I sat up after a few more minutes and ran through the instructions for tomorrow. They were sending a car. I’d go to the airport. The driver would direct me to the proper place and then...
“Goodbye, Kentucky.”
***
“How’d you do it, Cantrell?”
I froze mid-stride and turned my head.
I should have known I couldn’t escape without seeing him one more time. Dale Mitchell had parked his car in the rutted alley that served as a parking lot for the apartment building I used to call home.
The driver Ryan had sent waited by the SUV, and when I shot him a look, he started to come my way. I held up a hand and shook my head. He stopped, hands crossed in front of him. But he didn’t back off and he didn’t make any attempt to look like he wasn’t watching us both very carefully. I briefly wondered if Ryan had suspected this would happen.
I turned back to Dale, my face blank. “Detective.”
“I just can’t figure it out, Bobby. How in the hell do you do it? You got some of the finest cops I know fooled into thinking you’re not a waste of space. You had your warden fooled into supporting your release. And now, you wrapped that Hollywood chick right around your finger. Look at you. You landed yourself in quite the bed of roses, didn’t you?” A smirk crossed his face. “You must be really good at something she likes. I wonder what it might be.”
I wanted to hit him so hard it’d knock that smirk into next year and his ass into the next century.
Instead, I just shrugged. I couldn’t, however, resist a smart-ass comment. “Maybe she just likes my pretty face.”
“She likes something. There’s no denying that.” He came closer and nodded at the suitcase in my hand. “What’s in there, Bobby?”
“Clothes.”
“Drop it. I want to see.”
The driver again started toward me again. Shooting him a dark look, I said, “I got this. Stay out of it or I’ll call Ryan right now and tell him he can shove the job up his slick lawyer ass.”
When the man lifted his hands and backed away, I knew I’d guessed right. That wasn’t just some rent-a-driver from a car service. He was too watchful; too...on. If this wasn’t one of the crew, then I’d eat the damn suitcase in my hand. Looking back at Dale, I set the suitcase on the ground. I didn’t kneel down, though. Like a well-trained ex-con, I waited for further instruction.
A bit of a smug smile curled Dale’s lips, and his eyes gleamed with the light of what he saw as a victory. “Open it.”
Now, crouching down, I did just that, and then stood up, folding my arms over my chest.
“Turn around.”
I resisted the urge to say something ugly, but when I started to turn, I saw something that made me stop half-way. The driver hadn’t come any closer, but he had his phone out. I stared at him. “What are you doing?”
Dale looked up, slowly straightening from the semi-kneeling position he’d been dropping into as he caught sight of what the driver was doing.
“What’re you doing?” he asked, annoyance evident in his voice.
“Just trying to make sure there’s an objective record of what’s going on here, Detective. It’s for your benefit as much as it is for Mr. Cantrell’s.” He gave a slow, easy smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“There’s nothing going on here. Why don’t you put the phone away?” Dale’s voice was polite, but I could hear the edge underneath.
“If there’s nothing going on, then there’s no reason why I can’t record these events, is there?” the driver responded smoothly, the phone in his hand not wavering. “As I’m sure you are aware, Detective, it’s perfectly legal to record activities by the police in the state of Kentucky, providing I’m not interfering with your ability to carry out your job.”
Then he looked down, frowned a bit, and stepped so that he was standing by the trunk of the slick, shining Escalade that held my other suitcase and my duffel bag.
“Is this a reasonable enough distance, Detective?” The driver’s tone was polite, but cool.
“What’s your name?” Dale demanded.
“When you’re finished there, I’ll be happy to give you the name and number of my attorney as well as my card. I’ll be emailing him the file as soon as this is over.”
Five long seconds dragged out, and then Dale turned back to me. He glared at me as though imagining all the ways he’d like to tear me apart. I suspected blood, guts and dull, rusty objects were involved. Finally, he snapped, “Didn’t I tell you to turn your miserable ass around, Cantrell?”
Slowly, I did. I was facing the phone now, but I didn’t look at it. My face was burning with humiliation. As glad as I was to have things being recorded so Dale couldn’t do something like make me miss my plane, I was thoroughly disgusted with myself for needing it.
I held still as he dug through my clothes, and then I heard him moving around me and braced myself. The flat, hard glare he fired at me as he stepped in front of me yielded no response on my part.
“Get that shit up.” He practically spit the words at me. “Get out of this state. If you ever come back...”
He didn’t finish the sentence, just let it trail off. After one more hard glare, he turned around and strode off. I watched until he got back into his car, not trusting that this was over. If this was the last I ever saw of him, it was still too much.
Shoes scraped against busted concrete and I turned my head, watched as the driver slash whatever the hell he was moved back onto the pitted sidewalk.
“Is it safe to move yet?” he asked, a black eyebrow winging up as he tugged his sunglasses off and studied me with eyes the color of steel.
“You’re one of Ryan’s.” I made it a statement, not a question.
He ran his tongue over his teeth and then shrugged. “More or less. Jake’s the one in charge, but yeah, Ryan brought me in.” He stowed the phone back in his pocket. “So. Robert Cantrell.”
“Name’s Bobby,” I said, correcting him. “You?”
“Thomas Sinclair, but everybody calls me Ace.”
“And why’s that?”
The only response I got was a slight smile. Then he nodded at the suitcase. “You want to straighten that up or just deal with it later?”
I glanced down at the mess Dale had made of my suitcase, all the neatly folded clothes now twisted and tangled. I crouched down and just grabbed everything, throwing it back in. I was just glad it hadn’t been my bag with my books and my mom’s picture. I could only imagine the joy Dale would’ve taken in trashing that stuff.
Ace joined me. “That’s one pissed off cop, Bobby.”
“Yeah.” I had to force the zipper on the suitcase this time and Ace grabbed it, applying pressure with hands the size of dinner plates. The man was massive.
“He hate everybody or just you?”
I thought about it, then shrugged. “He hates me, probably dislikes anybody who doesn’t hate me. Other than that, I can’t say.”
“Why does he hate you?”
I looked up into Ace’s gray eyes. If Ryan hadn’t already told them, they’d figure it out sooner or later. Might as well get it over with. “I killed his brother.”
Ace regarded me with a cool gaze and then nodded once. “That’d do it.”
I stared at him as he picked up my suitcase and put it with the rest of my luggage. How in the world had I found these people who didn’t react normally when I told them who I was or what I’d done?
If life hadn’t taught me better already, I might’ve actually let myself feel hopeful about the future. All I let myself have though was the fact that I actually had a future that, at least for a while, didn’t involve me starving or freezing my ass off. That was enough.
Chapter 10
One month had made one hell of a difference in my life.
One month ago, I’d been jobless and freezing my ass off while I walked around in my home state of Kentucky. Now, I was standing outside in the warm, soft air of a California spring day, my head tipped back to take in the sun as my mind tried to process everything at once.
Carly lived in a house a little north of Los Angeles. Actually, the word
house
didn’t quite fit the building I was currently staring up at.
Mansion
was more accurate...maybe. It was more a modern-day version of a castle, fit for a modern-day version of a princess.
And here I was, expected to be one of her knights.
I heard somebody moving up behind me on the cobbled stone path, and I turned my head. Jake, clad in a polo and khaki shorts, came to a stop behind me. It was edging up on late afternoon, and while his clothes spoke of a man who looked ready to settle down and relax for the rest of the day, it was pretty clear that relaxation wasn’t something that was going to come to him any time soon. Fine lines of pain and strain stretched out from his eyes, and even though it had been less than a month since I’d last seen him, I could see he’d already lost weight.
“Am I going to sound rude if I tell you that you look like shit?” I asked, turning my head back to the small lake.
It was the focal point of what I guessed Carly considered her backyard. It was more like a small park, complete with several gardens, a running path, a swimming pool and an outdoor kitchen. I wondered if the lake was stocked. I hadn’t gone fishing in years.
“You might sound rude, but at least you’re honest.” His laugh was quick and easy. “I’ve got plenty of people telling me how good I look, how strong. They keep telling me I’m going to beat this.” His smile was fond, but sad. “Bunch of liars.”
“Truth is often very ugly.” I thought of my mother’s end. She’d asked me to be honest with her, even at the end.
“It makes them feel better to think I might get better, that I might pull through.” He paused. His voice was rougher when he spoke again. “Especially Carly.”
Neither of us spoke after that, not for several minutes. He was an easy guy to be quiet around, I thought. Easy and calming, kind of like standing there and staring out over the lake. I bet that was part of why he and Carly clicked so well. She needed that calming influence in her life, that steadying presence.
Now she was going to lose him.
“So what’s next?” I asked after a while. I bent down and grabbed a handful of the small, flat stones lining the edge of the path. Hurling one into the water, I counted three skips before it finally sank. “You got me out here. Now what?”
Jake glanced at the stones in my hand and then held out his own, palm up. I dropped a rock into it. He threw it into the water. Five skips.
“Not bad,” I said, looking over at him.
“I grew up in Montana. Dad had a ranch. Spent a lot of time skipping stones on our pond.” He accepted another stone as he considered my question. “What’s next is, we start getting you settled in and then up to speed. There’s a lot more to this job than what you did in Kentucky. You’ll be getting a hardcore crash course over the next couple weeks.” Then he grinned over at me. “Not to mention some other things we need to address.”
“Like what?”
He just shook his head. “Enjoy the night, Bobby. We’ll deal with everything else tomorrow.”
That smirk of his should’ve warned me.
***
My internal clock was all out of whack, and while the clock on my nightstand might’ve said seven, my head and body thought it was eleven, so the good news was that I was already up.
The bad news was that I hadn’t slept worth shit.
Not surprising. Even before I’d gone to prison, I hadn’t slept well, and being there hadn’t done me any good. Plus there was the fact that this wasn’t anything like any other place I’d slept before. The soft bed back at the Seelbach didn’t have anything on this place.
And the bed wasn’t the only thing about this place that wasn’t usual for me. I had my own little cottage, set back on the far side of the lake, a few hundred yards from Carly’s place. They’d told me that five of the six-member team lived on the estate. The sixth member was married, so he worked two days on, two days off. He was the one who’d been away for his daughter’s birth when Carly had been in Louisville, and he didn’t take night shifts. I wouldn’t be taking them yet either. Once I was trained, I’d join in the rotation and take my turn bunking in the house at night.
But first...training and other
prep
.
The other prep?
I stared at the needle and shoved past the doctor. “No fucking way.”
“You’re getting a physical.” Ryan said as he and Ace blocked the door.
If I wasn’t mistaken, Ace looked like he was holding back a laugh. I glared at him.
“Fine. He can check my blood pressure. I’ll piss in a cup, the whole nine yards. I don’t need that fucking needle jabbed into my arm.” There was a reason I didn’t have any tattoos.
Ace looked over at Ryan. “I thought ex-cons were tougher than this.”
“Kiss my ass,” I suggested and tried to shove through them.
I was shoved back. Not too roughly, but not exactly gently either.
“Sit down,” Ryan said. Amusement lurked in his eyes, but he was nice enough not to outright laugh in my face. “Come on, it won’t take long.”
I was about ready to tell him to move, or I’d shove his teeth down his throat when I heard a woman’s voice. A voice I would’ve known anywhere.