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I wrinkled my nose, my mouth gaping in surprise. “What the hell…”
“Realized the same thing when you were hunting for someone. So I went to go do my own hunting. Luckily, someone in a jewelry store was an idiot and left the cash drawer open while showing someone a set of rings. They clearly hadn’t followed protocol and emptied it when it’d filled with a lot of cash.” He coughed once. “I don’t think they were running a legitimate business. No one pays for diamonds with cash. Not like that.”
I dismissed the idea of the business not being legit. It wasn’t something we needed to deal with. I lifted a brow. “So you didn’t have my back?”
He quickly grabbed me by the front of the shirt and tugged me close. “You didn’t need me,” he said in a whisper. “But I always have your back, and every other part of you.”
My insides tightened and my heart raced. “What do we need all this cash for?” I said, not letting him distract me. “Can we bribe the police to give us information?”
He let me go. “No. We need to get word to Alice where to find us. And without our contacts”—he meant Academy—“in this city, we have to pay other people to help us.”
“Lead her to us?”
“We want her to meet us on our terms, not hers. We want to let her know where we’ll be.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Meeting spot?”
“Yeah. And it’s obvious we can’t rely on the police to catch her. So we’re going to have to get creative.”
My heart was pounding as I sat back on the bus seat, turning to watch the traffic. It was afternoon now. We were taking way too long. “You know they’ve got a needle in all of them by now.”
He didn’t say anything.
It bothered me how things had happened. We were in the only elevator. The stairwell was dark when we got to it. Could they all have gotten down the stairs so quickly?
Maybe with a gun pointed at their heads. But the apartments being empty when we got back and then left again, and the blood on the walls, the explosions and the police showing up… How could they all just disappear without even a police report to follow up on them?
Something wasn’t adding up for me. The whole setup… I just couldn’t quite figure it out yet.
The bus took us only as far as a rundown part of Charleston, the outskirts surrounding the tourist areas where no one came often. We were in a warehouse section where a lot of tall brick buildings constantly shadowed the narrow roads between.
Axel headed right into those streets, and I followed.
“Who are we finding here?”
“Stay close to me,” he said.
I walked beside him, sometimes behind him when he took an alleyway. He kept his head up, those dark eyes focused.
In the front of the large warehouses were office buildings, only these appeared to be reconfigured into some apartments a long time ago. These were run-down as well, with boards over most of the windows. What glass was left was covered by blankets or newspaper taped to the inside. There were rows of these run-down converted apartments on either side of the street for several blocks.
He went to the first one he came across on the left. At the door, he leaned in and sniffed. He reeled back, shook his head and moved on to the next one.
He sniffed that door too, rejected it similarly and then continued.
“What are you doing?” I whispered to him. I couldn’t help but feeling someone might be watching us.
“Finding a clean one.”
I couldn’t even fathom what he meant.
Eventually, he came to a door that he seemed satisfied with and knocked briefly. No answer. He did it again, louder.
The old, peeling door opened slowly, and one tired, bloodshot eye peered out at us. “Who are you?” the guy asked. “What do you want?”
“You don’t do meth?” Axel asked. “No crystal?”
“Hell no,” the guy said, opening the door further. He was shorter than me by a few inches, and lean and wiry. He had a gray beard and was wrinkly from head to toe. “No, I don’t do that shit.”
Had Axel sniffed for places that didn’t have a drug smell? How could he tell when everything in this neighborhood smelled like hot garbage?
“Good,” Axel said. “I’m here to help you.”
His eyebrows went up in surprise. “For real?”
“Did you want to get out of this neighborhood?”
“Sure do.” He took a step back and ushered us in. “Must be my lucky day.”
Axel didn’t hesitate. I tried to, because I couldn’t imagine what the inside smelled like. I only went in as I didn’t want to be alone on this street.
However, besides the dingy wallpaper and the dust layer along the edged, the space was relatively organized. It was dark because the windows were mostly covered in paper and there wasn’t any electricity. It took time for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. The tiny front hall had a side table that held a collection of cardboard signs with different phrases, begging for money. The rest of the single room was a bed on the floor. It was surrounded by books and newspapers, and in one corner stood two metal grocery carts. Each had aluminum cans and other collected dingy items.
The smell was pretty rank, like three-year-old BO and vomit mixed together into the wood rot.
“How’d you get the carts in the door?” I asked.
Axel gave me an eye like I shouldn’t be talking, especially about stealing carts.
But the guy shrugged. “Took the door off the hinge. I’ve got one cart around back for everyday use, but if I leave anything in it, it ends up gone. All that work cleaning the streets wasted…”
“Anyway,” Axel said, finding some room to stand near the bed that wasn’t cluttered with stuff, “we’re here to help.”
“I was just saying yesterday I needed to get out of this place,” he said. He wore a pair of old jeans and a polo that was dingy in the armpits and had holes around the collar from being worn so often. “Are you from that agency I applied to? What’s the name…”
“No, but one connected to it, “Axel said quickly. “To get rental assistance, right?”
He snapped his fingers. “My lucky day. I thought I was on an eight-year waitlist. It’s only been three.”
“You’ve been moved up,” he said. “I’ve been working some loopholes in the system for certain candidates.”
The guy beamed at this. “You magnificent person. Doing the Lord’s work.”
“Do you have some paper and a pen or something to write with here?” Axel asked. “I was supposed to bring stuff with me, and I forgot.”
The guy quickly found a working pen and paper, and Axel used a couple pieces of his cardboard signs for something stable to write on while kneeling on the floor.
I kept my arms folded at my stomach, waiting. There was no clue why we were here bugging this guy when we needed to go find Alice or the others.
The old man looked at me while Axel was quiet. “You’re helping him?”
“I’m new to this,” I said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. “What’s your name?”
“Carl. You?”
“Susan.”
Axel made a half snort that I took to be choking down a laugh.
Carl held a hand out to me. “Nice to meet you. Doing the Lord’s work. Bless your soul.”
I shook his hand shortly and made sure to let go and take a step back. “How’d you find this place to live?”
“Got lucky,” he said. “Technically, I don’t live here. But no one else does and I’m pretty sure there’s squatters rights, no one can really kick me out…” He turned to Axel. “Right?”
“If you really want to stay here…” Axel said without looking up.
Carl blinked a few times and then shook his head and put a palm to his cheek. “What am I saying? My brain doesn’t work as well as it used to. A little slow. No, I don’t want to stay here. I just didn’t get rental help yet…Not to mention my pension is on hold. My caseworker was supposed to be sorting it ou
t.”
Axel stood up, handing him two sheets of paper he folded neatly. “This one.” He held it up, showing him a big number one on the front. “The one means do this first. You need to walk into the police station…”
Carl’s eyes went wide. “What?”
Axel coughed once and then shook the folded paper at him. “I’m giving you cash to take a cab and go to the police station. I need you to take it to Roger. The woman behind the counter at the station will know who I’m talking about. I wrote the precinct number on the back. Hand it to her, tell her it’s for Roger. It’s part of the process.”
