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CHAPTER TEN
Adam
The bridge?
I couldn’t believe, of all the places in Redemption to meet my contact for the New Orleans delivery, Bastien sent me to the old bridge.
Don’t be late, he’d said.
As the reed-thin Cajun girl with her thick mop of midnight curls strolled up with her lemon-yellow backpack, looking no older than fourteen, I could see why. She was probably on her lunch break from school. God, I felt sick.
“Hey,” she said, popping the gum in her mouth and eyeing me up and down as if to make sure I wasn’t a threat, the wariness in her gaze belying her age.
“Hey.”
“Ain’t never met you before.”
“Nope.” That’s when I noticed the boy about her age, hovering behind the bridge piling, keeping a watchful eye. Smart cookie. But the juxtaposition of the two of them bringing me drugs, and what this place meant to me and Faith when I wasn’t much older than them, brought a sharp ache to my chest. I watched as she shifted her backpack off her back and unzipped it. “Aren’t you a little young to be doing this?”
Big brown eyes flashed up to mine that held a pool of worldliness and pain that I, sadly, understood all too well. “I’m older than I look.”
“Yeah, right.” I saw the guy shift nervously out of the corner of my eye at the sound of a car on gravel. I lowered my voice, and though I knew it was potentially dangerous, I couldn’t hold my tongue. “Look, I’m just saying, this isn’t the kind of life you want.”
“You don’t know nothing about me.”
“I know this road is no path you want to take. Trust me.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the trouble. I don’t trust you. You want the stuff or not?”
“There a problem?” her boyfriend called out.
She lifted a brow, and I shook my head.
“No problem,” she called back. She pulled out a couple of paper-wrapped packages and held them out to me. “Mr. Guidry said he already sent you the address for delivery.”
I nodded.
“Text him when it’s done.” She shouldered her backpack and started toward the boy.
“Wait!” I called.
She sighed and turned back.
“Just think about what I said, okay? Prison is a fucking shithole, and you can do better.”
She rolled her eyes and spun away, her faded purple sneakers kicking up gravel as she walked away from me.
Feeling nauseous, I stuffed the packages into my pack and straddled my bike, roaring it to a start. I slammed my helmet on and headed toward New Orleans, hoping the open road would wash away some of the filth I felt on my flesh.
Within two hours, I’d found the address, which was surprisingly an upscale bar in a trendy part of NOLA, and dropped the packages off with a clean-cut manager named Roger, right there in the middle of the day, like I was selling him bourbon. Hardly anyone was around, and those that were didn’t bat an eye, so this shit must happen all the time. I stuffed a giant manila envelope of cash into my pack where the drugs had been, texted both Guidry and Mateo that it was done from two different phones, then circled back to Redemption. Mateo told me not to worry about the details, to just do what was asked and let him collect the evidence, so that’s what I did. I figured he had someone running surveillance and getting photos, and eventually there’d be a bust for the drugs and cash evidence. I also knew he was really after the evidence for the murders of the previous chiefs, and I had to find a deeper way in to get that.
I felt a little bit better by the time I got back to the apartment. Faith was still at Grace’s, so I was able to slip in and hide the drug money in a box at the top of my closet until I could meet with Guidry again. I took a quick shower, grabbed a sandwich, then headed down to the shop.
When I pushed inside, I was greeted by “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” booming through the speakers.
I frowned in confusion at CJ at the front desk.
He shrugged. “Andromeda,” he said, his voice barely audible over the music. “Her girlfriend dumped her and she’s drowning her sorrows in music therapy.”
