Betrayed 2(241)

“You can’t smell with your dick,” he said, giving me a hard look to let me know he was serious. He gritted his teeth at me. “You let this girl get under your skin fast as fuck, brother. I’m not convinced she is who she says she is. There’s something familiar about her. And when I figure it out…”

“You will do nothing, little brother,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder and giving it a hard squeeze to remind him of the pecking order. “I’ve got this. You just focus on the job and try not to fuck anything up in the meantime.”

“You’d better be right,” he said, unamused. He jerked his shoulder from beneath my hand and looked me in the eye. “If she becomes a problem, you’d better take care of it or I will.”



“We need to talk,” I said, sliding onto a bar stool with my go-bag in my hand. I set the bag on the stool next to me and folded my arms on the bar.

Sandy gave me and the bag an apprehensive look. “Okay, that doesn’t sound good. Do you want a drink?”

“No, and it’s nothing bad,” I said, giving her the smile that she said curled her toes. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What would you say to getting away for a while?”

“You mean away from this place or the city?”

“I mean get away as in you and I getting on a plane and never looking back. We go somewhere sunny and warm, Belize maybe, or Tahiti, and we start again.”

She blinked at me for a moment. “I… I don’t know. I mean, what’s brought this one?” She nodded at the bag. “And what’s in the bag?”

I dragged the bag onto the bar and unzipped it so she could see inside. “Money, a new passport and ID, clothes.” I zipped it up. “It’s my go-bag.”

“Go-bag?”

“The bag I grab when I have to go. Quickly.”

A look of fear washed over her eyes. She put a hand to her lips and lowered her voice. “Why would you have to go?” she asked.

I glanced around the bar. It was late and the place was empty except for a couple of bikers and one old biker whore shooting pool. Eddie and the crew were out somewhere doing God knows what. I just hoped they didn’t get caught. The Crown job was in two days. I needed them sharp if we were going to pull this off.

“I want to start a new life,” I said, leaning over my elbows on the bar and lowering my voice so only she could hear me. “And I want you to come with me.”

“Okay. When would we go?”

I took a deep breath. I trusted her as much as I had ever trusted anyone in my life. I prayed Eddie wasn’t right, that my cock was not doing the thinking for my brain.

I said, “I am about to make a big score, one that will set me for life. It happens Friday. I’ll wrap up the details Saturday and be ready to go on Sunday. I want you to come with me.”

“You’re scaring me,” she said. “What kind of score?”

“I can’t tell you that. You just have to trust me.”

She looked deeply into my eyes. “Will anyone get hurt?”

“What? No, of course not. I don’t hurt people, you know that.”

“But your brother does.” She said the words and clenched her teeth.

I frowned at the look of fear in her eyes. “Why would you say that?”

“I’ve heard him talk about hurting people,” she said. “He brags about it.”

I tried to muster a reassuring smile for her. “Nobody gets hurt when I’m in charge,” I said. “You have my promise.”

She stared at the bag. “What do you want me to do with this?”

“Stow it in the trunk of your car. Pack one of your own. I will call you Friday after the job and have you meet me. We’ll take your car and get out of town, then figure out where we want to go and fly away.”

She held out her hand and I wrapped my fingers around it.

“This is so sudden,” she said. “Can I think about it?”

“Yes,” I said, squeezing her hand. “You have until Friday.”



SANDY



I was sitting at my kitchen table staring into a cup of lukewarm coffee, replaying in my head the conversation I’d had with Rick the night before when the doorbell rang.

He was going to make a big score on Friday, he said, one that would set him up for life. He wanted to leave the city and never return. He wanted to start a new life. And he wanted me to go with him.

I took a sip of the coffee and wondered how things had happened so fast. And gotten so far out of hand.

A week ago, I was Sandy Duval, an innocent girl who was grieving over her dead fiancé and plotting revenge on the men who had killed him.