Redemption (2 page)

Yellow root. What Lucky’s mama used to give Uncle Henry when he’d been on a bender. Helped with the detox and soothed the stomach, but also masked the stuff he tried to hide on drug tests. Worked so well it was now one of the substances to check for.

“And you can use the vitamins in the greens. I’m thinking you ain’t been living very healthy these days.”

An understatement. Lucky stared into the cup, breathed in vegetable fumes and spice, and coughed. “Why are you doing this?”

Her tone softened. “’Cause no matter how much you might say otherwise, if the shoe were on the other foot, you’d do it for me. And I’ll be honest. Since leaving Southwestern for Atlanta, I don’t want to train with anyone else. They quote textbooks, you teach me what I need to learn without adding on a bunch of useless crap. Now, drink.”

He eyed the cup, then eyed her. This wouldn’t be fun.

Lucky drew in a deep breath, chugged the green liquid, and didn’t stop until he’d emptied the cup.

Damn him for buying the biggest coffee cups available at the Super Dollar. Fuck! Nasty! Fire scalded his throat worse than a shot of whisky, and settled in for a nice, slow burn.

He belched, tasting the gross again.

“Now, for the sleeping.” Johnson dug into the grocery bag and pulled out a zip-top baggie.

“You detox me and bring me pot?” He’d hate to arrest her. Too much paperwork involved.

“No, it’s another of Grandma’s blends… tea this time. But don’t worry. No caffeine.” She dug out a shiny metal egg-looking thing full of holes. He’d seen a few in the kitchen drawer at Bo’s apartment. “This here’s a tea ball. Pack it full of leaves and steep in hot water for three minutes. Then drink.”

“What’s in this?”

“Chamomile, catnip, and echinacea. Valerian root. Drink a cupful about thirty minutes before bedtime. Don’t watch any action adventure or the evening news. Nothing to get you worked up. You just having trouble sleeping or you got restless legs or other shit going on?” She crammed the tea ball full with contents from the bag.

“Restless legs.” He’d never admit to the terrors he woke up to every night.

Johnson rinsed the coffee cup, filled it with water from the sink, and stuck it in the microwave. “When the water gets hot, take it out and put the tea in. What you got that’s tight?”

He rejected the first thought that came to mind. “Excuse me?”

“Wrap your legs snug before bed. Ace bandage, tight socks, something to apply pressure. No caffeine, no fizzy sodas. Got that?”

“Yes, Mom” nearly crawled out of his mouth. “And if I refuse?” Pushy woman.

“Then you’re a liability and it’s my duty to report you to the boss.”

“Okay. You win. I’ll drink the tea. Now will you please leave so I can go to bed?”

Johnson stooped, scratched the cat on the head again, and left the kitchen. Lucky followed her into the living room. Getting rid of the busybody couldn’t be this easy.

At the front door she turned around and made a kissy face. “You’re welcome.” She shot out the door before Lucky managed a comeback.

***

Lucky lay awake, an image of Bo in his head, and a half-interested cock in his hand. The image faded, wouldn’t come in clear. And Lucky didn’t have a single picture of the man in the house. Not a one. Nothing on his cell phone either. Too much risk of folks finding out about them to keep any evidence handy.

Bo in his chaps, nothing underneath. Lucky’s semi-hard cock took notice. The fantasy faded, replaced by the horror of Bo overdosing, gasping, lips turning blue—an image straight from Lucky’s nightmares. His erection wilted.

Fuck. Lucky couldn’t even jack off right anymore.

He glanced at the clock. One a.m. Three hours of tossing and turning and still no sleep. Cat Lucky hopped up on the bed and chirped.

“No, it’s not time to feed you.”

No help for it. Lucky trudged to the kitchen, a black and white feline twining around his legs, tripping him twice. “If you kill me, I can’t open cans.”

The cup of water still sat in the microwave. Lucky punched in two minutes and fed the cat while waiting.

He took the water, tea ball and all, back to bed. Bo would love this stuff. Then again, if Bo were there, Lucky might not need help. They’d watch a little TV, fuck like rabbits, and fall asleep in a tangled mass.

Johnson’s tea couldn’t come close to Bo’s way of tucking Lucky in at night. Lucky sucked down the concoction, curled up, and conjured a memory of him and Bo by the river.

Sleep claimed him during a remembered kiss.

***

Oh, God! Lucky stared at his hands. Thick red droplets slid down his fingers onto the sheets. He scrubbed his hands on the cover. The moment he got them clean more blood oozed from his pores.

He jumped out of bed and crashed to the floor. A dead man’s sightless eyes stared back at him—Bo’s eyes.

***

“Fuck!” Lucky bolted upright from the bed, heart pounding. He flipped on the bedside lamp and stared at his hand. Clean. No blood. Breathe in/breathe out.

Clutching his chest didn’t calm his heart. He closed his eyes, to be transported to a drug plant in Mexico where a dead guard lay on the floor. The face shifted and melted, becoming Bo’s. Shit! A dream. Not here. Not real. Cracking open one eye, he peered over the side of the bed.

“Mrrrp?” Cat Lucky hopped up on the bed and butted Lucky’s hand. Lucky rubbed a furry ear.

He’d shot a man. Taken a life. Or had he? Either way he’d lied by omission to his boss.

Loretta Johnson better have a home remedy for losing one’s mind.

Chapter Two

Lucky stepped off the elevator and took a sip of Starbucks decaf on his way to his desk. “Monday” and “morning”, two of Lucky’s least favorite things, but at least he’d gotten some sleep over the weekend.

The perky-to-everyone-but-him receptionist took a step back. “Mr. Harrison. Mr. Smith asked for you to stop by his office.”

What now? Lucky glanced at his bare wrist. Oh. Right. Yet another watch now roamed free in the world. The last one he’d parted with of his own choosing. Lowlife rednecks didn’t need Rolexes. Especially Rolexes inscribed by former drug lord lovers.

The clock over the reception desk said 8:55. So not late. Johnson might have gone back on her word and spilled the beans. No, they’d made a deal. Why help him and then go running to Walter? Well, if she had, she wasn’t the first to throw his sorry ass under the bus—and likely wouldn’t be the last.

Lucky sucked in a deep breath and huffed it out. The receptionist took another step back, staring at him wide-eyed, like he drowned puppies in his spare time or chopped up the neighbors with an ax for fun. Hell, he hadn’t growled at her in ages, not since Bo’s niceness rubbed off. He nodded and made his way to Walter’s office. He didn’t knock. Years of Bo couldn’t break Lucky of that bad habit.

“You wanted to see me?” Lucky dropped into his usual chair in front of a cluttered desk. Not as cluttered as Lucky’s, but every bit of the surface hid beneath paper, books, and files, except for the tiny bit of blotter where Walter now rested his hands. Never accuse Walter Smith of being a virtual guy. If he couldn’t touch it, it didn’t exist.

If Lucky was about to get his ass handed to him on a plate, he’d go down swinging.

“Lucky, Lucky, Lucky.” Walter let out a harsh exhale. “Whatever am I going to do with you?”

Shit. Johnson must’ve told. No more trusting her. “Boss, I’m handling it my way. In a few weeks…”

“In a few weeks HR will have issued a warrant.”

“What?” For a drug test?

“I told you they wanted to see you. They’ve sent letters and e-mails. Now they’re to the point of insisting I escort you personally if you don’t report to Human Resources and resolve whatever issue they have.”

Okay. They’d asked to see him about a dozen times now, so maybe not a career-ending drug test. Security showed up if he missed a pissing in a cup appointment. “All right. I’ll go.”

Walter gave Lucky the narrow-eyed squint that said better than words how deep in shit he’d be if he didn’t follow orders. “Now, please?”

Lucky beat a hasty retreat to the door. Another bullet dodged—for now.

“And Lucky?”

“Yes?” He stopped and glanced over his shoulder.

“Nice to see you rested over the weekend.”

Was he that transparent?

***

Anna or Hannah (or was it Savannah?) held out a stack of papers to rival any pile on Walter’s desk. Only, her desk was much neater. Too neat, as in, “Does she ever do anything?” neat. The floor and side table? Another matter entirely. It should be against the law to cram so many plants into such a tiny space. Lucky dodged a few flowerpots on his way to the lone chair in front of her desk.

What she lacked in papers, she made up with kid pictures.

Lucky’s desk held one department store photo of his sister Charlotte and her oldest boy, taken while she was pregnant with the second. The kids were both in high school now. Past time to change the picture. And first chance he got, he’d get pictures of Bo. He might not be ready to stack them on his desk like this woman had her family, but he definitely needed one or two for the house. Oh! One of Bo in his chaps and nothing else.

He took the papers. “What’s this?”

The woman handed him a pen. “It’s Richmond Lucklighter’s 401K. He’s legally dead, so you need to either cash out or roll the balance over to Simon Harrison’s. That’s why we’ve needed to see you. This whole matter is hush hush, and the sooner we take care of the legalities, the better.”

At the first opportunity, Lucky intended to abandon the department-created identity of Simon Harrison and use his own name again. Killing off Lucky Lucklighter and hiding behind an assumed name hadn’t worked. Everyone he’d hoped to avoid knew he still lived. And this lady did too. Which might explain why he’d been whisked into the HR Director’s office the moment he showed up.

He shuffled through the papers. Yeah, he’d had a payroll deducted 401K, but the statements lay unopened in a kitchen drawer. Wait! “How much money are we talking?”

“The current balance is on the bottom of page sixteen. But remember, if you take cash instead of rolling the money over, you’ll be taxed and penalized.”

Lucky’s hands shook as he rifled through the papers, but not because of lack of sleep or withdrawals—he’d slept forty-seven of the last fifty-eight hours, off and on, thanks to Johnson’s tea. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Really? “Are you sure about this?”

The woman picked up a pair of glasses from her desk, perched them on her nose, and rounded the desk to hover over Lucky’s shoulder. “Is there a problem?”

“Is this amount right?” He’d not seen so many zeroes on a statement since his living with a drug lord days.

“Well, you chose investments with high risk. It looks like your risk paid off. Congratulations. Now, if you want to deposit this into your Simon Harrison account, sign on the bottom of the page.”

Once Lucky picked his jaw up off the floor, he’d need a drink. “And all this is mine?”

“Less about a third for penalty and taxes, unless you’d prefer to roll over the amount into another account.”

Divided by three, multiplied by two. “Calculator?” Lucky held out a hand.

“There’s no need. You’re looking at a cash value of about thirty thousand dollars.”

Thirty thousand? Plus the eight he’d saved for a motorcycle. A little more and he wouldn’t have to ask Bo for anything, and could make the house a surprise. “I’ll take the cash. It’ll make a nice down payment on a house, once I add my savings.”

“How expensive a house are you intending to buy, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“They’re asking 200,000. Twenty percent is 40,000.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Why on earth are you putting down twenty percent?”

“Ain’t that the going rate?”

“For some institutions. Mr. Harrison, are you a member of the credit union?”

He’d changed the name on his credit union account the moment he’d died and been reborn. “Yes.”

“I suggest you talk to them before applying for a bank loan. You might get a better interest rate, and a much lower down payment. Now, for the 401K disbursement, sign page eighteen, giving us permission to cut a check, and page twenty, verifying I disclosed the penalty information.”

Lucky read and signed, heart hammering away.
Please, Lord, let this not be a dream
. “Can you direct deposit to the credit union?”

“Sure can. We’ve been waiting for you, so the funds should be available by next Monday.” She handed him another form to sign and smiled. At Lucky. His asshole reputation must’ve not preceded him, though as head of Human Resources, she was bound to have heard something.

Holding the keys to everything Lucky wanted shielded her from a lot of grief.

***

“What’s your current credit rating?”

Lucky didn’t often use credit. After getting out of prison to work for Walter, he’d bought his car from a police auction for cash, and lived a low-key lifestyle. Before that, Victor Mangiardi had taken care of him. A nice way to live, but other than a car stereo in his teens, he’d never made payments on anything. And he’d been Richmond Lucklighter then. He’d only been Simon Harrison for a short time, and although he’d used credit cards to make expense reporting easier when on assignment, he paid them off every month. “I’m not sure.”

“Then let’s see.” The woman tapped on her laptop and whistled. “Mr. Harrison, I don’t think we’ll have a problem getting you the loan.”

He owed Walter one hell of a lot of those frou-frou coffee drinks from Starbucks for giving him a credit score to make a loan officer whistle.

An hour later Lucky fought to hide a grin from a woman who’d put the Energizer Bunny to shame. “Now, I’m familiar with the house you’re considering. Offer a hundred eighty k. Trust me.” She winked and handed him the phone.

He pulled a dog-eared card from his wallet and dialed.

“Mr. Harrison?” The Realtor didn’t sound too happy to hear from him, not that he blamed her. She’d been working hard for her commission. That’s why she got commission.

“Is that house still available? The fixer-upper in the gated neighborhood?”