Evan Arden 02 Otherwise Occupied (24 page)

Even though I had told her I’d be there when she got back, I knew it wasn’t something I could ever have.  I didn’t get the kind of promises she could offer.  I didn’t deserve them.  According to Rinaldo, I didn’t even understand that sort of shit.

I did, though.  I knew exactly what I was missing.

Why did I keep thinking about her?  I didn’t want to think about her.  I’d been spending all my time since I left the cabin in Arizona doing things to stop myself from thinking about her, and it still wasn’t working.  Whether I was sweating at the gym, researching the next target, or
firing at the shooting range, she was always in my head.

Silk-soft hair running down her back, easy smile that made my heart beat faster for no reason at all, and that shy, quick blush that had my cock ready to go again at a moment’s notice.

From right behind me, the obnoxious sound of the parking garage door warning system went off and brought me out of the memory.  I scowled over my shoulder at the car that moved out of the garage and around the loop North Field Boulevard made as it circled the park.  The garage door went back down again.

What was I going to do about Bridgett?  Did she really hear things I said in my sleep and tell Greco’s men about them?  Who did she even know in his organization?  I couldn’t quite fathom how she could have hidden such things from me, but then again, I was usually completely exhausted by the time I went to pick her up.

I remembered how quickly she talked about going to work over by the warehouses and considered maybe she had been working for them the whole time.  Maybe her connection had always been there.  Maybe
she
contacted Terry.

I wasn’t sure.  They had both completely disappeared.

That didn’t make sense, though.  What would she have been doing on Melvin’s corner, then?  Not waiting for me – I had never even picked up a girl at that location before.  I had always gone further south and used one of the hotels you could pay for by the hour.

She was chosen because I was in a hurry, wanted to fuck her at my apartment, and because she had the roundest ass of the group.  There was no way that was a plant.  Someone had to have gotten to her after they realized I was fucking her regularly.

I was back to the list of those who knew about her and frustrated that I had been so stupid as to take her out in public where we could have been seen by anyone.  It made the list insane.

Top possibilities, then.

Melvin.

Jonathan.

Terry.

Mario.

One of the other hookers – Candy, maybe.  What did I know about her?

Michele with one “L” at the bar.

There were too many and very little else to go on.  Maybe I needed to figure out just which one of Greco’s boys was getting the information and see if that led me in the right direction.  Something had to show itself, but it wasn’t going to happen out here in the park.  The parking garage door was going to drive me over the edge before I came to any reasonable conclusions.  I grabbed Odin and headed back upstairs, knowing there was one name that came up more than anyone else’s.

Only name that really made any sense.

Terry Kramer.  His phone logs were far more interesting than Jonathan’s with several to a prepaid phone that seemed to find itself in the vicinity of my apartment pretty frequently, especially at night when a certain hooker should have been asleep in my bed.  I dug back to earlier in the year and found two calls to Bridgett’s number from the last surviving payphone in Chicago, as far as I knew, which happened to be near Terry’s place.

There was no doubt that Terry would look for an excuse to get me run out of Moretti’s organization – I was his superior in skill and position, and he knew it.  As long as I was around and the favorite, he couldn’t move up from where he was – nothing more than a two-bit thug.

Was Terry stupid enough to be working for the competition or just trying to get me out of the way?

My hands were jittery, and I was starting to feel really nauseated.  I lay myself down to try to get some sleep, but it didn’t come easily.  When it finally arrived, it brought forth some of the worst of the nightmares, and I woke sweating with a scream in my throat.

I took the dog out for a midnight walk to clear my head.  It wasn’t particularly successful, but it was probably better than nothing.  My cell phone began to ring just as Odin and I returned to the apartment.

I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered it.

“Evan?”

I froze just inside t
he doorway, paused for a moment and then reached down to unhook Odin’s leash.  I wanted to yell and scream, but I knew I had to at least appear calm.

“Bridgett.  You’ve been a little out of touch.”  My voice was cold.

“I need to see you,” she said quietly.  “I need to talk to you.”

“Where are you?”

“Would you meet me somewhere?”

She didn’t want to come here
or have me pick her up.  She wanted to meet somewhere – somewhere else, somewhere not alone.

Could she be any more suspicious?

“Where?”

“What about that place you took me on Michigan Avenue? 
The bar with the martinis and the waffles?”

“676,” I said.  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I knew what she was doing – trying to get me to meet her in a public place because she had something to say she knew I wasn’t going to like hearing and she was afraid of my reaction.  The fact that she had stooped to such a level didn’t give me any kind of calming feeling.  I was as tense as I could be.

“What did she fucking do?”

I took the Audi, drove up to the valet in front of the Omni, gave the guy a fifty to just hold my car there for a minute, and headed into the lobby.  When I turned the corner to head upstairs, I saw Bridgett right by the elevator, waiting for it to arrive and carry her upstairs.

Not going to happen.

I walked over swiftly, took her by the elbow, and began to lead her back to the front of the building.  As I had hoped, she was taken off guard enough that she didn’t have time to scream or consider what was happening until I had her outside the building.

“Evan
–” she started, but I shushed her.

“Not a fucking word,” I gr
owled.  “Don’t you say anything; don’t you do anything.  Just get in the fucking car.”

I escorted her around to where the valet was holding open the door, seated her with a smile, and then quickly climbed into my side.  I drove off before anyone had a chance to even consider what had just happened.

“Evan,” Bridgett whispered from the other side of the car.

I glanced sideways at her, my jaw tight.

“Tell me,” I snapped.  “Tell me everything.  Tell me how you know Greco, and tell me what your relationship with him is.  Tell me what the fuck you think you are doing!”

The precious little grasp I had over my emotions was waning, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to stop it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she cried.

As I looked ahead into traffic, I could still see her press herself against the car door like she might jump out and make a run for it.  It wouldn’t
work, though.  I wouldn’t let that happen.

“I came back
; you were gone.”  I turned around the block and started heading down Grand, over the bridge, and towards the boss’s office.  “You want to start by explaining that?”

“I-I-I went outside,” she said.  “I just wanted to get some air, but he was there.  He said I had to go with him, and we went to an office building – he had a room there in the basement.”

“What office?”

“Just a small one,” she said quietly.  “It was brick and didn’t have any windows at all.”

Could he really have been hiding out in the basement of the boss’s main office building?  Had he been there, right under my feet the whole time I was looking for him?  Was it even who I suspected?

“Who?”
I demanded.  “What’s his name?”

She didn’t answer.

“Who did you go with?” I snarled through clenched teeth.  I already knew the answer.  The little fucker had been trolling around my apartment, and he had sucked Bridgett into whatever his sick little game was to take my position in Moretti’s organization.

“Take my position in his
life
.”

“What?” Bridgett whispered.

“Tell me his name!”

“His name is Terry!  I didn’t know him
.  He just found me!”

“And you told him what?”

“I didn’t want to tell him anything,” she said.  “I stopped talking to him a long time ago.”

The cold feeling I always associate with what it must feel like to drown coated me from my head to my feet.  My knuckles went white as my hands gripped the steering wheel, and I made a quick turn towards the boss’s office building.

“A long time ago?” I repeated.

“Yes,” she whispered back.  “He used to…to ask me about you all the time.”

“What did you tell him?” I asked in a low voice.

“Nothing,” she replied.

I didn’t believe a word of it.

We were nearing Moretti’s primary office building, and the parking lot behind it was devoid of any cars this late at night.  I pulled up to the sid
e of the building near the door and then thought better of it.

“What are you doing?”

Ignoring Bridgett’s question, I maneuvered the car back behind the row of dumpsters on the far side of the lot instead.  I got the car mostly out of sight before turning it off.

“You have to
explain
,” I informed her.  “It doesn’t make any fucking sense, and you have to
explain
it!”

“Please, Evan, you’re scaring me!”

I looked over to my passenger and smiled.

“Maybe you ought to be scared,” I suggested.  “Get out.”

“How did you know this was the place?” she asked.

“Just get out of the car.”

Moving swiftly around the Audi, I made it to the other side before she was completely out the door.  I took her elbow again and led her across the lot and down the back stairs to the basement.  There weren’t many rooms down there, and Bridgett showed me which one she had been staying in.

I’d been in it before once or twice, though it didn’t serve any specific purpose.  There was
a time I recalled some goods being stored there very briefly before they were moved over to the docks by the river for shipment, but that was it.

Now there was a twin sized bed in the room, a small table, and a suitcase with women’s clothes in it.  The whole scene reminded me of Arizon
a, which made my already pissed-off self angrier.

There was no one there.

“Damnit.”  I turned back to Bridgett.

“How do you know him?” I interrogated.

“Who?”

My hand reached back into my jeans and wrapped around the handle of my Beretta.  I pulled my arm back around and pushed it against her shoulder as her face twisted into terror.

“Do
not
,” I said, “play any fucking games with me.  Tell me how you know Terry Kramer before I put a hole in your head.”

“I didn’t know what he wanted!” she said. 
“He kept following me and telling me he needed to talk to me.  He said I couldn’t tell you about it, or we’d both end up dead.  He said if I just told him what you told me, then…then…”

“Then
what
?” I snarled.  “Did he pay you?”

“No!”

“Did you fuck him?”  The very idea that Terry, the motherfucking piss-ant wannabe, had his cock in her made me livid.

She didn’t answer, which was answer enough.  I leaned forward and slammed my hand against the wall right next to her head.

“Tell me why you did it!” I screamed.  “What did you tell him, and why did you do it?”

“He said…he said he’d kill you if I didn’t cooperate!” she finally cried.

“You…you thought he was a threat to me?”  What had been a cold snarl escalated into a scream.  “That little fuck was somehow a danger to me? 
Me
?”

“He…he….he said–
” Her words were too choked to be understandable.  “I-I-I thought–”

“I don’t give a fuck what he said!” I screamed back in her fac
e.  “There is nothing – nothing – he could have said that would ever, ever make you…make you…”

I couldn’t even say the words.

Like some kind of primordial ooze making its way out of the ocean, Terry chose that moment to walk into the dimly lit room.  There was no consideration to my actions.  No thought behind them – just movement and quick, practiced muscle memory.

My arm rose.

My gun aimed at his face.

I pulled the trigger.

Bridgett stifled her scream as Terry’s face exploded in blood and his body hit the floor.