Authors: Bryan Smith
The door to the bathroom opened and Lana emerged from the steamy room wrapped in a white towel. Her hair was wet and her skin looked fresh and clean. “You can trust Big Ted. Guaranteed.”
She looked nothing less than absolutely scrumptious. There was something extra appealing about a woman fresh out of the bath. Casey was grateful for her opening conversational salvo. It meant he could look at her and pretend to be feeling something other than total lust. “I’m sorry, but all I’ve got is your word for that. I don’t know this Ted guy from a hole in the wall. For all I know, he’s setting us up somehow.”
All three women gave him a genuinely baffled look.
Lana narrowed her eyes at him. “Setting us up for what?”
“Well…” Casey raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. He didn’t actually have an answer for this. “I don’t know. It could be anything.”
Lana shot a dubious glance at Echo before shaking her head and looking Casey in the eye again. “Do you know how paranoid that sounds?”
Casey fought the urge to fidget. They were all still looking at him like he had lost his mind. “Maybe it
is
a little paranoid, but can you blame me? There’s a psychopathic cult leader out there pissed off enough to send a squad of mercenaries to kill us. Our supposed savior is late to the fucking rendezvous point. And about that, why would a big deal guy like this meet us personally? Why not send a representative? You’d think he’d want to keep out of it in case everything goes to hell.”
Lana went to a nightstand and took a cell phone out of her purse. She brought it over to Casey, turning it to show him the screen.
The display read:
Flight delayed. Hold tight. C ya soon, darlin’.
Lana arched an eyebrow. “There. That make you feel any better?”
Casey sighed. “Whatever. It still doesn’t explain why our situation merits a face-to-face meeting with this tycoon, or crime kingpin, or whatever the hell he is.”
Lana tugged at the fold of the towel above her chest and swept it away from her body. There was a moment of near total silence, during which the only sounds in the room were the moans from the all-girl porn movie.
Then Echo laughed. “I think that answers your question.”
Casey cleared his throat a little too loudly. “Uh…yeah…I guess it does.”
Lana smirked as she wrapped the towel around her again. “Teddy’s been sweet on me ever since I killed my boyfriend.”
Casey nodded. “I see.”
The brief glimpse of Lana’s gloriously nude form had taken the wind out of his argument, leaving him befuddled and mush-brained. Though Echo was his girl and he knew he should banish any further lustful thoughts lest they take root and turn dangerous, he couldn’t help comparing their bodies. Echo had the more classically beautiful face and a set of killer curves. Lana also had banging curves, but there were subtle differences—the size and shape of her breasts, the flatness of her belly and the more pronounced swell of her hips—that made her seem even more attractive fully revealed. The image wasn’t one he’d be getting out of his head any time soon.
Dez laughed. “He totally wants to fuck you now. Look at his face. He looks sort of like a caveman.”
She made what Casey took to be caveman noises.
He realized his mouth was hanging open. He closed it.
Lana smiled. “That true, Casey? You want to fuck me?”
Echo made a disgusted noise. “Of course he does. I must be crazy giving him a second chance.”
Casey gave her the most solemn look he could summon. “The only girl I want to fuck is you.”
Echo rolled her eyes. “Bullshit.” She smiled. “But it’s okay. I know you’re trying.”
Dez snorted. “Ah, ain’t they sweet?” She pointed an index finger at her open mouth. “Gag me.”
A strident knock at the door made everyone jump. This was followed by the bellow of a boisterous male voice from the hallway.
“Y’all open up this door before I kick it down!
”
Casey tensed and edged toward the dresser to his right, eyeing the Glock that lay atop it.
But then Lana squealed in delight and made a beeline for the door.
“Teddy Bear!
”
She opened the door and leapt into the arms of a tall man in a suit, nearly dislodging the cowboy hat from his head. “Big” Ted Wilkinson grinned around the stogie lodged in a corner of his mouth and wrapped his arms around her, carrying her into the room and swinging her around like a kid, eliciting more delighted squeals.
An attractive woman and a man in a dark suit followed them into the room. The man in the dark suit closed the door and stood perfectly erect in front of it, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses and his hands folded at his waist. The telltale bulge of a shoulder holster indicated the man was Ted’s personal bodyguard.
Casey didn’t care about him.
The woman, however, was another matter.
She had a graceful and elegant bearing, her attire, jewelry and perfect hair communicating a level of class and refinement typically only seen at the upper levels of society. This was the kind of woman you would see on the arm of a senator at a White House gala. Her presence in the company of a guy like Ted Wilkinson—who Casey could already see was the kind of puffed-up redneck big shot with delusions of grandeur he despised—seemed incongruous.
Casey fought an urge to run screaming from the room.
He was officially in
Twilight Zone
territory here.
This was Carolyn. The Toronto businesswoman he’d had sex with several months ago in this very room. Her hair was different. A little less modern style than he remembered, more like the hair of a Southern senator’s wife, frosted and shaped to eerie perfection.
Casey realized everyone in the room had fallen silent. He looked around at their faces. They were all staring at him. This shit was becoming a trend, people looking at him like he was a fucking ape-man let loose in the world of humans.
He scowled. “What? Why is everyone looking at me like that?”
Ted took the stogie out of his mouth. “Son, it might help if you’d stop giving my baby sister the stink eye.”
“What?”
Sister!? Holy Jesus.
Ted grinned and draped an arm around Carolyn’s shoulders. “I know Cora’s cute as a button, but I’m sure you’re not her type. No offense.”
Casey said, “Um…none taken.”
Cora?
Cora gave him a look that betrayed not even the slightest hint of recognition. “You’ll have to pardon Ted. He can be uncouth.”
Her accent almost sent Casey back into stupefied dumbass mode. It was all Southern honey and twang. There hadn’t been the slightest hint of that the last time he’d seen her. It seemed clear now her previous “Toronto businesswoman” persona had been nothing more than a performance.
This was all just too fucking weird.
The only obvious solution—at least for now—was to pretend it wasn’t happening at all. She wasn’t the only one here who could play make believe.
Ted extracted a cigar from an inner pocket of his blazer, proffering it to Casey with a raised eyebrow. “No hard feelings, son. Stogie?”
“I think this place has a no-smoking policy.”
Ted chuckled and clapped Casey on the shoulder. “That horseshit only applies to the peons. This is my room, son. I do what I damn well please in it.”
“Your room?”
Ted lit his cigar with a Zippo, then passed the lighter to Casey. “Do a lot of business in your city. I have this room on permanent reserve.”
Casey nodded in a noncommittal way as he lit up. That explained at least a little of the weirdness. “So no one else can stay in it? Like, ever?”
“Well, Cora comes up here now and then. She’s a big fan of the Grand Ole Opry, so she never misses a chance to tag along any time I come to your fair city.”
Ted glanced at the television, taking note of the pornographic movie playing on its screen for the first time. Dez had hit the mute button the moment Lana went running to the door. “Enjoying some quality cinematic entertainment, I see.”
Casey nodded at Dez . “Her doing.”
Ted smirked. “No surprise at all.” He shot Dez a wink and she blew a kiss back. “Now then. Down to business. I did a bit of looking into this John Wayne de Rais character after Lana gave me the lowdown on what went down yesterday. Son, you’re gonna have a hard time swallowing this bullshit because it’s a doozy, but turns out I have a history with the son of a bitch. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been much of a believer in coincidence, especially ones this big.”
Casey tried hard to keep his gaze from going to Cora. “Yeah. That’s a…pretty big coincidence.”
Ted guffawed. “You have a hell of a knack for understatement. This is the kind of shit that was meant to be. There’s no other explanation for it. This sorry sack of shit ripped me off for a good chunk of change back when I was just getting started and promptly disappeared, never to be seen again. I’ve done well for myself since then, but I ain’t ever forgotten what that old boy did to me. And that, my friend, is why I am here in the flesh to see to this matter in a hands-on way. You can appreciate that, I’m sure.”
Casey nodded. “Yeah, I guess I can.”
“Of course you appreciate it. This is personal for both of us, after all, albeit for very different reasons.” Ted exhaled smoke and gave Casey a flinty-eyed look that was equal measures determination and good old-fashioned Southern cussedness. “So you ready to hear what I’ve got in mind for Mr. So-Called de Rais?”
Casey was starting to warm to Big Ted. “Fuck yeah, I do.”
“The way I understand it, de Rais has a significant amount of security in place at his compound, all of it deployed in a way that makes getting in or out by land nigh impossible.” He grinned. “Which is why we’re going in by helicopter.”
Casey had been in the process of bringing the cigar to his mouth again. His hand froze just short of his mouth. “Helicopter? We can do that?”
Ted laughed. “Of course we can! Not only are we going in by helicopter, we’re going in with enough ordnance to blast this fool off the planet. Here’s how I see it going down. We hit those sons of bitches hard and fast, knock their teeth out before they even know what’s happening. We whack de Rais and anyone else dumb enough to get in our way, grab your sister and fly our happy asses back out of there, returning in time for everyone to change and have a big steak dinner on me at Jimmy Kelly’s Steakhouse later tonight.”
Casey frowned. “We’re doing this tonight?”
Ted showed him another of his good ol’ boy grins. “Got any other plans for the evening?”
Casey shook his head. “No. Just not what I expected. I’m all for it. The sooner the better.”
Ted’s grin got even bigger. “Good man, good man.” He shifted his attention to the girls. “Anyone else got any objections to commencing Operation Blow the Shit Out of the Weirdoes tonight?”
There were no objections.
Ted dug a plastic baggie full of powder out of a hip pocket. “How about this? Any objections to—”
The girls sprang into action, nearly bowling Ted over in their haste to get to the cocaine. Dez got to it first, earning angry snarls from her friends. But the anger was instantly forgotten as she dumped the coke out on the table by the window and started chopping lines for all of them.
Loud snorting sounds filled the room.
Big Ted winked at Casey. “Good times, good times.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Cleansing
The guy ahead of him in line at the ATM was beginning to piss off Jeremy Stewart. He was taking forever to complete his transaction or check his balance or whatever it was the greasy asshole was doing. Navigating the onscreen menus of the typical ATM was so intuitive a monkey could do it. Hell, a monkey would probably have an easier time of it than this guy. Every ATM he’d ever used offered the same limited range of functions. The average person never took more than a couple minutes to do their business, but this guy had been poking at the machine’s buttons for at least five minutes.
Jeremy suspected the guy was some mentally ill homeless person who didn’t actually have an account at this bank. Or any bank, for that matter. He was either high or permanently addled from all the drugs over the course of a long career in substance abuse. It seemed likely he was confused or hallucinating. His unwashed, stringy hair and the ragged condition of his clothes contributed greatly to this impression.
ATM etiquette dictated that the person next in line should maintain a distance of several feet from the person currently using it. This was so the person accessing their account could feel secure about doing so in public. Anyone who got too close immediately labeled themselves as suspicious, thus prompting the ATM user to more conscientiously block the view of the keypad to prevent PIN number theft.
Under normal circumstances, Jeremy scrupulously observed this unwritten but universal rule. He was a polite guy in general and was always careful not to step on anyone else’s toes unnecessarily. He also had no appetite for instigating trouble of any sort. But even he had a limit to his patience. Though he was considerate and courteous when called for, he was not a pushover.
“Hey,” he called out after clearing his throat. “You up there. You mind speeding it along?” He tapped the glass face of the expensive watch strapped to his left wrist. “There are other people in line, you know.”