by Ava Lore
“Oh.” My lip found its way between my teeth as I looked down at myself. “I guess that’s why you insisted I dress this way.” I saw Sonya nod happily from the corner of my eye.
I shifted uncomfortably in my new duds. After blurting out my bizarre request to Carter in the wee small hours of the morning, he had insisted on hearing my whole plan, including the more sordid parts of the story, like what I’d said to Manny...and what his cousin had said to me. Of course, hearing about those just made him more concerned for my safety.
“I am not getting you drugs until you consult with Manny on this,” he had told me over a late-night cup of tea.
“But I can’t. He won’t let me help him.”
“Then why are you doing it against his wishes?”
I couldn’t quite answer that. Because I needed to. Because if I didn’t, I’d still be boring, timid Rose who couldn’t adapt, couldn’t change, couldn’t grow. I’d still be cowardly Rose, who stuck her head in the sand and pretended everything was fine, when it wasn’t.
Carter must have seen something in my face, however, because then he’d sighed. “All right,” he’d conceded. “I’ll help you, but only if we can bring Sonya in on it.”
I hadn’t had much of a choice, so I’d agreed to his condition, and thus the Something Something Three was born.
“Like the Fantastic Four,” Sonya had said, “but without the shitty nerd name.”
Under Sonya’s tutelage—and with her generous funding—I had purchased the trashiest clothes to be found on Kauai. Now I wore a tiny black thong beneath my ragged cut-off jean shorts, which were so skimpy I could feel my generous ass cheeks leaking out the bottom. My top was a lacy yellow tank, and I wore a cheap black halter bra underneath it. My platform flip-flops and a king’s ransom of costume jewelry rounded out the outfit. I wasn’t in disguise, exactly...but I was attempting a subterfuge.
A subterfuge that, if it worked, would lead to Manny’s freedom.
Restlessly I stuck my hand into my purse again, my fingers running over the drugs Carter had procured for me before finding my phone.
My phone...that was the key to all of this. If I used it smartly, I’d free Manny from his family.
If I used it stupidly, I’d get disbarred, and possibly arrested.
Sonya giggled as the van took another sharp turn and I nearly spilled out of my seat. “I can’t wait!” she squealed with glee as she veered the van to the side and parked it firmly on a residential street. “I hate those fuckers. I can’t wait for you to nail their nuts to the wall.”
“Hopefully I won’t have to touch their nuts,” I said fervently. Before when we had been planning this operation, Carter had asked me if I would be okay seeing Yago again. I’d lifted my chin and said I’d be fine, but now that I was here, I was starting to have doubts.
No. You are a lawyer. You have the biggest, reddest baboon ass in the entire jungle. Wait...Do baboons live in the jungle? Or on the savannah? I should look that up...
“Hey! Earth to Rose!” Slender fingers snapped in front of my face and I jumped, realizing that I was getting distracted. Sonya was staring at me with irritation.
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head in an attempt to clear it.
She snorted. “Focus, Rose, focus. Okay, you have your phone, right?
“Check,” I replied.
“Junk?” She meant drugs. I don’t think our security provider cared, but you couldn’t be too careful.
“Check.”
“Sexy underwear?”
“I wouldn’t say sexy...more...trashy.”
“Hey,” Sonya said, frowning. “Nothing wrong with trash. Some of my best friends are trash.”
I couldn’t help but giggle at that. “Sorry,” I managed. “I’m just steeling myself for the battle to come.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Sonya said, brushing away a lock of hair from her eyes. “You’ll be fine. Just stick to the plan. I’m a master of the psychology of shitheads.”
Carter snickered at that, but quickly sobered. He turned to me. “You have everything ready?”
I nodded.
“You got your texting fingers ready?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t think the texting is going to work...” I started.
Sonya cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Of course it will,” she said. “Everyone else is glued to their phones all the time and my number is in disguise. No one’s going to question you texting with your girl—” she paused for dramatic effect, “—Saraswati.”
Yeah, that had been Sonya’s idea. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “No one is going to believe that name,” I said. “What am I going to say if they spot it? ‘Oh yeah, me and the Hindu goddess of wisdom are BFFs.’”
She scoffed. “Like they’d even recognize it. Those ignorant assholes don’t know how to find their own ass with a map and a tailor’s mirror. Now. You ready?”
Was I? I didn’t really have a choice, did I? Swallowing around my dry tongue, I nodded and Sonya gave me an indulgent smile, like a pageant mother proud of her painted, tap-dancing ego-extension. “Remember,” she said, “don’t drink anything they offer unless you open it yourself, bend over so they can see your whale tail, and have fun!”
And with that, Carter slid open the back door and gave me a nudge.
No time for second thoughts. Or first thoughts, probably. Sucking in a huge breath, I stepped out of the van and onto the sun-warmed pavement. Then the door slid shut behind me and I was on my own.
It was three in the afternoon. The sun was drifting across the sky, and I had a few hours to get in, get out, and get gone. My feet began to move, my ankles wavering on my platform sandals. I was used to stilettos in courtrooms and at client meetings, but they usually had a firmer hold on my feet than the current tiny rubber straps digging into the tender spots between my toes. Now I felt as off balance on the outside as I did on the inside.
I was about to execute a plan of the utmost stupidity. My get addicted to heroin plan? It had nothing on this plan. This plan could ruin my life for good. Or possibly end it, if I fucked it up too much.
No, it couldn’t end it...could it?
Who was I kidding? People got knifed for twenty dollars in the street. The kind of money we were talking about here? It was pushing daisies money.
Well, I just have to not get caught. Be the baboon, Rose. Be the baboon!
I straightened my spine and kept walking toward the ramshackle little house that sat on this street with a dozen and a half other ramshackle houses just like it. The tiny little run-down town sat on the eastern part of the island, just a few miles away from Kapa’a, the largest town, and except for the tropical sun, the profusion of plants, and the smell of the sea, it was exactly like the dying towns that dotted the Oklahoma highways.
The houses were painted white and pale pink and orange and blue and gray, but to a one they were aging little dwellings, clearly for working-class natives of the island rather than wealthy mainland transplants. Detritus littered their front yards and paint peeled from their walls, and I tried not to shudder as I passed them by. They called up a sadness in me, and even though they were clearly occupied I couldn’t help but imagine them deserted. Haunted.
I rubbed my hands over my arms. It’s just nerves, I scolded myself. Just nerves. Go over the plan. Be sure you have everything ready.
The plan. Right. Where was I? Oh, yes.
Step one: show up at Arturo Reyes’ house. Lead them to believe you’ll sleep with someone to keep Manny out of the crazy-house.
Step two: insist that you need something to make the experience more fun.
Step three: share drugs with the whole family.
Step four: take pictures and video of said debauchery. Be sure to get as much incriminating evidence on camera as possible so it can’t be dismissed in court.
Step five: call for backup from Carter, Sonya, and security dude.
Step six: blackmail them into signing the legal
document I had stuffed into my bra.
Step seven: make like a tree, and get the fuck out.
The perfect plan, I thought.
Yeah. Perfectly stupid.
Uuuuuugh. This is why you don’t come up with plans at two in the morning while still drunk from the day before, I chided myself. Because what sounds like a good idea when you’re drunk? Is never a good idea!
If the police ever caught wind of this, I could get arrested. Thrown in jail. Disbarred.
And if the Reyes cousins twigged to what I was doing before my backup arrived?
I shuddered and tried not to think about it.
Do this for Manny, I thought to myself.
Right. Manny.
We hadn’t made up. Not really. But he was still wonderful to me, even if our future was in flux. Still kind and gentle and everything I’d ever wanted.
Sweet Manny, who’d woken me up with kisses and made love to me entirely too few hours after I’d finally fallen back into bed. Caring Manny, who’d cooked eggs, rice, and spam for me this morning, claiming it to be a cure for all ailments, especially hangovers. Ebullient, effervescent Manny, who was right now busking with his beach-hobo friends in Kapa’a, just a few miles away, oblivious to what I was doing.
Wonderful Manny, who had held me as we both came down from the high of mid-morning sex, our legs tangled in the sheets, our sweat-slick chests slipping against each other, and said, You want to go for a ride in the Sprite today?
And I’d said, You mean the car that’s leaking oil all over the driveway?
And he’d grinned. I was going to fill it back up before we went out so you wouldn’t worry about it, but obviously I can’t slip anything past you, Miss Barrister.
And I’d shrugged, too happy to care, and too high on nerves to tell him that he already had.
He’d slipped himself past all my defenses, and now I was heading into a nest of vipers to risk it all for him. For no other reason than that I cared for him.
Just care? I thought. Please, Rose, at least be honest with yourself if not with anyone else...
Then the Reyes family estate came into view and my brain went numb.
The house Manny’s uncle lived in—with several of his six sons, Sonya had informed me—was ugly. I mean, even the most miserable hovel in Hawaii was going to be better than practically any house anywhere else in the universe, but this house...it was a fixer-upper to say the least.
The roof was missing shingles, the drab blue paint was peeling, and the chain link fence guarding the entrance to the back yard peeked through the vines covering it, bright red-orange with rust. A low cinderblock wall surrounded the front yard, which itself was overflowing with trash like old tires, a half-assembled car, a swing set listing to one side, and an ancient plastic playhouse so bleached by the sun that it was now a pale pastel ghost of itself. Huge patches of mud swamped the scraggly grass, and the house itself squatted sullenly in place. The lanai, so beautiful at Manny’s beach house, here was home to an assortment of stained easy chairs and rusty foldable lawn chairs.
And there were six men lounging about.
I sucked my breath in, then tossed my hair. Be like Manny. What would Manny do?
He’d have fun with this.
...Oooooh, god, how was I going to make this fun?
One of the men, dressed only in a pair of ragged shorts, turned his head toward me. For a split second I considered turning around, but then I remembered why I was here. For Manny.
These were the bullies who had been tormenting him for all of his adult life. The fear of them—the memory of their power over him—was too strong for him to overcome. He couldn’t face these men—but I could. To him, they were frightening.
To me? They looked a bit pathetic, to be honest.
I forced a sashay into my hips, and the one who had looked in my direction sat up, taking notice. His skin was slightly darker than Manny’s—a product of spending so much time in the glorious Hawaiian sun, no doubt—but he didn’t share Manny’s incredible physique. Though he couldn’t have been much older than thirty, he had a little potbelly, even while sitting straight up. I squinted behind my sunglasses and took note of the cigarette in one hand and the silvery can of beer in the other. At his feet there was an old red and white cooler caked with dust.
Yeah. Pathetic. But also...familiar.
I swung around the low cinderblock wall and strolled up the muddy path that served as the walkway to the front door. The other five men turned to watch me, recognition flashing across their faces. To my temporary relief, none of them were Yago.
God, I hope he’s here. There was no plan without him or Arturo.
One or two of them smiled and lifted a hand in my direction, which made me frown behind my sunglasses—why would they be friendly with me?—and then I was at the front porch. I stuck out a hip and propped a fist on it.
“Hey, boys,” I drawled. My old Oklahoma accent, usually buried, bubbled up and came to the fore, and with it the memories of my own hometown and the boys and men who lived there, who got caught in the eddies of small town life and never escaped.
I could deal with these men. They weren’t any different from me.
I lowered my sunglasses down my nose and gave them a little half-smile. “Remember me?”
“Manny’s girlfriend?” one of them said. This man was the youngest of the group, probably no older than Manny himself, skinny and sweet-faced, wearing an open button-up shirt and a pair of gym shorts. His dark, tousled hair was streaked with splashes of blond. He had a surfer-boy vibe to him, and I couldn’t remember seeing him in the group when they had first appeared to shake Manny down.
I nodded. “Rose Alton.”
Then, to my shock, he extended a hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “Miguel. And that’s Luis, Alejandro, Juan, Nando, and Lalo.”
Lalo? Why was that name familiar? I frowned and then remembered. Oh. Right. Lalo was the one who stole Manny’s girlfriend from him. Fitting, then, that he was the only one who didn’t seem very happy to see me. As soon as my eyes left him, I saw him reach into his pocket from the corner of my vision. Flicking another glance at him, I saw he was pulling out his phone, and I realized if Yago wasn’t here already, then he would be.
Extending my own hand, I shook Miguel’s, and then went around to the others. “Nice to meet you,” I murmured back to them.
It was strange. None of them seemed to regard me with hostility, not even Lalo. I had been certain that I was going to have to worm my way into their good graces, shake my ass or whatever, to convince them that I didn’t want Manny at all. I just wanted their money.
But most of them smiled, and the eldest one—Nando—stepped forward. “To what do we owe the pleasure?” he asked me.
I tried not to show how taken aback I was, so I smiled to hide my confusion. “I’m here to talk to Arturo Reyes,” I said. “Is he in?”
As one, their shoulders stiffened, and a look passed from one man to another as they all communicated with each other wordlessly. Nando stepped even closer. He wore an old t-shirt and a pair of jean shorts. He was a little pudgy and taller than the rest, but though he was much larger than me I didn’t feel at all frightened of him. There were laugh-lines around his hazel eyes, and he smelled like sweat and beer. An...honest scent. He seemed nothing like Yago. He forced a smile as he looked down at me.
“Right now is not a good time,” he said. “He’s resting. If you want to come back later, I can give you a call. Can you leave me your number—?”
The sound of a screen door banging open caught our attention, and as one we turned to see the front door open.
My heart skipped a beat and I had to swallow the sudden apprehension that rose in my throat.
Yago stood there, smiling indulgently at me, one hand hooked into his belt loop, the other propped against the door frame.
“Bonita,” he said. “So good of you to drop by.”
I felt the rest of the group shut down, draw away, and I r
ealized that they were afraid of him.
Things suddenly came into focus for me. I had wondered how a whole family could be so cruel as to endeavor to suck one of their members utterly dry. It wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before, but usually there was dissent in the ranks.
Now I realized there was dissent in the ranks—but it was entirely unvoiced. If there was someone here aside from Arturo Reyes who could be held accountable for the misery Manny had undergone over the years, it was Yago.
I need to trap Yago if I’m going to get anywhere, I realized. It was that simple. He was the key to getting to Arturo. He was the one I had to coerce into letting Manny go.
The scope of my quest suddenly narrowed from improbable to entirely possible. If I had the stomach for it.
Gritting my teeth behind my lips, I gave Yago a little smirk and cocked my hip at him.
Get him drunk. Lower his inhibitions. Trap him.
“Well aren’t you going to offer a girl a drink?” I said.
He smiled at me and pushed away from the door. His footsteps on the porch were loud and heavy, and I felt the rest of Manny’s cousins pulling back, melting into the background. They were probably assuming I was just like Emilie. Out for the money.
It didn’t matter. It was time to start cozying up to the family. As long as I could keep Yago’s hands off me, I could do it.
Those eyes gleamed at me, dull and muddy, and I knew it was the point of no return.
Let the games begin, I thought as he reached into the cooler at Alejandro’s feet and handed me a beer. I may not have a whole deck up my sleeve, but I’ll bluff with the best of them.
Chapter Sixteen
An hour and a half later the sun was creeping toward evening, Luis was telling me a story about a British tourist who tried to tip him in seashells, and I was drunk.
Quite drunk.
As it turned out, the beer Manny’s cousins were guzzling was Alejandro’s own home-brewed concoction and its alcohol content stood in the double digits. I, of course, had slammed two of them down before I’d known that. Sure, they’d smelled a little stronger than most beer, but to my unsophisticated taste buds the sharp Pine Sol flavor seemed bad and somewhat cheap rather than ‘robust’ and ‘artisanal’ as Miguel swore it was.
