Nine
Amelia
I heard him moving around all night. I heard this because I didn't sleep all night. Dade left sometime around one in the morning, quietly making his way down the hall. I cleaned. I baked. I showered. I tried not to think about Johnnie Walker Allen. I tried not to remember how his hands and lips felt on my body, how his tongue felt between my legs, giving me something no one had ever given me before. I tried to remember that while he was giving it to me, another woman was waiting for him to give it to her.
"Augh," I growled, getting out of bed around seven the next morning, getting dressed, and heading to work early again.
The last thing I expected as I made my way downstairs was to run into Luis. It wasn't that it was weird to run into him; he owned the building. He was around, checking on things, overseeing improvements, showing empty apartments to possible tenants. He was around a lot. That being said, I wasn't particularly in the mood to see him. Every time I saw him, he wanted to ask me out again. And when I turned him down, he didn't hear "no", he heard "try harder" and most of the time, I gave in just to save myself further argument. I felt absolutely nothing for him. Sure, he was attractive. He had a certain amount of appeal. Many of the women in the town had crushes on him. He just... didn't do it for me. But he was relentless and I was not in the mood to have another of his "Come on, Amelia, you work too hard. You need a night out" arguments.
"Darling," he said, his head tilting to the side, watching me walk down the steps. His eyes did a slow study of me from the feet up, resting too long at my breasts and I fought the urge to cover them. His gaze came to my face and he gave me a smile that wasn't quite a smile. "You should have called me," he said, tisk tisking as he ran a hand down my splotchy tear-stained cheek.
"Why?"
"Because I could have comforted you, darling." I hated that he called me darling, the way he enunciated it with a strong 'g' at the end. I hated it even more because it reminded me of when Johnnie called me that, dropping the 'g' entirely. I hated to admit that it sounded a lot better on Johnnie's lips. Damn it.
"I didn't need comforting. I just needed some time."
"I know you cared for Ben. I'm sorry for your loss, Amelia."
"Thank you," I said, trying to move to the side, but he blocked me in.
"It's too early for work. Why don't I come up for a bit? We can have a visit." He was always trying to get into my apartment. Whenever I caught him around the building, he'd ask me if there was anything that needed work in there. When I said no, he asked if he could check for himself. Which got him an even firmer no. When I finally gave in and went on dates with him, he always tried to invite himself up for coffee or wine. More firm no's. I guessed maybe he thought that if he could just get inside my apartment, he could get into my panties. That couldn't have been further from the truth.
"No." I didn't clarify. I didn't make excuses. I heard once that women should learn to use 'no' as a complete sentence, that we didn't need to explain our reasons for saying no. Apparently, Luis didn't understand that concept.
"Amelia..."
"No, Luis. Not today." Oh, shoot. I shouldn't have added the 'not today'. That sounded like it was a possibility another day. I blamed the lack of sleep. My brain wasn't working right.
He paused, a tightness forming around his eyes that made me uncomfortable before it softened. "Alright, Amelia, darling. Maybe tomorrow," he said, kissing my cheek. I watched him walk away for a second, feeling like I wanted to scrub my cheek with a sheet of sandpaper, before I turned to go back upstairs. Maybe I didn't need to go to work early. Maybe what I really needed was a day off. I needed to get some sleep, put my thoughts back in order. I didn't even have to call out to anyone. I had no one to answer to.
And then I ran into Johnnie and he dropped that line about knowing Luis before walking away from me too.
Watching him move to the parking lot and climb into the car, I got to say, it hurt. It hurt in a way that it totally shouldn't have. I was willing to blame it on the lack of sleep, on the grief, on the fact that I had let him do stuff to me that I hadn't let anyone else do. That was all it was. Everything was crazy. The sooner he was gone and things got back to normal, the better.
I let myself back into my apartment and threw myself in bed, fully knowing that sleep would not be coming. Especially with that little piece of information Johnnie dropped on his way out. Was he being honest? Did he really know Luis from somewhere? It seemed like an impossibility, but I didn't know that much about Luis' past either. He showed up in town, bought the land, built the apartments. That was the extent of my knowledge. I had no idea where he was originally from. Maybe they had crossed paths before. Besides, Johnnie seemed to be one of the more honest guys I had met. I really couldn't imagine him making up some silly story just for the hell of it. That didn't seem like him. But, really, I didn't even know Johnnie that well either. Someone who worked as a contract killer was surely good at lying. How else could he avoid trouble? So maybe it wasn't that he was so honest, maybe it was that he was just that good of a liar.
"Augh!" I growled, pulling the blanket up over my head and willing myself to stop thinking about Johnnie Walker Allen at all.
--
The next day, I went to work. I stayed late, pretending I had too much work to do, but honestly just doing so to avoid confronting my empty apartment. See, I realized something not sleeping again the night before, something that settled with a bitter taste on my tongue: I was lonely. I was bone-deep lonely. And, true, the lonely had always been a part of me, since I was a little girl, since my life fell apart. I kept people away with my thorns, a defense mechanism that Johnnie had spotted within minutes of knowing me. I did this because I learned how dangerous it was to let people in, to let them become important. Because if I had learned anything in my life, it was that people you loved went away eventually. And the space they vacated, it could never be filled.
That's what I was doing when I moved to Alabama: I was running away from people I had started to get too attached to, my old roommate, my classmates in college. Everyone. They started to mean too much. So at twenty-three, I packed my stuff, I left a note, and I took off. I landed in Alabama because that was where my crummy car finally coughed and sputtered and died. Luckily for me, there was a chance to build a life and career even in such a small town. So that was what I did. And I learned my lesson; I didn't get close with anyone.
Until Ben.
Ben worked at it. He talked to me at the mailbox; he engaged me in conversation on the balcony on the weekends; he invited me over when his 'eyes were bigger than his stomach' and he 'bought too much pizza'. The well of loneliness in him was as deep as the one in me. We'd connected. And he was every bit of a recluse as I was. He was safe. So I let him in. He helped fill the void a little.
Then he was gone. And not only was I dealing with his loss, I was becoming reacquainted with the hollowness inside.
And in walks Johnnie right when the misery felt too much to bear. He helped fill in the void in a smaller capacity than his father.
Now that was gone too.
I was alone as alone could get, with just Luis and his unwanted attentions to keep me company.
Maybe it was time to move on again. Maybe I was done with Alabama. Maybe it was time to try the midwest or California. Maybe I needed to get lost in the snow-capped mountains of Vermont. Maybe it was time for a change.
I walked back to my apartment, sorting through my mail so I didn't see him until I heard him. "Good evening, darling."
My head snapped up and there was Luis, leaning against my door in cream slacks (yes, cream) and a lightweight blue shirt. Everything about how he carried himself and dressed was out of place. Why he was living there was completely beyond me. It didn't seem to suit him.
"Hey Luis," I said, not even bothering to hide the displeasure in my tone.
"I brought wine," he said and, sure enough, there was a bottle of red in his hands.
Great. Just wonderful.
"Just twenty minutes, Amelia. I won't keep you from your plans."
Right, my plans. If eating a frozen pizza and re-grouting my tub counted as plans.
"Fine," I said, unlocking my door and letting him inside.
He closed it behind him as I made my way to the kitchen for glasses. I didn't own any wine ones, but I had nice glass tumblers at least. "You added locks," Luis observed and I looked up to see him inspecting the locks. "Were the ones installed not working properly?"
Gosh, he was so weird. I put the tumblers at the end of the counter and went in search for a corkscrew. "Ben installed them. He said it wasn't right for a woman living alone to rely on doorknob locks and a chain or something like that. He insisted on putting on some deadbolts."
"Two of them," Luis observed, making his way toward me and reaching for the corkscrew I was holding out to him. I hoped my message was clear: let's get this over with.
"He said you could never be too safe."
"Indeed," Luis said, jerking his head toward the sliding door to the balcony where I had a metal pole in the track, keeping it from being able to be pulled open.
"I'm not from around here," I shrugged. "It's not weird to me. I think it's weirder that no one else locks their doors than that I have multiple locks."
"Good point," he said, pouring the wine into the glasses. When I went to reach for mine, he brushed my hand away. "Let it breathe," he said in a tone that made me feel like a scolded child. "You know, I'm not from around here either."
Well then. There was my opening. "I know," I said, trying to soften my tone into friendly interest. "Where are you from originally?"
"New York. Then I spent some time in Boston, Austen, Miami, Raleigh."
"Big traveler."
"Business," he said, waving it off. I nodded, unsure where to go from there. Luis grabbed both glasses and moved toward the living room and sat down on my couch. I followed, choosing the opposite couch, not wanting him to get any ideas, and reaching for my glass. "You have an eye for interior decorating," he said and I felt the compliment lighten my mood slightly. "Normally, I wouldn't think this... lilac color would ever work, but you have somehow made it happen."
"Thank you," I said, sipping the wine, the flavor exploding across my taste buds in a way that only expensive wine could do.
"You've done some recent rearranging," he said.
"What? Like the furniture?" I asked, confused.
"Yes."
"No," I said, shaking my head. I hadn't moved anything since I got it the way I liked it... a year ago.
"Oh. Fresh scuff marks underneath your television cabinet," he said, waving a hand dismissively.
My eyes darted over to the cabinet in question to find he was right, there were scuff marks. Weird. "You're very observant," I said with a smile I didn't mean. "I clean a lot. I must have moved it while vacuuming," I said, hoping the lie fell true. Fact of the matter was, I knew with certainty I had never moved that cabinet. First, because it weighed a ton. Second, because I knew it would leave scuff marks on the nice wood floors. So that was really weird.
We sipped the wine. Luis asked me questions about college, about my work at the church, about the possibility of a date over the weekend. I answered college questions cryptically, work questions as honestly as confidentiality would allow, and told him I would have to check my meetings schedule and get back to him. Then, twenty minutes later, as promised, he put his glass down and stood, declaring he had taken up enough of my time and made his way to the door. He kissed me on the cheek again and I closed the door behind him.
I stared at the closed door for a moment when Ben's words came to me: Lock up, Amy. Gotta look out for yourself.
My hands flew out, sliding all the locks into place before I turned to rush to the balcony. If I leaned over the railing slightly, I could watch the street. So I did, eyes following Luis' car until he disappeared before rushing back inside, putting the bar back in the sliding door and rushing over to the cabinet. Why was it out of place? If I didn't move it, and I knew I hadn't, who had? And why?
I grabbed the bottom, throwing my shoulder into the side and push, push, pushed until it finally moved, making new scuff marks all over my floor that I wasn't even thinking about because there was a swirling pit of uncertainty in my stomach. Something was off. Something was very, very wrong.
And it didn't take long for that swirling uncertainty to turn into a cold sweat of sureness. Because there, behind my television cabinet, was a large square cut-out in my wall. As in, someone removed the drywall in a huge spot, then slipped it back in. It didn't take a criminal background to know that there was something in my wall, something I didn't put there, something that didn't belong there. My heart was thumping so hard in my chest that it was making me feel lightheaded. My hands shook as I reached for the finger-sized indent at a corner, obviously put there to make it easier to remove the wall. Taking a deep breath, I yanked the square, pulling it down onto the floor. The inside was dark and I scrambled for my phone, flipping on the flashlight app on and flashing it in the hole.
If my heart was pounding before, it stopped dead right then.
Because there, nestled in my wall, was eight blocks of plastic. I leaned closer, knowing, already knowing what it was, but needing to make sure. The fluffy, brown powder was wrapped up tight and stamped with some sort of bird emblem.
"Oh my god. Oh my god," I whispered, my butt falling back onto my ankles.
There was eight kilos of heroin in my wall.
A kilo of heroin went for close to sixty-thousand dollars.
Sixty-thousand times eight.
"Oh my god."
There was almost half a million dollars worth of heroin in my wall.
"Okay. Alright," I said to myself, needing something to drown out the frenzied pace of my thoughts. "Okay."
I scrambled away from the wall, all paranoia as I checked the locks again. What were my options? I could go to the police. I could hand over the drugs, explain my innocence. But what were the chances of success there? I knew the sheriff. He was an idiot. Worse yet, he was an idiot who never got any kind of action in his career and he was looking for his 'big bust' before he retired. He would see me with eight kilos of heroin in my wall, realize I was someone who led the narcotics meeting in town, and think that was all too perfect, too sordid. Maybe I was supplying to my people in my meetings. Who would ever suspect the one who was supposed to help them anyway, right?
Okay. I didn't want to do that.
I could get rid of the heroin. But where? Where the hell could you get rid of that much product without risking someone coming upon it and turning it into the authorities or, worse yet, using it?
I could leave it in my wall. But, if someone put it in my wall, someone was sure to come back for it. What if they came back when I was still there?
No. That wasn't an option.
My eyes drifted around my apartment, landing on the red wine bottle on my counter.
"Oh you son of a..."
That was why he wanted in my apartment so badly. Not to sleep with me, to retrieve his drugs. That's why he was asking about the added security measures. Hell, he probably had a key to the original lock he installed!
"I'm so stupid," I hissed to my empty apartment.
Okay. I needed to focus. I needed to... close up the wall. Right. That was what I was going to do. I was going to act like I knew nothing. Let Luis sneak in when I wasn't around and take his drugs back. Let him think I was clueless still. I grabbed paper towels off the counter and knelt back down by my wall, using the paper towels to pick up the piece of wall and slip it back, scrubbing at the corner where I had touched it before. I sat back up, pushing the cabinet back into place. All my movements were stiff and awkward as I went into my kitchen and got cleaner and wax to get the scuff marks out of my floor. I did that with my usual OCD perfection, not stopping until the tips of my fingertips hurt, before cleaning up all evidence that I had done it at all.
Alright. That was done.
I dumped the rest of the red wine down the drain, washed the glasses, recycled the bottle.
He could have his drugs back, but what was to stop him from storing more in there again? What would that mean for me? Who the hell was Luis anyway? Obviously a drug dealer. But what else? Was he a bad guy, as in a really bad guy? Was I in danger? I needed answers. I needed to know if I needed to get the hell out of town right then. Hell, maybe I should just get out of town in general. I could just... leave all my stuff, pack a small bag, point my car in a direction, and never look back.
I took a deep, steadying breath.
Answers.
I was right about that. I needed answers.
Why don't you ask your boyfriend how he knows me, huh, angelface?
Johnnie knew him.
That didn't surprise me. They were both criminals. But if Johnnie knew him, Johnnie could maybe tell me what kind of trouble I was in for. Was Luis the kind of man who would follow me wherever I ran? Was I too loose of an end to let go?
I walked toward my bedroom, hauling out one of those oversize reusable plastic bags you buy for the grocery store, and throwing a bunch of clothes inside. I threw my purse in the bag as well, grabbed my keys, and tried to keep my pace calm and casual as I walked out into the hallway, suddenly more paranoid than I had ever been in my life, even though I hadn't technically done anything wrong.
I got into my car and drove slowly out of town, checking my rear view frantically, convinced Luis was going to come shooting out of nowhere and take me down. I felt better when I crossed the town border and hadn't seen a single car following.
I pulled off into a gas station, filled up, grabbed some junk food, and took the time to do a quick search online. I didn't know Johnnie's address, but I knew he lived in someplace called Navesink Bank in New Jersey. That was a fifteen hour drive, but judging by the way my nerves were frantically threatening to burst through my skin, I was pretty sure I could make it in one trip. Once I got there, well, I would just find a way to find him.
There was no other choice.
I needed him.