She looked back at me, and her face relaxed as she cracked a smile.
“That isn’t a requirement,” she said, “just in case you were wondering.”
“Duly noted. All things considered, though, I’ll likely piss you off again.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
“I just want to know more about you,” she said. “I still want to know what happened to you.”
I shook my head.
“I need to get to my apartment,” I said. “You also need to get your shit out of this little hellhole.”
“It’s not that bad,” she said as she looked around.
“Yes, it is.” I untangled my limbs from her body and stood up to take a piss and pull my clothes on. I shifted a little bit in the pants—they were starting to get a little rough on my ass from the lack of clean underwear. I definitely needed to get to my place for supplies.
Odin followed me into the bathroom and sat there as I dressed, wagging his tail with his bone hanging part way out of his mouth. I grabbed it, ordered him to drop, and then tossed it to the other side of the room.
“I can’t really afford anything else at the moment.” I glanced in Lia’s direction and watched her pull her shirt on over her head. “I haven’t even found a job here yet.”
“You don’t need one,” I countered. I grabbed the bone back from Odin and threw it again.
“Of course I do,” she said. “I only have enough to cover rent and utilities for another month or so.”
“You don’t need any more.” I was dismissive in my tone but didn’t want to come right out and tell her just how much money I had stashed away in various places.
“Well, then I guess I’ll be staying in this hellhole.”
I watched her for a moment, trying to judge her mood. She certainly sounded pissy, but her posture was casual.
“I’ll take care of you,” I finally said.
“Evan, you just got out of jail, and we don’t even know when your hearing will be or anything yet.”
“There won’t be one.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I cupped her face in my hands, placed my lips against hers, and kissed her deeply.
“I’m going to take care of it all,” I promised. “Then we’re going to leave Chicago altogether.”
“And go where?”
“I have a few options.”
“You’re being very vague.”
“Yep.”
“Evan!” She took a step back from me and placed her hands on her hips.
“Lia,” I mocked back. I smiled warmly to try to break the building tension. “I can explain more later. Right now, I just need to get back to my apartment and assess the damage.”
With minimal additional protest, we collected Odin and his stuff, and I called a taxi from Lia’s phone.
“That’s going to be expensive,” Lia remarked.
“No one’s going to let him on a bus,” I said, nodding toward the dog. “A big tip goes a long way with a taxi driver.”
“I don’t have that much cash.”
“We’ll take care of it when we get back to my place.”
When we did get there, the apartment was a disaster.
The scene was almost enough to remind me of a warzone, but not quite. There was still crime tape up on the door, but I tore it away and shoved the door open to reveal most everything I owned spewed out all over the floor.
Papers, boxes, even dishes and shit from the cabinets in the kitchen were lying all over the floor, the counters, and the dining room table. My desk drawers were all pulled out, and papers were everywhere. All the cords and shit for my laptop were there in a heap, but the machine itself was gone.
“Wow.” Lia breathed out the word with a huff of air. “This is a mess.”
“I’m going to guess the housekeeper hasn’t been by recently,” I joked. Nothing about it was funny to me, but I didn’t want her to see just how irate I was. I was pretty particular about my place and my things. Seeing them just…everywhere was increasing my blood pressure by the minute. I wondered what was missing besides the laptop.
The back of the closet in my bedroom, which should have contained my firearms and a couple duffel bags filled with around eighty grand in cash was empty.
“Fuckers,” I mumbled as I moved over to my dresser. All the drawers had been pulled out and dumped, but no one noticed the envelope secured to the underside of the dresser’s top. I pulled a few bills out of it, ran down to pay off the cab driver, and then returned to check out the rest of the mess.
Odin was standing by the sliding glass door to the balcony, staring at his upturned dog bed. I used my boot to shove the crap on the floor to the side, righted the bed, and put it back in its usual spot. He sniffed at it, climbed inside, and spun around a few times before curling up and placing his head on his paws to watch us.
I went around to all the places where I had cash and weapons hidden. Most had been found and presumably taken as evidence, but I did come up with a few thousand in cash—no weapons, though, which pissed me off. My phone was also missing.
“I need to make a side trip.”
My Mazda was gone from the garage, presumably impounded pending my trial. With my CTA pass in hand and Lia staying at my apartment to start cleaning up, I headed over to Moretti’s office. I watched all around me as I approached, but I didn’t see any familiar cars in the parking lot and no one visible walking around. I made my way to my Audi—still hidden behind the dumpster from the night I’d killed Terry and Bridgett. Under the driver’s seat was a Beretta PX4 Storm .40—my backup handgun. In the trunk, hidden under the spare tire, there was another, larger envelope of cash.
I shoved the piece down my pants and felt myself relax at the familiar feeling of the barrel against my back. There was also a shoulder holster for it, but I didn’t want to take the time to put it on in the parking lot. I looked around quickly, then got in the car and headed to the nearest place where I could get a phone set up without a contract or anything like that. I kept looking over my shoulder, but no one appeared to have noticed me, and no one seemed to be following me. Still, I took a random route back to my apartment building.
All was quiet in the parking garage, so I made my way upstairs and back to my unit.
Lia was inside, folding clothing that had been dumped all over the place and neatly stacking it in piles on the bed.
“I wasn’t sure which drawers you used for what.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt a little weird and maybe embarrassed to have her doing something like that for me. It seemed very…intimate. I didn’t think anyone other than I had handled my laundry since I was a kid.
I grabbed the dresser drawers off the floor and inserted them into their slots, then picked up a couple stacks of shirts and laid them down in their rightful drawer. It didn’t take too long before we had at least managed to straighten out the bedroom to where it didn’t look like a recent tornado had been hanging out there.
The rest of the apartment was a much bigger disaster, and it took us most of the day to get it cleaned up. About the time we were done, when Lia had gone to take some spoiled food to the dumpsters outside, Odin started to growl.
I looked up at the door.
“Having fun?” Trent asked as he leaned against the wall.
Nothing could have pissed me off more than seeing him at my door.
Chapter 8—Unveiled Threats
I resisted the urge to pull out the Beretta and shove it in his face.
“I assume I have you to thank for all of this,” I muttered back. “What the fuck do you want?”