Evan Arden 03 Otherwise Unharmed (25 page)

“You’re packing because you are going to spend a few days away from here,” I said.

“Cryptic much?”

I went to the balcony and looked down below for anyone unusual hanging about.  The only person I saw below was the bitchy old woman with the obviously pregnant dog out in the green space.  It was probably about time for the pups to be born, and I wondered briefly how much cash it was going to cost me.

I pulled the curtains across the glass opening.

“You get your shit together,” I called over my shoulder.  “I’m leaving for about
ninety minutes.  Don’t leave the apartment—not even to take Odin out.  Don’t hang out around the windows.  Don’t open the curtains.  And don’t open the fucking door.  Got it?”

Our eyes met, and I could see how close she was to losing it.  I moved up to her quickly, holstered my Beretta, and pulled her against me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered against her hair.  “I just need to keep you safe, okay?  Right now, it’s not safe here.  I was being followed on the way back here.  I took care of him, but there may be others I missed.  I need to get you out of here and to someplace where I know you’re okay.”

She cringed at my words and looked away from me. 
I wanted to apologize for a couple other things as well, like not warning her there was a contract out for her death and maybe for kissing another woman while she fondled my cock, but I didn’t.  I couldn’t imagine that it would help the situation at all and had a very real possibility of making it worse.

I kissed Lia softly on the forehead, then tilted her head up and placed another kiss on her lips.  She sighed and leaned against me for a moment before she pushed back with her hands on my chest.

“I don’t like this,” she said.  She sounded defeated, and I didn’t like it.

“I know, baby.  But I’m close, or at least a lot closer.  I have some good information, and if it pans out, we could be out of here in a couple of weeks
—a month, tops.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to my apartment,” I told her.  “I need to get a few things.”

“Should I go with you?”

I brought my hand up to her cheek.

“I’d rather keep you close, but the chances of my apartment being watched are about one hundred percent.  I don’t want you seen.”

“Why not?”

I let out an exasperated breath.

“Please, I can’t explain now.  Just listen, okay?”

She pursed her lips but nodded her head.  I kissed her once more before checking my Beretta and heading back out the door.

“Remember—don’t answer the door.  Not for fucking anybody, all right?”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

I didn’t want to waste time, so I took a slightly shorter route back to my apartment.  I went up north first, so I would at least be coming in from another direction but still arrived in good time.  I approached the door to the apartment quietly, listened a moment, and then went inside.

Nothing looked out of place, and maybe my paranoia was kicking in again and maybe it wasn’t, but I did have the distinct feeling someone had been there.  There wasn’t anyone there now, though, so I starting to collect what I had come for.

Mainly money.

I had a lot of it stashed away, and though the cops had confiscated about eighty grand in cash lying in the back of my closet, there was still plenty hidden much more discreetly.  I had that much in the open just for such an occurrence.  If they had found only a few hundred dollars, they would have looked a lot harder to find the rest.  They hadn’t even found the bit I had taped to the underside of the dresser, so it was likely they hadn’t found any of my other stashes.

There was a
lot
more.

In the kitchen underneath the refrigerator’s drip pan was ten grand.  There was twenty more sealed in
plastic inside the toilet bowl and fifty thousand inside the air ducts.  I collected cash from a few other sites and ended up with a hundred and ten when I was done.

More than enough to get us going quickly if that was what we needed to do.

Inside my front closet, I selected one of my duffel bags from the never-ending supply and started to load it with the cash.  I’d already been gone an hour, and I wanted to be back as soon as possible.  I’d left Lia a little freaked out and wanted to be there with her to keep her calm.  I still wasn’t sure if I should tell her about the price on her head or not.  Maybe she should know—the situation was just too unfamiliar for me, and I didn’t know what I should do.  Every time I thought about telling her, I’d play it over in my mind.  Her reaction was never a good one.

“You
buggin’ out?”

My gun was in my hand and pointed at the front door less than a second later.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” I screamed at Jonathan Ferris.  “Are you trying to get a fucking bullet in the head?”

“Well, I don’t have your fucking phone number anymore, asshole,” he replied.  He
pulled out a cigarette, shoved it into his mouth unlit, and leaned against the doorjamb.  “How exactly was I supposed ta warn ya I was comin’?”

“Not the fucking point.”  I wasn’t sure what the point was exactly, but I knew that wasn’t it.  “I’m a little on edge here, and doing shit like that is going to get you killed.”

“I’m still standin’.”

“This time.”
  I glared at him for a moment before I sat back and leaned against the wall.  I let out a long breath and then holstered my gun.

“You seem a little more trigger-happy than usual,” Jonathan said.  “What’s up with that?”

I ignored the question, opting to pose one of my own instead.

“So, what’s the deal?” I asked.  “Do you just hang around my apartment and wait for me to show up, or did you become psychic when I wasn’t looking?”

Jonathan laughed.  He took a few steps across the room and pulled out the end table next to the couch.  He reached down the leg and pointed out a small electronic device secured there.

“Motion detector,” he said simply.
  He held up his smartphone to show me a blinking app with text that read “EVAN’S HOME” across the screen.  “Pretty straightforward, really.”

I rolled my eyes
but was mostly annoyed with myself.  I should have realized he’d have lots of ways of knowing where I was and what I was doing.  I would have to be careful about that.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Well, brother,” Jonathan said, “I just wanted to get a look at you and see if I could figure out just what the fuck you think yer doin’.”

“Nothing,” I grumbled.  “I’m not doing anything.”

“Bullshit.”  He lit his cigarette though I doubted he’d forgotten how much I hated people smoking in my apartment.  He did at least eye me with a bit of a grin and then motion to the balcony.

I followed him out and leaned against the rails.
  He handed me a pack of Marlboros and his lighter, and we both proceeded to smoke the cigarettes most of the way down before Jonathan finally spoke.

“
Lenny’s hit wasn’t unexpected,” he said, “but there were some, shall we say, unexpected themes around it that got me thinking.”

“Thinking about what?” I asked.  I didn’t try to play stupid
—like I didn’t know the dude was dead.  It wouldn’t have helped, and I was pretty sure I knew where this conversation was going.

“Military weapon used, near the river and in the daylight, which is pretty bold.  The fixer didn’t bother to wait until he was alone, either, which means a certain level of confidence,
ya know?”

I shrugged and tossed the butt of my cigarette on the ground before I lit another one.

“And sometimes…well, sometimes when you’ve been around someone for a long time, you just recognize their work, ya know what I’m sayin’?”

My eyes moved to his, and I knew he wasn’t just making random statements
, hoping I was going to give something away.  He knew I wouldn’t be so careless as to let my poker face down, and I knew he wouldn’t be making such proclamations without being a hundred percent sure.

I was going to have to kill him.

My stomach tightened at the thought.  If I was ever going to call anyone in my life a friend, it would be Jonathan.  He was one of the few who never pressed me to tell him about the shit I went through but somehow managed to get me to talk about more of it than I had with most people—even my shrink.  It never felt like prying with him, and he always changed the subject before it got to be too intense for me.

“He already
knows, brotha.  I didn’t tell him shit, even when I suspected it, but he still knows.  Too many hits that look like you in the area, and you don’t return his calls.”

“Haven’t received any.”

“You’re workin’ for the competition.  You hate Greco, so what the fuck?”

I didn’t reply.  He had to have figured I wasn’t going to answer something so blunt.

“You ain’t gonna talk, and that’s fine,” he said.  “I don’t know what happened to you in the slammer, and you probably aren’t gonna tell me, but I just figured you ought to know he’ll be gunnin’ for you now.  I can’t stop that shit.”

“I don’t expect you to do me any favors,” I informed him.

“Well, I fuckin’ did anyway,” he replied.

I looked up
at him as he stepped closer to me.

“I wanted to give
ya somethin’.”  Jonathan pulled out a folded up piece of paper and handed it over to me.  “I know it’s been a while, and I don’t know where we stand now, but I said I’d find out what I could, so I did.”

Tentatively, I reached out and took it from him.  As I unfolded it, the let
terhead was instantly familiar—a stylized crucifix within a circle of woven wheat.  There was also a State of Ohio seal on the bottom of the paper, and across the top were the words “Certificate of Adoption” followed by my name.

There were two names on the paper
with signatures scrawled below them.  The signatures were just above the words
mother
and
father
.  I could feel my pulse in my wrists as I looked over the document confirming my adoption from Alexander Janez and Anita Arden to Sister Margaret Arden.

My maternal grandmother.

I knew who Sister Margaret was—she had often taken care of me and the other children at the orphanage.  She died when I was in seventh grade—around the same time Mother Superior started spending more time with me.

“I confirmed that they’re both deceased now,”
Jonathan said.  “So is the nun who adopted you, but there’s addresses on the back that’ll tell you where they’re buried.  You know, in case you wanted to go there or somethin’.”

I couldn’t speak as I stared at the paper and tried to make sense out of it beyond the obvious.  Were they too young to take care of me?  Were they pressured into giving me up by her mother?  Why raise me as an orphan instead of letting me know who my grandmother was?

Jonathan opened the sliding glass door, and I followed him dumbly into the apartment and sat on the couch.  My heart continued to pound.  I could only stare at the paper and try to make some kind of sense out of it.  Questions I had considered far beyond answering were popping into my head though I hadn’t thought about it all in years.  I had decided I didn’t care—whoever my parents were and why they decided to ditch me would always remain a mystery.  Now that I had a smidge of information, I wanted more.

“Well,” Jonathan said quietly, “I just wanted to give
ya that.  I’ll leave ya be now.”

I found my voice.

“Hey, Jon?”

“Yeah,
brotha?”

“I have something for you.”  I went back into the bedroom to retrieve the “Save Ferris” T-shirt I had bought for him some time ago, still in its plastic bag.  I handed it over to him, and he opened it up.

At first he looked a little confused, and then his eyes darted over to me.

“It
ain’t my birthday,” he remarked.

“I missed your birthday.”

“That was six months ago.”

“I bought it in December.”

“Why were you going to kill me in December?”

Jonathan always was a lot more perceptive than he appeared, and I needed to remember that.  I smiled a half smile at him and shrugged.

“I was just checking on something.  You were clean, though.”

“Uh huh,” Jonathan mumbled skeptically.

“I was considering it a few minutes ago, too.”  I smiled a bit more.

Jonathan laughed.

“I guess I’m definitely thankful for this—in more ways than one.  Thanks, brotha.”

We shook hands, and he started for the door.

“Oh yeah,” Jonathan said as he snapped his fingers.  “I got ya something else, too, but I didn’t bring it with me.  Here ya go.”

He fished around in his pocket, came up with a couple lighters, shoved them into the other pocket, and then pulled out a key.  He tossed it to me with a flick of his wrist and walked out the door.