by Nico Rosso
“You have good taste.” Olesk put his hands on his hips and assessed the Mercedes.
“I do.” She nudged the car with her hip, sorry to see it go.
The woman in the doorway craned her neck to look in. “Did you nick the fob off of someone?” She had an English accent and a judgmental sneer.
Stephanie answered as dryly as she could. “I pulled the factory key code off the CAN bus.”
“She’s got the tech.” Arash hooked a thumb toward Stephanie with a grin. “Thing of beauty.” His energy was so different than the other two. Comfortable and loose, he didn’t have to posture to prove he was tough.
The woman in the doorway narrowed her eyes on Stephanie, ignoring Arash. Olesk chuckled and said to Stephanie, “You’ll have to show Ellie that trick.”
“After some sleep.” It might be Olesk’s crew, but she didn’t have to act like a minion.
“Of course.” Olesk waved his hand toward the doorway. Ellie slipped away into the house. Stephanie stepped first to the door. As Arash passed Olesk, the blond man put his hand out. “You have my paperwork?”
Arash pulled the folded page from his jacket and slapped it into Olesk’s palm. It might’ve just been early-morning frayed nerves, but the move seemed somewhat aggressive to Stephanie, though Arash kept the smile in his eyes. If Olesk felt it the way she did, he didn’t show it.
Olesk unfolded the paper and looked it over, nodding. “You guys deliver good stuff.”
Arash picked up one of the empty bottles of motor oil from the workbench as he passed it. “I hope you didn’t bring me here just to do oil changes.” He tossed the bottle back; it clunked against the others, knocking them over in a noise too loud for this hour of the morning.
Olesk stopped walking and both Stephanie and Arash turned to him. Warning tension prickled up her spine. Her back was to the open doorway where Ellie had disappeared. Olesk ran his hand through his hair in what appeared to be a practiced move. “We’re the Slick Track Racers,” he explained. “Anyone mentions STR and you know that we’re the best at stealing cars, breaking down cars, fixing them up, moving them without being caught.” He took a dramatic pause. “Sometimes we do oil changes. Sometimes we get paid a lot of money to get someone’s merchandise from one place to another without a scratch, and without anyone knowing anything about it.”
She forced a casual look on her face while her blood boiled. The merchandise he was talking about were human beings, people trafficked by the Seventh Syndicate.
“I’m here for all that.” Arash nodded with approval, lowering her opinion of him.
“Good.” Olesk waved them toward the doorway again and they all moved into a featureless mudroom. “Because we need reliable people for a very important gig.” They passed a laundry room, then emerged into the kitchen. Empty packages of convenience food were stacked on the counters. There was no aroma of fresh cooking. “We had a problem with a conscience.” Olesk drew a horizontal line in the air with a long finger, as if demarking a border. “And we don’t want those.”
Ellie emerged from the other side of the kitchen with two white envelopes. She handed them to Stephanie and Arash, eyes still wary.
Olesk pointed at their envelopes. “Work solid, get paid.” Stephanie sneaked a peek into the envelope and riffled across eighty hundred-dollar bills. Anger continued to simmer beneath her skin. Blood money. The big gig he was talking about was what she really wanted. Then the STR and the Seventh Syndicate could go down in flames. Olesk walked them farther into the house. Few pieces of furniture littered the tan carpet, just enough to crash comfortably for a few hours. “Thom and Hector are sleeping. You’ll meet them tomorrow after they finish their assignments.” He stopped at an open doorway in an undecorated hallway. “This is you.” He pointed at Stephanie. “Bathroom’s down here. And on the other side’s Arash.” Wrapping his arm around Ellie’s hip, he ambled toward a flight of carpeted stairs. “We’re upstairs. Get your rest, take the morning off, get outfitted. Expect to move.” He sent Stephanie and Arash a wave as he ascended the stairs. Ellie didn’t look in their direction.
Arash stood outside his room for a second and turned to Stephanie. “Good night.”
“Good morning,” she answered wryly and stepped into her room. The door closed securely and luckily had a lock. Still, she wedged the back of a small chair under the handle. Arash’s last word wrapped around her like a thick blanket, muting sound and making her think about a possibility of meeting this man who seemed to balance easily with her somewhere where they weren’t surrounded by a criminal gang. Meeting him in a different life, when he wasn’t part of that same gang.
She sat on the bed and took out her phone. There were no details of her real self anywhere in the device. It would be so easy to send a text to Ty, Mariana and Vincent, the other members of Frontier Justice, to let them know where she was and that she’d made the first move into Olesk’s gang. Any kind of lifeline or reminder that she wasn’t alone. But if anyone in this house caught sight of that contact, she’d be dead.
The narrow mattress creaked as she stretched out, shoes still on. She dug her phone charger out of her bag and plugged it in. It rested on the small nightstand, next to the slim automatic pistol she laid within reach.
Thick curtains covered the one north-facing window. They should be enough to block the coming day. Still, she knew there was only time for a couple hours of sleep. This house wasn’t set up for long breaks, and Olesk’s energy revealed there were plans in the works.
Her heavy bones sank her deeper into the bed. She convinced herself not to worry about the sleep she was going to miss, and just to concentrate on the rest she felt in that moment. For now, she was alone. Despite the ease with which she and Arash worked together, he couldn’t be trusted. Frontier Justice was miles away, and she couldn’t call them in until she was much closer to her ultimate target. Her life was on the line to help others, just like her nineteenth-century ancestor on her mother’s side. Li Jie had emigrated from China to the American West, worked in the mines, lived through the collapses and dynamite and the racism. Many people had seen him as less than human, and legally he couldn’t testify against a white man in court, yet still he had the strength to help form the first Frontier Justice and fight for others who suffered under that same oppression.
He’d survived. Now she must do the same, to save countless people from Olesk and the Seventh Syndicate.
* * *
ARASH NEEDED TO SLEEP, but all he wanted to do was tear down the walls of the house around him. A man snored steadily in the next room. Arash would never feel that calm, that safe, until he knew that Olesk and the STR were wiped off the face of the earth.
Had Marcos been in this room? Lying on the mattress on the floor, resting between gigs for the gang? Olesk said he’d had a problem with a conscience. Arash knew who he’d been talking about. Marcos had been found dead in a car wreck on the highway south of Livermore. Arash hadn’t seen the body, but he’d found the twisted car in the scrap yard. And he’d tracked down the spot where it had happened. It wasn’t an accident. It was murder. Another car’s paint scraped into the side of Marcos’s vehicle. Tire tracks revealed the moment of impact, perfectly timed to send Marcos into the concrete pillar of an overpass.
Recounting all this wasn’t the way to get to sleep. Arash’s heart thundered with anger, thinking about his friend’s last race toward freedom. He’d texted Arash that night and asked for help. Marcos was finally looking for a way out of the spiral he’d gotten into. But forever after that text, that last contact, was...silence.
Arash took a long breath and focused his memory on Stephanie’s hands. Her fine fingers were so sure as she steered the Mercedes through the chase. Remembering her movements helped bring a bit of a hypnotic calm. He knew he shouldn’t be thinking of her this way. She couldn’t be trusted. But something about her ethic didn’t fit with Olesk and his crew. She
wasn’t ruthless. She’d been against using a gun in San Francisco. He couldn’t hold Marcos’s death against her because she was new. But he didn’t know what side she’d be on when he decided to destroy Olesk and his drivers.
Chapter Three
Stephanie woke with a gun in her hand. Several other noises had pulled her from a thin sleep, but the footsteps down the hallway had her fully aware and gripping her automatic. The metal was cold, the chill extending all the way into her bones. This was the world she was in now. Any second she might have to make the choice to pull the trigger.
The footsteps took a turn into the bathroom and she soon heard water running. Her watch told her it was after eight o’clock. Not nearly enough sleep, but her own discomfort couldn’t matter until after this job was over.
She set her gun down and quickly changed into a fresh set of clothes before repacking her bag, including her pistol, and arranging herself for the day. The chair she’d wedged under the door handle remained in place; no one had tried to get in. She removed the chair and stepped into the empty hallway.
A second later, Arash opened the bathroom door. Water glistened in his dark hair, which had been released from its short ponytail to brush about his shoulders. He wore a tank top, revealing well-muscled arms and dusky skin. The flush of heat over her chest at seeing him this exposed proved that her body was still operational with little sleep. But she kept her face neutral and said only, “Morning.”
He ran his hands through his hair, showing off the muscles of his shoulders. When she could see his face again, he was wearing a small, pained grin. “Why you gotta hurt me like that?” His voice was low and gravelly. Straight out of the bedroom.
She cleared her throat to erase the image of his piercing eyes glowing in the early dawn, his body surrounded by a tousled bed. “The truth hurts.”
With a groaning laugh, he stepped out of the bathroom doorway and ambled toward his room. “What’re the chances there’s coffee around here?”
Ellie descended the stairs at the end of the hall with an answer. “Take the car in the garage.” She tossed him a set of keys. “Keep your kit with you. Be ready to jump.” She breezed past Arash and Stephanie without another word and disappeared out the front door of the house. An engine revved outside, then drove off. The house was quiet.
Stephanie was alone with Arash. “Two minutes,” she told him, then closed the bathroom door. She emerged within her time frame to find him in the kitchen, fully dressed in his clothes from yesterday, nudging boxes of breakfast cereal on the counter. He still wore his hair down, making him seem more accessible and less like the man she saw running from a crime scene the night before.
“I’m driving.” He dangled the car keys.
They went into the garage to find the Mercedes already gone. Her sense of loss was quickly swept away with the idea that the car had died a hero, getting her into Olesk’s gang. Arash didn’t seem to have any lingering feelings about it and climbed into the low sport-tuned import that remained in the garage. She tossed her bag into the back seat and climbed in next to him.
His hands hovered over the steering wheel and shifter for a moment. She understood this moment of assessing a vehicle before entering into a relationship with it. The car was modified and bare-bones. Racing seats and analog gauges. It didn’t even have floor mats. But when Arash turned the engine over, she could feel the power in the quick growl. She hit the garage door opener on the visor, letting daylight in. Arash put the car in Reverse and eased out.
“How is it?” She closed the garage once they were clear.
“It’s good.” He didn’t sound convinced. “But I could make it better.” Throwing it in First, he sped them away from the house. “Find us some breakfast, and a mall. I need clothes.” From the way he was squinting, he needed sunglasses, too.
She put on her own sunglasses and pulled out her phone to search for their next stop. Again, the urge to contact the others at Frontier Justice made her pause before switching to the navigation. But she was still far from being in a safe space. She knew the whole internal debate didn’t last long enough for Arash to see her hesitation. He drove without comment as she directed them toward a mall.
Lack of sleep put a frothy edge around the bright, cool day. Things grew more ordinary when they parked and walked to the chain coffee shop on the perimeter of the mall. The morning crowd was still in full effect, restraining Stephanie and Arash’s conversation to the bare minimum. They certainly couldn’t compare notes about their first night in the midst of a criminal gang.
She ate and felt more human with each sip of her latte. Arash leaned his elbows on the table, both hands around his cup of coffee. He glanced surreptitiously at the others around them before asking, “What do you normally drive?”
The unexpected question made her shiver, as if an intimate barrier had been crossed. “’74 Datsun 260Z.” No way would she have pretended to steal that one for Olesk.
He sat back and assessed her with surprise. And there was a hint of sadness in his eyes that blinked away before she could fully explore it. He mouthed a couple of words, then finally said, “You’re hot.”
“Changed the timing and compression ratio for more horses.” She adjusted the hang of her bob along her cheek. “Got the suspension low and tight, just how I like it.”
He moaned sensuously, drawing a couple of looks. After licking his lips, he ventured, “Color?”
“Brick red. Matte.”
“Hell, yes.” He thumped the side of his fist on the tabletop. A growing sexual energy in him caught her up. Breath ran hot in her and an effervescent tingle spiked her fingers and toes. And in a moment it was gone. Arash’s face frosted over and he focused back on his cup of coffee. “I’d like to see it sometime.”
She leaned forward and whispered, “Just don’t steal it.” Part of her missed the brief carnal connection they’d shared, but she knew it was for the best to keep this kind of contact shut down.
“No promises.” He stood and nodded toward the door. She moved with him and they were soon back in the bright, cold sun. They’d only walked a couple dozen yards from the coffee shop when a car started up nearby and Arash froze.
His sudden reaction sent her into high alert. Electric charges shot through her legs, ready to move. She’d left her pistol in her bag in the car, knowing they were in too populated an area to carry it, but she did have a switchblade in her pocket. “What is it?” she hissed, looking about for the threat.
“Can you hear it? Car trouble.” He motioned her toward the idling, twenty-year-old sedan in a nearby parking spot and approached the driver with a greeting wave. A Latina woman dressed for an office job sat in the front seat, eyeing him cautiously. He pulled up at a nonthreatening distance and pointed at the front of the car. “I’m not trying to sell you anything. I just heard a little problem.”
The driver rolled her window down, her gaze switching between Arash and Stephanie. “I’m on my way to work and I don’t have time...”
Arash kept his hands open and nodded. “I want to get you to work. No BS. If you could just rev the engine for a second.”
The woman kept her hand on the shifter, ready to throw it into Drive and run, but did give the engine some gas while idling. Arash cocked his head, then nodded again. He maintained his distance and turned to Stephanie. “Do you hear it?”
She listened to the revving motor and found nothing out of the ordinary for a car of that age and make. But when the driver released the gas and brought it back to idle, a faint metallic double knock caught Stephanie’s attention. “I think I got it.”
Arash turned his attention back to the driver. “So there’s a sound, a double knock, that goes away when you rev, but I hear it in your idle. Get your ride to a mechanic you trust and tell them that you might have a bad piston pin. They’ll track it down. Take care of it soon, before it turns into big trouble.”
&nb
sp; The woman revved the engine again, squinting and concentrating when she brought it back to idle. Stephanie picked up the double knock again, but couldn’t tell if the driver detected the sound. The driver seemed less skeptical and warmed with a small smile. “Thanks. I’ll get it looked at.” She put her car in Drive and headed out of the parking lot, waving out the window before she turned onto the boulevard.
Once she was gone, Arash continued his walk across the parking lot toward the mall. Stephanie strode with him, studying his face out of the corner of her eye, trying to find the motivation for what he just did. Instead of looking smug, or downright cocky, his expression was neutral. “You’ve got a good ear,” she told him.
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. In the light of day she saw that it was a simple black work jacket, heavy cotton with a corduroy collar. “Been living next to engines long enough.”
“But you’ve got a soft heart.” She couldn’t puzzle him out at all.
“Not when it comes to business.” His eyes hardened. He tipped his head in the direction where the woman had driven off. “I wasn’t going to make any money off that ride. Wasn’t going to fix it, steal it, part it out, joyride it or use it in a getaway. She was just trying to get to work, and I know a lot of people like that.”
Sure, that sounded on the level, but did he know that by taking the gig with Olesk, Arash would be running boys and girls for some of the worst criminals in the country? Those people were just trying to live their lives, as well. Stephanie’s chest tightened thinking about them. Before that anger took her over and she railed at Arash, she asked simply, “So what’s your ride?”
“Mazda RX-7 Turbo II, ’89.”
“I can see that.” He would fit well into the low-slung sports car, and there were plenty of opportunities to tune the ride into a well-handling street rocket. “White, with a turquoise roof?” It was from the ’80s, after all.
