by Callie Hart
“Dr Newan know you’re bringing a guest with you today, Mr. Fletcher? You know how she hates surprise visitors.”
“Yeah, Franz. Chill. He's my uncle. She told me to bring him.”
The guard, Franz—who the fuck calls their kid Franz?—gives me the once over. “I thought your uncle was currently a resident of the penal system?”
“Just got outta SeaTac,” I tell him.
“Yeah, you look fresh off the bus,” Franz replies. He shoves a tray into my chest, none too politely. “You should still know what to do with this, then.”
I empty my pockets into the tray, smiling brightly at the guard: wallet, cell phone and keys. I purposefully left the gun in the car. There’s nothing on the phone or in the wallet that could cause me any serious problems. Franz eyes me like he doesn’t believe I’m not packing. I hold my arms up at either side—search me, motherfucker. He ignores that and shoves the tray into Antonio’s chest instead. A grubby bus ticket, a single house key and a crumpled twenty goes into the tray after my stuff. I get the feeling that the contents of his pockets are pretty much all Antonio owns in the world.
“Be waiting here for you on the way out.” Franz tips his head to the doorway behind him. “Better hurry. You’re gonna be late.”
The office is on the third floor, pretentious as shit. When we enter, the owner of the bubbly intercom voice is already on her feet, bouncing with, what is that? Excitement? She can only be twenty herself, curly blond hair and a tidy body clad in a skirt and blazer right out of “Legally Blonde.” She grins when she sees the kid next to me.
“Hey, Antonio.”
“S’up, Patricia. This, uh, this is my uncle.” There’s something going on between these two, it’s blatantly obvious. The girl is practically mounting the little fucker right in front of me. Her ecstatic smile slips when she looks at me properly.
“Oh, hi, sir. You came to give Tony some support?”
“Something like that.”
“Would you like to take a seat?”
“Actually I was thinking maybe you and Antonio could go spend some time checking out the skyline or something. I need to have a word with Dr. Newan about Antonio’s sessions.” A stroke of genius. If the kid heads down without me, that gung-ho guard is gonna be up here in two seconds flat.
“Uh, I’m not supposed to leave the front desk.”
I just look at Antonio.
“C’mon, Trish. It’s cool.” He holds his hand out and my suspicions are confirmed. Trish goes bright red, carefully taking it in her own. She edges past me like I’m the devil incarnate. Smart girl. With those two gone, I plant myself in a chair in the empty waiting room and do just that: I wait. The intercom on the reception desk buzzes a couple of times. Seven minutes later, a door down the hallway is flung open and a tall brunette in a pantsuit stalks out.
“Patricia, how many times! The buzzer means I’m re—” She sees me. Halts. Places her hands on her hips. It’s a defense mechanism—when you’re being attacked by a bear, make yourself look bigger!
I smile sweetly at her. She touches a hand to her forehead and gazes down at her shoes for a second. Seems as though she’s trying to find the right words to say. When she looks back up at me, she’s already collected herself again, one hundred percent in control. “She said you were hideous,” she announces.
“I’m aware.”
“Should I even ask where my appointment and my receptionist have disappeared to?”
“They’re fine. On their first date by the looks of things.”
Pippa shakes her head again. “Terrific. Well, I suppose you’d better come with me then.” She’s not even flustered. I like and detest this at the same time. I wanted to catch her on the back foot, and my unannounced arrival has barely made her blink. She gestures into her office. I get up and walk inside; she follows after, closing the door behind us. Together in an enclosed space? Alone? Yeah, this chick has steel cajones.
“You’re here to talk about your friend.” She sits down at her desk, crossing her legs and resting her interlaced fingers across her stomach. The posture immediately makes me angry. Prison counselor pose.
“I’m here to talk about you,” I correct her. I stand by the window, walking right past the chair set up in front of Newan’s desk. If she cares, she doesn’t show it.
“What do you want to know?”
“Are you in this for the money or do you really want to help people?”
She shrugs. “I want both. I have bills I need to pay just like everyone else. But I get to make the money I need to do that by assisting people with their reintegration into society, helping them isolate the problem areas in their lives and teaching them how to make positive changes.”
I hold up my hand—I’ve heard enough head doctor bullshit to last me a lifetime. It sounds like she’s reading from a script. The only reason I haven’t walked out already is because of the first part. She admitted to wanting the money.
“Have you ever had a patient confess criminal activity to you?” I demand.
“Yes.”
“And what actions did you take?”
“The appropriate ones.”
She called the cops. That won’t work. I don’t really know for a certainty what’s gone on in Lacey’s past, but I get the distinct impression that she did something crazy just before she showed up on my doorstep. And it probably wasn’t legal. “What would it take for you to accept Lacey off the books? To keep everything confidential, no matter what she tells you?”
Pippa assesses me, thinking. “I’m a doctor, Mr. Mayfair. I took an oath just like Sloane did. We are both bound by that oath to help people, so under these extreme circumstances I would be willing to help your friend without creating a file on her. I am, however, also bound by the law. If your friend confesses that she has caused or intends to cause harm to another person, then I can’t turn a blind eye to that.”
“So your Hippocratic oath will force you to help her, but your sense of civic duty will overrule that and ruin her anyway.”
She fixes steel-colored eyes on me. Cool and collected. “That’s how these things often go.”
“And no amount of money will change your mind on that?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mayfair.”
“Then I guess we’re done here.” Waste of fucking time. I shouldn’t have bothered. I hustle for the exit, not willing to expend any further breath on the dead-end conversation. There are a million corrupt psychologists, doctors, police officers out there. I’ll just have to bribe one of them instead.
“Mr. Mayfair?” Newan is still sitting at her desk. She hasn’t flinched. “Against my better judgment, there is one reason that might persuade me to look the other way should your friend admit to something that might normally end in jail time.”
“Oh yeah? And what would that be?”
She looks at me blankly, but I can see the worry in her eyes. That part is too difficult to hide. “You can stay away from my friend. Permanently. You can stay away from Sloane.”
Well, well, well. Conniving bitch. I definitely don’t like her now. “And if she doesn’t want me to?”
Pippa looks out of the window, over the park, purveyor of her safe little kingdom. “Then I suppose if she wants to see you, I can’t stop her. But then these sessions you need from me? You’ll be paying me double—one for your friend and one for you, too. I don’t want a mentally unstable man anywhere near Sloane.”
Me and ultimatums? Yeah, we don’t mix. Give me two options and tell me I need to pick between them and I’ll find a third just to throw up a middle finger. Sloane’s friend has thrown me a curveball, though. Try as I might, I can’t seem to find a fucking third option here. Newan wants me to stay away from her friend, which I can’t do. And so the alternative would be to go to fucking therapy sessions with her myself. Which I can’t do.
The old me would have just said screw it and I’d have told her I’d stay away from Sloane, fully intending on seeing her anyway, but if I do th
at and the shrink finds out, then it’s Lacey paying the price, not me. The girl needs help. The girl needs help more than I need Sloane Romera in my life.
At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
Who the hell does this woman think she is, anyway? I’m so fucking mad at her. Normally I’d solve this problem by planting my fist firmly into the face of the person responsible for making me see red like this. But I can’t. Because she’s a smug, in an I-have-a-PhD-in-psychology-and-you’re-one-hundred-different-kinds-of-fucked-up kind of way. She’s manipulating Sloane’s life in a really calculating manner. Bitch is probably jealous that her friend is getting some or something. I laugh: yeah, that’s highly unlikely. The woman oozed her own brand of sexuality that declared she didn’t have problems getting it when she wanted it. She’s probably just looking out for her friend, but I’ll do anything to justify avoiding her request.
I drive the Camaro across the city, headed for Charlie’s mansion at the other end of the peninsula to Hunt’s Point. This is one of the most salubrious areas in Seattle. Bankers, golf pros, business owners, all respectable types, live here. They wave at Charlie when they’re walking their dogs, mowing the lawn, smile at him as he drives his Lexus down the leafy, suburban streets. They have no idea that he’s a fucking serial killer. He’s lived there for twenty-five years and the place is sacred to him. He definitely doesn’t shit where he eats, and he sure as hell doesn’t appreciate when his boys trail their shit to his doorstep on their shoes either. That basically means no dealing, no weapons, no grudges and no shop talk when you step foot through his front door. Follow those rules and the man will treat you like a king. Break them and he’ll make you wish you’d never been fucking born.
Shop talk is the reason why Charlie has called me over here tonight, though. The man never married, but his mistress, Sophie, is out of town visiting her mother so the place is empty—no curious ears to overhear something they really shouldn’t. I pull the Camaro into the long driveway leading up to Charlie’s estate and wait for the gates to buzz open. The burst of static crackles two seconds later. The security guards are well used to my ride. Know not to keep me waiting.
I park up and head inside, not bothering to knock. Knocking is for people like Rick and O’Shannessy, the lower grades who’ve only been with Charlie a couple of years. I fucking grew up in this house. I lost my virginity here to one of the Mexican housemaids that used to clean up after me when I was a snot-nosed teenager. I broke three of my ribs sparring with a martial arts instructor out on the back tennis court. My current digs are humble compared to this monstrosity of a house, but I never felt at home here. I never felt I deserved this. I always felt like I deserved the stinking shithole my uncle had raised me in during the first miserable part of my life. Dirt poor, lowest of the low. That kind of poor works its way inside your very psyche. No matter how big the roof over your head may grow to be, how many maids you’re fucking, or how many hundred-thousand-dollar cars are parked in the driveway, ready and at your disposal, you can never really escape it.
The lights are on inside Charlie’s place, blazing away, lighting up the whole house. Crystal chandeliers, Persian rugs, antique furniture—the works. The boss may have lived in this country for more than half his life, but the guy still seems to believe he’s stuck in 19th-century England.
“Charlie!” I make my way through the sprawling ground floor, headed straight to the one place I can always count on finding the man: his study. Just as I predicted, when I push the door back the grey-haired bastard is bent double over his disgustingly ostentatious desk, snorting a line of blow. He sits up, eyes the size of silver dollars, holding his fingers to his powder-rimmed nostril.
“Well, if it ain’t my most entrusted employee.” He sits back, wipes his hands on the front of his pinstripe waistcoat, leaving smudges of white behind. “So glad you could join me. Did you lock the door behind you?”
“Of course I did.” The very first thing I learned about Charlie was that security was his number one priority, especially in his own home. Woe betide the person who leaves a fucking window cracked. Ever.
Charlie shrugs one shoulder, nodding his head. He gestures to the chair waiting for me on the opposite side of his desk. I sit in it like I’m supposed to, making myself comfortable. “Got a job for you, son.”
“Uh-huh.” There’s no other reason for me to be here. Charlie makes nice, pretends that we’re family, but the truth of the matter is that I’m his dark and sometimes slightly evil secret weapon. Would he have kept me around if I had been more business minded, utilized me to launder his money or work his contacts like he said he would have last time we talked? Maybe. But even I know I’m more useful to him as a savage monster.
“It’s Rick.” He collects a razor blade from the wooden desktop and starts cutting another bump of coke for himself. The man is a professional, and makes short work of it. Surprised the fucker has any septum left. Once he’s done, he points the sharp edge of the razor at me, leaning across the desk. “The little shit’s been selling to the bike gangs.”
Selling to the bike gangs? I can’t help but laugh at that. “His father’s president of an MC. What did you expect? I told you your stock would end up in their warehouses if you let Rick anywhere near it.”
“Drugs, guns—I don’t give a shit about that.” He waves his hand in the air. “He can sell those to whoever the fuck he wants to.”
“Then what the hell is he selling?”
Charlie sits back in his chair, his eyes still wider than they have any right to be. He’s gripped by a level-ten paranoia; the coke always does this to him. “Information, Zeth.” He still hasn’t blinked. “Information! The bastard’s been selling information to some small charter in Southern California, some nobody fucking gang that no one cares about. Telling them what we got in our warehouses. When we receive shipments. Valuable information, Zeth.”
“And have the warehouses been hit?”
Charlie shakes his head rapidly. “That’s just it. Not a peep.”
I’m probably risking my balls by saying this but the question has to be asked. “Then are you sure the kid’s not just talking to family? You know how it goes. One charter and the next, they’re all interrelated. All messed up in each other’s business, screwing each other’s women.”
“No! I heard ’im. I heard ’im telling them about the girls from the shipping container. This ain’t no family matter. This is about cold, hard cash.”
If Charlie wants to ingratiate me to his cause, then he probably shouldn’t have brought up that godforsaken shipping container. It’s been a sore point between us since I found out the old man was responsible for moving young girls in the skin trade. I still haven’t decided if I can overlook it yet without taking some sort of action. The old man probably wouldn’t have mentioned it if he wasn’t so messed up.
“How did you hear him?”
“On his phone, fuckhead. You think any of my staff ain’t monitored? I didn’t come down in the last shower. I gotta make sure my interests are protected.”
On his phone? What the hell does that mean? A listening device? A bug in Rick’s phone? And not only in Rick’s phone. Charlie just said it himself: you think any of my staff aren’t monitored?
Any.
My blood is suddenly running hot. I get that hazy blur to my vision that never bodes well—I’m going to flip if he has done what I think he’s done. “You got a bug on my phone, Charlie?” I ask him quietly. Carefully. The old man has a temper like a lion, but then so do I. I don’t want to set him off, especially in the state he’s in, without knowing the facts, but it’s almost fucking impossible to keep myself in check. Charlie’s angry expression fades a little, like he’s suddenly realized what he just told me. Like he’s just realized what a major fuckup admitting something like that to me would be.
“No, no, not you. Of course not you. You’re family, ain’t you.” There we go again with the family bullshit. As if to prove the point, Charlie off
ers me up a small white bump of the coke still scattered all over his desk. “I need you to watch Rick, okay? He’s supposed to meet them tomorrow night down on the wharf. They’re exchanging something. I wanna know what. I want you to take back whatever it is, and then I want you to kill that little shit. You ’ear me?”
I wave off the coke, shaking my head. I’m not buying his vague dismissal of my question; if anything it’s confirmed the worst. Motherfucker. The girls were bad enough, but if he has been spying on me… I try to loosen the muscles in my body. Loosen them enough so that I don’t shake with the all-powerful rage building inside me. “What time’s the meet?” I grind out.
“Seven thirty. And you make sure you make that little weasel suffer before you dispose of him, alright?” Charlie doesn’t seem bothered that I rejected his offer of the drugs. He cuts it for himself and then inhales in a sharp blast. God knows how many lines he did before I got here, but that’s three in the last five minutes. The old man slumps back in his chair, head tipped back, chest rising and falling slowly as he makes a euphoric moaning sound. I stand up and make my exit, still warring with my need to curl my fingers into a fist and smash it repeatedly into his face.
“I’ll let you know what happens,” I throw over my shoulder as I leave. Except I probably won’t have to. Charlie will probably be monitoring me somehow. He’ll watch the whole thing via fucking satellite feed somehow, I’m guessing. From outer fucking space. I tear out of his house before I can do something rash. He still has his security detail on site. If I even so much as lift a finger here, break a vase, scratch the wingback chairs, breathe in the wrong direction, I’m a dead man.
Instead, I jump into the Camaro and lose an inch of rubber off the tires as I scramble to get the hell out of there. Through the gates, out of the suburban headfuck Charlie likes to call home. I’m almost through the other side of Clyde Hill before I pull over the Camaro and get my phone out of my pocket.
