode everywhere as I kick the door in. Inside, the house is quiet. Deserted. I don’t waste any time in carr
ying out the task I came here for. I find the gasoline in the garage, canisters of it stacked up against the wall so Charlie would never have to lower himself to going to an actual gas station and deal with the unwashed masses. Ironically, I know he visited one recently, since that’s where he picked up that poor girl he poisoned.

  He always did have a flair for the dramatic.

  And right now I’m feeling a little fucking dramatic myself.

  I collect two cans, one in either hand; I pop the caps, and then I proceed to walk through the house, sloshing the pungent liquid over the carpets, up the walls, into the beds upstairs. The last room I enter is the one I slept in as a kid. Or rather, the one I was tormented in. Everything looks exactly the same as it did when I hightailed it out of here as an eighteen-year-old. The comics I used to read are still stacked on the shelf, all dog-eared and tatty, which is weird because I took extremely good care of them when I was younger. I know they’re falling apart now because Charlie…Charlie would have come in here a lot, I think. He would have sat on the edge of my old bed, thumbing roughly through my comics and the rest of my possessions, reliving the shit he did to me inside these four walls. The shit he tried to do to me.

  Even though he was bigger, even though he was stronger, he never won. He was always drunk. High. Something. I never let him win. In hindsight, I think that’s probably what pissed him off the most. I pour healthy splashes of gasoline all over the room, drenching the duvet, the carpet, the curtains, everything. I stand there, taking the place in, finally facing what happened here, and suddenly I realize I don’t care. I don’t fucking care. Charlie’s dead. This house will soon be ash. He can’t touch me anymore. Once more, he will never win.

  I head downstairs and do one last thing: I walk through to the back of the house where Charlie’s study is located. His safe, a huge fucking thing cemented into the ground, is hidden underneath a Persian rug. I flip it back and I don’t hesitate—I enter my mother’s date of birth, Christmas day, into the keypad, and the fucking thing clicks open. I feel fucking sick. He said he hated her after she refused him, but he obviously clearly loved her, too. Sick, delusional fuck.

  I take every last bundle of cash from Charlie Holsan’s safe, stuffing it into carryalls, and then I leave the house. I give myself permission to leave behind the stress and trauma of everything that happened here, too. Outside, I strike a match and toss it, watching to make sure it hits the puddled fuel on the tiles inside the hall.

  Flames rise like fingers from the floor, orange and yellow and blue, and then the house is claimed. I turn away, hearing the subtle whoompf as the fire spreads, and I do not look back.

  ******

  Lacey used to launder money for me. Back before all this shit went down and Sloane came back into my life, Charlie actually used to pay me pretty fucking well, and Lacey used to clean the money for me. She’d gamble with it—surprisingly good at that—or she’d make large purchases and return them, essentially, just trading my money for someone else’s. That didn’t necessarily give me a solid paper trail to prove where the money came from, but it was enough for me. And sometimes, when there was just too much to handle at once, the two of us would head out together and bury stashes of money. I’ve never dealt with a bank. I’ve never had anything so administrative as a checking account. Cash was always king in Charlie Holsan’s world, and I was very much a part of Charlie’s world. But now I’m making my own world, and things have got to change.

  I need a way to make the stacks of my own money I have hidden behind a brick wall beneath the warehouse legitimate, and I have a very good idea how to do that. There’s just one thing I need to do first. I make a brief phone call to Rebel, and then I set things in motion.

  I find Agent Lowell in a coffee shop across the road from the address Sloane gave me in Everett. By the looks of her, she’s on her fourth cup of coffee for the day. It doesn’t make it to her mouth, though. She spits most of it onto the floorboards when she lays eyes on me.

  “What the fuck?” she gasps. “You’re fucking…you’re fucking crazy.”

  I glare at her, wishing I felt differently about hitting women. “I’m fucking tired,” I correct her. I’m also sore, battered and significantly bruised from nearly being blown up and being shocked with a Taser. “It’s time we end this shit once and for all.”

  “You realize I’m going to arrest you right now, don’t you?”

  I just raise an eyebrow at her.

  “Well, alright then. Do I need to cuff you, or are you gonna walk across the road with me like a civilized human being?”

  “There’s only one woman on the face of this planet who I’d let fucking cuff me. And you are not her.”

  Lowell leads the way out of the coffee shop; I can tell by the way her hand’s trembling as we head toward the liquor store on the other side of the road that she’s on the back foot and freaking the fuck out. Hopefully that’s gonna work in my favor. She guides me up a metal fire escape that runs up the building behind the liquor store, and then she’s punching a code into a keypad by a reinforced steel door. We move down a winding corridor, through another access door, and then into a vast, open-plan room, filled with cops. A stunned silence falls over the room. About eighteen pairs of eyes all watch with unveiled surprise as Lowell leads me through their midst and into a cold, sterile interview room. There are three chairs and a table inside and nothing else.

  “Sit down,” Lowell commands. So I do. “Get comfortable,” she advises me, and then leaves me alone in the room. The door locks behind her when she goes.

  This may be the most foolish thing I’ve ever done, but I’m fucking over all of this now. I’m over all of it. I did a lot of thinking last night, Ernie’s little head resting on my knee until the sun came up, and I realized this isn’t the life I should be living. Not because it wouldn’t have been easy for me to slip right into Charlie’s shoes and claim Seattle. But because my sister died yesterday. I watched her die, and then I had to bury her. Because the woman I can’t live without is inherently good, and deserves someone better than me. Because Sloane deserves everything, and I want to give it to her.

  Lowell leaves me locked in the interview room for half an hour before she returns—a common, frankly transparent move on her part, designed to make me work up a sweat. The woman is a fucking moron. I’m not going to sweat; I handed myself in, for fuck’s sake. She’s towing a fucking giant in a suit behind her when she enters the room, her shoulders stiff with her own importance. She undoubtedly made good use of the thirty minutes she left me in here, calling her superiors and telling them the good news—I did it. I fucking caught the bastard. I know, I know. You can promote me later.

  The giant, I suspect only invited into the interview for decoration and culpability’s sake, begins setting up a video recorder, the lens pointed directly at me. They both remain silent until the little red dot is angrily blinking at me.

  “Can you please state your full name for the purposes of the video,” Lowell says.

  “Zeth Mayfair.”

  “And that’s your legal name?”

  I tilt my head to one side, shooting her a very bored look. “That is my legal name.”

  “Okay, then. Zeth Mayfair, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”

  I lean across the table, staring the bitch down. “Perfectly.”

  “Good. Then we’ll get started. We want to discuss your involvement with a certain individual known to us only as Rebel. Are you aware of this person?”

  I sit back, cracking my knuckles. “I am.”

  “Do you know his exact whereabouts?”

  “I do not.”

  Lowell tilts her head on an angle, pulling a tight smile. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you believe. It’s
the truth.”

  “Do you have a contact number for him?”

  “Nope.” She must think I’m fucking retarded or something. I walked in here without a cell phone. There was no way I was handing Sloane and Michael’s contact information over to the bitch on a silver platter.

  “All right, Zeth.” Lowell takes a deep breath, pressing her fingertips into her forehead. “We’ll come back to Rebel. Right now we’re going to talk about your involvement in a list of offenses that could put you away for a very long time. Are you going to cooperate?”

  “What’s given you the impression I’m not going to cooperate, Denise? Didn’t I come here of my own free will?”

  She pauses, shooting me a dry look. “Have you ever been to Monterello Farm Markets?

  “Yeah. Plenty of times. I buy a lot of fruit there. It’s organic, y’know?” So, they wanna talk about Frankie Monterello, the last job I did for Charlie. The grocery store doesn’t have security cameras inside—more illegal dealings went on inside that place than anywhere else in Seattle—so there’s no way they have footage of me heading in there. I was wearing gloves when I shot Frankie—shot him before he shot me—so there won’t be any prints. But still, better to say I may have been there at some point than deny it altogether and then have Lowell produce evidence to the contrary.

  “Did you know Charlie Holsan had the owner of that place killed?”

  I rock back on my chair, pulling a surprised face. “No, I did not know that. How do you know that?” I already know how she knows. Rick Lamfetti, the guy I refused to kill for the old man, the guy I sent up to Anaheim, was on Lowell’s payroll for god knows how long. He’ll have squealed and told her anything she wanted to know just to keep his own ass out of jail. Thing is Rick’s dead now, and without his testimony, Lowell’s got little more than a statement that can’t be backed up.

  The agent smirks at me. She knows I know she’s got nothing on this one. “You killed Frankie Monterello for your boss.”