Cold Burn

by Olivia Rigal

  She opens her eyes and looks up at me. Turning my question around, she asks, "You're good?"

  I help her get to her feet then hold her as tight as I can without hurting her.

  "Better than good, baby. Way better than good."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  She sits on her bed, and I stand in front of her, readjusting my shirt in my pants. I try to think of a nice way to get the touchy subject of her brother's jacket on the table, but I can't. So I just ask, "Where's David’s jacket?"

  Lisa stiffens as if I had just slapped her. "Why?"

  I come closer to the bed and crouch in front of her. "Because I don't think you were the victim of a random attack. I think David must have been onto something, and we may find it hidden somewhere in his jacket."

  She thinks about it and shakes her head. "I emptied all the pockets before I started wearing it."

  "I'm sure you did, baby, but maybe there was a special pocket you haven't seen. Something in the lining…" I look at her, and she doesn't seem to understand what I want.

  I stand up and change my tone from cajoling to authoritative. "Where is it, Lisa?"

  She lowers her gaze and answers, "In the left side of the closet."

  "Thank you, baby," I say, keeping my voice low.

  I open the closet, to find it half-filled with men’s clothing, among which I recognize David's jacket. I pull it out of the closet and ask, "Whose clothes are those?"

  "Andy's," she answers. "This is his room."

  "What do you mean?" My question comes out more aggressively than I would have liked because the idea of her sharing this room with another man is making my temper flare. I lay the jacket on the dresser, to pat it down.

  She sighs. "This place belongs to Ten. He's Lyv's husband. Old money, good family. They used to have roommates. There was Xander, Oliver, and Andy… I'll give you the short version. Xander ran away after knocking Lyv up. Oliver—he's a doctor, the one who delivered baby Oliver. He moved out at the end of his residency. The only one that's left is Andy. He's still in and out, depending on the state of his relationship with his girlfriend, and now Ten's moved out, too… I'm praying he'll come to his senses and come back before the baby arrives."

  I relax. It's innocent room sharing. They don’t really share the room; she uses it while he’s away. Still, I'll feel better when she'll be back home.

  "If Lyv ever gets tired of running the restaurant, she could come down south with us and run the clubhouse," I say. "She sounds like she's got the collective living thing down pat. In the meantime, I want you to come home as soon as you can."

  Lisa laughs, and she comes to stand behind me. "I'm not sure how you're being possessive and bossy makes me feel. Sometimes I like it because it shows me that you care, but sometimes it annoys me because it makes me feel as if you don't trust me."

  "I do—fuck, what's that?"

  In the shoulder padding of the jacket, I feel a thin square object. I slide my fingers in an opening that looks like it's been done with a razor blade or a sharp knife. I can't catch the object.

  Lisa pushes me aside to look and touches the contour of the object with the tip of her fingers. "It's a floppy disk." She trails her finger along the sleeve and finds the opening in the lining. She slides two fingers in it and pulls out a cracked disk.

  "Looks like it didn't like being dragged on pavement for a block, either," she says as I gently take it from her. She looks at the disk then at me. Her composure has changed completely. "How did you know?" she asks, her tone accusatory.

  "I didn't know. I just took an educated guess. There's nothing special about the jacket, so if someone went all that way to try to take it from you, it means there was something in it."

  She gives me a suspicious look while I open my wallet and slide the disk into it, making sure I don't damage the magnetic part.

  "Oh, come on, Lisa. Give me a break. Even Lyv realized there had to be something in the jacket to make someone want it, and she's not a detective."

  Lisa frowns and seems incredulous. "She did? How do you know?"

  "Because she asked me this morning if I was coming over to check it out, and I said yes."

  "Oh, I see." Looking very deflated, she takes a step to the door. "I guess now that you have what you came for, you'll be on your way."

  The flagrant disappointment in her voice makes me cringe.

  "Yeah, I've got to get going, but you know it's not like that," I tell her.

  She stops and turns around. I can read the hurt in her eyes.

  "Prove it to me," she says, and she holds out her hand. "Just leave the disk with me. I'll make sure it gets to the police. I'm certain they have the right equipment to retrieve whatever data was in there even if it was damaged."

  I shake my head. "Nope, not going to happen. I have a tech whiz who will do it, and if I come up with any information that can be useful to the police, I will give it to the only police officer I trust."

  "And who might that be?" she asks with a sarcastic tone.

  "My brother." I put as much conviction in my voice as I can. I want to convey to her how serious I am about this. "I trust him as much as I trusted your brother." She raises her eyebrows, and I realize she doesn't know who my brother is. Tony never allowed my half brother nor my half sister to visit his house. “Ernest Hatcher is my brother."

  "Everest is your brother? He's the other son of the head of the Iron Tornadoes? You're kidding me, right?" I shake my head.

  Lisa loses it and starts talking to herself out loud. "Everest was in the task force with my brother? It's like asking the fox to guard the henhouse!" She turns around and glares at me. "Then I guess you're right—something's really wrong with the organization of the police. I will never find out who killed my brother."

  "Why do you say that?"

  Lisa doesn't seem to hear my question. She rests her head against the door. "I can't believe I was so stupid. Oh, I'm such an idiot…"

  Before I have the time to take her in my arms and talk some sense into her, she opens the door and rushes into the main room.

  "Brian is leaving," she says to Lyv, who gets up from the sofa and asks, "Is it time to hit the road already?"

  "Yes, I have to catch up with the rest of my crew," I tell her. "Thank you very much for a delicious lunch, and I hope that one day, you'll come and visit us in Florida."

  Lyv's eyes cloud suddenly, and I can't figure out why, but she smiles and says, "It was lovely meeting you, Brian."

  Lisa walks me to the door, and when I bend over to kiss her, she turns her head away and says, "It's fine, Brian. You got what you came for, so there's no need to pretend anymore."

  I fight the urge to toss her over my shoulder, bring her back to her room, and show her how crazy I am about her. But I really don't have the time that I need to convince her that she should trust me. I'll wait for both of us to cool down before we can talk this out.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A knock on my open door makes me raise my eyes from the incomprehensible invoice from our liquor supplier. I look up, happy for the reprieve. Anything that can distract me from the pile of paper that spontaneously grew on my desk while I was on the road is a welcome relief.

  My favorite nerd is standing by the door with a smile on his face. He's the brains behind the Friendly Persuasion Agency. He knows his way around electronic circuits like I know my way around an engine, and if one piece of information can be found in a library or in some administrative document, he's the guy to find it.

  "Ice, you got a minute?" he asks.

  "Sure thing Whiz. Come on in."

  He steps in and delicately closes the door behind him. Watching Whiz move around unsettles me, giving me the impression that the film of my life just went in slow motion. He nonchalantly settles himself in one of the two armchairs on the other side of my desk and opens his messenger bag. He looks into it, and he's so slow that I wonder if he remembers what he's searching for.

  I restrain the urge to jump ove
r my desk and toss the contents of his bag on the flat surface to help him remember. But rushing our whiz is counterproductive. He has his own agenda and his own rhythm. If anyone makes him skip a step, he has to restart. Those of us who need his expertise have to slow down and adopt his pace if we want to work with him.

  There are only two activities during which Whiz acts like a regular guy: when he rides his bike and when he eats. All his other physical activities are carried out at a leisurely pace, even sex. Well, especially sex. He's objectively nothing to look at, but all the subs of The Styx love him. Talking about foreplay with Whiz brings tears to their eyes. They said deferred gratification takes on a totally new meaning with him, and I absolutely believe it.

  But I'm not into delayed anything right now. I dropped the disk at his house this morning, and I just can't wait to find out if he was able to read what was on it. If patience is a virtue, then I have to plead guilty of sin. I'm a very moderately virtuous man.

  Whiz finally pulls a transparent plastic storage bag from his bag. He opens it and takes out two colored floppy disks. He closes the bag, leaving the broken one that I had given to him inside.

  Unable to wait any longer, I ask, "Did you get what was on it?"

  "Some of the data was unretrievable."

  I roll my eyes at him. "But you were able to read some of it?"

  "Oh, yes, absolutely."

  I breathe in deeply and wonder if I should prompt him to continue or if he's going to do it spontaneously. I wait, giving him the benefit of the doubt while he meticulously closes his bag. He looks up at me, and I raise my eyebrows in a silent question.

  "All the available documents have been copied on those two disks," he says. "And I also took the liberty of keeping one copy on a hard disk in my home. Obviously, said disk encrypted."

  "Obviously," I repeat. My amused tone escapes his notice. Some days, I wonder if he's immune to sarcasm.

  "Most of the documents are in ClarisWorks. I printed them." He slowly dives into his bag again and comes back with a bunch of stapled sheets, but this time, he multitasks and talks at the same time. "It's a very nice integrated program for Macs. Anyway, there are a few spreadsheets. I studied them, and I have no doubt it totals some sort of income stemming from various contributors and then computes the distribution of such income. The contributors and beneficiaries are identified by initials, and you can see when payments were made and received. However, by itself, this data is useless since you don't know if this is about tricks turned, grams of coke, or church donations."

  Whiz stops, and his gaze gets lost in the distance. Maybe he does that because his mind works so much faster than those belonging to the rest of us, and he feels he needs to give us some time to catch up with his train of thought.

  "There is a database that is most interesting and that may help identify the beneficiaries of the payment. It allocates some sections of Florida to some of said beneficiaries. So, for instance, 'MDC' belongs to 'SC' while 'PBC' changed hands about two years ago. It went from 'SW' to 'ST.'"

  I immediately think that "SW" could be the initial of Steven Williams, the police captain who married Lisa and David's mother last year, but then I realize I'm jumping the gun because there are probably a dozen other police officers in the county with the same initials.

  "What is more interesting," Whiz says, "are the copies of the documents related to various businesses that belong to a corporation called the Unrepentant Southern White Wizards."

  "Have you ever heard of them before?"

  "Not before this morning, but now, I have found out more than I ever wanted to know about them," Whiz says. "It's the official front of a white supremacist group. If you want their corporate structure and the activities they are involved with, I should be able to gather the data for you within a few days."

  "Yeah, please do that."

  "Anything in particular I should be looking for?"

  "I'm not sure…"

  "Maybe if you tell me who the client is, it would help," he suggests.

  I think about it for a second and decide to tell him the truth. "I'm the client, and I would appreciate it if it you could keep this between us. This is about the murder of a friend of mine. He was a police officer, and he was investigating some local organized crime unit when he was killed."

  "That would be Lisa's brother," Whiz says, surprising me once more. Most of the time, he seems oblivious to what’s happening around him, but every so often, he says something that proves he's not the absent-minded professor we believe him to be. "I only saw her once, last year when you took her to the clubhouse. She's very lovely. A real sweet girl. You should bring her here someday."

  The way he smiles at me, I can't figure out if he's being facetious or not.

  Since I have no sense of humor when it comes to Lisa, I snap back at him, "I don't think so."

  He laughs. "It figures!" he says, revealing he was baiting me.

  Delicately unfolding his long frame from the chair, he tells me that there's a terrified-looking prospect waiting for me at the bar.

  That would be Earplugs. Tonight's the night I'm introducing him to Patricia.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I ride by my mother's house and see that Tony's car is gone. I park half a block away and return to her house on foot. I walk through the backyard and peek through the kitchen door; Mum's sitting at the table, nursing a cup of coffee, with a novel in hand. When I knock on the glass part of the door, she looks at me and smiles. It's a sad smile, but still, it's a smile.

  "Come on in, Brian," she says as she gets up and pours me a cup. "Did you have breakfast? I can cook up something for you."

  "No thanks, Mum." A wave of guilt washes over me as she struggles to keep her smile. Feeding her loved ones is her favorite way to show her affection. Turning down breakfast after we just started talking again is a major mistake on my part.

  "Can I get a rain check? I worked all night, and I just dropped by to give you a hug on my way to bed," I explain.

  She nods. The ghost of David hovers in the kitchen. She did say she believed me when I swore to her that the Iron Tornadoes had nothing to do with his death and that he was not investigating us, but I can still feel the shadow of a doubt lingering. Tony probably keeps it alive.

  "What did you do last night?" she asks, breaking the silence.

  "Caught up on the paperwork at The Styx and supervised the evening. It was a quiet one."

  "That's good, I guess." She twirls her spoon in her coffee.

  I gave my mother a watered-down idea of what The Styx is, presenting the sex club as an alternative place to do things that you can't do in your own home for lack of space or privacy. She was puzzled at first, but she got it when I told her about this member who was very vocal during sex and stopped enjoying it when she had to remain silent for fear of waking her kids.

  "It makes sense to go to a place where there's a soundproof room that's a club instead of a cheap motel," she admitted then.

  I also explained that the club offers some equipment that some members don't have the space for in their own homes. I even made her laugh when I told her about the Tantra chair a friend of mine had purchased and how, after their sons had adopted the very curvaceous chair as their miniature car race track, he and his wife could not make love on it anymore without giggling like idiots.

  Talking about sexual activities with my mother was weird, but somehow, I find it healthier than lying to her about what I do.

  "How are the newlyweds?" I ask, trying to find a subject that will be easier on her.

  "They're good," she says. "I would never say this to Tony, but I think she's a lot happier with Steven than she was with her first husband."

  I nod. David and Lisa’s father was Tony’s twin brother. He died a long time ago, and I don’t remember him that well.

  "Of course, now they need to adapt to Lisa moving back in, but I understand it's temporary, only until she passes the bar."

  "When is Lisa arriving?" I
ask.

  "She's been here for a few days," my mother says, and instantly, I'm mad. Mad that she's been back and that I haven't seen her. Given where we were when I last rode away from her, I'm not surprised she didn't come to the clubhouse to let me know she was back.

  "I think she looks terrible," my mother adds.

  "How so?" I avoid her gaze to hide my feelings.

  "Sad, broken. It's like something inside her has been shattered again, but she keeps going. She's registered for this bar preparation intensive seminar. Good thing it’s held really close, in the conference center of the Central Hotel. Steven drops her off every morning, and she walks back home. Betty and I offered to drive her back, but she says she needs the fresh air and the exercise."

  Good, now I know how I'm going to manage to get some alone time with her.

  "Now you, young man, look like you badly need to get some sleep."

  "You're right, mom. It's time I head back home."

  The very second I call the clubhouse my home, my mother cringes. As far as she's concerned, this house should still be my home. But that's not what her husband thinks anymore. Tony doesn't want me around since I stopped blindly doing what he wanted me to do.

  Tony gave me one, and only one, pass. I used it the day David and I ran away to enlist. So when I decided not to become a cop and went to work with the Iron Tornadoes, well with Cracker, I had no passes left. As far as Tony's concerned, joining the club was nothing more than an act of betrayal. He doesn't get that the motorcycle club is a form of brotherhood that works for me and that Everest and Juliya are my blood and my family.

  I hug my mother and return to my bike. Instead of getting back to the clubhouse right away as I initially planned, I ride to the Central Hotel and get the schedule of Lisa's classes. It's easy enough to remember: nine to five every single day of the week. I have enough time to go home and grab a few hours of sleep then catch her as she gets out.