by Parker, Ali
“I do earn real cash.” I glared daggers at him, not comprehending what it was that he didn’t understand about my need to go legit. We’d been driven to robbing banks, to a certain extent, because of our upbringing.
Not that I was blaming the foster system. There were plenty of kids who came out of much shittier situations than ours who never turned to crime, but I hadn’t gone into it to stay in it. At the time, I got involved out of necessity.
When I turned eighteen and was kicked out of the only real home I’d ever known, Rayce had been there waiting for me. He’d already started this enterprise of his, and I’d already been involved in more than a few of his operations.
It seemed only natural to keep going, but my end game had always been to get out as soon as I could. I’d needed the money then to keep a roof over my head. To figure out something I could do with the rest of my life that wouldn’t have me facing a certain jail term if we were ever caught.
I had found that something now. Being an electrician might not have been everyone’s dream, but after the first apprenticeship I’d done, I realized it was something I was naturally skilled at and fell in love with it.
“You don’t have to spread yourself so thin, brother.” Rayce interrupted my thoughts, clearly misinterpreting my silence to mean that I was tired or offended. “I don’t understand why you’re fighting me on this.”
“We’re going to get old, Ray.” If my argument about wanting to earn a legitimate living wasn’t getting through to him, then maybe that would. “It’s going to be a hell of a lot easier for them to catch us when we’re using walkers while trying to do our thing. Besides, I enjoy being in the workforce.”
Loud laughter rumbled out of him even as he shook his head at me. “Bro, by the time we need walkers, we’ll have more than enough to retire on. Maybe even get ourselves a little island in the middle of nowhere and spend our golden years fishing and fucking exotic beauties.”
“Pretty sure you can’t fuck once you’re in a walker.” I checked my watch again, realizing that I was coming dangerously close to being late. “I’ll speak to you later. I gotta go.”
“Just so you know, I’ll be fucking till the day I kick the bucket,” he called out after me, chuckling as I made my way out of the restaurant.
When I got to the address my new client had given me when he had called to ask me if I could help him out, I collected my tool kit from the back and crossed a half-dead lawn on my way to the front door.
I knocked, then took a step back when the door swung open and I stared at a mostly naked man who had to be pushing ninety. “You the electrician?”
“I am.” I stuck out my hand to shake his. Even if he was only wearing a tattered robe he hadn’t fastened properly, allowing me a glimpse into what the future held for my balls, he still deserved my respect. “I’m Will.”
His grip was surprisingly firm, though, his skin was papery and soft. “Johnny. Come on inside, son. I really hope you can help me.”
Stepping aside, he motioned me in and led me to his breaker box. After explaining his problem to me again—I didn’t remind him that he’d told me everything over the phone—he walked away to let me do my thing.
I opened my tool kit and started sifting through it for what I needed, straightening up when I’d found it. It wasn’t the most glamorous job, this one.
The light in the house was so faint I had to squint to see inside my tool kit. The place smelled faintly like old chili, and I’d literally just seen a pair of balls I really could have gone without, but I took pride in my job anyway.
As the man had said, I was here to help him. It gave me a hell of a lot more joy than robbing banks, balls and all.
Chapter 4
Heidi
In the passenger seat of Olive’s car, I watched the rolling landscape as we not so slowly but surely made our way to Florida. With our minds made up that we wanted to leave New York, we hadn’t wasted any time.
We’d packed up our stuff and let our landlord know we wouldn’t be renewing our lease. Thankfully, Val and I had managed to talk him out of holding back our security deposit and with a few flirty smiles and eyelash battings, we’d walked away with our deposit before he’d even checked if we were leaving his property damaged.
“This is my jam!” Valerie shimmied her shoulders, reaching for the volume control on the radio. She turned it up to earsplitting, but the grin I’d been wearing since we’d left New York in our rearview mirror didn’t disappear from my lips.
Sure, the radio was way too loud now, but I didn’t mind. My eardrums could handle it and blasting chick songs while we made the drive down to our new home was somehow freeing. It was like we were in a movie or something.
Olive, however, didn’t seem to agree. I twisted in my seat to face her as Val and I sang at the top of our lungs along to the radio. Olive had her hands pressed over her ears and scowled at me. “Turn it down.”
I could barely hear what she was saying, but it didn’t matter. I had known exactly what she was going to say as soon as Val reached for the volume. “What?”
Her scowl deepened as she scooted forward in her seat until the seat belt she wore wouldn’t allow her to come any closer. “I said, turn it down.”
She jabbed her finger at the radio, wincing slightly as she exposed one ear. I grinned at her, then turned around to face the road again, and rolled down my window for good measure. Sticking my head out and screaming along to the song with the wind in my hair, I felt a light and easy joy flowing through my veins.
There was nothing quite like a girls’ road trip. Guys could say whatever the hell they wanted about their own road trips, there was no way they could rival being in the car for seventeen hours with your best girls and good music.
Val seemed to be on the same page as I was because she followed my lead and stuck her head out the window too. Olive’s hands landed on both of our shoulders as she gave us a narrow-eyed glare, which I caught in the mirror. Her loud screech beat out the music. “Are you guys fucking kidding me? Val, eyes on the road. Heidi, you’re supposed to be her copilot, not her Labrador.”
Val threw her head back and laughed but closed her window and turned the volume down just enough that we would actually be able to hear one another talking. “Come on, Mom. We were having fun. Besides, I’ve brought you safely this far. We’ve only got a couple of hours left and nothing bad has happened.”
“Not yet,” Olive retorted and stubbornly crossed her arms over her chest. “Keep goofing around when you’ve only had four hours sleep and we’ll see how fast that changes.”
“Oh, come on.” I shifted in my seat so I could see her from the corner of my eye and still see the road too. “Loosen up, Mom. We’re on an adventure.”
“Stop calling me that,” Olive snapped, her eyes darting away from mine and landing on something next to us. “Oh jeez. This is the last thing I need.”
Curious about why she’d suddenly hidden her scowl in one of her palms and started shaking her long, beautiful brunette head, I turned again to see what had caught her attention. “The last thing you needed, huh? Funny, I think this is exactly what we needed.”
A grin tugged at the corners of my lips. I was joking with Olive, but I also kind of hoped things were about to get interesting.
There was a truck next to us with four guys around our age in it. I couldn’t really make out too much about their features, since they were all wearing sunglasses, and maybe it was just the cheerleader effect taking hold, but I could have sworn they all looked pretty hot. Tanned skin, bulging biceps, and white smiles were on display for us to feast our eyes on.
Better yet, it seemed they had spotted us around the same time Olive had spotted them and were now keeping to around the same speed that Valerie was doing. She let out a low squeal, waving enthusiastically at our fellow travelers.
“Oooo, they’re hot.” She pursed her lips and blew a little kiss at them, laughing when the guy in the passenger seat of the truck pretend
ed to catch it and his friend at the back slammed a fist into his shoulder. “This is going to be so much fun.”
“Don’t I know it,” I agreed, giving the guys a wave of my own. Olive rolled her eyes at our antics and sat back in the seat, looking like she was hoping it would swallow her up and deliver her back to the diner in New York. “Relax, girl. It’s just a little flirting to pass the time.”
Olive shook her head, her eyes narrowing. “So long as you don’t pull over for them. We’re in the middle of nowhere and they could be serial killers.”
“They’re not serial killers.” Valerie shot her an exasperated look in the rearview mirror before going back to splitting her attention between the road and the guys.
I didn’t think they were dangerous either. They kind of just looked like surfers or whatever, but Val sounded pretty sure. “How do you know they’re not serial killers?”
“They’re too hot.” She leaned forward a little and blew another kiss, this time seemingly at the driver. The guy was having as much trouble as Val was focusing on the road and the truck swerved a little as he blew a kiss back to her.
Olive yelped as the truck came a little too close to us for comfort, turning her glare on the guys even as she spoke to us. “Just because they’re hot doesn’t mean they’re not serial killers. Have you ever heard of Ted Bundy? He was gorgeous, charming, and a prolific serial killer.”
“Of course I’ve heard of him.” Val scoffed, her eyes still darting between the road and the truck. She hadn’t so much as flinched when they swerved, which just went to show that this wasn’t her first rodeo. “You can tell they’re not like him, though. They’ve got nice smiles.”
“Just don’t pull over, okay?” Olive looked like she wanted to say something else, but then Valerie gripped the steering wheel with her legs and lifted up her shirt to flash her bra at the guys, and Olive shrieked again. “What are you doing? You’re driving, Val. Jesus.”
Valerie laughed at the stunned looks on the guys’ faces and dropped her shirt, closing her hands over the wheel again. “Relax, Olive. I know what I’m doing.”
“You’re going to get us fucking killed,” Olive mumbled and dragged her hands through her long hair. “Did I just hear a siren?”
My eyes widened as I glanced out the back window. Sure enough, the noise I’d just heard and assumed was part of the song playing on the radio was, in fact, a police cruiser that had appeared behind us. “Crap. Their lights are flashing.”
“Damn it.” Valerie started slowing and gearing down, sighing when the guys kept their speed and drove away ahead of us. “They would have made the rest of the drive so much more entertaining.”
“Yeah, but who knows? Maybe we’ll catch up to them again.” I quickly reached for my seat belt and buckled it as Valerie slowed to a stop.
“So not what you guys should be focused on right now.” Olive pasted her sweetest, most dutiful smile on her face as the officer walked up to the car. “Let’s just get away from here without a ticket, okay? None of us have money to waste on that.”
“We won’t get a ticket,” Valerie assured her, her own megawatt smile curling on her lips after she rolled down her window. “Problem, officer?”
The uniformed man didn’t seem much older than us, but the look he gave Valerie was decidedly disapproving. “You mean other than speeding, your taillight being busted, and I’m pretty sure I just saw you flashing the guys in that truck when you raced past me?”
She batted her eyelashes as Olive released a long-suffering sigh from the back. “I’m so sorry, officer. I didn’t know the taillight was busted. As for the speeding, it won’t happen again. My boyfriend and his friends promised me I didn’t have to worry. They said to keep up with them and they would make sure we kept at the speed limit.”
The taillight had been busted for more than two months and Val damn well knew it, never mind the fact that even if one of those guys had been her boyfriend, it still wouldn’t have been a valid excuse for her speeding. I never would have said—or believed—any of that by the look of innocence in her eyes and the pout on her lips.
“Please forgive us, Officer.” Her voice was practically a purr. I had to bite back laughter when she started twirling a short, raven-colored lock of hair around her finger.
Surely, police officers didn’t fall for her crap in real life. If anyone was going to get it right though, it was Val. I sat back and watched the master at work.
Ten minutes later, I learned that cops did, in fact, fall for that. I lifted my hand to Valerie’s for a high five as we got back on the road. “I can’t believe that really just happened.”
“You better believe it.” She smirked and turned the radio up a little more again. “No ticket and I got his number. I think I deserve a drink.”
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” I agreed, slapping her palm again and laughing at the shocked expression on Olive’s face. “Loosen up, mother hen. No ticket, see?”
“You guys are idiots.” She groaned, then leaned over and rummaged around in the backpack on her floorboard. “I’m going to read until we get there. Do me a favor and don’t do anything else that’s stupid for the last few hours, okay? For the record, I’m really disappointed in both of you.”
Val and I both nodded, but I winked at her as soon as Olive’s gaze dropped to the paperback she had fished out. “It’s not our fault guys are so easily distracted by boobs. You should be disappointed in the officer, not in us.”
In the end, though, we kept our promise and didn’t do anything stupid. There were no more cops on the road and disappointingly, we didn’t catch up with those guys again either.
I agreed with Valerie. They would have made the last bit of the drive a lot more interesting. Instead, we ended up singing along to more songs and staring at the seemingly never-ending asphalt until finally, it did end.
“Thank fuck we’re here.” I threw open the door and climbed out as soon as Val parked outside the double garage of Olive’s mom’s old house. “That was getting ridiculously boring.”
“I’m so with you.” Valerie stretched her arms up in the air from the other side of the car, twisting at the waist to face the beach. “This is even more stunning than I remember it being.”
“Right?” I agreed, taking a deep breath of fresh ocean air as I swept my gaze over our surroundings.
The beach was only a couple of feet ahead of me, the sand almost completely white. There were a few people in the distance, but the stretch of beach right in front of the house was empty.
Olive’s mom’s house was a double story built right on the beach. If I remembered correctly, the back patio even had a staircase that delivered you straight to the sand. It was glorious.
The house was bigger from the outside than I remembered it being, but then again, I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. Olive’s mom had passed away last year, leaving the house to her. We’d been meaning to visit it but hadn’t been able to afford either the trip or the time off work.
I was eager to get inside, to see if it was still decorated in the cozy, homey way I remembered, but then I was hit in the head with a piece of material. “What the fuck?”
My gaze snapped to Valerie’s since the material had been flung from her direction. Immediately I realized it had been her shirt that had hit me in the head. Her jeans hit Olive’s head the next second as she stripped to her underwear. “Last one in the water has to do the dishes for the rest of the week.”
She turned and took off sprinting to the water, squealing and laughing when she hit it. Olive and I exchanged a look, then I smirked at her and started stripping like my life depended on it. I fucking hate doing dishes. “It’s not going to be me doing all of our dishes for a week.”
Olive let out an annoyed sound, but quickly started stripping as I kicked off my yoga pants and ran toward the shore. She hit the water only a couple of seconds after me, sputtering while I laughed. “Fuck yeah. You’re on dish duty this week, big O.”
“Don�
��t call me that.” She sent a spray of water in my direction, but I smiled and took it before turning to face the horizon.
Thank God we had decided to come to Florida. My life had been starting to feel dull and boring recently, but the drive and ocean had had a cleansing, invigorating effect. I didn’t know what was waiting on us here, but I had a feeling that whatever it was, it was going to be good.
Chapter 5
Will
Austin Roberts had taken a chance on me. The first time I set foot in his office a couple of years ago, he’d looked me up and down, and after a few awkward minutes, had nodded slowly. After that, he’d told me that he would allow me to do an apprenticeship with him despite my lack of formal training.
When I’d asked him a year or so later why he’d done it, he told me that he saw it in my eyes that I just needed a break. He had been right, of course. I had needed a break, and I would be eternally grateful to him for giving it to me.
After I’d completed my apprenticeship, he took me on as a contractor to his business. Technically, he wasn’t my boss, but it kind of felt like he was since he was the one responsible for most of my work. Sitting behind his desk, his pale-gray eyes swept over me and he started a slow clap. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t my star pupil.”
“Fuck off.” I jokingly flipped him off as I took my seat in the same spot I had been in on that very first day. “What’s going on, Austin? You said you needed to see me.”
The silver-haired man nodded, a grin hooking the corners of his lips. “Yeah, but don’t worry. You’re not in trouble or anything.”
Well, that’s a first. “Good. I was trying to think of something that I could be in trouble for all the way over here.”
“Did you come up with anything?” Austin lifted a white eyebrow, a faint flash of amusement in his eyes. “If you did, you can tell me. I’ll chew you out before I tell you what I actually called you in for today.”
