“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.