“Yes, ma’am.”
Then Amelia exhaled. “Get a crew over to Culvy’s place. Get my money. But you go too, just in case anybody else gets sticky fingers. Those stealing Amelia’s money days are over.”
Scotty smiled. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Then she looked at the two collectors who had been in her employ. She should have felt for them. She knew, despite what they had done, she should have felt empathy for their plight. But she’d lived a hard life, an abusive, bitter life, and she didn’t know what empathy felt like. When she needed it, nobody gave any to her. Nobody felt bad about her plight. Why was she supposed to feel bad about theirs? How was she supposed to feel it?
“Clean up the mess,” she said again, and left.
CHAPTER TWO
Reggie Dell lounged in her garden tub as if she had nothing but time on her hands. But when her intercom buzzed, and she opened her eyes and looked at the time on the cellphone that sat on her tub’s edge, she panicked.
“Shit!” she yelled, and jumped out of the tub. She grabbed a towel and ran to the intercom near the front door of her small apartment, and pressed the button. “Come on up,” she said, because she knew who it was, and then hurried to her bedroom.
The see-through silk robe was already laid out across her bed as she dried off quickly. After she threw it on, she tied it below her waist, which allowed for her chest, and half of her breasts, to be exposed.
Knocks were heard on her door as she fluffed her short hair in the mirror, smiled, and then took off.
Once she finally made it back to her front door, she exhaled, smiled again, and then opened the door.
And frowned. “Ozzie?” She looked beyond the tall black man at her door. “Where’s Hammer?”
Ozzie Jones smiled too. He was accustomed to Reggie’s serious lack of tact. “He couldn’t make it,” he said.
“But I told him I needed to see him!”
“That’s why he sent me. May I come in?”
It was obvious to Ozzie that Reggie was disappointed, but she moved aside and allowed him to walk in.
She closed the door. Ozzie stood there, with his hands in his pockets, and looked at her. She was a pretty woman, but with too many issues to interest him. And one of those issues, he felt, was her unhealthy obsession with his boss.
Ozzie began looking around. “Nice place,” he said.
“Thanks,” she responded.
He horned in on a group of framed photos that lined her foyer table. Almost all of them were of the same two people: a black woman with a white man. He knew the woman. “Your mother was very photogenic,” he said.
Reggie sighed that I’m not feeling this sigh. “Thanks,” she said.
“Who’s she with?”
Reggie exhaled. She didn’t want to hold any small talk with Ozzie! She was still fuming that Hammer, once again, didn’t bother to come when she called. But it wasn’t exactly Ozzie’s fault, she also knew, and she didn’t want to be rude just for the sake of being rude. “That’s my father,” she said.
A white father, Ozzie thought, and a black mother. Reggie was biracial. He would not have known that by looking at her. But it wasn’t like they’d had any personal conversations in the past for him to know anything about her. Whenever she came around Hammer, he assumed it was a private matter, so he skedaddled.
“Anyway, Reg, what’s up?” he asked. He did have shit to do. “You said you needed to see Hammer. He wanted me to drop by and find out why.”
“Why couldn’t he make it?”
“He’s busy.”
“Too busy to come see me? I don’t think so!”
“Just tell me what you want him to know. What is it?”
Reggie closed her robe and folded her arms. “He could have come. He can’t be that busy.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll tell him what you said.” He was about to leave. Then he turned back around. “May I take a piss before I go?”
Reggie was still reeling that Hammer sent a stand-in to talk to her. She felt she deserved better.
“Reg, may I use your toilet before I leave?”
“Yeah, whatever,” she said irritatingly.
Ozzie wasn’t trying to irritate the bitch. But that was how Reggie was. Self-centered as hell. “Where is it?” he asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
But she just pointed toward the back of her apartment.
Ozzie smiled, shook his head, and made his way down the hall. He opened the first closed door he came upon, figuring it to be the bathroom, and walked on in. Only it wasn’t a bathroom, and he was about to walk back out. But then he saw what was in the room. And he couldn’t believe his eyes.
The room was a small bedroom. Possibly her guest bedroom. But it was more like a shrine, complete with wall-sized posters, to Ozzie’s boss and best friend, Hammer Reese. Photographs, newspaper clippings, and pictures filled every crook and cranny of the small room. Everybody knew Reggie had a thing for Hammer. Everybody knew that. But Ozzie didn’t realize just how much.
He pulled out his cellphone, took a few pictures, and decided to hold his pee for another spot.
He left Reggie’s place with all deliberate speed.
She left with an escort. An SUV in front of her own car, and one in back. It was one of those just in case protocols whenever trouble brewed at her distribution center. And two casualties, both of whom once worked for the center, were big-time trouble.
Besides, it was one in the morning on a side of town not known for puppies and rainbows, and her security team wasn’t taking any chances. It seemed pretty unnecessary to her, since she was relatively certain there were no outsiders in on Ringo and Culvy’s money grab, but protocol stated she was escorted if shit went down. Whether she wanted that escort or not. It was another one of those Bulldog rules already in place when she eventually took over the company. Another rule she planned to review.
She turned onto Whimbley and kept driving west. And as she drove, she did feel some kind of ache. Not for those two assholes she had to ice, but for that sense of regret about how her life was turning out. Her brothers would kill her if they knew she was still up to this shit, for one thing, and she didn’t even want to think about what Hammer would do if he knew. But her deceased husband, a man who made her his wife when she was too young to know a damn thing, had taught her to wheel and deal in drugs and crime her whole adult life. This was the only life she knew. And she’d be damned if she was going to give it up and rely on some man ever again. Her husband’s death was her freedom, and his business she inherited was her means to stay free. She wasn’t giving freedom up.
But she still felt as if she was letting down the real men in her life, the only people who ever gave a damn about her. Although, she also had to remind herself, Hammer Reese probably didn’t give a damn about her specifically. He only cared about their son. She was the mother of his only child, so naturally he would be concerned about her. But that wasn’t the same as caring for her. That wasn’t the same as love, Amelia thought, then tried not to think about that little depressing part of her life at all.
When her Bentley turned off of Whimbley onto Potomac, the two SUVs continued to provide security as she made her way home. The point wasn’t for them to follow her all the way to her house. The point was for them to make certain nobody else was following her home.
But as they drove on, a big, yellow school bus suddenly entered the intersection they were crossing, and crossed right in front of her convoy. The SUV fronting her security couldn’t swerve in time, and crashed into its big, side frame.
It was a violent crash, as the SUV toppled over and the school bus began rolling and rolling as if it was tumbleweed rolling down some ghost town. It was surreal to see. But Amelia didn’t wait around to see what happened next. Mainly because, when the crash occurred, she wasn’t looking at the crash itself, but what surrounded it. And that was when she saw that another truck was heading their way, undoubtedly loaded with gunmen. She knew an ambush w
hen she saw one!
She turned right, away from the approaching truck, and relied on her well-paid men to handle the situation. But as her men got out of the SUV behind her and began shooting at the approaching truck, a group of gunmen got out of the school bus and started shooting back at them. It was a modern-day gunfight. But Amelia was gone.
She sped through side street after side street as she got away from the scene. She had a child to get home to, and she’d be damned if anybody was going to stand in her way. She could only hope her men were able to contain those shooters and get out of it alive themselves.
The further away she got from the ambush, the better she felt. She was angry that it happened, and was praying that her men were up for the job, but she was pleased to get away. Until she turned another corner and crashed, head on, into another truck. Her airbag deployed and threw her into it. But she was otherwise okay.
She unbuckled her seat belt, grabbed her loaded gun from a compartment beneath her seat, and jumped out of her Bentley. Damn if they were going to get her this night!
But as soon as she jumped out, three more trucks arrived and surrounded her. And what looked like a dozen men jumped out of those trucks, with guns drawn, ordering her to drop her weapon. Amelia was not a quitter. Not ever in her life. But she was no fool, either.
She dropped her weapon.
CHAPTER THREE
Hamilton “Hammer” Reese ran.
At five in the morning, on a cold, winter morning, when most people were just beginning to think about getting out of bed, he was on his third mile. As the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, he no longer had the protection of the agents at SPS, who used to run with him. But he had his own protection in the form of Ozzie Jones, a muscular black man with movie star good looks that could rival Hammer’s, and he was running with him. Oz was a former Green Beret, and a former SPS agent who became the lead agent in charge of Hammer’s security when he headed the CIA. He was the only man on the face of this earth that Hammer trusted with his life. When Hammer left the government, he took Oz with him.
After miles four and five, Hammer called it a morning. Oz, who had a pain in his side by the time they arrived back at Hammer’s picturesque Canadian estate in the Laurentian mountains of Montreal, shook his head. “You’re trying to kill me, Boss,” he said. “I finally figured it out. Runs like this every day? Oh, yeah. Murder. That’s what this is!”
Hammer laughed, and they both went into the main house.
After grabbing a couple bottles of Powerade from the frig, Hammer stood at the center island and tossed one of the bottles to Oz. Oz sat at the center island across from Hammer, and they chugged down half of their drinks. Then Oz broached the subject.
“I saw Reggie yesterday,” he said.
Hammer looked at him. Both men were exhausted. “And?”
Oz chugged down more drink and then looked at the man who was his boss, and his best friend. “May I ask you a question?”
“You know you can.”
“What’s your relationship with Reg?”
“You know what my relationship is. Why would you ask me that?”
Ozzie shook his head.
“What, Oz? What happened? Did she tell you what she wanted?”
“She was bitching because you didn’t show up. You know how she is. She’s not herself if she’s not bitching about something. But since she wasn’t going to tell me what she wanted, I told her I needed to use the restroom, and then I was going to get up out of there. So I walk down the hall looking for the bathroom, and I open this closed door, figuring that was the place I needed to be. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t a bathroom. It was a shrine.”
That baffled Hammer. “A shrine?”
“A fucking shrine, Boss.”
“To whom?” Hammer asked.
“To you,” Oz said.
Hammer was surprised. “To me?”
“It creeped me out, I swear it did,” Ozzie said. “I mean, I know Reggie’s different. The girl is not your standard issue anything. But damn.”
“You didn’t think to take any pictures, did you?”
Oz smiled. “Great minds think alike,” he said, pulled out his cellphone, and handed it to Hammer.
When Hammer saw the photos and newspaper clippings and life-size posters of himself on the wall, he was creeped out too. “What kind of bullshit is this?” he asked. “What the fuck is she pulling?”
“She’s pulling you closer, she hopes,” Oz said. “She figures if she dreams it up, it just may come true.”
Hammer shook his head and took another drink. “I’m going to have to have a meeting. Me, her, and Amelia. Like now.”
Oz looked at Hammer. “Does she even know Amelia is in your life at all? And I mean beyond being the mother of your son?”
“She knows. I think.”
Oz shook his head, drained down the last of his Powerade, and left the bottle on the counter. “I wouldn’t want to be you,” he said. “At least not where Reggie Dell’s concerned. Good luck,” he added, and headed out of the door.
Luck, Hammer thought. What the fuck was that?
Oz, who lived in a luxurious guest house on the property, wasn’t two minutes out the door when Hammer began to feel the effects of his morning run, too. So he drained his remaining drink, and made his way upstairs.
By the time he had jumped in the shower and was getting out, his cell phone began ringing. He grabbed a towel and walked over to his nightstand. He picked up his phone and checked out the Caller ID. When he saw the name, that it was coming from Amelia’s home phone, he quickly pressed the button. “Hey,” he said.
But it wasn’t Amelia. It was Rowena Harper, their son’s live-in nanny and bodyguard. “I am so sorry to disturb you this early in the morning, sir,” she said.
Hammer was surprised to hear from her. And concerned. “Is my son alright?” he quickly asked.
“Oh, yes, sir. He’s right here with me. He’s fine.”
But Hammer was still concerned. Because another person in that household had his heart, too. “And his mother?” he asked. “Is she alright?”
“That’s why I’m calling, sir,” the nanny said.
Hammer’s heart squeezed. The thought of Amelia in any kind of trouble always created a surge of panic inside of him. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did something happen?”
“Well, sir, she left last night. She told me, as she always does when she goes out, what time she would be back.”
“Go on.”
“She said, before she left, that she would be back by five this morning, sir. If she couldn’t make it back on time, she would definitely phone me. That’s the routine we have worked out, and she always sticks to it.”
“She’s not back?” Hammer asked.
“No, sir,” the nanny responded. “And she has not phoned.”
Hammer’s heart began to pound. Amelia was a lot of crazy shit, and drove him crazy as hell, but she always kept her word.
“She told me,” Rowena continued, “that if I didn’t hear from her by daybreak, I was to phone you.”
Hammer was pleased that Amelia would make him, rather than her big brother Mick Sinatra, her default contact. But it also made him wonder if whatever she left to do last night was shit Sinatra didn’t approve of. But what made her think Hammer would approve of it? He worried about her ass as much as Mick did. He would even say more so.
“Did she say where she was going?” Hammer asked the nanny.
“No, sir. She never does.”
Hammer exhaled. That was Amelia too. And it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack in that big-ass country called America. But that would be the case only if he wasn’t the former Director of the CIA, and he wasn’t Hammer Reese. “I’ll send a team over to provide extra security for you and my son,” he said. “But you do your job. Make certain he’s protected.”
“He is, sir. Don’t worry, sir.”
Then Hammer ended the call and immediately phon
e Oz, ordering him to call their guys and get more security out at Amelia’s estate. Then he called his pilot and ordered him to get his private plane ready for takeoff, as he hurried to his closet.
But then his phone rang again. He answered without checking the Caller ID. It was early morning and Amelia was missing. He knew what it was about. “Yes?”
“They lost her, sir.” It was Ken DeSousa, the man he put in charge of Amelia’s shadow security detail. Shadow because she didn’t know such a detail existed, and they were to follow her in case she needed protection. But there were not to spy on her.
“Explain.”
“There was an ambush on Potomac.”
Hammer’s heart pounded with fear. What the fuck was she doing on a rough street like Potomac this early in the morning? “Was she hit?”
“We don’t know, sir. There was a shootout. She took off, the way she was supposed to, and her security detail tried to handle it, but they were getting hammered. Our men wanted to follow Miss Sinatra, but they came under assault too. We were nearly wiped out. Only myself and one other man on our detail survived. None of Miss Sinatra’s men did. But I assumed the threat was neutralized at that chokehold. I assumed she had made it safely home.”
“A lot of fucking assumptions,” Hammer said. “Your ass should have stayed with her. I don’t pay you to bail out her team, I pay you to stay with her! That’s the reason I hired your asses. That’s the fucking point!” Hammer was reeling now that he knew for certain something horrible had gone down.
“I apologize for that, sir,” DeSousa said, “but we were under instant assault. We had no choice but to stay and fight. We assumed she made it out okay. But we just got here, to the house, and Rowena’s telling us she’s not here. Ro’s telling us she hasn’t heard from her, either, sir.”
Hammer exhaled. What the fuck did they think was going to happen? She was the target. They weren’t letting the target get away!
Amelia Sinatra: Hammer Time Page 2
