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"I slept at a rest stop in Virginia."
"You slept at a rest stop in Virginia," he repeated, his face settling into hard lines, like he wasn't happy with that information.
"The road was starting to get blurry."
"The road gets blurry, honey, get a room somewhere. Rest stops aren't exactly the safest places on Earth."
"I survived," I pointed out, getting a little annoyed. I wasn't a child. I could take care of myself.
"'Course you did. Come on," he said, tugging a little at the hem of my shirt as he moved toward the hallway beside the front door.
"Come where?" I asked, following behind, but cautiously.
"To my bed, angel," he supplied, opening the first door in the hall.
"Your bed?"
"To sleep," he said, ducking his head a little to slant a serious look at my face before he started to smile a little boyishly. "Not that I wouldn't love to ravish you, honey, but you need some rest. I'll keep my hands to myself."
A part of me was kinda whispering (okay, screaming) that it would be totally okay if he put his hands on me, but I ignored that voice and stepped into the doorway of his bedroom. It was another large room. The walls were painted a deep hunter green and the space was dominated by the huge California king bed covered in crisp white sheets. Crisp like they were just laundered. Like maybe they had even been... ironed. Who ironed their sheets? I chanced a look at Johnnie. No way did a guy like him press their bedclothes. Did he have a housekeeper?
God, why did I even care?
"Kick out of your shoes, sweetheart," he urged when I just kept standing there dumbly. I kicked out of my shoes and made my way over toward his bed feeling self-conscious because I could feel his eyes on me. I pulled back the sheets and climbed in.
I had just settled on my side facing away from the door when I felt the bed depress behind me and Johnnie scoot in. And I mean in, until his entire body was wrapped around mine from behind, legs cocked under my bent knees, his arm heavy around my belly, like he had held me when I cried after his father's funeral. "What are you doing?"
"Amy, you just lost the closest person to you. On top of that, you think I'm a dick and that hurt your feelings. Now you find half a mil worth of drugs in your wall and you drive up to me, sleeping in a fucking rest stop, and you get here shaking. Just let me hold you for a couple of minutes, okay?"
"Okay," I said, my eyes already getting heavy. I didn't know what kind of mattress he had, but whatever it was, I needed one.
"She's my best friend's girl," he murmured when sleep was just about to claim me.
"What? Who?" I asked groggily.
"The girl who was at my Pops' apartment. She's my best friend's girl. She and he came down to make sure I was alright. I didn't fuck her. I'd never fuck her. I should have explained that before I left."
I felt his lips press into the skin behind my ear and, well, that was what did it. I turned in his arms and buried my face in his neck, stealing his warmth in the air conditioned room, and breathing in his scent which was something I couldn't put into words, something masculine and spicy, like male musk mixed with the traces of body wash from an earlier shower. "Thanks for telling me," I said quietly, maybe nuzzling in. But just a little bit, I swear.
His arms tightened around me. "Sleep angel," he commanded.
Then I did.TwelveShooterThere was eight kilos of heroin in her wall. There was eight kilos of heroin in her wall and her first instinct was to run to me. I liked that. I liked that a little too much for either of our good. But she was here; she was wrapped up in my arms, making almost inaudible mewling noises in her sleep.
Fucking Luis.
I figured he was harmless. I figured he had me hit the H dealer because he wanted out, he wanted to not be under the man's thumb anymore. Hell, I wasn't paid to think about the job at all. I was paid top dollar to mind my own goddamn business and get the job done. But as much as I put up that front, I did my research. I didn't like the idea of killing some poor sap because someone was holding a stupid grudge, or cause someone's wife cheated on him. That wasn't my kind of work. I tried as much as possible to only shoot scumbags. And seeing as it was usually criminals who hired people to carry out hits, that was almost always what I took care of. I figured Luis was just a guy caught up in the drug trade or that he'd fucked over his boss and wanted him dead before he found out. His boss was a piece of shit with a blood trail as long as the Nile. No one cried when I put a plug between his eyes, least of all me.
And I didn't even care that Luis wanted his old boss dead so he could take over the trade. What I did care about was the fact that the mother fucker was such a pussy that he had to hide his product in the walls of unsuspecting people. Especially someone with no one to protect her like Amelia. No wonder Luis spent so much time trying to woo Amelia. He wanted to keep an eye to see if she ever found out about what he was up to.
A while later, Amelia's breathing heavy, her body limp in sleep, a thought came to me, a thought I wasn't exactly happy to have. She had told me that my father was good to her, that he always told her to lock up when she came home from work. That wasn't like him. All the years I lived at home, he never once locked his door. He never lectured my grandmother to lock her door either. That was the kind of thing that no one ever really paid much mind to there. It was always safe. No one needed to lock their doors. So why was my Pops telling Amy to? Did he know something was going on? Was he trying to protect her? Or, worse yet, was he involved? It wasn't much of a jump for me to assume he had his hand in it. It was harder for me to accept that he was clean and sober for years than it was to accept that maybe he was keeping illicit drugs in the drug counselor next door's wall.
