BITCH (A Romantic Suspense Novel) (9 page)

Eighteen

Waking up late had always come hard for her. But when Erin avoided sleep long enough, it was an unhappy necessity that she had to deal with in spite of her best intentions to sleep as little as necessary and never past the sunrise.

She opened her eyes slowly, and closed them again. The sun had somehow found a way through the blinds that managed to fall square across her eyes, and after a night's rest it was blindingly bright.

She rolled away from it and pushed herself out of bed, still letting her eyes stay shut a minute. She knew the layout well enough not to worry about it. She reached for where her phone should be, but she must have knocked it to the floor. Erin opened her eyes just enough to reach down and grab it.

As she'd hoped a message. As usual, though, nothing to be sure who it was from. She cursed herself again that she'd forgotten to put Roy's number back in. It would be as easy, even now, as going back to the call log and adding the most recent call. Unless she'd gotten one after midnight last night, which she doubted, and even then, the log had timestamps.

Doing anything today?

She thought forward. No, nothing. Unless she wanted to schedule some last-minute piano lessons. She'd always wanted to learn, never put in the least bit of effort. Maybe today would be the day. Maybe it wouldn't.

She punched in that she didn't have any plans at all and dropped the phone on the bed, where it lay as she went off to get dressed.

She was just pulling on a pair of slacks as her phone buzzed. That would be Craig, she knew. Roy didn't seem to prefer to text, but more than that, he wasn't quick about answering them when he did send any.

She picked the phone back up and turned it over to read the message.

I'll be there in 5, be ready to go.

She shrugged. Alright. That was enough time, if she needed to be out the door. She reached down to pull on socks and then slipped her feet into a comfortable pair of flats.

The knock came at the door after 3 minutes. She opened it halfway without undoing the chain, already knowing what she'd find.

"You ready to go?"

"You said five minutes."

"I lied," Craig answered, letting the tiniest hint of a smile cross his otherwise surly face.

"I'm ready anyways, let me grab my wallet."

"You won't need it."

"Fine, then I won't take it."

Erin shrugged and pocketed her keys, undid the chain latch on the door and went outside, locking the door behind.

Whatever was going on, she was intrigued enough already that she wasn't going to argue. Maybe that was a risk, she thought. Maybe there was going to be tons of trouble any minute now, and she needed to have someplace to carry her backup.

But she already knew better than to think that she was going to use it on Craig. Not unless something very drastic changed, and she knew that it wasn't going to, in spite of her better judgment.

He took her back down to the motorcycle and got on, kicked it to life, and handed the helmet off to her. Erin put it on, still unsure how to feel about the tightness that was almost too much. Just a little bit too tight for comfort. But then again, when it came to protecting her head, maybe that was a desirable trait. She didn't know much about helmets, after all.

Craig tested her grip around his waist before he took off. It was still strange the second time, being pressed up against him with her whole body. He carried her weight, and she let him shift her to the left as they turned. It was made all that much more strange because she knew that she couldn't trust him as far as she could throw him, but when she was on the back of that bike her life was completely in his hands.

All it would take would be one or two bad turns and she'd be as good as dead, and yet she knew instinctively that if he was going to kill her—and the jury was still very much out on that subject—then it wouldn't be with incompetent or dangerous driving.

Erin watched a car carefully as they started to pull up. She could tell instinctively that it wanted to get over, and she could tell just as instinctively that it wasn't looking for two people on the back of a motorcycle about to pull up beside.

Just as she thought it, she felt Craig pull a little off the throttle and the car sailed harmlessly by them. She let out a little breath that she'd been holding and started to relax until she heard the bike roar to life below them.

Craig tugged the bike to the left and brought them up along the driver's side, taking a hand off the handlebars just long enough to rap on the window and make a vulgar gesture at the woman driving, who looked about ready to spill her coffee in her lap.

Then they pulled on past and slipped back into the center of the lane. They were leaving the city, even leaving the metro area, she realized. What sort of road trip was he taking her on? It would be an even bigger change of pattern to kill her out here, so in some ways it felt strangely safer out here, even as they became more and more isolated. He got them onto the interstate for a few miles, her grip getting that much tighter around his waist as the wind whipped at them both hard.

He pulled off into a bar that looked like they had more need for cops than the rest of the county, and the bike shuddered below them and expired as he turned it off, just the next in a long line of bikes.

"Not too bumpy," Craig said, as if he were making a general statement instead of asking her. She wasn't sure if that was intentional or not, but knowing him, he wasn't worried about her answer either way.

"No," she said, pulling the helmet off and trying not to think about what it had done to her still-damp hair.

"Come on."

Craig took her inside behind himself. There wasn't anyone at the door to stop them, but she got the impression that the wrong sort of person rarely walked into an establishment like this, and the few times that they did, it didn't take long for them to figure out the mistake and get the hell out before there was trouble.

Of course, that was part of the appeal for the men—and they were almost all men, save a few women who looked like they peed standing up—who came here. No outside interference. And as much as they probably had need for cops, she doubted that any, whether from the city or county boys, or even the staties, ever stepped inside the place. She might have been the first in years, and she was going to do her best not to stand out.

The clothes she was wearing weren't going to make it easy, but the company she came in with, she hoped, might be enough to get her free and clear out of trouble.

She had to hope, because otherwise things were going to get ugly.

Craig settled into a booth and let his eyes drift across the room, where they settled onto a couple of toughs playing billiards. Erin slid in across from him and waited to figure out what the hell was going on.

She didn't have to wait long, because a minute later, a familiar face turned around and made its way over to their table.

Nineteen

"Hey, Craig," the guy said as he slid into her side of the booth whether she wanted him to or not. Well, there had been plenty of things that she'd had no choice in, the past few years, and this wasn't going to be the thing that ruined her.

"Who's the chickadee?"

"Don't be crass," Craig said mildly. If it were someone else, Erin might have thought that he was letting it go. But she knew that wasn't what was happening. Rather, Craig was relying on the fact that he wouldn't have to say it a second time. If he did, she knew, there would be trouble.

The man beside her had been one of the faces on that sheet of men who had dated the previous victims. She wasn't about to assume that the both of them were all she needed to find. Two people didn't just meet each other and set off on a whirlwind murdering adventure like that. And the prosthetic work that would have been necessary to make Craig fit perfectly with the other two was prohibitive.

"Okay, well, are you going to introduce me to your friend, Hutchinson?"

"What, like we're friends?" Craig's face darkened. "Do you have the money, or don't you?"

Erin had to fight to keep her face straight. Maybe this was all set up to intimidate her, or maybe it wasn't, but she had stumbled into something that she wouldn't have been remotely privy to if they knew what she did for work.

"Relax, man. I got the money."

"Good."

The man slipped a fat yellow envelope across the table. Roy opened the top flap and looked inside. If he had any doubts that everything he wanted was in there, he didn't show it, and he didn't bother to count it.

She waited for the pass back, whatever it would be. Instead, the killer beside her waited a minute before asking, in his most nervous voice, "we good?"

"Yeah, we're good. Go on, now."

The broad-faced man got up and took a few hurried steps toward the door. Craig caught his arm.

"You try to conduct business when I'm here to relax again, and we're going to have trouble. You feel me?"

"Sorry, man. Won't happen again."

"You got it?"

"I got it!"

Craig let him go, and he pulled hard as he started to move away. Erin let out a breath and closed her eyes a moment, trying to relax herself.

"Sorry about that."

"What was that all about?"

"Oh, I did some work on his bike. It was making a mean bit of engine noise. Turned out he needed a complete rebuild."

"So he paid in cash?"

"You bet," Craig said, nodding softly to music that wasn't playing.

"Is that how all your business goes?"

"Not all of it," he said with a shrug.

"Who was that, even?"

"Oh, you know," Craig said. Evading the question again. "I met him around."

"Around, huh?"

"What is this, twenty questions? Yeah. Around."

"Sorry I asked." Someone finally came around, a guy who looked like he could serve double-duty as a bulldozer if the need arose, and Craig ordered them both beers. They'd take a basket of fries, as well, and make it snappy.

Apparently the deal the day before had set him off. Well, she wasn't going to complain if it meant better service, but it told her something about the man across the table from her. All of it did.

Whatever he was getting paid for, it was worth more than the bike he was sitting on. Time rebuilding an engine might add up to ten grand, but that wasn't the kind of atmosphere that surrounded a mechanic getting paid, and this wasn't the sort of place a mechanic hung out at noon.

"You said you knew my sister."

"Yeah, I said that. Knew her voice, from over the phone, anyway. Saw a few pictures. We tried a video chat one time, but it didn't work out."

"You don't seem like the computer type."

"No?" Craig shrugged. "You have to keep up with the times, don't you?"

"I guess so," Erin agreed. The fries came out with the beer, steaming hot and overfull for the basket they came in. Craig dumped some salt on and took one.

"So. Between jobs, huh?"

"For now," she said, mildly. "They come and go. I could have a contract tomorrow, or I could be another few weeks."

"For real?"

"Sure," she said.

"How do you manage to pay for it?"

"My mom left me a little money." It was a lie. After Dad left, she'd been a wreck. Barely able to keep herself together. Erin wondered how bad Dad had taken it, but then she decided that she didn't need to worry about that. He probably took it as badly as he took everything. It would make a great excuse to drink, but not a great excuse to change anything about himself.

"We should all be so lucky."

"It is what it is."

"I hear that," Craig said, another tug of a smile at the corners of his lips. "But hey. We all do what we have to in this life, right?"

"Exactly."

Craig didn't know how true that was for her. She would do whatever she had to do, and if that meant spending time with this bastard until he slipped up and gave himself away, she'd wait all year if she had to.

He took a french fry between his fingers and moved over to her side of the booth, wrapped his free hand around her shoulder and pulled her in.

"I think something happened to your sister. You heard from her?"

"No," she said. "Not in years."

"See, that's a shame, darlin'. Family's family."

"I know."

"I watch out for my family, and they watch out for me. We fight, sure. Who doesn't? But we at least got that much figured out. We're responsible for each other. Nobody gets off, and nobody walks away."

"What's that supposed to mean? Like—you have brothers?"

"Brothers and brothers. I was the youngest, and my brothers looked out for me. Now I'm older, I look out for them."

"I don't know what that's like. My sister and I split up a long time ago."

"That's how it is, sometimes. But I'm telling you, it's not good. You need to reforge those bonds."

"Well, if I get any word on her…" Erin forced herself to swallow the anger that was threatening to spill out. "Then I'll do just that. You're right. It's too precious to waste time on petty little fights."

"See what I mean?"

"Yeah, I see what you mean."

He smiled and stood up. Pulled another fry and put it between his lips. Like a cigarette or something. Then he went over to an old jukebox, old enough to still be using C.D.s, and thumbed a couple quarters in. A minute later it started playing something and he slid back into the booth opposite her.

"Of course, sometimes you have to take a hard line with them, too, you know?"

"What?"

"With family. I heard a little about your parents' situation. A year, it's a long time, you get to talking, and that sort of thing comes up. Bad stuff."

"Well, sometimes you have to deal with bad stuff."

"Oh, no, I ain't doubting that. But what I am saying is, I know your dad didn't do your mom right. As much as I care about family, as much as I'd do anything to keep my brothers safe—" he sucked in a breath through his nose and let it out like a bull about to charge. "—Someone did my momma like that, and they wouldn't be in no position to do it to nobody else. Not ever again."