Authors: Cara Ellison
Carlos tossed the portrait back on the table, knocking over a collection of glass figurines. Seth flinched as two of them crashed to the hardwood floor and shattered.
It was fuckers like this Carlos couldn’t understand. He had a nice little place here, nice honey. And then he goes and screws over Carlos. That wasn’t smart.
He grabbed Seth by the collar and pulled him into the living room. Good furniture – those fancy rugs and silk furniture you couldn’t eat on or fuck on. This kind of wealth – modest as it was, but completely legitimate – puzzled Carlos. It seemed crazy if you could already afford stuff like this to venture into trafficking. Some people were just adrenaline junkies, he supposed.
Carlos shoved Seth to the sofa and held the gun slack in his hand, just reminding him that they were equals here.
Seth sat on the edge of the sofa, his hands by his sides like he was going to get up and run. Fat chance of that. Still, he was a cop and he was armed, so Carlos lifted the gun to Seth’s head, enjoying the look of abject terror in the fat fuck’s face.
Carlos sat down next to him, lifting the barrel to his ear, letting the cool metal whisper against the sensitive skin, and asked in a conversational voice, “Seth, where the fuck is my money?”
“My ex-girlfriend has it,” he said. “I’m going to get it for you.”
“Why does your girlfriend have my money?”
“She…” He grasped for a lie.
Carlo
s knew whatever was going to spew from his lips was a lie and he was tired of being jerked around. He grabbed Seth’s right hand and wordlessly jerked back his index finger until he heard the satisfying crack of breaking bone. Seth wailed, trying to reclaim his hand from Carlos’s iron grip. He sank to his knees on the floor.
Carlos leaned in close to Seth’s sweating, crimson face. “I want my fucking money.”
Seth nodded hysterically. His face had gone pale with shock and agony.
“Where is the girl?”
“I….”
“You want your other hand fucked up too? You want me to just shoot you and finish this? I’ll do it Seth. It’s no problem if you want to make me do it that way.”
“She’s in Oregon.”
“Oregon? What the hell, Seth? I try to be nice to you. I try to give you the benefit of the doubt and you tell me my money is on the other side of the god damn country?”
“She took it.”
“You have twenty-four hours, Seth to get six hundred thousand dollars that belongs to me.” Carlos stood up and looked around the house again. “This is bullshit. How much you make every year?”
“What?”
“What’s your salary at the police department?”
“Seventy thousand.”
“How much does the girl bring in?”
Seth shrugged. “Depends.” It infuriated Seth that the seventy thousand figure included Aimee’s income.
Carlos shook his head. “You’re a dumbass,” he said, almost to himself. “You have this beautiful place. You make money. And you try to fuck me over. You’re a dumb man.”
“I’ll get it to you,” Seth said, holding his deformed finger gingerly in his other hand. Carlos was pleased at the beg in his voice.
“Yes,” Carlos replied. “You will.”’
He walked out of the house, slamming the door so hard one of the pictures of the boats fell off the wall.
Bella, the tiny white puffball of a biscon frise that Bryan bought for Jake last Christmas, had a very rigid schedule. She had to be out the door at six thirty in the morning, or she’d piddle on the carpet. Her bladder was apparently the size of a hummingbird’s.
At exactly six thirty, Bryan stepped outside and set Bella on the porch. She delicately
ran across the dewy patch of grass that was their postage stamp front yard and did her business.
The street was quiet, just barely rinsing purple in the first brightening hues of morning. It was still pleasantly cool, a respite before the day’s temperatures soared into the nineties.
A
slamming door shattered the peace of the morning. A short Hispanic guy erupted from Seth Sabich’s front door. He glanced at Bryan and flashed a grotesque sneer designed to intimidate. Bulky with prison muscle and wearing what Bryan thought of as gangster clothes – baggy jeans, a long sleeve shirt buttoned to the neck, and a red bandana around his head – he was not one of Sabich’s usual visitors. In fact, for a detective at the Metropolitan Police Department, a visitor like that was downright bizarre.
Instinctively, Bryan feigned disinterest in the man, and walked over to pick up Bella. He only looked up when the van roared from the neighborhood.
Sabich’s door flung open and Seth stepped out. “Hey!”
Bryan tried to pretend he didn’t hear Seth’s loud cry in the silence of the morning, but when he called out again, Bryan realized he was trotting over to speak to him.
“Good morning,” he replied calmly.
As he neared, he noticed Seth’s swollen eye and bloody lip. He cradled his right hand, which was magenta and mangled, in his left. Still, his posture conveyed that authoritarian instinct, the demand for total submission.
Bryan pretended nothing was amiss.
“You saw him come out of here,” Seth said. When he spoke, a black space in the side of his jaw became visible, and Bryan realized with a chill that the Hispanic man had knocked Seth’s tooth out. Whatever was going on, Bryan wanted no part of it.
“I wasn’t paying attention,” he answered blandly, smiling in the vague hope that Seth would take him for a simpleminded fool and leave him alone.
Seth’s bloodshot eyes narrowed. “You didn’t see anything,” he growled. It was a statement of fact.
Bryan shrugged. “Whatever, man. I really wasn’t paying attention.”
Seth’s gaze bore into him like nails, holding him in place. “You and Aimee are pretty close,” he said.
Bryan tried to keep his face neutral, giving away nothing. “We are neighbors,” he said lightly. “She’s always very kind to me. To us. Jake and myself…”
A look of disgust washed across Seth’s face, then vanished with the veneer of a bureaucrat’s impassive glaze.
“Did she ever mention her sister?”
Bryan frowned. “No. I didn’t know she has a sister.”
Seth starred at him dubiously and Bryan felt the situation was getting ridiculous. Blood was smeared over Seth’s lips. He finally said, “Are you okay?”
“Don’t you worry about me,” Seth said.
Jake opened the front door and looked out. Bryan met his gaze, and Seth backed off. “You didn’t see anything,” he muttered again.
Bryan watched him walk through the pretty pansies that Aimee had planted this spring, then jog up the steps to his house.
Holding Bella, Bryan hurried to his front door.
“What on earth was that about?” Jake asked as he came inside.
“Fucking psycho,” Bryan replied and double-locked the door behind him. He walked into the kitchen to make Bella her breakfast. “That asshole ---“
Jake quickly shushed him. “These walls are thin,” he said in a low voice.
Bryan dumped a bit of soft dog food in the dish with kibble and placed it on the floor. He washed his hands and turned to Jake. “Some Hispanic guy came blazing out of there. Seth was all beaten up. And then he tells me that I saw nothing while asking if I heard from Aimee. Something weird is going on.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing, of course.”
“He’s a fucking psycho. I hope she’s okay.”
Bryan frowned. Seth looked so crazy. Aimee was probably safe right now, but for how long? H didn’t want to think such thoughts. Silently he wished her godspeed.
In the master bathroom basin, Seth spit out blood, then rinsed with water. Carlos had busted his lip and sliced up the inside of his cheek pretty good, but it could have been much worse. It was just a warning. He had to find Aimee. He’d been unable to reach Kimberly in Portland– or rather, she still refused to speak to him or put Aimee on the phone. But he could not imagine where else Aimee might be.
He was scheduled to go on duty at ten o’clock tonight. He didn’t even have a day off until next week. He’d already used all his sick and vacation days. If he missed any more work, they’d fire him and he could not let that happen. He had nothing in savings. Not since Aimee stole his cash. He’d just have to wait until his next day off, in five days, to fly to Portland. Until then, he had to avoid Carlos at any cost.
Seven
It was two weeks after Lauren had arrived at Spanner Ranch when Mark took a break from cooking dinner and walked into her room to find her awake and petting May, who had jumped up on the bed.
“Do you want her off the bed?”
Lauren smiled wanly. “No, I like her.”
Mark
pulled a chair up beside her bed. “How do you feel?”
“Better, I think,
” she murmured. “I was thinking maybe I’ll eat downstairs instead of up here on a tray.”
He smiled, genuinely happy with her progress.
“That would be great, as long as you’re up for it.”
“I think I am.”
“Wonderful. There are some clothes on the dresser… unless you prefer that fetching hospital gown.”
She smiled at his lame joke. For the first time, he noticed that she had two adorable dimples in her cheeks. Her cuts and bruises had also hidden the pretty shape of her cheekbones and her green eyes.
“Not my favorite fashion,” she said lightly.
Mark held her arm gently in his lap and slid the IV needle from her vein.
Aimee
winced but didn’t complain. He helped her sit up, then asked her to stand. She was slow, and wobbled and winced, but it was good for her to start rebuilding her strength. When he worked in D.C., the nurses would encourage patients to get up within hours of appendectomies, gall bladder removals and broken legs.
She swayed on her feet and Mark grabbed her around the waist to steady her.
“I’m just dazed from the painkillers, I think,” she said, leaning against him. “Um… Mark? Would it be possible to take a shower?”
“Sure. Why don’t you use my shower. It has a bench where you can sit down. The en suite one through there is smaller.”
“Sitting is good,” she said lightly.
He guided her down the long hallway to his bedroom and into the large master bath. The shower was enormous, with six showerheads and a curved bench. There was also a separate deep Jacuzzi tub big enough for two.
“I would suggest a soak, but considering your sutures, a shower is probably better for you.”
“A shower sounds nice.” She ogled the large, modern enclosure. It was one of his indulgences, a top of the line steam shower that, he had to admit, was pretty sweet.
He turned on the water for her then took a fresh towel from a cabinet and placed on the vanity. He indicated the electronic read-out. “This button is for the steam,” he said. “And use this one if you want acupressure for your back. I wouldn’t recommend that in your condition, but a minute or two won’t hurt. And, as you can see, the water is ninety-nine degrees. These are the hot and cold buttons.”