Chapter 16
16
M ACKENZIE
It’s one of the best naps I’ve had in a while.
The room smells nice, the temperature is perfect, and no noise comes from outside.
I slip in and out of a drowsy state, dreaming some stuff that doesn’t make sense, like having Callan’s arms around me, his smile in front of my eyes, his touch on my body, and his voice in my ears.
I’m so concerned with pleasing him for no understandable reason that I’m consumed with anticipation and angst.
So the loud knock on my door finds me teetering on the edge of awareness and kicks my anxiety into a higher gear.
I pull up to my elbows, trying to figure out what’s going on. The light outside the window is grayish dark as the day gets swallowed up by the early evening.
What time is it anyway? Shifting my eyes to the nightstand, I reach for my phone.
Half past four?And it’s that dark?
Soft snow dances across the window.
It’s been snowing for a week now.
Knock, knock, knock.
The tapping against my door is firm and heavy with frustration, and I can’t imagine why.
Has someone mistaken my neighbor’s door for mine?
Quietly, I slide off, push my slippers on, and put my bathrobe on.
They keep knocking. That can’t be good.
Have I done something wrong? Is this an emergency of sorts? Are cops at my door?
I may have joked about it, but this shit is real.
Struggling with the tension in my throat, I muster enough courage to go to the door and confront whoever is so loud and obnoxious.
I peek through the peephole first and turn breathless for a second.
Carmen?
“Yes?” I bark without opening the door.
“Open the door. I need to talk to you.”
Wow. She sounds bossy. And no introductions?
No damn explanation for showing up at my door uninvited?
“Why?” I push back.
“Open the door, damnit. This is about Charlie.”
Uh… What?
Charlie?
Who the fuck is Charlie?
Is Charlie Callan?Or is Callan Charlie?
What the fuck? What does she know that I don’t know?
The woman is a straight shooter, isn’t she?
Has he lied to her? Or has he lied to me?
I have a hard time understanding all this.
Haven’t we skipped a step or two?
Shouldn’t we catch up on things before getting ‘close’ and talking about our common friend ‘Charlie’?
“Who is Charlie?”
Her fist comes faster than her words, rapping on my door again.
“Open the fucking door, you little bitch.”
Oops.
“If I didn’t want to open it before, what makes you think I’d open it now?”
“Open the door. The man is in danger,” she says in a quiet, strained voice, and I imagine her with her cheek pressed to the door, her eyes shooting flames.
What if it’s true?What if he’s in danger?
She got me, didn’t she?
This might be a trap, but it could also be true.
So, what am I supposed to do now?
Open the door?Call the police?
Do I trust this woman?No. Not in the slightest.
But what if what she’s said is true?
I don’t want anything bad to happen to him.
I suck in a long breath and unlock the door before firmly pulling it open. The move is so fast that I don’t realize the door is pushed against me as much as I pull it toward me.
I only get a glimpse of Carmen––her green top and black skinny pants that emphasize every delicious curve the woman has––before I face a wall of tattooed muscles and a face scary as shit.
“Is this her?” the man accompanying her barks at the woman, swiftly confirming she’s set me up.
Suddenly calm and displaying no concern for anything, Carmen walks ahead of him and enters my place while I’m stuck with the stranger.
“It can only be her,” Carmen says, curiously looking around my place. “Who else?” she tosses at him over her shoulder before shifting around to face us and clasping her hips.
So no more talking about Charlie…?
“What are you two talking about?” I toss at them, finding my mojo.
Carmen tilts her chin toward the door.
“Close the fucking door,” she says, and I wedge my foot between the door and the frame.
“No fucking way I let you two in my apartment. Get the fuck out,” I say, showing them to the door.
They both look at me like I’m crazy before laughing derisively.
“Isn’t she funny?” Carmen says, feigning amusement.
Her expression instantly changes when she steps toward me, grabs me by the elbow, and drags me in.
The man shuts the door without further instructions from the woman.
His tattoos look like ivy across his neck.
Metal rings adorn his lower lip and earlobes while solid rings flash across his fingers. He wears a raggedy-looking jacket, baggy pants, and expensive boots.
The contrast is striking but not as raw as the mix of roughness and barely suppressed curiosity on his face.
I shift my focus to her.
“What do you want, Carmen?” I say icily cold.
A smile tugs at her lips.
“Carmen?” she murmurs, entertained. “How do you know my name? Did you two talk about me?” she drones on, taking a step back and leaning into the kitchen counter, her arms crossed over her chest.
The thug’s back hits the door, and this is the first time I hate that my space is so small.
There is nowhere to run.
“Don’t flatter yourself. No one’s talked about you. The super dropped your name in one of our conversations. And Charlie? I have no idea who the fuck is Charlie. Maybe you should start by telling me why the fuck you and your boy toy here are bothering me now. I don’t remember being introduced to you.”
Carmen looks at the man behind me, and I move my eyes to him as well.
“She’s so fucking cute, isn’t she?” Carmen says, pushing off the kitchen counter and moving toward me.
I keep my feet pinned on the floor when she stops in front of me and doesn’t even blink as she examines me.
“What if we’re doing this? You’re telling me everything you know about Charlie, and you don’t have to spend time alone with him.”
She flicks her chin toward the man in the room, and horror grows in my chest.
“There is no need for threats,” I say, barely keeping my face straight.
She looks at me with a conniving smile on her face.
“Then tell me,” she murmurs, studying my face.
“I told you. I don’t know who Charlie is.”
My voice bears the signature of truth.
It doesn’t sound like a lie because it isn’t a lie. I don’t know a man named Charlie. I know a man named Callan, but I won’t be stupid enough to tell her that. And I still want to know who he’d lied to. Was it her? Or was it me?
I hold her eyes for a little longer before she peels her gaze away, looks around the room, inches closer to the coffee table, and picks up a cookie.
“Let’s do this then,” she says, talking around the crumbling dessert. “You had a male visitor last night.”
I think about it for a second before answering.
“So?”
“Who was he?”
I look at her like she has lost her mind.
“Excuse me? Who gives you the right to ask me all these questions?”
She only stares at me, softly chewing on her cookie, but the man behind me moves, his clothes rustling before a calloused hand wraps around my neck.
“Stop playing dirty games and start talking, little bird. You kissed him in the hallway downstairs.”
The roughness in his voice sends a shiver down my spine.
Out of reflex, my hand shoots to his grip.
He squeezes my neck in response, and I get swiftly dizzy, the room spinning with me.
As if that is not bad enough, he shakes me a little, and I crash my fist into his shoulder.
“Let her breathe,” the woman thunders, having more common sense than him.
Man, this guy is dumb.
He tosses me back, and I barely catch myself and rub my neck, eyeing the vase and envisioning it flying to his head.
Carmen catches that and moves between us before pushing the vase away from me.
“Talk to me, or he’ll get worse,” she says, glowering at me.
Oh. So they’re playing good cop, bad cop.
Wincing and still rubbing my skin, I lift my gaze to her.
“Technically, I wasn’t in the hallway. We were on the first floor. And I kissed a man. So fucking what?”
Her eyes glint with something sulfurous like jealousy and hate.
“His name is not Charlie,” I say.
Grinding her teeth, she straightens and feigns a condescending smile.
“All right. What’s his name then?”
Like I’m stupid to tell her his name.
Regardless of what his real name is, I won’t give her the name he’s given me.
“Manny,” I say in a clipped voice.
Her eyebrows shoot up.
“Um… What?”
“Yeah. His name is Manny.”
She laughs, her hands clutching her arched hips again.
“Manny from what?”
“Emmanuel.”
“Last name?”
“I don’t know his last name.”
She’s changed her tactic.
We’re no longer playing games.
She’s shooting question after question, testing my ability to respond and be truthful at the same time.
I’m not batting a lash as I deliver lie after lie like a pro.
“How come?”
“I just met the guy.”
“Care to say more?”
“Not that it’s your business, but I met him at the deli.”
And just like that, the story I’ve told Kayla becomes useful now.
“I don’t know much about him. We stood in line for coffee and had a chat the other day. Then we started to walk together. I like to go outside and get my steps in,” I say to buy some time and test her patience.
She rolls her eyes at me.
“It’s true,” I say.
She cuts me off with a clipped gesture.
“Go on,” she says before her lips press together, her jaw locked.
“That’s it. I wanted to go out last night because of the noise upstairs, and it happened that he showed up at my place. We were on our way out when we started to make out. I didn’t think it would be earth-shattering news or something.”
Sighing, she looks at the man. I don’t know whether she believes me or not.
She clearly knows that Callan and I had our lips locked into a fiery kiss last night.
She knows he walked down a floor and knocked on my door to hide from the likes of the man having his back pressed into my door right now.
She knows the only way he could’ve escaped that night when her husband came home early––where is he, by the way?––was to climb the balcony and walk out through my apartment.
Maybe he told her that when he went upstairs and got the rest of his Santa costume.
But… Whatever the hell she knows, she won’t find more details from me.
It’s not that I’m not intimidated. I am.But I also hate bullies and people trying to get stuff from me by threatening me.
She and Callan are clearly no longer friends.
And there is some bad blood between them. But I won’t play a role in this.
Not in the way she imagines it.
“And where does this Emmanuel guy live?”
I shrug.
“I have no idea. For sure, he doesn’t live here.”
She looks around the room.
“Where is your phone?” she tosses at me.
My mind goes straight to the nightstand in the other room.
“Why do you need my phone?”
She shifts her stare at me.
“Give me your phone.”
“Why? I don’t have his phone number. We’ve never talked on the phone.”
She looks at the man.
“Grab her,” she says, and before I can protest, the grumpy man lays his hands on me and pulls me to the side.
“Don’t you fucking move, little bird, or I’ll break your neck.”
Feverishly, Carmen starts searching through my apartment. She’s not delicate, either. Pillows fly to the floor. The kitchen drawers are pulled open, and the rugs are tugged to the side.
The back of my TV is checked.
The tidiness that I hold dear goes up in flame.
I lock my jaw to stop myself from commenting. This is probably not the moment to give her a piece of my mind.
While waiting for the search to end––I have no doubt she’ll find my phone––I try to put the pieces of this story together.
These are not good people.
And the fact that Callan has been involved with them casts a shadow on how much of an upstanding citizen he is.
He was after something.And they are after him.
They seem pissed, the stench of betrayal oozing from their pores. He double-crossed them. Took them for fools.
Played them.
Who knows?
He did something… Or maybe they did something to him and hoped to never face his wrath.
My information is scarce and unreliable, and as he himself has said, things have been like that by design.
He didn’t want to pull me into something that could negatively affect me or my life.
Although that ship has sailed.
“Got it.”
Carmen’s victorious voice rings out in the other room.
She bursts into the living room, her arm extended.
“Unlock it for me.”
“Why would I do that?”
The man’s hands grip the back of my neck like pliers.
Yelping, I crouch and elbow him.
“Fucking bitch.”
He’s quick to lunge at me, and I stand zero chance of winning this battle when Carmen barks at him.
“Leave her the fuck alone,” she growls, slapping his back. “I don’t need a dead body,” she adds, her eyes stormy and dark.
“Unlock your damn phone, or I’ll take it with me and have someone do it for me.”
“Tell your brute to take his hands off me.”
“You heard her,” she says to him.
He takes his paws off me.
I grab my phone, punch in my passcode, and hand it to her.
“There’s nothing on it. I told you I don’t have his information.”
She swipes a finger down the screen and checks names and numbers.
There’s not that much to check. It’s mostly business phone numbers. People I have interviewed with. Kayla’s name. Her parents. That’s pretty much it.
Oh, and Quinn. Again, I don’t know why I’m keeping his information on my phone.
I’ve never talked to him since we broke up.
“Please don’t mess with those phone numbers. I’m looking for a job, and I’ve received calls from several companies,” I say while her finger goes down the line.
Some of those phone numbers have been added to my list––if I thought I’d need them later––but most are just phone numbers with no designation.
“What is this?” she asks, zeroing in on one of them.
I tip my eyes and ponder what she’s pointing to.
I don’t remember that number… Oh, wait. That’s Beverly. How the fuck did she spot her very number?
And why did I think it was a good idea to have it on my phone after talking to her from his phone?
Before I can give her an explanation, Beverly’s phone rings at the other end of the line.
My heart beats in my throat.
“That’s my cleaning lady,” I say, so fucking uninspired.
She tilts her gaze to me while the phone keeps ringing, and I’m praying Beverly won’t answer.
Just when she is about to hang up, the woman answers.
“Yes?” a female voice drips from the speaker.
Looking at me, Carmen says nothing.
“Can I help you?” Beverly says, her voice an empty vessel.
“Talk to her,” Carmen mouths to me, and the blood drains from my body.
She brings the phone to my mouth.
“Hi. It’s me, Mackenzie. Is there any way you can come on Monday? I know we talked about you stopping by every other week, but I want to have my place tidied up for New Year’s Eve.”
My voice is translucent, lacking emotion and warmth before the entire room goes quiet, and we all wait for the response from the other end of the line.
My heart beats in my ears when her voice rings in the room.
“It’s a bit tight, but I can make it on Monday. How about four in the afternoon? Would that work for you?”
Heat floods my cheeks.
“Four is great. I’ll see you then. Merry Christmas.”
With a mean look on her face, Carmen cuts my conversation short and tosses my phone on the couch.
“I don’t believe an iota of this story, but what do I know? You might be as stupid as you look,” she grumps, signaling the man to join her as she heads to the exit. “You just said you were looking for a job, but somehow you have the money to pay someone to clean your place when you’re here all day doing nothing.”
I look at her like a cat with a mouse in her mouth, my eyebrows lifting slowly.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one spying on my neighbors in this building.
She’s done some spying herself.
I watch her walk to the door. The man opens it and holds it for her before she spins around and pins me with her glare.
“You tell him this. We know who he is.”
“Charlie?” I say, struggling to keep a chuckle back, almost hinting at my amusement, but luckily for me, it goes unnoticed.
“It doesn’t matter what name he goes by. He stole something from us. He or his men. It’s the same. And we’ll get to him. And get what’s ours back.”
She doesn’t spend another second before spinning around and clacking her heels down the corridor.
The man gives me a warning, frightening look from the doorway before following her in perfect step with her.
The door is still open, and I stare at the corridor, a thought spinning in my head.
I just moved here, and these are my new neighbors?