Real Dangerous Ride (The Kim Oh Suspense Thriller Series Book 6)
Page 17
I went on gazing at the flat, gray ocean. You can’t stop a tsunami, either.
Screw it. I pushed up the cuff of my jacket and looked at my watch. Time to make my delivery. And get paid – which was way more important than moping about how much the future was going to suck, or not.
If I did in fact get paid – that’s what I thought about as I leaned the bike through the curves heading away from the Great Highway and toward Geary Boulevard. There was so much that Dalby had lied to me about – plus what he had told me when we’d been facing each other at the diner, that he hadn’t really expected me to be able to pull off the job at all – that I wouldn’t have been completely surprised to discover he hadn’t actually made any provisions for me getting my money once I got here.
I found the address he’d given me, and even a space along the side street barely big enough to wedge the bike into. Taking the crumpled slip of paper from my pocket, I checked to make sure – on one corner was a Russian Orthodox church, complete with shiny gold onion domes, and across from it was a shabby tiki bar and lounge that looked like it’d been around from before Pearl Harbor had been bombed. So, pretty much a normal San Francisco neighborhood, or what was left of them.
From the rear of the Ninja’s seat, I took the backpack Dalby had given me, slung one of its straps across my shoulder, and walked into the little Korean liquor store next to the bar.
The guy behind the counter could’ve been my cousin. He frowned as he studied the backpack, where I’d set it down next to the cash register.
“Dalby sent me. With this.” I poked the backpack. “You know what I’m talking about, right?” I sure hoped he did.
His frown deepened, but he didn’t say anything. He held up a finger, indicating that I should wait where I was, then picked up the backpack and carried it toward the office and storeroom at the rear of the store. I stood there and listened to him and a woman, who I couldn’t see, talking in Korean. I didn’t understand a word.
Then they were both quiet, and the woman came out – she looked like one of my relations, too. She laid a piece of paper on the counter in front of me and handed me a ballpoint pen. “Sign here.”
Some kind of receipt – I didn’t bother reading through it. I scrawled a fake name on the line at the bottom and stepped back from the counter.
“Here you are.” Her English was a lot better than my Korean was ever going to be. She handed me a padded manila envelope sealed with packing tape. “All done.”
“That’s it?” The envelope felt oddly substantial in my hands.
“You’re good to go.” She turned and headed back to the office.
The guy was sweeping the sidewalk as I stepped outside. I walked past him and past the tiki bar, then around the corner to my bike. There was nobody close by – I leaned against the seat and pried the envelope open, getting an index finger under the tape and peeling it loose, enough to see what was inside.
Money. Stuffed with it, nice fat packets. That part of the job, Dalby hadn’t been b.s.’ing about. Then again, it might’ve been a lot to me, but for him it’d just been something out of the petty cash box. If I hadn’t made the delivery, it probably would’ve just sat at the bottom of a desk drawer in the liquor store office, maybe forever. Or close enough.
I didn’t bother counting it. I stuffed the envelope into my own backpack, zipped it shut, and climbed onto the bike. I didn’t start the bike up, though – instead, I pulled my phone from inside my jacket.
“Hey –” It took a while, but my brother Donnie finally answered. “Guess what? I’m here.”
“Really?” He knew what I meant. From around him came people’s overlapping voices, the usual clamor of some kind of conference going on in a big hotel function room. “Why?”
“Oh . . .” I wasn’t going to tell him. He didn’t need to know. “You know how it is. I get bored when there’s nothing to do.” Keeping it light. “So I figured, why not?”
He wasn’t too annoyed – which was nice of him. Even agreed to cut some time away from all the high-tech buddies he’d been making so we could have lunch together.
There was still time for me to pull myself together. Coming over here from the Great Highway, I’d spotted a decent-looking motel called the Seal Rock Inn, with its VACANCY sign out. I could head back there and check in, then borrow an iron and ironing board – places like that always have them – so I could touch up the nice shirt I’d brought. And take a shower, which I badly needed by now, and wash my hair. There were even some nail places a few blocks away on Clement, so when I got to the hotel where Donnie’s conference was at, my hands wouldn’t look like I’d been digging ditches with them.
“Okay,” I told him. “See you in a bit.” I thumbed the phone off and stowed it inside my jacket. Hearing his voice had made me feel better. I started up the bike and wheeled it around and onto Geary, rolling into traffic and heading back toward the ocean. When I got to the top of the hill and saw the glint of sunlight on the slow, distant waves, I didn’t think about what it meant at all.
Copyright © 2015 by the Author.
This ebook edition first published March 2015.
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The Kim Oh Thrillers:
Kim Oh 1: Real Dangerous Girl
Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job
Kim Oh 3: Real Dangerous People
Kim Oh 4: Real Dangerous Place
Kim Oh 5: Real Dangerous Fun
Kim Oh 6: Real Dangerous Ride
. . . and more to come
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