Orion’s Flip House

El Segundo, California

 

Orion stood on the back porch and watched the sun play in the waves on the ocean. A friend back in New York had answered his phone despite the early hour, confirming for him what he already knew. The pictures he had in his pocket had to be turned over to law enforcement. Even celebrities couldn’t get away with shit like that.

If he turned this thing in to the police, they’d want to talk to Jane. There wasn’t much Jane could tell them, but the act itself would expose her to whoever it was who broke into her place last night. He needed to know who that was before he could safely hand her over to the police.

He knew that they weren’t just amateur thieves. They’d been too careful, been too quiet and methodical about the whole process. If he hadn’t known better, he would suspect they worked for Mastiff.

That was what bothered him about the whole thing. They were clearly professional. But who had hired them? And why?

He turned and was about to head back into the house when the front door suddenly shattered and blew inward. He backed up, slipping behind the wall as he listened to someone bark orders.

“Check the bedrooms. Find the girl.”

How the hell had they found them?

Orion ran around the side of the house, hesitating outside the master bedroom window. He could get it up and climb inside, but would he be able to wake her and get them both out before these people burst through that door, too? He didn’t think so. And, as if to underscore his thoughts, he heard the door break and Jane cry out.

He ran to the front of the house, stopping to peek around the corner before he revealed himself. There was a dark SUV parked beside his smaller sedan, and a man leaning against the back corner as though watching the road for trouble. He didn’t appear to be armed, but Orion of all people knew how misleading that could be. Waiting to make sure the man was completely distracted by whatever it was he’d been told to do, Orion hunched low and ran in front of the vehicles to his own car. His gun was tucked inside the glove compartment, fully loaded and waiting for action. He would have taken it inside, but Jane was already asking enough questions about him, and he didn’t want to give her more fuel to ask even more that he couldn’t answer.

It wasn’t his job to protect her. He could very easily walk away from here. Let them take her. They wouldn’t find the pictures, and she’d swear up and down that she hadn’t seen anything that night. But when he looked longingly at the steering wheel, imagining himself slipping up behind it, he found himself thinking about Caterina. She was a kind person, a person who would have put herself in harm’s way for the most corrupt of people. She believed every life deserved as many chances as possible to do it right. She’d want him to help Jane.

He kept low and made his way around the house again, that stupid guy by the SUV never spotting him once. Back at the sliding glass door behind the house, he could see two men standing by the fireplace, while a third stood near Jane. She was in a chair, her hands restrained behind her, but not tied to the chair itself.

“Where are the pictures?” the man demanded of her.

“I don’t know. Someone stole them.”

“Did you keep them in the camera bag? Or are they on your computer?”

Jane looked up, pieces of her hair stuck to the moisture on her cheeks. “I told you, they were on a memory card that I put in the camera bag. But someone broke in and took all the cards!”

“Did you put them on your computer?”

“No, not yet.”

The man glanced back at his two companions. “You didn’t find anything other than what you brought back?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“And the computer?”

“Johnny’s over there getting it now.”

Jane was staring at them, trying to follow the conversation, but she was clearly confused.

“Where’s the guy who brought you here?”

She shook her head. “I fell asleep. I don’t know where he went.”

“Do you know who he is? Did you see him go through your things? Did he see the memory card? Did he know what was on it?”

A small sob escaped Jane’s lips. “I have no idea what you’re talking about! I’m nobody, just a photographer trying to survive, that’s all!”

“Where is the man who brought you here?” he demanded again, lifting her head with his hand buried in her hair. Jane cried out. “Did you give him the memory card?”

“Why would I do that?” she sobbed. “I just showed him a couple of encryption programs he could use to send pics to potential editors. That’s all.”

“What name did he give you?”

“O.”

The man glanced back at his friends again. “Did you search the perimeter of the house?”

“I stepped out onto the back porch. You can see all the backyards. He wasn’t there.”

“Did you walk around?” The guy in charge seemed a little perturbed. “Did you look in the other bedrooms?”

“He’s not here, boss.”

“His car’s out front!”

The other guy stepped forward. “I’ll go look around.” He went out the front door instead of the back, clearly annoyed by the whole process. He was probably just going to have a smoke.

“Who’d that man tell you he was?” the boss man demanded of Jane. “He say he was a photographer? You believe him?”

When Jane didn’t look up, he gave her a hard slap across the cheek. She cried out, her head finally coming up.

“What’d he tell you?”

She shook her head. “That he wanted to learn how to do what we do.”

“And you believed him?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

The guy glanced back at his buddy. “Fucking women will believe anything a good-looking guy tells them. Put a movie star in a gorilla outfit, and women will wet themselves over him, swear they were always into screwing animals.”

The other guy just shrugged.

“He’s a cop, you know. At least he was, some years back. In New York. Highly decorated, from what I heard.”

Jane shook her head. “He’s just a guy.”

“Just a guy who was hired by Mason Trueblood to get those pictures back that you managed to take. Just a guy who played you like a cheap fiddle.” The boss guy laughed, shaking his head as he regarded Jane. “Did a piss poor job getting the pics, but that’s okay. That’s why Mr. Trueblood keeps us on retainer. He knew we’d find them for him.”

“If I had them, I’d give them to you.”

The guy grabbed her by the hair again, forcing her to look up at him. “He led us right to your little warehouse out there in Long Beach. We took every damn memory card we could find, but none of them had the pictures we were looking for. That’s why we’re here.”

“It was there, in the camera bag!”

“Not when we arrived. Only thing in there was a bunch of blanks.”

“I swear, I put it in there! Maybe…maybe the pics just didn’t come out. Maybe they looked blank to you because it was dark, and I was using a new lens. Maybe they didn’t come out very well.”

“They weren’t there,” he said, leaning her head way back as he towered over her, staring into her eyes. “The only other explanation here is that he took them.”

She shook her head. “He was never alone in my place. He couldn’t have.”

“Don’t bother protecting him, sweetie. He lied to you.”

She tried to shake her head again, but he tightened his hold on her hair. She cried out, making the hairs on the back of Orion’s neck stand up. It was time to go in. He’d learned all he was going to.

As Orion silently began to slide the glass doors open, the boss guy straddled the chair where Jane sat, this menacing grin on his face as he stared down at her.

“My boss really hates bitches like you. Do you know how many of your kind I’ve quietly made disappear since I came to work for Trueblood? Too many to remember.” He ran his finger down one side of her face. “Paparazzi are the scum of the earth, almost as bad as cops and politicians.”

“I’ve never hurt anyone.”

“You think taking those pictures the other night was innocent? You were on Trueblood’s property. That right there is against the law.”

“But I didn’t get anything, and I wasn’t going to use anything I did get. I was just practicing with my new lens.”

“You were trespassing and caught Mr. Trueblood’s guest in the middle of something he doesn’t want to become public. In fact, a lot of people will be headed to jail if any of those pictures gets out.” He touched her face again. “You understand my problem now?”

“I didn’t see anything. I doubt I got anything with the camera.”

“I’d like to trust you, sweetheart, I really would. But trusting people in my line of work often proves to be a mistake.”

Jane began crying again, her tears distracting both her and the guy sitting astride her chair. He didn’t notice Orion standing just inside the sliding glass door or truly register the pop of Orion’s gun until his buddy was on the floor, and he was flying sideways, a bullet ripping through his chest.

Jane screamed.

“It’s okay,” Orion said, rushing to her side and helping her to a standing position. “We have to go.”

She whimpered when she realized who it was standing there beside her. He brushed his hand over her face, wiping some of the wetness away.

“We’re going to go around the side of the house and take their SUV. You have to stay close to me, but try to stay low.”

“Who are they?”

“We’ll figure that out later.”

He pulled her out of the house and around the side, the same path he’d walked earlier. They could clearly hear the other two men conversing in the front drive. They could also hear conversations and the slamming of doors as others in the neighborhood began preparing to leave for work. Orion was counting on these neighbors, these potential witnesses, to keep things from getting too far out of hand.

Orion hesitated at the corner of the house, checking the two men’s position. They were both leaning against the back of the SUV, apparently sharing a joint. They were talking about Jane, discussing what they were hoping the boss would allow them to do with her when he was done interrogating her. One suggested that his wife had been less than forthcoming lately, so he’d been looking forward to a case that might bring with it these sorts of benefits. The other laughed and told the first that his only problem was that he’d gotten married.

“Stay behind me,” he whispered to Jane.

He strode into the yard like he owned it—which he did—and called out to them.

“Get away from the vehicle.”

They both jumped to their feet, the first guy pulling a gun from a holster under his thin jacket. Orion lifted his gun, too, both men aiming at one another in the middle of that very open front yard.

“Back up!” Orion cried.

The second guy grabbed his friend by the shoulder, pulling him back away from the SUV. Orion pushed Jane forward, keeping his body between her and the two gunmen. He yanked open the driver’s side door and pushed her inside.

“Where are the keys?”

“Inside.”

“They’re here,” Jane said in her shaky voice.

Orion took a step toward the two men. “How’d you find us?”

The two men exchanged a look. Orion fired his gun at the ground, sending a spray of dirt and pebbles flying around their feet. The second man jumped back slightly, but the other stood his ground.

“We knew who you were from the beginning, asshole,” he announced. “You think we wouldn’t know who was hanging around outside Mr. Trueblood’s property?”

“I didn’t report in. I didn’t tell anyone we were coming here. How did you find us?”

“Fucking tracker on the car,” the other guy said. “We tagged both cars parked outside Trueblood’s house yesterday.”

Orion backed up. He kept his gun aimed at the two men until he was inside the SUV, until he could gun the engine and pull out of the drive. The two men fired at them a couple of times, but it was more a show than a true attempt to stop them.

Orion sped along the highway, trying to remember when someone might have slipped out of the house to put something on the two cars. He remembered a couple of joggers going by, a woman with a baby, and a few other neighbors, but no one who could have put a tracker on the cars. Maybe he’d been too distracted by Piper to notice.

“Call Piper,” he said to Jane. “Find out if they broke into her house last night, too.”

Jane’s hands were still tied behind her back. Tears still welled in her pretty eyes. Orion pulled out a pocket knife to cut the rope, but there wasn’t much he could do for the tears.

“Piper,” Jane said into her phone a moment later, her voice surprisingly calm, “what’s going on?”

Orion could hear Piper’s voice, but he couldn’t make out the words. But the look Jane shot him gave him an idea of what she was saying.

They’d hit both Piper and Jane. That meant they didn’t know which one had the pictures. But Andres had shown Orion a picture of Jane on Trueblood’s property on the night in question. How could they have not identified her, especially since she and Piper were the only female paparazzi hanging around outside his property when Orion arrived the following day? They knew it was Jane. They didn’t need Orion to lead them to her, and they hadn’t needed to break into Piper’s house. But they did. And they had planned far enough ahead to put a tracker on their cars.

There was more going on here than what Andres had told Orion. Did Andres know that?

If Trueblood had his own security crew, why hire Mastiff? Why get Orion involved?

He kept coming back to what he’d seen on the pictures. Maybe there was more there. Maybe he’d missed something.

“Someone broke into her place during the night. She said she wasn’t home—she had gone clubbing—but she came home to a mess. She called the police to deal with it.”

“They made a mess?”

“Yeah. Threw clothes and books all over the place, turned over plants, emptied out her fridge. It was like they were there just to make a mess.”

“Or a distraction.”

“What’s going on, O? Who were they? Why do they want my pictures?”

He shook his head. “They work for Trueblood. That’s all I know.”

“He’s a director. They were acting like they were from a Mexican cartel or something!”

Orion reached over and touched her knee. “I know. We’ll figure this out.”

“What about you? They said you were a cop?”

He inclined his head slightly. “I was.”

“You worked in New York?”

“Yeah. Like my father before me, I worked at the NYPD. And my grandfather, he was the first black police captain in the small upstate town where he was from.”

She looked over at him, her expression lost in shadows. “Why aren’t you still there? How did you end up out here?”

“It’s complicated.”

“It seems like everything is complicated right now.”

“I know, Jane.”

“Who are you?” Her voice had fallen to almost a whisper, but she was watching him with intensity in her eyes. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

Orion spotted a library on a corner ahead of them. Libraries had computers.

He tore into the parking lot, stopping the SUV so abruptly that they both bounced in their seats. Then he turned to her, taking her hands in both of his.

“Listen, I’m not who I told you I was, but we don’t have time to discuss all this right now. I will explain everything soon enough. Right now we need to go inside here and take a look at your pictures.”

She gasped. “You did take them?”

“Yes. And you need to see what’s on them.”

He thought for a moment that she would continue to protest, but she just nodded. They climbed out of the SUV and went inside, sitting down to a computer in less than five minutes. He shoved the memory card into the computer as she shoved him to one side with her shoulder, sliding up to the mouse so that she could be the one to click on the photos. She ran through them quickly, not even pausing when she got to the ones that had shocked Orion.

Slowly she went back, highlighting one photo in particular. She caused it to blow itself up, filling the screen with its bright image.

“My God!” she hissed under her breath.

Orion glanced over his shoulder, then moved closer to her, resting his chin on her shoulder as he studied the photo. It took a second, but he finally spotted what it was that had Trueblood and his people so up in arms.

“That’s Mason Trueblood,” he said, touching the image lightly.

“And that’s Sam Porter, his mother, and that girl…” She whimpered, her hand pressed hard against her mouth. “What the hell?” she asked, her voice muffled.

“That’s why Trueblood is pulling out all the stops to get this back. He doesn’t want this getting out.”

“Of course not! These people should be in prison!”

Someone shushed them. Orion pulled the memory card out of the reader and stood, dragging Jane to her feet.

“We have to move on.”

She was so shocked that she didn’t protest as he pulled her out of the building. She didn’t seem to notice much of anything until he approached a little blue Prius parked at the curb.

“We came in an SUV.”

“We’re leaving in this. We need to disappear until we can figure out what’s happening here.”

Again, she didn’t protest. Orion was almost relieved.