by Leo, Cassia
I look Sooner in the eye. “What do you want to know?”
He’s silent for a moment before he expels a soft sigh. “I want to know about the suitcase,” he says, pointing at the surveillance photo of Garrett. “Do you know what Garrett was carrying in that suitcase?”
15 King
August 6th
Where is that fucking suitcase?
I repeat the question in my mind over and over as I drive along the Valdese backroads. I think about Izzy’s insistence that we fish off my dock instead of hers. I recall the panic in her eyes when she hooked that jacket. What did she think we were going to reel in?
I’m pretty sure Izzy’s too smart to allow herself to appear suspicious. The way she booby-trapped her property with all those holes — and the tripwire and nets she put up after we found Steve in one of them — it’s like the set of Home Alone in the woods near her house. No doubt, that’s where she plans to run to if someone should attempt to pursue her. She takes Steve for long walks in those woods, probably trying to commit the locations of her boobytraps to muscle memory.
Santos and I have only been able to stand on the edge of the tree line with binoculars. Neither of us is stupid enough to think we can make it out of there unscathed. Which makes me believe that Izzy’s skittishness about fishing on her dock was an act. The suitcase is probably in the woods.
I pull into the dirt parking lot at Bubba’s Korner Kitchen in Morganton, and Santos immediately steps out of his rented SUV. Hopping out of my pickup, I reach into the footwell and slide my .44 Magnum out from under the seat, tucking it into the waistband around my lower back. I pull a crossbody holster, containing a .500 Magnum, out of the back seat and strap it on.
God bless North Carolina and its permit-free open carry laws.
Reaching into the pocket on the back of the driver’s seat, I pull out a .38 Special, which I tuck into my ankle holster. As I’m smoothing down my pant leg, Santos approaches from behind.
“Boss ain’t here yet,” he says, glancing at the sign in the window of the restaurant. “Why do you think they spell corner with a K? You think they’re gonna try and deport me if I go in there?”
I chuckle at his paranoia. “If they do, we’re prepared,” I reply, tapping the .500 Magnum in my crossbody holster. “Besides, you didn’t serve this country in that desert shit-hole just to come back and get attacked at fucking Bubba’s Korner Kitchen. Fuck that. Not on my watch.”
He smiles and bats his eyelashes. “Bro, you’re making me blush.”
I shake my head as I shut the driver’s side door. “Let’s wait inside.”
I opt for a cup of black coffee while Santos, the beast, eats an entire twelve-ounce New York strip steak and four fried eggs. “You’re not careful, you’ll get fat. Then, Denise will have to trade you in for a slimmer model.”
“You kidding me?” Santos replies, setting his used napkin down on his plate before he pats his belly. “My baby loves this body. Besides, she ain’t going nowhere. I locked that shit down.”
I tilt my head in surprise. “You proposed to her?”
“Nope. She’s pregnant. Three months.”
“And you’re just fucking telling me this now?” I reply, suddenly feeling guilty for asking Santos to come to North Carolina with me.
He shrugs. “I didn’t find out until, like, a month ago.”
“And you still came with me?”
“You said it wouldn’t take longer than three or four weeks.”
I shake my head. “I’m not talking about the fucking time. I’m talking about the risk. You can’t risk your life for this shit if you have a baby on the way.”
He narrows his dark eyes at me. “It’s not okay for me to do it here, but it would be okay if I were deployed to that ‘desert shit-hole’ as you call it?”
“The point is that we’re not there anymore. If you’re going to be a father, you can’t be out here risking your life for a fucking corrupt congressman.”
“Are you asking me to leave or are you ordering me to leave?” he challenges me, his jaw set as he looks me straight in the eye awaiting my answer.
This is what the military does to us. Most people think being in the military makes a man more obedient, more agreeable, but that’s not actually the case. Most of us grunts come out of it wanting to set everything on fire, even ourselves.
Everything seems insignificant and petty when you’ve seen the horrors of war. So fuck it all, right? Fuck paying your taxes. Fuck taking care of your mental health. Fuck taking care of your family. Fuck everything. None of it matters, anyway.
Except, that kind of nihilistic philosophy is a bunch of destructive, grade-A bullshit. Unfortunately, there’s no way to convince someone of that. They have to figure it out on their own.
I look him square in the eye. “I’m asking you to stay. I can’t finish this alone.”
Santos’ broad face splits into an easy smile. “Motherfucker. You need—”
I shush him as I watch Congressman Richard Hunt and Winston Merrill, his chief of staff, walking toward us with a three-man security detail trailing behind them.
Hunt and Merrill are both wearing crisp, navy-blue tailored suits with white pocket squares. Hunt is wearing his usual dark-rimmed square glasses, which I assume, along with his silver hair, are meant to make him look like some kind of intellectual instead of like the criminal he truly is.
Santos and I both stand up at the same time and greet the men with handshakes. Santos moves to sit on my side of the table, while Hunt and Merrill sit on the other side. Their security detail takes the table behind them.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Hunt says, smiling as he unbuttons the top button on his blazer as he gets comfortable. “Interesting location for a meeting,” he says, looking around. “Was the local Olive Garden unavailable?”
The waitress arrives to take their order before I can respond to this elitist scum. Merrill declines even a glass of water, while Hunt orders a small glass of milk. I almost forgot about his stomach ulcers.
I would speculate that Hunt’s conscience weighs heavily on him, and the stress of that caused the ulcers. But after the way he handled Garrett’s death, I don’t think this man has a conscience.
I ignore his Olive Garden comment and cut right to the subject of the meeting. “Look, I know you want me to make this happen faster, but this girl won’t give up the location — or go down — without a fight. We need to approach this with finesse, not force.”
Hunt’s gray eyes flit back and forth between Santos and me. “Finesse, huh?” he says before turning to Merrill.
They both burst into cackling laughter.
I smile at his attempt to intimidate me. “Yeah, finesse. If you think you’re gonna get what you want by pulling her fingernails out, you don’t know this girl.”
Hunt stops laughing abruptly, but he’s still wearing a slick grin. “Sounds like you’ve got a thing for the girl. Maybe your judgment’s a bit cloudy. Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t know her. Because I’ve done my research on this girl, and she can be got.”
“Then maybe you should try to squeeze the location out of her.”
Hunt’s smile vanishes. “I’m not the one who allowed my fuck-up of a son to pick up that suit—” He smiles at the waitress as she sets down his glass of milk on the table. “Thank you, dear.”
She flashes him a tight smile and walks away without asking if we need anything else.
I wait for Hunt to pick up where he left off, but he appears lost in thought as he traces his finger along the rim of his glass. Judging by the furrow in his brow, they’re not happy thoughts.
“You’re lucky I didn’t implicate you in Garrett’s death,” he begins. “But it’s not too late to change that. Or maybe I should just pay a visit to your sister and her beautiful family in Brentwood. What is it?” he says turning to Merrill. “Just ten minutes outside of Nashville. The area is much greener than I anticipated. I really enjoyed that barbecue place we went t
o in Brentwood. What was it called?”
“Judge Bean’s,” Merrill replies.
“Right. They have some killer ribs. Have you ever been there, Kingston?” Hunt asks, refusing to use the name King, as usual.
“I’ve never been there,” I reply.
Hunt’s eyes widen. “Oh, that’s right. You haven’t spoken to your sister in years. How insensitive of me. You’ve never even met your nieces, have you?”
My nostrils flare as I hold back a flood of boiling anger. “Cut to the chase, Dick,” I say, using the name he hates.
He chuckles, then he goes back to staring at his glass of milk. “Seven days. If you don’t have that suitcase in one week, your sister and your nieces will get another visit from me.”
I shake my head. “Nope.”
Hunt freezes as he’s about to stand up. “Excuse me?”
“I said no. I’m not doing one more thing for you until I know what’s inside that suitcase. This can’t be about money. We’ve all got plenty of that. There’s something else in there. And if you don’t tell me what it is now, I’m checking out. You can find someone else to be your fucking errand boy.”
Hunt remains frozen for a moment before he turns to Merrill, whose only response is to shrug his scrawny shoulders. “Look at this kid. A real fucking war hero, just like my son,” Hunt says, nodding his head, allowing a moment for this jab to sink in. “You’ve got balls. I mean real balls to threaten to walk out on me. You can’t walk away. I own you.”
I don’t blink as I look him in the eye. “Your move, Dick.”
Hunt knows I’m the only one he can count on to follow through with this operation. Right now, he’s thinking about torturing Izzy to get the location of the suitcase. He’s weighing the risk of Izzy not telling him what he wants to hear against the risk of looking weak by capitulating to my demands.
Finally, he nods. “There’s a USB drive sewn into the lining of the suitcase. It contains some critical information on some of my political opponents. Oppo research. If it gets into the wrong hands, it could be very damaging for them. But more importantly, it could be damaging for me if it’s discovered I paid a large sum of money for it. Understand?”
I squint at him as if this will help me see through the smokescreen of lies, but it doesn’t help. “Understood,” I reply. “I’ll get you your USB.”
“Eight days. And once you have the drive, get rid of the girl,” he reminds me, grabbing his glass of milk and downing it in a few gulps. He stands up and glances at my gun holster as he uses the back of his hand to wipe his mouth. “Don’t let your sister down, Kingston.”
When Hunt and his goons are gone, I throw a couple twenties on the table and stand.
“I’ll contact you soon,” I say as Santos rises from his seat.
Santos shakes his head. “You think you can do that?”
“Do what? Find the suitcase?”
He tilts his head and looks me in the eye as if to say, “You know what I mean.”
He wants to know if I can get rid of Izzy when the time comes.
My gaze falls to the table, where the empty glass sits. “I don’t know. But I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
* * *
The muscles in my neck are corded with tension as I pull into Izzy’s driveway. Her Ranger is parked near the front door, and I find myself wanting to ask how her day was at work today.
I shake my head as I pull my pickup next to hers. I can’t have those kinds of thoughts about Izzy. I need to keep my guard up or my sister and her family are dead.
Knocking on Izzy’s front door, instead of walking across her backyard, seems like a less personal approach, so it seems like the right thing to do. Like I’m doing a construction job for a random client, not the girl I’m supposed to stab in the back.
Or the girl I’ve fallen head-over-heels for.
I shake my head as I hop out of the pickup and slam the door shut. Grabbing my toolbox out of the truck bed, I head up the driveway and onto the porch. Izzy opens the door after a single knock.
“Hey,” she greets me with a sunny smile.
“Hey, beautiful.”
The words roll off my tongue as if I’ve been saying them to her for years, and the way her breath seems to catch in her lungs makes them feel even more accurate.
She casts her gaze downward, almost looking bashful. “Why’d you knock on this door instead of the back door?”
And just like that, all the stress from my meeting with Hunt vanishes into thin air.
“Are you gonna invite me in?” I ask, sidestepping her question.
Her hazel eyes widen. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. Of course. Come in.”
She steps aside so I can enter. I set my toolbox down on the floor in the entryway. Before she can say another word, I grab her face and kiss her.
Her lips are as soft and sweet as they were last night. And I can smell the same coconut sunscreen wafting from her warm skin.
I want to press her body against the wall and kiss every curve of her gorgeous body. Maybe I should throw caution to the wind and hop on a private plane with her. Live out the rest of our days on a deserted island.
I pull away slowly, placing a parting kiss on her delicate jawline. “Where’s the access to your crawl space?”
She clutches her chest as if she’s having trouble catching her breath, then she lets out a soft laugh. “I think you already know the way to my crawl space.”
I laugh out loud and plant a kiss on her forehead. “Come on. Let’s go fix your subfloor.”
There’s no need to ask where the access door to her crawl space is. Santos and I have been down there multiple times, looking for the suitcase and placing listening devices.
“This way,” Izzy says, leading me toward the empty guest room across the hall from her bedroom.
She slides open a mirrored closet door and shows me the hatch in the floor.
“I’m just going to inspect the floor right now,” I begin. “So this should only take a few minutes. Once I know what’s going on, I’ll probably have to make a run to the hardware store and grab some lumber.”
“Do you mind if I go down there with you?” she asks. “I want to see what you’re doing. Maybe I can learn how to fix this stuff on my own.”
I don’t want her to go down there with me. I planned to go alone first so I could collect the listening devices. They’re about the size of a quarter, and there are only three, but I can’t risk her seeing them.
“Actually, I’d rather go down alone first,” I reply, my stomach clenching at the crestfallen look on her face. “I want to make sure there’s nothing dangerous down there first. Sometimes, in these old houses, there can be exposed wiring and sewage, and even animals that have died down there.”
She looks horrified at this news. “Okay, you can go down alone.”
I open the hatch and hop inside. Standing straight up, the floor in the closet hits at chest-height. I grab my toolbox and crouch down to head toward the bathroom area.
It’s dark and dirty down here. A corner of the crawl space near the front of the house is littered with trash, which makes me think there must have been a homeless squatter living down here while the house was on the market. Cobwebs snag on my hair and the tops of my shoulders as I walk, and the earthy smell of decay I’m detecting is probably from a long-dead squirrel or rat.
“Anything dangerous down there?” Izzy shouts at me through the open hatch.
“Still looking around!” I shout back.
I collect all three listening devices and stuff them in my pocket. As I do this, I look around for signs of disturbed soil. If Izzy moved the suitcase down here recently, there would be signs of freshly unearthed dirt. But nothing has changed since the last time I was down here.
It has to be in one of the holes on her property if it’s not hidden near the dock. I’ll have to wait for Izzy to go back to work tomorrow before I do another search. This time, I’ll start with the dock, where there are lik
ely to be fewer boobytraps.
I head back to the bathroom subfloor area. Getting down on my knees, so I don’t have to crouch, I inspect the plywood for dry rot and mold. There are multiple areas of water damage and a significant bulge near one of the PVC drainpipes. I’ll have to replace the subfloor in the entire bathroom.
Unfortunately, with only one week left on my deadline from Hunt, I don’t have enough time to do that.
“The coast is clear. Come on down,” I call out to Izzy.
I watch as she lowers her legs through the hatch. Then she hops down, landing softly on the musty dirt. She looks around at all the cobwebs and decides to get down on all fours to crawl toward me.
She gets down on her knees next to me, looking very serious. “What’s the prognosis?”
“You see this floor joist?” I say, pointing at the beam right above us. “This will need to be replaced, along with all the subfloor in the bathroom. And, if I’m being totally honest, I don’t think you should be using this bathroom until it’s fixed. It’s liable to cave in any moment.” I point at the drainpipe where I see the most damage. “You’ve got a cast iron flange on your toilet, and it also needs to be replaced.”
Her brow is furrowed with worry. “I only have one bathroom. Am I supposed to go do my business in the woods?”
“You can rent a portable toilet,” I reply, grabbing a monkey wrench out of my toolbox and tightening the nut on the pipe.
“A porta-potty? Really?” she replies, clearly not amused.
“You’re welcome to stay at my cabin until it’s fixed.”
Her mouth curves in a gorgeous smile. “You want to see me naked.”
I shake my head as I point at the water line above her. “You’ll need to get a plumber out here to change out all your galvanized piping to copper. These are pretty rusted. Then you can get a carpenter out here to fix the floor joists and subfloor.”
