by Michael Todd
She stood there for a moment longer, and a smile began to move over her lips. She had always made her own choices in her life, but there was something about this job that she couldn’t resist—or maybe it was the man behind it.
“So,” she said quietly to herself. “Mr. Big, Tall, and Hunky thinks he can just come in here, hire me, and walk out.” She bit her lower lip. “Well, I think I will just go right ahead and get a bit of my own back.”
She straightened her arms and spun around to stare at Joshua, who was starting to recover from his amazement. She chuckled, loving how innocent that kid was, and how he was going to get the attention he needed.
She adjusted her expression and put on a hard face.
“Come here,” she snapped. “Pull up a chair next to mine. We are going to go through every single one of your purchases since this company started, and don’t leave anything out. If you want the company to succeed, you have to learn from your mistakes and your successes. That is how great people become greater, Joshua—they observe, and they figure out from the best how to make the system even better. Eventually you will be able to make these choices with your eyes closed. You won’t need Mamacita here looking over your shoulder every step of the way.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Joshua said meekly, hurrying across the room to grab a chair and pushing it back in front of him. “I’m ready to learn.”
“I’ll give him ‘you’re hired.’”
“You wouldn’t be so upset if you had just slept with that guy from the cabana,” Elizabeth commented to her friend. “Now you are upset because the vacation is over, and we are stuck at the San Diego airport waiting for our flight back home.”
“It’s not about him,” Sarah told her, “and there are a lot worse places we could be stuck than at an airport. Take this opportunity, for example.” She pointed out the window.
“What?” Elizabeth asked, walking up to the glass and watching a sleek black jet roll down the runway and pull to the side for unloading.
“Where else would you see a private jet stop all the traffic?” She laughed. “And they are unloading right there. We get to see someone famous.”
The girls stood in the window staring at the Killers’ private jet. As the door opened they moved closer, basically pressing their faces against the glass.
The stairs lowered to the ground and a female emerged, dressed in a calf-length tight black dress, suit jacket, and black heels. Her hair was pulled back tightly, and her large-lensed sunglasses hid most of her face.
Directly behind her was a very handsome, very sharply-dressed black man. His hair was freshly cut, his suit was pressed perfectly, and his glasses hid his eyes as well.
As they got off the plane they looked around for a moment, then got directly into a blacked-out SUV. The guy was the driver, and the woman climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door. As soon as they drove off, the girls turned to one another.
“See?” Sarah told her. “Only in California. It’s not all bad.”
“That is kinda cool,” Elizabeth agreed, then her eyes narrowed and she asked, “Which of the Kardashians was that?”
6
“Okay,” Katie demanded, taking her glasses off. “Where are we going first?”
“First we are going to this tavern in South Park, or near it, called Hamilton’s,” Calvin told her as he took a right turn.
“Why?” Katie asked.
“Because…beer.” He chuckled. “And food.”
“I guess that’s a good enough reason.” She shrugged.
They drove up the highway, and after exiting took several different streets. Katie had to admit she was very glad she wasn’t the one driving, since California drivers terrified the shit out of her. She was used to Las Vegas driving, which was mostly slow and steady due to the freakishly wide multi-lane roads all over the place. Las Vegas had a bunch of cheap land and they weren’t afraid to use it.
When they finally got to the bar, she was relieved to be done with roads for a little while.
The two of them went inside and looked around. The bar was a hole in the wall, but it was charming in some ways. Over the bar there were hundreds of beer tap handles.
On the wall above the active taps was a giant chalkboard, with the names of the available beers hand-printed in different colored chalks across it. The selection was unbelievable. There were beers from all over the world on their draft list, and if you wanted a bottle, there were a ton of them as well, all stacked neatly in the fridge against the wall.
Katie took a seat at the bar and pulled a menu from the stack. She was starving, since they’d left Las Vegas in such a hurry. It was good to feel hungry again—this was the first time since she’d allowed Pandora to talk her into gorging herself at the Italian restaurant.
There had come a point where she couldn’t speed up the digestion and elimination process any further, so she’d just had to wait it out. That kind of food orgy could not and would not happen again.
Quite so soon.
So instead of a repeat, she decided that having a salad would be the best course of action.
“This place is nuts.” Calvin grinned, looking around.
Katie narrowed her eyes. “I thought you had been here before?”
“Nah. I read about it on the plane, so I figured we would give it a try,” he told her. “I didn’t want to rush right into a crowded restaurant in downtown San Diego. All the reviews said that despite being a hole in the wall, the place was really good. It’s not often I get such a choice selection of brews.” He snickered. “The guys back at the base are going to be so jealous of this.”
“Yes, they will be…and Korbin will be pissed,” she joked.
Calvin agreed. “You’re right. Better not show them until we get back.”
“It’s better to ask permission than forgiveness?” Katie said, tilting her head.
“That, but backward,” Calvin replied.
Katie thought about it a second, “Well, damn. I did say it wrong.”
“Besides, if I’m going to get demon guts all over me, I need to be properly lubricated beforehand.”
“Hey, you two.” The bartender lightly wiped the bar down as he walked over to them. “What can I get for you?”
“I will have the…” Calvin looked up at the sign. “I’ll have the Beachwood Red Ale.”
The bartender smiled at Katie. “And you?”
“Do you have hot tea?” she asked.
“We normally do, but we are all out,” he explained. “We do have the Lipton raspberry.”
Katie nodded, not sure she could refuse at that point. He walked back with Calvin’s beer and Katie’s prepackaged iced tea.
She was more than a little pissed at the fact that she was going to have to drink it.
Kill horrible demons, check.
Fight for her right to have a brewed cup of tea? Uncheck.
What the hell was up with her unwillingness to push back on the small things? She should have just told him to bring her a beer.
The two of them ordered some food, and found a small table in the back corner to sit down at. Katie almost felt claustrophobic even with the bar mostly empty, and couldn’t imagine what it would be like if it were packed like the bars got in Vegas.
Everyone would be a big pile of sweat and drunkenness, baking in the San Diego sunshine. It would be absolutely miserable.
“So, do you think this reporter will have real information about what is going on?” Calvin asked.
“I don’t know.” Katie shrugged. “I’m inclined to say no, but honestly, there is a chance that she does. I mean, she shows up at most of the killings and I have no idea how she tracks us or finds us. There is a really good chance that if she does that to us, she has a handle on who the other guys are too.”
“Maybe.” Calvin sounded unconvinced.
“Of course, she could have absolutely nothing except news on the next talking banana,” Katie continued. “In that case, we will just be fueling her fi
re. If she doesn’t know anything and we yanked her off the street, she’s gonna know something big is going on.”
“I know.” Calvin sighed. “But we have to do it, since Korbin wants it to be done. And we have to make sure we protect her like we promised to. Until then, though,” he lifted his bottle, “I am going to drink this beer…and probably get another.”
The middle of the night was a normal time for people in San Ysidro neighborhoods to be lurking in the streets, especially in that neighborhood.
The drug house had been quiet for hours and no one had come to check on it, neither for the fire in the living room nor the screaming and crying when the demon had made the people dropped into his circle his first meal.
The guy walking toward the house now was nothing more than a junkie looking for his next fix from his normal drug dealer, with whom he shopped every time he had enough cash.
He scratched the side of his face and yawned as he walked up the steps to the front door. He was used to seeing some serious muscle out there at that time of night, but figured they were having a party inside or something.
He knocked on the door and stood there rubbing his hands together, looking around in paranoia. After a couple of minutes he knocked again, surprised that no one had answered the door. Alejandro had always been open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
The druggie shrugged his shoulders and opened the unlocked door slowly and walked inside.
“Hey, Alejandro,” he called, his burnt-out coke nose twitching. “I’m here for… whoa!”
He tripped over something and landed on the floor on all fours, cursing. He stared at the red puddle underneath him and slowly he lifted his hands in disgust, watching the blood drip down them.
Then he focused on the room, where there were the pieces of bodies strewn all over the floor. He swallowed hard. He wanted to scream, but nothing would come out.
After scrambling to his feet he looked at the rug to the side, which had a large burn mark in the center.
There were bodies fucking everywhere, and the stench of blood permeated the place. He had been half out of his mind to begin with, but this sent him over the edge.
He scrambled to the door and ran as fast as he could toward the front yard.
He stumbled down the steps—fell off them, really—and rolled across the lawn, his breathing so heavy he damn near passed out. If there was a way to sober someone up?
He had walked right into it.
Three blocks down the street two cops were parked on the edge of the neighborhood, taking it easy while watching the streets like they normally did at that hour.
They were used to seeing crazy shit going on with the junkies and the homeless in the area, so at first they didn’t even notice the guy, who was covered in blood, trying to run a straight line down the street toward them.
“So yeah, the sergeant was right there with the girl,” Stone told his partner Holden. “He gave zero shits that everyone was staring at him and the woman, and one half his age, too. I bet he thought he could get away with it. Well, then his wife shows up and just about kills him right there in the middle of the bar.”
“No fucking way,” Holden complained, shaking his head. “I always miss the good shit.”
Stone cracked up at that. “How is daddy life treating you now?”
“It’s good, most days.” Holden chuckled. “It’s tough when I get off the night shift because the baby’s up and the wife’s up. They try not to bother me, but we live in a shoebox-sized house and we are unable to really do anything quietly with the baby.”
“Yeah, but you’ve been saving up for a new house, right?” Stone asked.
Holden nodded and frowned. “Yeah, but it all depends on whether I make rank this time around,” he told Stone. “I need to make more money to be approved for the house we want. That, or we are going to have to move away from this town or even state. It’s so fucking expensive here; we can’t do anything.”
“I feel you, dude,” Stone commiserated. “My girlfriend wants the whole nine: the house, the dog, the kids, and the picket fence. It’s not her making me question getting all of that, it’s the fucking price of living here in Cali.”
“We could go be cops in Mayberry,” Holden suggested with a twinkle in his eye.
That cracked Stone up completely. “Yeah, right. I would go nuts.” He shook his head, “No fucking way.”
“What the hell?” Holden exclaimed, squinting into the gloom.
“What?” Stone asked quickly, following his partner’s line of sight until he found what Holden was watching.
They watched the druggie run down the street, his hands covered in something red and his face pale as a ghost. It looked like he might just have shit his pants.
The druggie spotted the car and the cops both got out, figuring he was headed in that direction anyway. As he got closer, the officers put their hands on their guns.
“That’s far enough,” Holden commanded, raising his hand.
“What’s all over you?” Stone challenged.
The guy was completely incoherent, talking so fast and shaking so badly that they couldn’t understand a word he was saying.
Holden attempted to calm the distraught man. “Take a deep breath. Speak slowly and clearly so we can understand you.”
The man’s eyes bulged, and his words continued to be lost in frightened sobs and gulps for air.
“Breathe, man,” the officer repeated, his patience wearing thin.
The man continued to gibber, waving his arms in the direction he’d run from. He was clearly high, and both officers could see the blood coating him.
“STOP!” Holden finally called, raising his sidearm but not pointing it directly at the man…
Yet.
“Now take a motherfucking deep breath or I am going to drop you right here on this street!”
“Okay, okay.” The junkie cringed, raising one hand and putting the other on his knee. “Just give me one second. Look, I know you think I’m a junkie, right? Well, I don’t want the motherfucking drugs anymore.” He pointed back the way he had come. “I just found a bunch of dead bodies and what looks like some serious fucking voodoo devil shit in that house down there at the end of the block.”
Stone sneered. “Are you sure you’re not high as a kite?”
“No,” he denied angrily. “How else would I have all this blood on me?”
“All right,” Holden allowed, with a doubtful glance at Stone. “Take us to the house so we can see this for ourselves.”
“Okay, follow me.” The druggie turned back toward the house, and hurried up the sidewalk with the officers following closely behind him.
“You know shit’s bad when a junkie is leading the police to the house he buys his shit from,” Stone remarked dryly. “Like, this might be one of the first signs of the apocalypse.”
“Right,” Holden agreed with a low chuckle. “What’s next? Bank robbers returning the cash?”
The guys kept up the snarky banter all the way to the house.
Holden looked left and right before shining the flashlight into the open doorway. Something sparkled in the dark and Holden stepped closer, pulling his brows together.
“What the hell is that?” he wondered aloud, stepping toward the house.
The two officers shone their flashlights through the door from the porch, and the beams showed them several different body parts.
“That’s… That’s a head!” Stone put his hand to his face and groaned, wanting to puke right then and there.
Immediately Holden reached for his gun and spun around to point it at the junkie. “Put your hands up,” he bellowed. “Put them up over your head.”
“Officer, I didn’t do nothing,” the druggie begged. “I swear I found them like this.”
“Then who did this?” Holden demanded, pushing the man down on all fours.
The druggie began to weep. “As far as I know, the only one that can be at fault is the devil himself,” he cr
ied, trembling in fear.
Back in Vegas, things were a lot more relaxed and quiet. Mamacita had gone back to her home with the girls for the evening. She sat down at her computer and thought for a moment, trying to decide the best search terms for what she was interested in buying.
It had been many years since she had needed appropriate clothing for work. So long, in fact, that she didn’t exactly know what size she was in the brands she found.
Still, she needed something professional to wear into the office now that she was going to be doing the ordering and pretty much all the administrative work.
“What clothes are you ordering?” Lily, one of the girls from the brothel, asked. “Are you getting back into the business with us?”
“No.” Mamacita chuckled and gave her a coy smile and a wink. “I’m buying business clothes.”
“What’s the difference?” Lily asked innocently. “We work for a business, right?”
“Yes, but these clothes are for working while you are vertical,” Mamacita explained. “It’s another type of game men and women play—one where we let the men believe they are in the driver’s seat, when really we tell them where to go.”
“Oh?” Lily inquired, with a look that said she didn’t really understand.
“Don’t worry about it, sweetie. You just keep doing what you know.” Mamacita smiled. “I’ve got a new challenge.”
The girl walked away nodding happily and Mamacita leaned forward, staring at the black dress suit on the Versace website.
It was nice, but not at all what she was looking for. She was intending to buy herself horizontal outfits, and she was pretty sure she had a crush on one specific man.
She knew it was her turn to have a good time, to show how intelligent she was, and to be the star of her own life for once. She just wished she knew exactly what they did for a living. Running a business where she didn’t know what the product was might be a bit of a challenge, but she liked those, and she certainly wasn’t going to pass the opportunity by.
Maybe she would find out something she didn’t want to know, or maybe she would find out something that she had known all along. Either way she was going shopping, and she was going to make sure she looked damn good at work.
