I found a small pistol in one of the kitchen drawers, the first one I opened. It really didn’t surprise me to find one that fast in Cole’s apartment. There were probably guns hidden everywhere. He’d been an underground arms dealer at one point, before Fang took that business from him, so it only made sense that he would have been prepared for any incident.
I checked to make sure the gun was loaded. It wouldn’t have done me any good empty. I shoved it in the waist of my jeans and grabbed my backpack from the bedroom floor. I looked around again before walking out. I knew I was leaving my clothes here, but they were the clothes Cole had purchased for me. They didn’t need to come with me. I didn’t want the constant reminder of what I might have been leaving behind.
I also wasn’t completely convinced that I wasn’t coming back.
I closed the door behind me and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The building was so quiet, it was like everyone knew something I didn’t. I didn’t see another person until I stepped out back.
There was a ratty, homeless-looking man hanging out by the dumpster. I fished out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to him.
“Thanks,” he said, stuffing it into one of his filthy pockets.
“It’s not free,” I told him. “I need a witness. Hide where you can keep an eye on me. Someone’s coming to get me, and you might have to tell someone later who it was. Think you can do that for me?”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Yeah, I can do that,” he said, and he wandered into the mess of boxes and newspapers on the other side of the dumpster, disappearing into the garbage.
Chapter 15
I waited in the afternoon light with Cole’s whiskey sitting in my stomach and flowing through my veins. Suspicion brewed in the back of my mind. I was suspicious of both of the men in my life, and it was starting to get old already. I looked up and down the alley between the apartment building and the parking garage.
I felt like I should have gone with Cole. I should have forced his hand. It was the only way I knew I could ensure that neither one of them would fuck me over. It would have been a good way to make sure I didn’t screw either one of them over, too.
Of course, I could screw both of them over right now, I thought. I looked around at the buildings surrounding me. Everything was so close right here. I could almost touch the concrete walls of the parking deck from the back door of the apartment building. The next building over stood just as close, leaving enough room for one-way traffic down the alleyways.
I could have taken a page out of my homeless friend’s playbook and just disappeared right then and there. I could have ditched my phone in the dumpster, stopped at the nearest ATM to grab enough cash to get me up the road, and just walked off into the dying light. It wasn’t an idea that occurred to me often, but there were times when I fantasized about ditching my current life and going off to find something new. At times like this, when I was faced with a no-win situation, when I suspected I was going to get screwed either way I went, it just seemed easier to walk away.
It wouldn’t have been hard to keep my head down until I got somewhere safe. Then, thanks to the internet, no one had to know where I was when I transferred the money out of my bank account electronically.
“What are you thinking, Sasha?” I asked myself under my breath. “Thinking about running?” I owed both men for their kindness and their help, but both of them had used me to some extent. Then again, I had used them as well.
My eyes darted back and forth, torn between waiting for Fang’s car and watching out in case I decided to make a run for it.
“If you’re going to run, now’s the time to do it,” the homeless man called out to me.
I jumped at the sound of his scratchy voice. I laughed.
“It’s that obvious, huh?” I asked.
“Yep, but if you’re going to do it, it’s best to stop thinking about it and just go,” he added.
“Is that what you did?” I asked him.
“Not quite. I got booted out of my life,” he told me. “I landed here the hard way, but whenever I want to go now, I just walk. Nothing’s tying me down, lady. You got something tying you down? I mean, besides what you’re thinking about running from?”
I glanced over in his direction, but I couldn’t see him. He was talking to me from his camouflaged hiding place in the boxes and papers. I didn’t know how to answer him. I had one man who wouldn’t let me go very easily. He was my boss and probably thought of himself as my father. The other one thought of me as either his lover or a threat to his business.