K. Tucker - Four Seconds to Lose

I tell her the rest, including the phone call from the guy who’s supposedly her father, “Sam.”

“And it doesn’t match up with what John’s found out for you?”

“No.” Part of me feels like I’m betraying Charlie by divulging this, even to Storm, but I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know what to think. With a hiss through my gritted teeth, I shake my head and admit, “I was so close to throwing her over my shoulder and walking out of there.”

“I am surprised that Caveman Cain didn’t make an appearance,” she says with a giggle, her vision clouding over as her thoughts drift to the past, I’m sure to the time that I did that to her. I’ll never forget it. The first day Storm came in with heavy makeup around her eye and a story about an unfortunate tumble into the wall, my gut told me to call John and ask him to do some research on her husband. When she came in with a fat lip a week later, my gut said fuck the research. Nate and I drove her home to find a coked-out asshole on the couch and a toddler crying in the crib. Storm started babbling about how he was stressed, how she’d said something stupid to him, that he’d never hurt Mia. All typical excuses used by an abused woman. I had heard it all before. That’s why I scooped Mia up in one arm and, leaning down, hoisted a teary-eyed, scared Storm over my shoulder. In hindsight, I probably could have escorted her out on her own two feet but at the time, all I could think of was filling my arms so I didn’t have a chance to beat that asshole senseless.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do that tonight, to Charlie. I wanted her to make that decision on her own, to come home with me willingly. I didn’t want to force her. I’ve never wanted to force her.

I need to know that she chooses me.

But she asked me to let her go, instead.

And I did. With my words, anyway. In those few seconds, I wanted her to feel the pain that I was feeling.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve figured this out, but it sounds like she’s into something. The question is what.”

“There are only a few things it could be.” The very thought of her fucking another guy makes my fists ball up. But my gut says that’s not it. She’s not practiced enough to be doing that professionally. If not that, what else? Theft . . . extortion . . . drugs?

Shit.

Drugs.

“What?”

“Nothing.” As I glance at Storm through the corner of my eye, her wrinkled brow tells me she may have come to the same conclusion on her own. Still, I won’t voice this out loud. I can’t put Storm in that position. I know her. She’d tell Dan. Not because she wants to get Charlie into trouble; she’d think she was helping. But Storm is naïve in that sense. Getting the DEA involved without knowing exactly what’s happening could put Charlie’s life at risk. I’ve seen this all before. They’ll put her into a little room and drill her for information, and it will be up to her whether she wants to spend the next twenty-five years in jail or turn on whoever is making her do this.

Turning means testifying. Testifying means someone will want her dead.

I need to find Charlie. Now.

I don’t bother to smile at the valet this time when I climb into my waiting car. I don’t even think about it. I don’t race to the cash drop location. In fact, if the needle didn’t tell me I was doing forty miles per hour, I’d believe my car was parked in the middle of the road.

Jimmy’s clearance text on the burner phone he handed me tonight comes in and I do as expected, walking stiffly to my Sorento. When I’m safely inside it, with the doors locked and the key in the ignition, I have just enough time to grab and open the spare plastic bag sitting in the glove compartment before the entire contents of my stomach comes up.

I’m dry heaving when the burner phone starts ringing.

“Hello.” I hear the emptiness in my voice.

“All good, little mouse?”

Did Sam know that Manny would be there? Did he do that to me on purpose, to scare me? Or is Manny the “other way in” that Sam was looking for? I’m not supposed to use names and give details, even though it’s a burner phone and there can’t be any wiretaps yet. Suddenly, I don’t care. Of all the things I should be worried about, cops listening in on this conversation is not one of them. “Eddie has a partner. He was there tonight. His name is Manny. He put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger but the chamber was empty. Then he threatened to chop me up into a thousand pieces and feed me to the gators. He said he was going to rob you.” The sentences comes out choppy and without emotion.

Dead silence meets my words. I wait. I say nothing and listen, until I hear a sharp inhale. I picture Sam sitting in his cellar, smoking a cigar as he talks to me.

“Everything else went as planned?”

Sam doesn’t sound like he cares that someone was seconds away from killing me tonight. But Sam is as hard to read as I am. I’ve learned from the best, after all. “Yes.” You got your money, Sam. “I’m not doing this anymore. This was the last time.” I set my jaw stubbornly against the urge to backpedal.

I’m not going back there.

“That’s not an option. I have big plans for us. I was going to surprise you with this but I’ve been holding a cut for you, cycling it through some real estate ventures. One year with Manny and you’ll have more money than you could dream of.”

“A year?” My voice explodes into a shrillness I’ve never heard in myself. That I can’t control. “I won’t last a year. Didn’t you just hear what I said? Manny’s going to kill—”

Sam cuts me off with a sharp edge. “I knew he was going to be there. He was just making sure you were legit, that’s all. Do you really think I’d ever send you in somewhere that I thought you’d get hurt?”

“You already have.” My cold whisper is somehow harsher than the shrill voice a moment ago.

“That was a mistake that I made amends for. At great risk to myself, for you! Have you already forgotten?”

“I’ll never forget what you did to him.” Amends. Because executing a man is supposed to make me feel better.

“And have you forgotten all that I’ve done for you?”

I swallow the bubble of guilt trying to make its way up, fighting for dominance over my bitterness. But I say nothing.

“I’ll take care of Manny, little mouse,” Sam says softly, soothingly. “He was just keeping you on your toes, but I’ll make sure he knows that you are trustworthy. Because you are, right?”

Sam is trying to appease me. Make me feel like he’s actually doing me a favor. “I just want out. I don’t care about the money.”

In an instant, his tone is glacial again. “Really . . . the spoiled little girl doesn’t care about the money. Will you care when you can’t pay for your schooling? Or your fancy clothes and your car? I wonder if you’ll care when you’re whoring yourself out to make ends meet.”

Too late, Sam.

How could you do this to me?

Sam has never spoken to me like that before. There’s a long pause. “Let’s talk tomorrow, when you’ve stopped being so irrational.” The phone clicks, ending the call.

The near-death shock hasn’t worn off but a familiar edge is beginning to find its way back in now: that familiar pain throbbing in my chest cavity, the difficulty breathing, the relief associated with wondering what it would be like to just fall asleep and never wake up again.

All the things I found a brief escape from with Cain.

But I was an idiot. There is no real escape.

Sam won’t let me go. He’ll never let me go.

“I have big plans for us,” I echo his words in a whisper as I wrap my fingers around the steering wheel, as I absorb the gravity of the situation. Those words are like a heavy steel door closing above me. Trapping me back inside this suffocating cage that is my life.

Somehow I kept the tears at bay while on the phone with Sam, but now that I’m alone they pour freely, burning hot against my cheeks.

Sam knows about Cain.

He has a name, a physical description. Perhaps even a picture, though he didn’t mention it. How long before Sam finds him? If I stay here, I’m putting a target on his chest.

I can’t put Cain in any more danger.

You don’t do that to people you love.

Cranking my Sorento, I pull out onto the street, the lights and stop signs blurred by my tears.

With no destination, I drive.

I know where my selfish heart wants me to go. I don’t even care about the China incident anymore. Given that I just had a loaded gun pointed at my head, it seems trivial. I don’t know why China was on his lap. He says he had a good reason and I believe him.

But I asked Cain to let me go. And he did.

Which makes what I have to do easier.

I feel the freedom I had tasted fading away.

As Jimmy tails me.

I’m surprised that I even caught on. I wouldn’t have, had I not looked in my rearview mirror at that precise second to see a black sedan three cars back make a left-hand turn, the streetlight reflecting off its shiny upgraded hubcaps.

It looked an awful lot like the same car I climbed into earlier tonight. Seven minutes and three turns later, I can’t deny that it is the same car.

I pass by the entrance to my apartment building—quivering at how easily I could have brought Jimmy there, handing him yet another bit of information that could lead him to Cain—and I continue all the way to a twenty-four-hour diner on the other side of Miami.