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“It better be,” I warn.
“It is, I just got it back. I didn’t do anything. It was my girlfriend. She organized the entire thing. It was her idea. Not mine!”
“Way to take your punishment like a man. Blame your woman,” I growl. “Even if she did set this entire scam up, you just showed us what a fucking coward you are.”
Bear waves his gun and allows Jared to stand. Jared walks over to a painting, hanging above the dresser and pulls it down. There’s a large wet spot on the front of his pants. He literally pissed himself. Behind the painting is an in-wall safe. He cracks the code with shaking hands and opens the door. Jared reaches inside and feels around, but when he pulls his hand back out, it’s not a laptop he’s holding.
It’s a gun.
Jared doesn’t hesitate, firing two rounds at Bear, one hits him in the arm, knocking his gun out of his hand. The other lands in his thigh, sending a gush of blood surging out like the fountain in the front of this house.
Jared’s quick, but he’s not quick enough.
By the time he turns his gun on me, I’ve already fired off three rounds into his chest until he falls down dead. The gun drops to the wood floor with a hard echo.
I rush over to Bear, who is cursing under his breath. “I’m fine,” he grates through his teeth. “Get me the fucker’s tie.”
I pull the tie from around Jared’s fresh corpse and hand it to Bear, who ties it around his wound as tight as he can. His face reddens with pain.
He stands, holding himself up by using one of the bed posts as an anchor. I know better than to try and help him. Bear isn’t one to accept help from anyone. I walk back over to the safe and pull out Jared’s laptop. “I’ll take it with us. What do you want to do here?” I ask.
“I’ll call for cleanup. Let them handle it while I get patched up.”
I notice the other closet on the other side of the hall. This one is filled with women’s clothes. Bear notices it, too. “Jared doesn’t live alone. He said the girlfriend was involved. Should we wait for her to get home?”
“Her shit’s still here,” I say. “You heard him. He wasn’t just leaving. He was leaving her. If we bring her in, she might not tell us shit. I’ll keep an eye on her. Check her files. If she’s got shit to do with this, she’ll lead me right to the money.”
Bear grimaces as we head for the stairs. “Just get to her before Tico does.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “And there’s nothing left of her to question.”
Chapter Six
LENNY
When I was younger, I used to call for my mom in the middle of the night. She’d race up my room, and I’d complain to her that my stomach hurt. She knew that it was my way of telling her I was worrying about something, even if I didn’t understand it yet myself.
Mom would make me soup or hot chocolate no matter what time or day or night it was. She’d hold me close and tell me everything was going to be okay. She never brushed me off. She never told me that it was pointless to worry, just that the feeling would pass, and that everything was going to be okay, even if it didn’t feel like it would be.
Until they both died, and it wasn’t okay anymore.
It never would be.
“I can’t believe it’s been almost four years,” I say. “And I can’t believe I’m talking to you as if you guys are still here.” I wipe the tear from my eye and sniffle. I crouch down and lay a bouquet of tulips in front of the simply marked headstone with my parent’s names, Michelle and Michael Leary, and the date that their plane went down over the Gulf of Mexico.
I brush my fingers over the soft grass, and stand. I look down at the headstone once more and find myself smiling. Even in death, my parents were romantic. Their will insisted that if they died together that they be buried together in a single coffin in one shared grave.
Together for eternity.
A love like theirs was the stuff of fairytales when happy marriages like theirs didn’t exist anymore. Growing up, I didn’t have a single friend whose parents weren’t divorced or whose step-parent wasn’t the first one to be awarded that title. Nope, my parents were the odd ones. Neighbors since the day they were born, elementary school best friends, high school sweethearts, married in college and stayed that way for over twenty-years while running a successful business together.
A business I tried and tried to save after they died. But when their single-engine plane crashed, so did the South Florida real estate market. I did everything I could, including using every penny from their life insurance payout, but it wasn’t enough. I was young and naive and wasted a truck-full of money on something that couldn’t be saved. I take some small comfort that, at least, they weren’t around to see it go down in flames.
