“Maybe I should take you up on that.” Caitlin stretched a little. “I’m pretty tired. I can send Rodrigo for the car tomorrow.”
Leaving the car was fine with the restaurant manager. They knew Caitlin here. “I left them an extra-nice tip,” Caitlin said, sliding into the passenger seat of Michelle’s rented Prius.
“This your car?” she asked.
“A rental. But…”
It’s like the one I have at home, Michelle almost said.
“I’ve always liked them.”
“Well, no need for you to be renting a car. There’s an extra one in the garage you can use.”
“That’s very generous, but-”
“Now, no arguing.” Caitlin wagged a finger. “It’s supposed to be used for Safer America business, and it’s just sitting there rusting away as it is.”
They’d just turned down the broad avenue that led to Caitlin’s house when Michelle’s iPhone rang. Emily’s, rather. The ringtone, “Get Smart.”
Fucking Gary. And it was only 6:29 p.m.
“Sorry,” Michelle said. “I have to take this.” She pulled over. No hands-free setup on the rental, and even if she had one, she wasn’t about to put Gary on speakerphone.
She fumbled around in her new tote for her phone. Her Emily phone.
“Well, hey there.”
Just the sound of his voice, that phony flirtatiousness, made her shudder.
“Hi, listen, I’m going to have to call you back-I’m… driving someone home.”
A chuckle. “Now, what did I tell you about cocktails with Caitlin?”
God, Michelle hoped Caitlin hadn’t heard that. She pressed the phone closer to her ear.
“Five minutes,” she said. “I’m just about there.”
She disconnected.
“What was that, Get Smart? How funny!” Caitlin gave Michelle a friendly pat on the arm, giggling a little. “And here I thought you seemed so serious.”
Michelle supposed that she was serious. It was Emily who’d learned to lighten up a bit, to laugh at Danny’s jokes.
What was he doing right now? How was he?
She pushed the thought aside. She couldn’t take the time to worry about him. Not now.
“You’re early,” she said.
“Change in plans.”
Of course.
“Gonna need you to make a stop first, pick something up. Got a pen?”
“What am I picking up?”
“Never mind that. You’re just the delivery gal. You’ll hand it off, and then you’ll get your money.”
Not good. But so predictable.
It was close to sunset.
At first the neighborhood she’d driven through seemed okay. Nice, even. Well-kept older houses, big oak trees, trimmed lawns. Restaurants and clubs that looked funky and hip. Then the main business street turned into peeling beige stucco fast-food chains and auto-part shops: radiators, mufflers, tires. A strip club called Purple Passion that looked like one of the auto-part stores, with faded tin siding. No sidewalks in places, just dirt.
It hadn’t cooled off much, and Michelle was glad she’d kept the air on, the windows rolled up. She was drenched in sweat as it was, her heart racing like she’d been running. But of course she hadn’t been.
Danny was right. She should have turned Gary down. Should’ve run. Should’ve done… something. Anything other than taking this job and driving down a sketchy-looking street in god knows where, Houston, so she could “pick something up” for that fucker Gary.
She’d packed a change of clothes this morning: jeans, Nikes, black T-shirt, a light-weight women’s cut hoodie she wore on nicer days in Arcata. But she hadn’t had time to change, so here she was in her black silk Eileen Fisher T and her black Stella McCartney slacks.
She did take the time to put on the Nikes. In case she had to run.
The address Gary gave her was for a trailer park called “Shady Acres.”
Shady Acres. She had to roll her eyes at that. Fucking Gary. She’d bet good money this was his idea of a joke.
Probably you’d call this a mobile-home park as opposed to a trailer park, she thought. The homes here were single-wides, long rectangles that looked like flimsy shipping containers made out of plastic siding, plywood and corrugated tin, the skirts around the bottoms warped and buckling, satellite dishes clamped or bolted onto the structures like the remnants of some advanced alien technology.
There were trees, at least, patchy attempts at landscaping here and there, kids’ bikes sprawled on the dirt. Not that many people outside. Maybe it was still too hot.
At the end of the road was her destination: #52.
It looked like most of the others. Single-wide, two-toned, in this case cream with ochre trim, rusting here and there around the edges. A Harley and some kind of late-model Ford sedan were parked on a tiny patch of asphalt next to the entrance. A flag fluttered from a skinny pole stuck into a stanchion mounted on a wood beam holding up the canopy that shaded the door. It was one of those flags with a black coiled rattler on a yellow background with the legend don’t tread on me.
Please don’t let there be a pit bull, Michelle thought.
She parked. Took a deep breath, then another. Thought, I’m not going to get killed here, that wouldn’t make any sense, this whole setup with Caitlin and Safer America is too elaborate, there’s more at stake, this is just Gary fucking with me, because he can.
She got out of the car, stood by the door for a moment. Breathe. Just breathe.
Get it over with, she thought.
She walked past the Harley, up four mold-stained cement steps, paused on the landing. Listened for a moment. Voices. A burst of laughter and music. Something on TV.
She knocked on the door.
Chapter Ten
An explosion of barking greeted her knock: high-pitched yapping.
That doesn’t sound like a pit bull, she thought.
Though had she ever actually heard one bark?
She could hear movement behind the door: a scrabbling of blunted claws on linoleum, more barking, then a heavier, human tread.
She smoothed the wrinkles in her black silk T-shirt and ran her fingers through her hair. Because I want to look my best for whatever maniac Gary sent me to meet, she thought briefly.
The door cracked open.
“Yeah?”
In his late fifties or early sixties, thinning gray hair combed back from his forehead, falling over the collar of a short-sleeved button-down checked shirt. A smallish man with a round gut that made him look almost pregnant.
Behind him, she heard more high-pitched yapping and nails scrabbling on linoleum. “Get back, Roscoe,” the man snapped.
For a moment, her mind went completely blank. A fresh wave of sweat broke out on her forehead and back. Gary hadn’t told her what to say. Gary hadn’t told her anything.
“I’m here for the pickup,” she said.
The man’s head tilted back. He looked her up and down. “Come in.”
A small dog with long cream-colored hair scampered around her feet, rearing up on its hind legs and barring its overbite of tiny fangs with a high-pitched growl.
“Shih tzu,” the man said. “They’re very loyal. Chinese.”
She nodded.
Past the small rectangle of linoleum of the entrance was a stretch of rust-colored pile carpet. The living room. The TV she’d heard, a large flat screen, took up most of the narrow end of the rectangle. It was playing a reality show. The Bachelor. An overwrought woman in a Little Bo Peep costume and lots of lip gloss wrung her hands at another woman dressed up like a cowgirl-that is, if cowgirls wore short shorts and crop tops with their cowboy boots.
The man aimed a remote at the TV and muted it. He indicated a loveseat-sized brown and gold upholstered couch across from a leatherette recliner with a TV tray table parked at its side.