Deadly Secrets

by Ann Christopher

  Kerry nodded miserably.

  “The pay is shit.” Dr. Katz seemed to be winding down. “You’d be better off digging ditches or selling your blood. If I get a whiff of trouble or danger from you, or people who want a piece of you, you’re out of here. I’ve got a zero-tolerance policy for shenanigans. How does all that sound?”

  Kerry grinned, a wild surge of joy nearly lifting him off his butt.

  This was it—all he needed to build a decent life for himself.

  With a foundation like this?

  A hard-earned house was not out of the question.

  A dog was not out of the question.

  Kids.

  A wife.

  “It sounds perfect,” Kerry said.

  23

  LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY

  “I want you to behave today,” Henry Gustavson told Kramer, wagging a finger in the furry face. He parked behind the abandoned factory, cut the engine, adjusted his Brewers baseball cap, settling it lower across his forehead, then patted his jacket pockets to make sure he had everything. “You know what I expect from you. Don’t you try any tricks.”

  Kramer whined from the passenger side.

  “You don’t get a cookie now,” Henry grumbled, checking his watch before grabbing the leash. “We’ll see how you behave. Let’s go.”

  They got out of the car. Waited. Kramer had a pee.

  Henry sighed at the woods off in the distance and thought of Alice.

  “Wish we could get up there, buddy,” he told the dog. “In the old days, Alice would have packed us a picnic basket. You’d like to hike, wouldn’t you? You’d probably bark at the wrong rattler and get your furry ass bit, but you’d have fun doing it.”

  The dog grinned up at him.

  A shabby Corolla turned into the parking lot and pulled up alongside them. Out climbed one Rickey Hughes, who was tall and thin, with pockmarked skin, straggly hair and the glazed and darting eyes that marked him as a habitual user.

  “You got my money?” Rickey asked by way of greeting, shoving Kramer away when he came over for a friendly sniff.

  Henry hated the man on sight.

  “I do,” he said, tugging the leash to get Kramer to hop back into the car and curl up on the driver’s side. “Do you have my information about Dr. Harrison?”

  Rickey gave him the side eye. “Still not sure why you want to find her.”

  “She’s my employer’s long-lost sister,” Henry lied. “They had a falling out years ago. He wants to make it right.”

  “I worked with her at the hospital for years before I moved down here, and she never mentioned no brother.”

  “You were the janitor in her lab?”

  “Sanitation specialist, yeah.”

  Henry repressed a snort.

  “Well, like I said, Rickey, they were estranged.”

  “Well, it’s going to cost you another five—no, ten,” Rickey said, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his dirty jeans and striking a tough guy pose he’d probably seen on an episode of CSI: something. “A guy like that who can afford to hire a PI like you? He won’t miss another ten large.”

  Henry started to get annoyed. If there was one thing he hated, it was when jobs went south on account of idiots thinking they were a lot smarter than they were. “The deal was for five.”

  “Yeah, well, now the deal’s for fifteen.”

  Henry stared at this loser for a long couple of beats, running through his options.

  Rickey tried to stand tall, but didn’t quite manage it because he was evidently past due for his next fix, and had the fidgets. “Well, what’s it gonna be? I don’t have all day.”

  That decided it. This clown was burning daylight and Henry had better things to do.

  Henry shrugged. “You got it, man.”

  “I do?” Rickey grinned, revealing teeth that had passed yellow and were heading for rotten. “I mean…good decision.”

  “Indeed,” Henry said darkly, heading for the trunk. “One second.”

  “Don’t try anything funny,” Rickey called.

  “Relax, tough guy.”

  Henry got the duffel, counted out the stacks, got the other thing he needed and met Rickey on the driver’s side of the Corolla to hand it over. Rickey eagerly unzipped the duffel and checked the cash. Henry doubted he had enough functioning brain cells left to count that high, but Rickey was full of surprises.

  “Thirteen…fourteen…fifteen.” Rickey looked up from his loot, beaming with triumph. “Great doing business with you.”

  “So where is she?”

  “She’s got a friend out in Cheyenne with a ranch. Double something.”

  “Double what, genius? There’s probably a million ranches in Cheyenne. Double R? Double G? Double J?”

  Rickey snapped his fingers. “That’s it! Double Q! Always talks about how it’s on the river.”

  Henry pulled out his phone and did a quick search. “She ever show you any pics?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That it?” Henry showed him the phone.

  “Yeah! That’s it!”

  “Great.” Henry put his phone into his back pocket and slid his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker. The breeze was picking up. “Thanks for your help, Rickey.”

  “Anytime. You’re my kind of guy. Nice and generous.”

  Henry stuck out his hand.

  The men shook.

  Henry waited.

  Rickey blinked, frowned at Henry, then down at his palm, where the needle had pricked him.

  His lids fluttered.

  Henry sprang into action.

  The first thing he did was to yank off the ring and drop it back into its plastic case in the trunk before he jabbed his own fool self with it.

  Then he slipped on some rubber gloves.

  By this time, Rickey’s body was stiffening. Henry guided him back a step and pushed him into the driver’s seat. From there, it was easy enough to swing his legs around and get him settled for his death, which would come pretty quickly now that paralysis was setting in.

  “Strychnos toxifera. Curare,” Henry said softly in response to old Rickey’s wide-eyed bewilderment, which was quickly turning to horror. A guy deserved to know what was going to take him out. “The real South American stuff they used for poison darts. If it was up to me, I’d have just shot you in the back of the head and been done with it, but I don’t get to choose. The Llama likes to leave his little signature when I need to take someone out. Sends a warning to the other idiots who try to double-cross him. Don’t worry, though. It won’t take you long to suffocate, Rickey.”

  Rickey spasmed, his chest heaving in a pitiful effort to get the air that wasn’t coming.

  Henry watched him, feeling a twinge of pity and guilt. But what else could he have done? A dishonorable loser addict like Rickey would a) sing like a canary if anyone ever asked any questions; and b) come back again and again to feed his habit.

  No. Best to off him now and tie up this loose end.

  “Why’d you try to get smart with me, Rickey? Didn’t anyone ever tell you a deal’s a deal?”

  Rickey’s eyes bulged.

  Sighing, Henry pushed him onto his right side, so he wasn’t visible from the window, shut the door and grabbed the duffel.

  What was he forgetting?

  Oh, the greeting.

  The ridiculous and embarrassing greeting.

  But Henry was a man of honor who prided himself on doing things right, even when he didn’t want to be doing them. A deal was a deal, and right was right.

  Rolling his eyes, he opened the door again. Poor Rickey was still alive, still gurgling, but his eyes were bloodshot and his tongue was protruding, so it wouldn’t be long now.

  “The Llama says hello,” Henry told him. “Go with God.”

  Then he got into his own car and pulled up information about flights to Cheyenne.

  24

  The business had always been about control for Kareem, Kerry thought around lunchtime
. Mind games. The more twisted, the better. The cat-and-mouse thrill of coming out on top by any means necessary. Power, whether it was over Kira, Kerry or the hapless kids back in high school who’d had targets on their backs from the second Kareem laid eyes on them.

  It just so happened that distributing illegal substances ticked all of Kareem’s boxes, but it could as easily have been arms dealing or some high-end import-export enterprise with the Chinese. Anything that let Kareem stare down a foe, exercise his exquisite skills at psychological warfare and emerge as the victor.

  Kareem’s animal soulmate was the fox.

  Kerry’s animal soulmate? The squirrel.

  He surveyed his storage unit with satisfaction, admiring his shit. Yeah, he liked to store up for the winter. Because just as winter was always coming in Westeros, it was always coming for a kid raised in poverty. When you grew up in a home where a Christmas with toys was an occasional event, like the Winter Olympics, and an exterminator to kill the roaches was a luxury item in the same category as the Hope Diamond, you learned about putting a little something away for when times got tough.

  Oh, yes you did.

  Hence his ten-by-twenty-five-foot self-storage unit stuffed to the gills with precious acorns.

  In a life full of stupid-ass decisions and more shots to his own foot than he could ever count, Kerry had gotten this one small thing right. Almost from the second he started working with Kareem, he’d planned for his future. His retirement, assuming he lived and stayed out of prison long enough to enjoy one.

  He had, of course, used a fake ID and paid, in cash, to lease the unit for several years.

  Hey. Having money to burn was one of the perks of the job when you were a kingpin’s lieutenant.

  Had he mentioned the unit to the feds when he forfeited all his personal possessions, including his sweet cars, at the time he made his deal?

  No, he had not.

  Did Jayne know about this shit?

  No, she did not.

  Hey. He had to keep an ace or two up his sleeve, didn’t he?

  That was what he’d told himself when it came to Uncle Sam.

  When it came to Jayne, though, he felt a nasty twinge in his gut.

  And an uncomfortable tightness in his chest.

  But now wasn’t the time to explore his inconvenient feelings, nor was it the time to think about how the feds would probably void his deal and indict him after all if they knew he’d failed to forfeit all his possessions. Right now he needed to make sure his shit was still there and accounted for.

  Artwork. NBA memorabilia. First edition books. One of his favorite pieces, a blue marble Egyptian mantel clock from the Napoleonic period. It had a round face and kept perfect time. Well worth the eleven large he’d paid for it. Too bad he couldn’t keep it.

  Inside the six-foot safe? Rare stamps, including a Chinese Monkey stamp that was worth a mil and a half the last time he checked. Rolexes. Not the flashy models that Kareem had worn, but vintage pieces that other collectors would sell their mothers for. A handful of loose diamonds pure enough to make Elizabeth Taylor green with jealousy.

  He quickly opened the safe and double-checked on a couple of things. Just to make sure his security blankets were still there.

  Fake IDs? Check.

  Information on his offshore accounts, which totaled $2.1 mil? Check.

  Stacks of hundreds to the tune of $875 large (nearly twenty pounds’ worth) placed in a duffel? Check.

  And the three most valuable things of all, both inside the small top drawer:

  A gold ring with a blue opal that was nowhere near fiery enough to interest a collector but was the most precious thing Kerry owned.

  A strand of fake pearls that had been his grandmother’s favorite.

  And a computer flash drive—containing the formula for W-80, the synthetic opioid—that Kareem had given him for safekeeping.

  Check, check and check.

  Breathing easier now, Kerry shut the safe door and dusted off his hands. It was all still here, thank God. Too bad it had to go.

  Well, all except his grandmother’s fake pearls and the anniversary ring, which was the only thing of value she’d possessed that hadn’t been sold or pawned. How she and his grandfather had scraped together the money for this two-thousand-dollar ring, when they often hadn’t had the money to buy new shoes for themselves or Kerry, was anyone’s guess. Maybe they’d scrimped on the canned meat for a while. Who the hell knew?

  Kerry was just grateful he had a memento from his grandmother to cling to. So he’d keep it.

  And the flash drive. He should destroy it, but, again, winter and bad guys were probably coming, and you just never knew.

  So he’d keep it—for now—and be better safe than sorry.

  Everything else had to go. With a new chance at life, why keep a bunch of physical reminders of his moral decay hanging around? So he could remember how he’d sold his soul for a few trinkets that had never made him happy? Could never make him happy? Would he choose any of this crap over a family? Swap a wife to greet him when he came home for the Napoleonic clock?

  Yeah, no thanks.

  He couldn’t get rid of this shit fast enough. If he had a flamethrower, he’d take care of it all right now, but that would be wasteful. And stupid. Just because he didn’t want this drug money—blood money—on his conscience didn’t mean some good shouldn’t come from it.

  The only question was…what good?

  His side started complaining again just then, so he rubbed it, sat in one of the Stickley armchairs (eight large each) and ran through his options, one of which was shitty.

  Option 1: call up Jayne and/or the IRS agent assigned to his case and say, Oops, sorry, I forgot to mention all this shit when you cut me that immunity deal. You can have it now because an unexpected side effect of my near-death experience was the sudden regrowth of a conscience.

  But this option would put him on the wrong side of the feds (he wasn’t trying to have his immunity deal voided) and, more importantly, of Jayne. Actually, it would make a fool of Jayne, who’d worked with him for months and tried to sniff out all his goodies.

  He didn’t want to make a fool of Jayne. More importantly, he was violently opposed to being on her bad side. For reasons he didn’t dare explore right now.

  Or ever.

  Jayne was…well, she was…

  Don’t go there, Randolph.

  Do the right thing for once in your godforsaken life and let sleeping dogs lie.

  So…

  Option 2: quietly—and anonymously—donate all the shit to charity.

  The furniture could go to Goodwill. There were discreet brokers who could handle the art and other collectibles. And his offshore bankers could help him make gifts of the money to some worthwhile organizations determined to, say, eradicate childhood hunger, improve literacy or cure diabetes, the scourge that had taken out his grandparents.

  It might be tricky, but he could do it over the next few months.

  Option 3: sit on the stuff for a while longer. Let everything settle before he did anything drastic.

  The little voice in his head, the one that had warned him against Kareem from the start and would have sent his life down a different path if he’d only listened, tapped him on the shoulder and spoke louder.

  Sell all the collectibles now, it said. Wait and see on the money.

  Fair enough. Why not give his instincts the occasional chance to steer him in the right direction?

  And how would he make ends meet until the checks from his new job started rolling in?

  Well, sports fans, he had it all figured out.

  On the day he’d signed on the metaphorical dotted line with Kareem, he’d had thirty-eight hundred dollars in his savings account. That was what he’d come in with, and that was what he’d leave with. No more, no less—

  His phone buzzed.

  He warned himself not to get too excited, but blood rushed through his ears and his heartbeat pounded toward c
ardiac arrest. And that was before he checked the display:

  Jayne.

  He stiffened, trying not to dwell on the miserable loneliness of not speaking to one of the handful of people in the world who cared if he lived or died. Tried not to think about her, because she’d already crept into every waking thought he’d had today. Tried not to be fascinated by her eyes or her smile, her heart, humor or laughter.

  Desperately tried not to recall the big titties and bigger ass, or how much he wanted to dive in and fill his hands, arms and mouth with her.

  When all of that failed, he cursed, turned the phone off and shoved it back into his pocket.

  It was rude not to answer. Rude to disappear without saying goodbye. Would her feelings be hurt? Yeah. Would she wonder if he was doing okay physically? Yep. Would she get over it and resume her regularly scheduled life? Absolutely.

  It was all for the best. Not his best, which would involve months in bed with Jayne. A lot of getting to know her better. But he didn’t deserve the best of anything. No, it was all for Jayne’s best. You didn’t screw around with a woman like Jayne. A woman like Jayne deserved a man who was a million times better than he could ever hope to become.

  His fingers itched to pull his phone out and call her. To explain why he couldn’t indulge in the powerful chemical pull he’d felt toward her last night. Hell, she’d understand. She might blush when she looked at him, but she wasn’t stupid enough to hook up with a guy like him.

  But he left the phone where it was and let himself slip deeper into the pain in his side and the yawning ache of loneliness inside his chest. There was no fucking way he could deal with hearing her sweet voice again, much less ever seeing her again.

  He thought back to the way she’d felt in his arms last night…the dizzying sensation of her curves pressed against him…the way her eyes glowed when she looked at him…the way her smile—her laughter—contained all the brilliance of the sun…