Interlude

by Anna Cruise

The Facebook profile is of a guy in uniform, posing with his K-9 dog, a German Shepherd that looks like it would bite my head off if given the chance.

  She closes the file and scrolls some more, then stops and clicks another.

  “Deputy,” she says.

  She opens another. “This guy works at the county jail.”

  I get her point. She got info with her hack, info about a lot of people who shouldn’t be involved in the drug business. Lots of them.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I tell her.

  “This is why I took your phones,” she says. “We don’t know who might be watching, who might be listening.”

  I can’t decide if she’s just paranoid or insane. Probably both.

  She clicks another name and a new Facebook profile picture pops up.

  A police officer. Older. Mirrored sunglasses. A slight frown on his face.

  Claire and I both stiffen.

  Because it’s the cop who was at my house.

  fourteen

  Lydia notices our reaction.

  “What?” she asks, glancing from Claire to me.

  Claire’s mouth is open. “He…he was at Nash’s house.”

  Lydia gets this funny look on her face. “When?”

  “Tonight,” Claire says slowly. “When I got there. He wanted him to come down and make a statement.”

  “And he was at my house yesterday.” My pulse quickens and my throat tightens. “Asking about Joey.”

  “What?” Lydia is on full alert. She leans closer to me, so close that her leg touches mine. “Tell me everything.”

  I open my mouth, then close it. I don’t owe her shit.

  “Nash.” Her tone is soft, neutral, like she’s on my side. “Did he say anything suspicious? Unusual?”

  I swallow another mouthful of vodka and think about my interaction with the cop. I don’t know what’s normal or not when interacting with the police – hell, my only experience was when I was seventeen and we had to pour out our beers at the Hump. He toyed with writing us tickets but decided not to. Probably because Macy Gunther’s tits were practically hanging out of her shirt and he couldn’t take his eyes off them.

  This cop, the guy with the sunglasses and the badass attitude, just seemed…normal. Sure, he was suspicious, but his job was to see everyone as a suspect. And I’d given reason for him to question me: dead roommate, bashed-in body, smashed phone on my floor. He should have questioned me.

  I think hard about what he asked. Mostly questions about my bruises, about my phone. And questions about Joey.

  “Do you think he knows?” Lydia asks.

  “Knows what?”

  She rolls her eyes. “About the drive. The files.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?” I drain the rest of the vodka.

  “This could be bad,” she murmurs, her eyes locked on the screen. Her fingers fly over the keyboard and more boxes pop up on the screen: pictures, names, screen shots of text conversations. “Very bad.”

  “What are you doing?” Claire asks. She inches closer to the laptop, partially blocking my view. “What are you looking at?”

  “Trying to see what I can pull up on him.” Lydia points at the screen. “Trevor Cushing. Ten-year veteran of SDPD. Divorced five years ago, remarried last year, to a retired exotic dancer. Lovely. No kids. Summer home in Ensenada. Total red flag.”

  “A summer home in Mexico is a red flag?”

  She glares at me. “Where do you think the drugs come from?”

  “So you think he’s bringing them across the border?” She really is stupid.

  “No. But if he’s going easy on this side of the border, he might be getting some nice kickbacks. Like this beachside condo.” She brings up a picture of a white, three-story stucco building surrounded by palm trees.

  “How the hell do you have all of this?” I ask.

  “That’s classified information.”

  “No, that’s classified information,” I tell her, pointing at the screen. “Claire said you hacked in using their numbers. Their phones. How?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Her tone is condescending and I bristle. “Try me.”

  She sighs. “I sent a file from Joey’s phone to Gino. With A RAT – remote access tool – attached. Accessed Gino’s contacts. Sent texts from his phone with the same malware linked up.”

  “And what exactly does a RAT do?”

  She shrugs. “Hijacks their phone. Gives me access to contacts, texts, any accounts they use passwords for.”

  A shiver runs down my spine. Not just because she talks about it so casually, this complete violation of privacy, but because she has no qualms about doing it.

  “How long did it take you?”

  “To access their shit?” Lydia smiles. “I got in with Gino on the first try. Stupid ass opens everything people send him. The others? It took a while. I went down his contact list. Sent game links, files, anything I thought people might open. But I had to go slow, do it carefully, send stuff that looked like it could legit be from Gino so it wouldn’t raise suspicions.”

  I don’t want to be impressed but I am.

  “So, now that I’ve answered your questions,” she says, her eyes on me, “are you gonna answer mine? About Cushing?”

  It takes a second for me to register who she is talking about. The cop. “I don’t have any answers,” I tell her. It’s the truth. The only answers I have are the ones she’s given me, and I still have questions.

  “So we have to operate under the assumption that he knows,” she says.

  “Knows what?” Claire asks. It’s the first time she’s spoken in a while and her voice startles me.

  “About the drive. About me—us—having this information.”

  “That’s a pretty big leap,” I say. I don’t say this because I think it, but because I want to believe it. “Just because he’s the guy who showed up at my house doesn’t mean he knows you’ve hacked into their little drug network.”

  “It’s not little,” she counters. “And it’s not a big leap at all. Think about it. Out of all the cops in San Diego, why did he show up to ask about Joey?”

  I don’t have a good answer for that. “Maybe he works homicide?”

  She shakes her head and her red ponytail bounces a little. “Or maybe he knows who Joey is.”

  “Okay,” I say, nodding. “Maybe he does. Maybe this cop is totally bad and knows Joey is connected to Gino. That doesn’t mean he knows you’ve got info on him.”

  “But it’s a possibility,” she says.

  “Everything is a possibility. It’s possible that Gino could show up here and kill all of us tonight. It’s also possible that a fucking asteroid could drop from the sky and demolish the world. And it’s possible that the cop was just doing his job, investigating a homicide.”

  Claire nods her head in agreement and Lydia frowns.

  “Look, you can think what you want,” she says. “You can live in your little bubble and think everything’s cool. But I know what I know. I’ve been snooping on these guys for a few months. Nothing would surprise me anymore. Nada.”

  I hate that she’s sucking me in to her paranoia. I’m not a paranoid person. I’m pretty laid back, actually. But the last twenty-four hours of my life have been a series of shitty events, all of them seemingly connected. It’s not hard to follow the dots, to see that she might just be right.

  Even though I don’t want her to be.

  fifteen

  “So what do we do?”

  It’s ten minutes later and Claire is scrambling eggs. It’s after midnight and the small buzz I’ve got going from the vodka is making me sleepy.

  Lydia is still parked in front of the laptop, clicking on different names. My eyes have glazed over and I’m only half-paying attention. Thanks, vodka.

  “Get the info to someone who will do something about it,” Lydia says.

  Claire uses a wooden spoon to stir the eggs. She shakes salt and pepper, then sprinkles s
hredded cheese on top. My mouth waters. I could eat the whole pan.

  “You’ve already said you don’t know who you can trust,” Claire reminds her.

  “I know. So I need to find someone.”

  “How?”

  Lydia sighs. “I don’t know! I didn’t think everyone in San Diego was involved in the drug trade, you know?”

  “Stop being dramatic,” Claire tells her. She opens a cupboard and pulls out three plates. Then she looks at me. “You hungry?”

  I nod.

  She scoops eggs and distributes them on each plate, one loaded a little heavier than the others. She hands this one to me, along with a fork. I dig in.

  “Not everyone is involved,” she tells her sister.

  “Really?” Lydia reaches for her plate and shoves a forkful of eggs into her mouth. “Because in the ten minutes it’s taken you to make this, I’ve found two more crooked cops on the list.” She nods at the screen. “And I haven’t even dug into their contacts to see who else might be involved.”

  “So we don’t go to the cops,” Claire says. Her tone is measured, calm; she sounds like an older sister.

  “We could plant it with someone,” Lydia murmurs. “Like I did with Nash.”

  Claire keeps talking. “I can talk to one of my law professors.”

  Law professors. That explains her interaction with Cushing: what she said to him and why he asked her if she was a lawyer.

  Lydia’s eyes go wide. “What? No, you can’t say anything to anyone!”

  “Relax. I’m not going to show them the drive and tell them my little sister has cracked a drug cartel. But I can ask a few questions, give them a hypothetical, and see what they say.”

  Lydia makes a face. “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “It’s the best idea I’ve heard,” I say, scraping my fork across the empty plate, trying to pick up the last little bit of egg and melted cheese. “Apart from just mailing it in anonymously.”

  “Of course you would agree with her,” Lydia mutters.

  I have no idea what that means and chalk it up to some sibling rivalry I don’t know—and don’t care—about. “I agree with her because it’s a plan. And because it doesn’t involve planting it somewhere, which is the only thing you’ve suggested.”

  “That wouldn’t work,” she says, shaking her head.

  No shit, I think.

  She closes her eyes and thinks. “Because there’s no guarantee it won’t end up in Cushing’s hands. Or with one of these other dirty assholes.” She opens her eyes and drops her empty plate to the counter. “We have to find someone clean. Someone we know who will do the right thing.”

  I admire her sense of justice, if not her execution. And if she wants to get the drive to someone who can do something about it, who can bring down this drug ring she’s found, more power to her. But I don’t want anything to do with it. Which brings me back to Gino.

  “So do what you need to do,” I say. “But you need to get Gino his shit back so he backs off.”

  Lydia shakes her head. “No.”

  “Stealing drugs wasn’t part of the original plan,” Claire says. She is the only one still eating.

  “Finding a massive drug network wasn’t, either,” Lydia points out. “We need that money.”

  “Selling drugs is illegal,” Claire says. “You aren’t undercover with a government agency, Lydia. If you get caught, no one is going to care about the reasons why you were doing it. You’ll go to jail. And I’m not going to be a part of that.”

  “You already are.”

  Claire stiffens.

  “Where are the drugs?” I ask. “And what exactly do you have?”

  Lydia looks at me. “Heroin. Half a kilo. They’re in a storage facility in Clairemont.”

  “Half a kilo?” I stare at her blankly. I don’t have a clue what half a kilo looks like.

  “Sixty-five thousand street value.”

  My eyebrows shoot up. Holy shit.

  “Yeah,” she says, watching my reaction. “Dump that and we’d be alright for a good, long while.”

  “You are not selling drugs,” Claire tells her. She presses her lips together and I wonder what else is on the tip of her tongue.

  “If you don’t give it back, Gino will never stop looking for you,” I say. “You’ll be on the run forever. And if he’s as connected as you say he is, he’ll find you. Eventually.”

  Lydia nods. The light from the laptop reflects in her eyes and they look like they are glowing. “But if I do give it back to him, I’m screwed. Because he’s beyond pissed. So either way, I’m dead. I’d rather have some money and try to get out of dodge than sit here and wait for him to come get me.”

  “You don’t know that.” I’m thirsty but I don’t want more vodka. I stand up with my empty cup and fill it at the kitchen tap. I drain the glass of water. “Arrange for a drop and then leave. Get out of here, go someplace far away. Maybe he’ll just be happy to have his merch back. You never know.”

  Gino doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would be content with that, but I’m not gonna say it.

  “And what about you?” she asks.

  “Me?”

  Lydia smiles but it isn’t a genuine one. The crescent dimples don’t appear. “He’s going to come after you, you know.”

  “Not if you give him his stuff back.” I shake my head. “I’m not involved with this – you’re the one he wants. You need to get him back his shit. Listen to your sister and figure out who to give your info to. And get me back home.”

  She laughs. “Home? You can’t go home – you said so yourself. You pulled a gun on him. Stripped him naked. Locked him in a bathroom. In your house. You think he’s just gonna forgive and forget? ‘Oh, hey, I got my drugs back so everything is totally cool.’” She snorts. “Wrong.”

  I don’t have a response. Because she’s right.

  She levels her eyes on me. “You go home and you’re as good as dead.”

  sixteen

  She’s definitely right.

  I can’t go home. Not now, maybe not ever. I think about my mom’s house sitting empty, the carton of almost-expired milk in the fridge, the trash I meant to take out the night Sara and I got in a fight. My lighting equipment tucked inside the garage – the par cans, strobes, hazer; thousands of dollars worth of equipment. The gig I’m supposed to be working Friday, and the ones on the calendar after that. The cat with empty food and water bowls. Jesus, what was I gonna do about Sherlock?

  “We can stay here tonight,” Claire says. “For a while, actually. Zoe is doing an internship in DC. She’s gone for another couple of weeks.”

  I wonder who Zoe is and figure she must be the owner of the apartment I’m hiding out in.

  “So, we’re fine. We don’t have to make any decisions tonight,” Claire says.

  She talks like we’re trying to figure out what to have for dinner, fish or chicken, and I think I want to hit her.

  Lydia apparently feels the same way. “Would you cut the big sister bullshit? There aren’t any choices or decisions to make!” Her face is almost as red as her hair. “This isn’t a game, Claire. There is no consolation prize. Everything is fucked up, remember? You said it yourself. And the only way out is to leave. All of us. Get the hell out of here while we can. And we need money to do it. Sixty-five thousand won’t get us far, but it’ll buy us distance and time. And I’m taking it.” She wipes at her eyes. “With or without you.”

  She slams the laptop shut and stalks down the hallway. A few seconds later, a door crashes into the frame.

  Claire slumps against the wall and slowly slides down. She rubs her temples, brushing her hair off her forehead.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, looking up at me. Her own eyes are wet. “I’m sorry we got you involved. I’m sorry about Gino. And the stupid flashdrive. And I’m sorry your girlfriend got mad at you.”

  Her sincerity gets to me. I’m angry and scared and I want to lash out, but she’s not the person to direct it a
t.

  “Not your fault.”

  She rubs her shoulders, almost like she’s trying to warm herself. “I know. But Lydia is my responsibility. I should have been better prepared. Hell, I should have tried to talk her out of this stupid idea. I…”

  Her voice trails off and she buries her head in her arms. Her shoulders shake and I can tell she’s crying. Shit.

  I take a step toward her. Then another. Before I know it, I’m sliding down the wall next to her.

  Tentatively, I touch her arm. “Hey,” I say. “Don’t cry.”

  Her shoulders shake harder.

  I rub her arm a little. It feels weird, touching her. “Everything will be okay.”

  It’s a lie. She and I both know it, but I still say it. Because I don’t know what else to say.

  She looks up. Her eyes are wet and they remind me of Lydia when she was standing in my doorway, tears in her eyes. “It won’t be,” she whispers. “It won’t be okay. It hasn’t been okay since Alex died.”

  Part of me wants to know more. As pissed as I am about being tied into their mess, I can’t help but wonder how everything snowballed. How Claire let her sister get involved, how Lydia got the idea in the first place. I’d spent so much time being in the dark about what was going on that I wanted to turn the floodlights on and see everything.

  “Tell me.”

  Claire sighs. “It would take all night.”

  I offer a half-smile. “Like I said before, I’m pretty sure we’re not going anywhere.”

  She almost smiles. “You can say that again.”

  She shifts and I lift my hand off her arm. She stands up. “I think the couch might be more comfortable.”

  I follow her into the living room and sit down on the opposite end of the brown corduroy couch. The cushions are soft and I sink down. Claire folds her legs under her so that she’s sitting cross-legged, half turned toward me.

  “Alex and Lydia have been together forever.” She closes her eyes. “Had. I always forget it’s past tense now.”

  I wonder how long forever means.

  “They were friends as far back as fourth grade. Started dating in junior high. Everyone just assumed they would get married, have kids, live this great life.” Her expression hardens. “He was a good kid. Easygoing. Laid back. The last person you’d think would get involved in drugs, you know?”