I HADN’T DONE the cloak and dagger act since I was a teenager. But what I had learned was never forgotten. The key ingredients: plain, cheap dark clothes, gloves, and a cap to prevent any stray DNA strands from being left behind were all at hand.
Trisha was a little too trusting and didn’t engage the security system for her house. It would’ve been a mild detour even if she did. I had the ability to get around it, but it was nice not to have the nuisance.
The cushy lifestyle Vic provided her with allowed her to afford a place on the water.
While glancing at the family pictures she had on display, I picked up a picture of Trisha and an older woman. I turned the frame around and pulled out the photograph. Scrawled on the back of it was: Me and Mom, 2013. The woman labeled as her mother, wasn’t the one riddled with cancer whom she helped set free. Insert sarcasm here: Shocking.
Retuning the photograph back into its frame, I replaced it back on the shelf.
I pulled the chair from the dining room table and set it down in the direct path of the hall leading to the front door. Cranking my neck, I sat down and waited until the sun fell.
MY PHONE BUZZED WITH a text from Dom, telling me it was time.
The door unlatched and opened. I quietly observed Trish—or Clare as I later found out—walk in with funky colored paper bags. With her back to me, she flicked on the light. Keeping my steps soft and quiet, I stalked toward her. My hand was on her mouth before she could scream and fend me off.
Turning her around, I slammed her against the wall, casting a cutting gaze in her direction. “I’d strongly suggest you rethink screaming your head off before I tranquilize you and you wake up hogtied. Would you like to remain comfortable, Trish—” I slowly grinned. “I mean, Clare?”
Bobbing her head, her eyes flickered with recognition.
I glanced at the chair. “Sit.”
Wobbling in her heels, she almost ate the floor a few times before she was able to obey my orders. “Y-you c-can’t do this. I-I’m under Victor’s protection.”
I hit the dimmer switch on the light. “Clare, you are very fucking naïve if you think he’ll protect you. Women…mean nothing to him. Matter-of-fact, he was good with my idea to kill you.”
“Vic…sent you here?” she asked, completely surprised.
“I know things he doesn’t think I know, and you know things I want to know. This interaction is going to unfold a little differently than he might’ve expected.”
She sighed in relief.
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I informed her. “You’re still going to die tonight.”
“Please,” she implored, wrongly thinking if she begged me not to kill her it would make a difference, “I’m a struggling actress. I didn’t even apply for the job with Vic, he offered it to me when he saw me serving tables in Austin. The pay he offered? I couldn’t refuse that.”
“What did he say he needed you to do with me?” I asked.
“He didn’t tell me so much as threaten me.” She glanced down her trembling legs. “He wanted me to distract you. I was so scared when I thought I failed, but he said I didn’t. He told me how to say goodbye to you and sent me on my way.”
“With a shitload of cash.”
She nodded a little bit too excitedly.
I rocked on the soles of shoes, slightly irritated, “Clare, tell me why I feel like you’re not telling me everything?”
“I-I a-am,” she admitted, bursting into tears. “I promise. Please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone you were here. I know you, Eric. You’re a nice guy underneath all of this. You don’t want to do this.”
My eyes flickered at her bullshit tactic for pleading for her life. “Clare? Don’t. Really. You’re making it worse for yourself.”
“I have more. Information I overheard and wasn’t supposed to.”
“For fucks sake, Clare, don't you get it? Victor played you. All the information you stumbled upon or were told was all a part of his plan.”
“That’s not true,” she denied, shaking her head. “I know things he didn’t want me to know. L-like you and your wife…you’re tied together in a way you don’t know about. Something about a job in Texas.” She looked off into space as if she was trying to remember. “He’s worried she’ll remember him and tell what happened. Patrick was an undercover agent. Vic told the people—FBI, I think—that someone else was responsible for the death of one of their agents. The only person who knew who Patrick really was is now dead. I think his name was Jr. Howard Lemon, Jr.”
“Come the fuck again?” I questioned, my voice raised.
“I-I know more. Victor set you and your wife up because he thought with her ways and yours, you would kill her…or something. I also know his books. He’s made several payments to people in Texas who aren’t clients. The payments to the Braes stopped many years ago, but the payments to the Millers? They’ve continued. The ones for Tamala Miller stopped last year, but the ones for Natalie Miller are ongoing. At least, that’s what I remember.”
She told me some things I already knew, but the payments to Tamala’s family? Payments to the Braes? Why?
My mind ran round in circles, trying to figure it all out. I glanced at my tattoo and squatted to the floor.
Vic had been orchestrating my life since the deal went wrong? No. It had to have been before then. I rubbed my forehead, recollecting everything Vic had ever taught me. Remembered he was the one who picked me up from hiding underneath my mother’s bed as a kid, scared shitless over hearing my mother’s screams. Next thing I knew, he was standing by my side as a hero, telling me to stop crying and be a man while I watched them lower my mother’s coffin into the ground.
It was said she died of a heart attack, and I never believed it. Her casket was closed and for a long time, I could never figure out why.
Eamon was pleasant to me until the night I stumbled in on Victor beating someone in the breaking room—when I saw him beating my mother. The first time Thaddeus began touching me was the day Tamala’s sister had suddenly taken an interest in him—and Victor had been paying her family off for years.
It finally fit together. Eamon was never an asshole to me because he was a fucked up bastard. He was given an incentive to be one by Victor. The things that happened to me were due to a man with enough motivation to make people do the most heinous things. Money and fear.
“Mother fucker!” I shouted, scaring Clare.
“I-I’m sorry.”
“I’m not enjoying this, Clare,” I promised her, and really, I meant it. “But it’s either me or a slow, painful death. If I don’t do it, you’ll remember this moment in the near future, and wish you had it again. It will be quick and painless. Got me?”
“W-what are you talking about?” Suddenly, she looked down at my hand and spotted the syringe. “Oh, God,” she whimpered.
I put my finger to my lips and shushed her. “Keep your eyes forward, sweetheart.” I ducked down and slipped her shoe off her foot.
“Please, Eric.” She struggled, trying to wrestle her foot out of my hand. Her fight, while entertaining, was downright laughable. “I’m sorry. I’ll go away. I won’t tell anyone.”
I looked up at her. “It’s not about trust. It’s about Vic; he is about to go down and everyone he ever dealt with will, too. You will be found. You set your death sentence when you left Austin. What I’m giving your right now…it’s mercy, Clare.”
She never gave up pleading for her life, but the needle jammed strategically between her toes stopped her. She whimpered for a moment before she started to feel the effects.
Her head lobbed to the side, dying exactly as I promised she would, quickly and painlessly.
Returning to the picture of her and her mom, I replaced the photograph with a picture of Victor and Clare at a Mejía Enterprises Function. The one where, to the naked eye, it could easily be assumed they were fucking.
WHEN I RETURNED TO the car, it was idling on the curb with Dom in the driver’s seat. I slid into the front passenger seat and shot a quick look to whoever was behind me. I wasn’t at all surprised by who occupied the back seat.
“Drive and be silent,” Charlie said to Dom.
In ten miles, we were in the middle of nowhere. After pulling off onto the paved median, Dom turned off the ignition and got out of the car to sit on the hood.
“Before it’s done, I need to say goodbye to Nikki,” I told Charlie.
“I know you want me to believe you are doing as promised, but recent history doesn’t make me feel comfortable, Ethan. The answer is no. You will not be allowed near her.”
“You must think I’m a total shit if you think I’d ever hurt Nikki while she’s carrying my child.”
“I think you are less than what you assume,” he replied.
“Do you want me to beg?” I looked at him in the rearview mirror, but he was too busy looking at the car pulling up behind us.
Without a word, he got out of the car and left in the new arrival. His answer was definitely yes, because if it was no, I would’ve had a bullet in the back of my skull by now.
DURING MY TRIP BACK to New York, I’d never felt first-class seats that were so uncomfortable.
“Bro, you’re shaking my seat,” Dom bitched. “I’m trying to get some calm here. What the fuck is up with you?” With his glass of whiskey near his lips, his searched me up and down.
Looking at the runway through the small window, I felt a little easier knowing we were minutes from landing. “I need you to do me a favor when we land. I need you to ride along with me to Nikki’s place, then I need you to give her something.”
“Uh, I don’t have to tell you that there is still an RO against you, and Charlie doesn’t want you messing with her head. Especially not now.”
“He gave me permission to say goodbye. Don’t give me shit about this. Promise me, Dom.”
“She might be long gone by then.”
I turned back to him like he spit in my face. “What the fuck do you mean?”
“Shit,” he said in a lazy way, prolonging the vowel. “Charlie’s had her stowed away somewhere. She only came back here to have the baby. But seems like once the baby is born, she’s…moving. Hell if I know where.” He punched me in the arm, and managed not to spill his drink in the process. “You better be planning on coming back out of this alive, you fucker. Cause if you don’t, I’m rampaging the shit out of the fucker who got you.” He added in a whisper, “I can work some angles with Charlie. He’ll forgive you, man. You finish this, you and Nikki can have that Hollywood ending. Don’t go all suicide mission on me.”
“Can you do this or not?”
“Bro? Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? At your side for life, remember? It’s you who left Texas. I came here because you needed me.”
Feeling the stress headache come back to fuck with me, I leaned forward and rubbed my temples. “Give me a verbal confirmation, Dom.”
He grabbed my hand and shook it. “Without question. It will be done. And if something happens to you, I’ll make sure no one comes after Nikki. Not that she needs it. She’s got good people surrounding her. Trust.”
I gave him a nod and relaxed back in my seat.