Sins of a Siren (30 page)

She snarled like a werewolf. “Fuck you!
Fuck you
! I'm going to cut your fucking eyes out!”

As she brought the blade up to follow up on her threat, he fired. The bullet went into her large right breast. She paused, touched the bullethole with her free hand, felt the blood and growled. “You shot me, you faggot!” She then brought the blade up again and ran toward him.

Fuck! Is this bitch for real?
He fired three more silenced rounds into her chest. Still clenching the blade, she wheezed and fell to her knees. He scrambled to his feet as she tried to crawl toward him.

POP!

He put one final, muted slug in her back. The knife fell out of her hand and she stopped moving. Just like Nuts, this scenario was very familiar to Darius. Thinking fast, without bothering to check and see if she was dead, he kicked the knife away from her and moved her body over behind the door.
If anybody tries to push the door open, her big-ass will block them, givin' me a little extra getaway time if I need it.
He then ripped off her watch and gold chain,
picked up her purse and poured out the contents.
Looks like she got robbed to me.

After going through the spilled contents of her purse, he grabbed her wallet and pulled out the cash.
Time to get the fuck out!
Grabbing the knife, he tucked it under his sweatshirt, and ran down the three flights of stairs to the parking garage.

He nearly jumped out his skin after hearing a loud “
BOOM!
” followed by a second “
BOOM!
” once he opened the door leading into the parking garage. “What the hell was that?” He pulled down the bill of his cap, lowered his head and calmly walked to his car.

The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble.

—P
ROVERBS
4:19

Pussy twitching, body sore, Trenda eased herself into her seat behind the reservation counter.
Shit! It feels like I been at the gym workin' out all day!
Thoughts of the feel of Eli's weight on her and the warmth of his sperm pumping into her chiseled a small smile onto her face.
For a big dude, he knows how to work what he got!

Even though everything was quiet at the desk, she was on edge. A by-product of her hustling lifestyle was a heightened sense of self-preservation. A sort of “spidey-sense,” if you will.
I wonder where Jason went?
she thought after scanning the lobby. The only other person she could see was an old Asian man waiting for the elevator.

While counting out the cash in her register, she thought,
I don't know why I'm so jumpy. If anything, I should be dozing off after fuckin' with Eli all day.
She fiddled with the over-starched collar of her blouse.
I wonder what Lollie and Walter are up to? I bet money they are still gettin' their freak on.
Just as she picked up her cell phone in order to give Lollie a call, the registration desk phone rang. “Hello, thank you for calling the Edgewater Hotel, how can I help you?”

“Is this that bad-mouthed lil' bitch?”

Trenda furrowed her brows. The gravelly voice on the other end of the conversation sounded very familiar. “
Excuse
me?”

“You heard right, bitch. I told you once you needed to learn proper manners.”

“I ain't got time for games, muthafucka. If you have somethin' to say to me, come say it to my face.”

“Calm down, ho. I was just callin' to offer you a ride home when you get off work.”

“Look, asshole, I don't need shit from a punk muthafucka like you. I got my own ride home.”

“You sure about that?”

“Hell yeah, I'—” Before she could finish cussing him out, he hung up on her. After hanging up the phone, she spotted Jason entering the lobby from the swimming pool area. She waved him over. “Hey, Jason, come here for a minute.”

“What's up, Mya? Everything okay?”

She pulled her keys and “Baby” out of her purse. She slid the knife into her pocket before he got to the counter. “Can you watch the desk for a minute? I need to go get something out my car real quick.”

“Sure I can!” He smiled and adjusted his crowded utility belt. “It's kinda dead right now anyway. I'll hold down the fort.”

“Thanks, sweetie.” She rounded the desk and strolled to the front door, Jason's eyes nailed to her wondrous ass.
I swear I can't enjoy a single fuckin' day without some kind of drama!

At half past eight, the bells atop the St. Augustine's church tolled in the distance as she stepped outside the hotel. The lights seemed too bright, the conversations too loud and the distance to her car too far. In the past, she usually would recognize these signs, stop and analyze the situation. Is this a trap? A police sting? A hit? Her intuition was seldom wrong.

Unfortunately, her combination of fatigue and seething hatred of King Gee blinded her. She calmed a slight bit once she saw
her car 100 yards away. “It looks okay…maybe that sorry asshole was just tryin' to fuck with my head.”

At fifty yards from her car, she saw a Ford Explorer speeding down Broadway toward the freeway. She slowed down and looked around.
No sign of his ass.

Thirty yards away from the Honda, she stopped, looked around, reached into her pocket and wrapped her hand around Baby.

She walked ten more yards toward her car. Seconds later, she saw a flash, heard a boom and felt herself flying through the air. The exploding Honda sprayed burning gasoline and debris on the pick-up truck next to her car. A piece of the shrapnel pierced the gas tank of the truck and it, too, exploded.

The initial blast tossed her twenty feet away, and rudely deposited her onto the hard parking lot asphalt.

“H
oly shit!” Jason yelled as he ran out the lobby toward the sound of the explosions. Outside, he ran toward the dancing flames coming from the employee parking lot. A crowd began assembling a short distance from the fire. He removed his walkie-talkie and called in the emergency to his company dispatch. Channel two—located in Jack London Square—already had a news crew out investigating.

A tall, slim black man whistled and waved at Jason. “Hey! Hey! There is a woman over here on the ground! She's out cold!”

Jason ran over and fell to his knees next to Trenda, who lay on her side. The news crew quickly followed, filming. “Stand back, please!” he ordered the crowd. After placing his hand on her neck, he was relieved to feel a pulse. Her breathing was shallow, but consistent. Using his flashlight, he inspected her. Other than a penny-sized scrape on her left wrist, she looked okay. Careful not to move her, he took off his jacket and covered her torso.

The wail of an approaching fire truck mixed with the murmur of the growing crowd and the crackle of the fire-engulfed vehicles. Several employees of the hotel scrambled to move their cars out of harm's way. Jeff, the manager on duty, ran across the lot, paisley tie flapping in the wind. He stopped next to Jason and leaned over Trenda. “What happened?”

“I dunno! I was watching the counter while Mya went to get something out her car. The next thing I knew, I heard a loud explosion!”

Jeff's steel-gray eyes looked at Jason, bewildered. “Holy-fucking-shit!” He turned his gaze to Trenda. “Is she okay?”

“I think so…it's hard to tell. The paramedics should be here any minute.”

To their relief, Trenda's head moved from side-to-side slowly. A moan escaped her mouth. “Easy…easy, Mya,” Jason said as he gently held her shoulders.

Jeff stood and waved the firefighters over. “We have a victim here!”

“Owww, shit!” Trenda said, rubbing the side of her head, as her eyes fluttered open. She squinted, fighting off the glare of the TV camera as she pushed off Jason's jacket. She tried to sit up, but found Jason restricted her. “What are you doin'? Let…me…up!”

Before Jason could release her, two burly firefighters carrying paramedic rescue gear squatted down next to Trenda. “Just relax, ma'am,” the balding firefighter said as he used Jason's jacket as a pillow and eased her head back down onto it. “Let us check you out first.”

Gazing at the crowd around her, she asked, “Why do you have to check me out? What happened?”

Baldy checked her eyes with his penlight. “You were knocked unconscious by an explosion.”

After two minutes of looking around in silence, she asked Jeff, “What happened? Why do I smell so much smoke? What's burnin'?”

Concern clouded Jeff's eyes. “You don't remember your car exploding?”

She shook her head slowly as the ambulance crew ran over pushing a gurney. “No…is that what's burnin'? Why am I on the ground? Somebody tell me what happened!”

The balding firefighter looked up at Jeff. “She's perseverating…
I think she has a concussion. We need to get her to the hospital.”

Stress ran through Darius like the bulls in Pamplona as he stood in the bathroom of his motel room, looking at the gash under his arm Piper had given him. It was short but deep. It took nearly the entire roll of toilet paper to stop the bleeding. He used some of the tissue to wipe off the blade of the knife.
With forensics being as good as they are these days, I am not gonna take a chance and leave some blood here for them to track me down with.

After flushing down another bloody clot of tissue, he used one of the face towels as a bandage and taped it to his wound with some of his duct tape. Sweat formed on his head as he hastily packed his bags. He rolled up the knife in his bloodstained sweatshirt and put it in his duffle bag next to the pistol. He then inspected his bulletproof vest for blood.
Cool…it's clean.

The sound of police sirens and speeding fire trucks filled the air.
Time to bounce!
He exited his motel room, tossing the cardkey in a nearby trashcan. “I was inches away from finding Trenda before that crazy bitch got in the mix and tried to kill my ass.”

While sitting in his car, he called the airport and found out the next flight to Newark was four hours away. His stress level increased.
Be cool, bruh; be cool!

After starting the car, he followed the signs to the Oakland Pier. The number of police cars he passed on the way as well as the CSI van told him they had found Piper. Displaying a remarkable amount of “cool” under the circumstances, he managed to make it to the pier with no problem.

At least something is working my way tonight
, he thought as he pulled into the deserted parking lot. He was the only person who
had an interest in the pier that night. He got out and walked along the boulder-lined shore until he spotted a basketball-sized rock. He took the rock back to the car, opened his duffle bag, removed his bloody sweatshirt, tied it around the rock, and put it inside his duffle bag.

After looking around, he got out, carried the bag of evidence to the edge of the pier and heaved the sweatshirt, gun, knife and bullets into the calm water. In the glow of the pier's night-lights, he saw the items splash and immediately sink.
That cold saltwater should take care of those bloodstains on the sweatshirt real quick.

Feeling better, he took the ski mask, stuffed it into a nearby trashcan, and left the pier. As he neared downtown Oakland, he scanned the radio for a news station. Minutes later, he found a local talk-radio station on commercial break. He heard that a robbery victim had been found dead in a Jack London Square bookstore. A sinister smile grew on his face. “Now
that's
how you handle ya business!”

Feeling a bit of relief, he decided to find a place to hang out until his flight left. Police cars zipped up and down Broadway as he drove away from the action. A few miles south of the murder scene, he spotted a club called The Spot. “That'll work,” he said as he parked and went inside.

The bar portion of the club was half-full of patrons. He took a seat at the bar and looked at the many TV monitors bordering the bar area. Every screen showed a live shot of a black news reporter with a background featuring a half-dozen of police cars and a few fire trucks. He waved to the extremely sexy, middle-aged, African-American bartender. She smiled and placed a napkin in front of him. “What can I get you, babe?”

Darius looked from the sexy silver streak in her hair, to her large tits and back to the TV screen. “I'll have a double-shot of
Hennessy with a cranberry back.” He turned back to her and nodded at the TV. “What happened?”

She glanced at the screen. “They had a murder and somebody's car blew up down in the Square…they're trying to see if the two are linked.”

“Is it always this exciting down here?”

She poured his cognac. “Sometimes…but not always
this
exciting.”

The surrounding patrons murmured about how violent Oakland was getting as they watched the breaking news footage. His drink arrived. “Here you go, babe. That'll be five dollars. Do you want to pay cash or use a card and run a tab?”