A Jar of Hearts (9 page)

His steady breaths told her that he was asleep. She pushed his arms away as carefully as she could and then scrambled for her clothes. But where were they?

She found her underwear and she hurriedly put them on. Now, for her dress. Where could he have tossed it?

The bed creaked, and she froze, hoping he hadn’t awoken. But she heard nothing more and she went back on her hands and knees to look for her dress.

“Here,” he said, his deep voice penetrating the silence in the house.

She went rigid as she straightened up. He placed the dress in her hands.

“You look even more beautiful in the morning,” he whispered, stroking her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “You should have told me you wanted to go home. I would have taken you back.”

“I… I didn’t want to wake you,” she muttered, pulling her dress over herself as fast as she could.
I look beautiful? He’s got to be kidding me! I am always a mess in the morning.
She bit her lip, swearing inwardly.

“I’ll make you breakfast.”

“No, don’t. I really have to go back home.”

“Right.” He sounded a little disappointed and she felt guilty at once.

“I’m sorry. But I am in the dire need of a bath.” She tried to break their awkwardness with a small chuckle but it came out phony instead. She flushed.

“Let me see you to the door at least,” he said stiffly.

He knows
, she thought as she squeezed her eyes shut. She had been trying to make a quick getaway and instead had embarrassingly got caught in the act.

Her legs almost crumbled beneath her and only managed to walk steadily without falling to the floor.
I doubt he’d carry me now after this early morning drama.

He caught her arm as she walked past him. “Anne, did I do something wrong?”

“No, of course not.” She fumbled for the right words. How could she tell him? “You don’t need to go out of your way, James. I’m a big girl. I can handle the morning after.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Our one night-stand,” she gulped.

“One night-stand? Is that what this was?”

“Wasn’t it?” She tilted her head up at him. Why did he feel the need to act so innocent about it now? “I heard you last night. You told that guy that I was nothing to you and that you were eagerly looking forward to a … hot night. Isn’t that the word you used?”

“Anne.” He clasped her arm, but she pushed them away.

“It’s okay. You don’t need to explain yourself. In fact, I appreciated that that was how you felt. I guess I was being needlessly afraid that it was more.” She pulled in a deep breath. “I’m glad it meant nothing.”

“Are you really?” he asked her coldly.

She combed her hair with trembling fingers. Why couldn’t he just let her leave? They had slept together. He had got what he had wanted. She had given him a ‘hot night’, hadn’t she?

“It… it helped me get over a difficult part of my life,” she stammered. “The so-called ‘nothingness’ helped.”

“Anne…”

“Please, James,” she said with a quiver. “You need to let me go while I’ve still got my pride intact.”

He palmed his face, kicking himself on the inside for those words. She had rolled down her windows and heard him.
She is nothing
. The words reverberated in his mind, tormenting him.

They had been rushed, he tried consoling himself. He had only wanted to protect her from Juan. But in truth, there really was no excuse for hurting her.

He followed her a few paces away, watching her amble towards her house. How did he always manage to fuck things up with her? It was always one step forward and two damned steps back.

She cocked her head for the tinkling sounds of her wood chime and Harley’s tiny bark to tell her she was at the right house.

“Harley?” she said as she fumbled with the back gate.

And when she disappeared down her path and into her house, he let out a disappointing grunt, kicking the sand at his feet into the air. He’d have to find a way to win her back. He couldn’t just let her continue to think he had used her and then sent her packing the next day. She was his woman, even if she didn’t know that yet.

He walked back to the house. But first he had to deal with Juan. Hopefully, he would fix that problem and get his life back with Anne as soon as he could.

“Fuck, Ty, you should have had a lookout driver! What the fuck were you fucks doing?!” Juan screamed into the phone. “This is not good! Not fucking good.”

He glanced up at James strolling into his living room and waved at him to take a seat.

“Find a way, Ty. I mean it, or I will have your fucking ass on a skewer.” He ended the call, rubbing his brow with his thumb.

“Something wrong, Juan?” James asked.

“The cops arrested almost five hundred kilos of coke last night. That’s a million and a half dollars worth gone… fucking poofed!” He swiped a frustrated hand over his face. “I don’t need this shit right now, James. This shouldn’t have fucking happened.”

“So what’s the story?”

Juan shook his head. “The boys were doing their usual run this morning. They passed the herd at the border but ran into cops five miles in.” He grew quiet for a brief while. “They were waiting for them. I think someone snitched, Jamie.” He frowned looking up at him. “That woman you were with… who was she?”

James froze. What was he on about now? “Like I told you last night, she’s no one.”

“How do you know that? She could have been a cop. She saw us together.”

“That’s why I told you to never show up at my house,” James replied flatly. “As for the girl, I can swear she’s not one.”

“You sure about that? Right after I meet you, my boys get caught by the police. How the fuck do you explain that?”

“Well, it isn’t her.”

“I’m not having that, Jamie. I need to investigate every end if I ever want to find that fucking roach. Where is she?”

James casually slid out of his chair and towards the window. If Juan discovered the bile of nervousness he was trying to swallow down his throat, this would be the end of both him and Anne. “I told you it isn’t her. The woman is blind, so it was impossible she had seen you. And you saw for yourself the windows of my car were rolled up, so she heard nothing as well.”

“You fucked a blind
chica
?” he asked with surprise and then let out a laugh. “How did it go?” He slapped James’ back. “I’ve fucked women blindfolded, but doing a woman who is blind… now, that’s another level completely. Damn, man”

James placed his hands in his pocket to restrain himself from landing a fist against the man’s jaw.  “Why did you come by my house anyway?”

“Right that.” He scratched his head. “Talk about one fuck up after another.” He walked over to his bar and opened up a can of beer. “You want one?”

“Thanks.” James waved his hand at him. “But it’s a little too early for me.”

“I need you to do a clean-up.”

“Who is the poor bastard this time?”

“Derek Burns, CEO of Denton Securities. Derek’s been dipping in our turf. I’ve warned him and his boys several times but they don’t listen. They won’t listen and they won’t learn.” He swallowed his drink and then smacked his lips. “They’re taking a chunk of our clients and our profits. He needs to be handled, Jamie, or people would think we’re fucking pussies, you feel me?”

“He is a prominent figure, Juan. The cops and the media will be all over this.”

“That’s why I hired you, an expatriate to handle the complicated stuff,” he snapped. “If I wanted him gangbanged in the middle of an intersection, I would have got my homies to do it.”

“There is no need to get riled up. I just meant I need some time to figure this out. This is the head of Denton Securities we are talking about. Except for his own gang, there are only a few people who know that he is the leader of the Arms & Blood Brotherhood. And those who do will fight to protect him.”

“Well, figure it out, damn it! I pay you enough to do that,” he mumbled. “I just want him gone, you feel me, Jamie? Gone.”

“Yeah,” Mark’s voice came on the phone.

James ran a hand through his breeze ruffled hair. “I have a janitor shift at Denton Securities.”

“Where you cleaning?”

“The CEO’s office. Am I cleared to go?”

The line went static for a brief while. “I’ve cleared your schedule to accommodate your shift. You’re good to go. Just make sure you spruce it properly. He is an important client. We don’t want to be receiving complaints on a shoddy job for fingerprints.”

“Yes, boss,” he mumbled.

And that’s how easy it was. Mark had given him the go-ahead to murder the man. As long as he ‘spruced’ it up like he said. He leaned against the rails of his verandah, looking out into the wild waves.

He was the expatriate cleaner of the Pachecos. He was expected to erase the footprints of those assigned to him.  That was his job and he was paid handsomely for that. Juan knew he would never be a Pacheco. He was neither blessed into the gang nor taken a thirty-five for initiation. A thirty-five second beating, that is. 

No, he simply held a contract for services. And that meant he was indispensible to Juan. And that included death. He rubbed his jaw.

Most of the murders that Juan did hire to conduct were of scumbags that deserved it anyway. And Derek Burns was even more of a bastard than any of those he had signed off in all these years. Then why the fuck did he feel so burdened by their deaths?

He buried his head in his hands. His only redemption was Anne. Only she could save him.

He shadowed Burns for a week, looking for a suitable opportunity to off him. But his personal security seemed to hover over him like moths to a flame. If he needed it to look like a suicide, then he would need to find his target at a time when he was alone and without his guards.

He opened the secret panel to Mark’s task force base and strolled into it.

“Eric,” Mark said as he led him into his office. “What’s up?”

“I need help with Derek Burns.”

“You can’t locate the man?”

“No,” he replied, slumping into a chair. “Wednesday, in fact, would be the perfect time. Burns is taking a trip to Atlanta. He’s booked a room at Medusa Hotel. As far as I know, his bodyguards won’t be sharing the room with him.”

“Looks like you did your research. What did you need help with then?”

“Mark, the guy is six feet tall and weighs about two hundred and twenty pounds. How the fuck do you expect me to make it look like a suicide without beating him to a pulp first?”

“You want help in handling Burns.” He frowned.

“Do I have a choice?”

Mark scratched his head. “I suppose not now that you’ve laid out the pertinent details.”

“You can’t expect Juan’s boys to help me out. We can’t trust them to not babble.”

“Yeah, that’s not a viable option.”

“Do we
need
to kill the guy?” Eric asked, raising his brow.

“Juan wants him dead and we need to gain Juan’s trust to get to Trent Harvey. It’s a small sacrifice. Besides, I wouldn’t mind getting rid of that scum myself.”

“Are you saying you’re going to help me?”

Mark put his hands on his hips, his lips thinned out with deep thought. “What did you have in mind?”

Eric and Mark sat quietly in their van fully equipped with computers and surveillance monitors. Outside, in the parking lot of the Medusa Hotel, a couple bickered with each other about the disappointment of their night’s affair, unaware that they were overhearing them in the van.

“Don’t you get into trouble for killing people?” Eric asked with curiosity.

“Like get arrested for murder like normal people?” Mark smirked as he busily worked on his computer. “No, there are some things that need to be done in order to achieve the bigger goal.”

Eric swiped his glance over the man’s grayish streaks in his hair and sharp nose. His eyes were a light blue, perhaps dulled over by his many hours of staking out criminal suspects.

“Was the FBI involved in the JFK assassination?” he asked slowly.

Mark zoomed a portion of an image on his computer screen. “You think I’d tell you if I knew?”

“What about Kurt Cobain?”

“I can’t say.”

“Marilyn Monroe?”

“I don’t know.”

“Michael Jackson?”

Mark lifted his head and frowned. “I’ve heard conspiracies that he is still alive.”

“So he
is
alive.”

Mark turned to him. “You have to make up your mind whether he is dead or alive. Come on, you‘ve got to admit that even conspiracies have got to be steady to make them sound the slightest bit credible.”

The passenger door swung open sharply and Casey climbed into the van. “Here.” She threw a pair of staff uniform at them. “Get changed. Burns just walked into his room and ordered wine and a meal. Here’s his order.” She handed Mark a slip of paper. “You’ve got exactly two hours to pull this off. He has an appointment at ten pm and that means his guards will be checking in on him at least thirty minutes earlier.”

“Where’s Corey?” Mark asked, already pulling his shirt off. “He needs to keep an eye on the guards and Burns’ doors.”

“He was setting up the spy cam in the hallway. He should be here soon.”

Mark set his timer on his watch. “You ready?” he asked Eric.

They stepped out of the elevator and walked together towards Derek Burns’ room. Eric carried a tray of food while Mark carried a bottle of expensive wine.

Casey pulled up the skirt of her dress and then pulled down her neckline to reveal more of her cleavage. She pulled off her hair-tie, shaking free her shoulder-length bleached blonde hair and threw a strip of gum into her mouth. “You better call me on time before I get raped by them,” she mumbled as she walked past them and on towards the bodyguards’ room a few doors down.

Eric knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Burns called from inside.

“Meal service,” Eric answered.

The heavy set man opened the door and let them in.  They walked politely through and placed the food neatly on the table. Mark withdrew his gun from under his wine napkin and pointed it at him.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?!” Burns screamed out as he stumbled back.

“Shut up!” Mark said firmly. “Shut your mouth or I’ll put a bullet down your fucking throat!”

“Sit down!” Eric dragged the man by his collar and threw him into a chair, cuffing his hand to the chair’s arm.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Burns trembled.

“You don’t want to know. Just sit still and you’ll be fine.”

Burns glances faltered between the two men. “Is it money? Who sent you? I’ll pay you double… triple the amount!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Mark growled.  “Get on with it!” he screamed at Eric.

“What… what is that?” Burns cried when Eric pulled out a syringe.

“This? It’s just crack. You use them, don’t you?”

“But… that’s… that’s too much,” Burns whimpered. “That’ll kill me.”

“You’re a big man. You can take it.”

“No… no, please,” the man begged, grabbing Eric’s hand. “Why… why…”

Mark shoved the gun violently into the man’s mouth. “The crack or the bullet, you decide. If you even move just an inch, you’ll set this off,” he minced threateningly between his teeth, his finger holding firmly onto the trigger.

Burns eyeballed the trigger and froze immediately.

“That’s a good boy, Derek,” Eric muttered as he pushed the man’s sleeves up. “If you survive this, you can come look for us. No big deal. Now, where is it that you usually inject this thing?”

He found track marks on his inner arm just as he had suspected and injected the needle into a vein in the vicinity. The key was consistency.

Burns groaned.

“Easy now, Derek,” Eric mumbled. “You’ve done this a thousand times. It’s just another doze of crack and it’s on us.”

He pushed the entire fluid into his vein and then pulled out the needle.

“Done,” he announced to Mark.

“Run the bath,” Mark ordered.

Eric raced over and turned the faucet on. The water gushed out into the bath at full force.

“Twenty minutes! He’s out, he’s out!” Mark commentated.

Eric raced back to Mark who was already pulling off Burns’ clothes. He helped him out with the rest and then nodded as they both carried him to the bath.

“Easy now,” Mark said. “No bruising.”

They placed him carefully into the bath and then waited for him to drown.