Chapter 7
SEVEN
CAL - PRESENT
My gun doesn’t waver—even recognizing that it’s Grayson, I don’t give a damn thing away and neither does he.
He doesn’t lower his gun, and after the initial surprise on his face, he’s quickly covered it up.
He doesn’t want them to know he knows me, but why?
Does he think knowing me will put me in even more danger than we already are?
His dark blue eyes watch me closely, his expression steady.
I remember the first time I saw his face, I wanted to keep watching him.
He looked focused and professional, but the moment the hat he wore was allowed to be removed, he was all smiles.
He made everyone laugh. Grayson could become friends with anyone.
But sometimes I felt like even though he was friends with everyone, he wasn’t extremely close with any of them.
They all loved him, but at the end of the day I always thought he seemed a little lonely.
I felt like he only opened up to me over the span of those months, but maybe that was some strange thing I wanted and not what was really happening.
He looks irritatingly even more handsome with longer hair than he’d had in the military and a short beard that’s graying a little.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Mr. Goatee yells as he rushes onto the scene.
“I think these are the wrong guys,” Grayson says. “They aren’t the ones you were supposed to grab.”
The man who’d led me here makes a noise of disbelief. “You fucking sure? That one is a fucking nightmare! He just came out of nowhere and beat down two guys in the blink of an eye! You want me to believe they really are the wrong guys? You think just anyone can move like that?”
“Just… fucking hell. What is this mess? You’re going to…
” The guy I’d stolen the gun from stills as he stares at us.
His gun—which I’ve borrowed—is still trained on Grayson, and Grayson’s gun is trained on me.
Felix is just frozen in spot and Lane looks ready to fuck someone up but isn’t sure who.
“Tonio! What the fuck, man… Jesus Christ, I didn’t know you were still in the business.
Are you up there with those asshats now?
You jump ship? What’d your family think about that?
” He smacks the arm of his buddy who is trying to recover from a split lip and bleeding nose.
“You know this guy too, right? He’s a fucking beast when it comes to moving product.
You ever need someone to sneak shit across the border, slip under the nose of them cops, he’s your man. ”
I hesitate, really feeling like I shouldn’t look away from Grayson to see who the man is talking about. It’s not like Grayson is going to shoot me the moment I do, and the curiosity is killing me, but won’t they find it odd if I let my guard down with a gun pointed at me?
“Who?” Felix wonders, asking the question we all want to know the answer to.
“This one time there was a fucking police barricade waiting for him. They knew he was coming. They got a tip. And this fucker stole one of the cop cars and finished the run in it when he was fifteen . FIFTEEN! It was so fucking cocky. Best thing I’ve ever heard about.”
I have to turn. I have to.
Risking my life, I turn and look past Felix who is confused, past Lane who was a cop, and over to Antonio who is slowly kicking a rock around while staring at his feet. He seems to notice that I’m looking at him, so he kicks it around harder.
“I think you are mistaken, we are lowly hikers who simply got abducted by you assholes,” Felix says.
The guy straight up pushes Felix out of the way so he can reach out to Antonio. “How have you been, man?”
Antonio gradually looks up and locks eyes with me before he grimaces and holds out his hand. He’s reacting like he’s making a pact with the devil. I’m not sure he’s going to live through this exchange, but at the moment, it might be the only thing that gets us out of here.
That’s when Mr. Goatee joins the discussion. “Holy shit. You’re Elena’s son, aren’t you?”
“Ha… Haha. I really was just hiking,” Antonio says. “Wait… they were hiking. I was enjoying the luxuriousness of my SUV because I had some time off from the club I work at.”
Mr. Goatee looks confused. “With all that counterfeit money you moved, you can’t tell me you’re not rolling in dough.”
Antonio looks a bit embarrassed and horrified. “Ha… haha… I am indeed not and have none of it. No, I actually just…”
“Come on, dude, you need to meet the bossman,” the first guy who recognized him says.
“Does this mean we’re letting them free?” Grayson asks.
“Tonio, these your friends? They cool?”
“They’re so cool. They’re like… ice,” Antonio says before giving a weak and pitiful “Ha” and being dragged off as I realize we’re expected to follow.
I grudgingly lower my gun, and when some guy tries to take it from me I shove him at Grayson, who has to catch him to keep him from slamming into him.
As I start past Grayson, I glower at him. He seems reluctant to let them know we know each other, so he just stares at me while I pass him before hurrying after our drug lord Antonio.
“What the fuck is going on?” Felix whispers.
“I think one of your friends is a covert assassin and the other is a drug lord,” Lane replies.
“I’m not an assassin and… it sounds more like Antonio’s family is involved and he… maybe joined in a bit growing up,” I say.
Antonio grimaces. “I really was… going to tell you guys. I just wanted to pretend like that life didn’t exist anymore, you get me?
And I felt like if Felix knew, he’d be all, ‘Hey, Antonio, want to have a movie night?’ And next thing I’d know I’d be in a car chase just so we could steal some horse. ”
“Horse…” Felix whispers. “I really do want a horse. And I like this idea. Can you drive a trailer?”
The first guy who recognized him says, “This guy can drive anything. I saw him drive a semi once. Rammed it right into this guy’s car that was trying to con him. He demolished that fucker. Laughed the whole time.”
Antonio stares up into the sun like maybe he can just burn his eyes a bit to get out of this situation. It doesn’t seem to work because he sighs and lowers his eyes.
I notice Grayson trailing behind us as we’re led through a greenhouse and into a building not far from it.
I can’t help but question what else they’re doing here.
Is the marijuana actually a front for something else?
They’re obviously not interested in others knowing about this operation since it’s tucked out in the middle of nowhere with men who look like they could beat someone to a pulp if someone looked at them wrong.
And why is Grayson involved?
I can’t fathom that after nearly twenty years in the military, he left to pick up a life of crime. And better yet, why was Devon Jefferson’s photo in that drawer with this very location on it?
Mr. Goatee knocks on the door to an office.
“Come in,” a man says.
We’re led inside to where the man, a gruff-looking guy in his fifties, looks up with much interest.
“So you tell me you caught the people we were looking for, then you tell me that maybe you were mistaken because one guy is blind and the other is toting a pig around, and now you lead them into my office while one of them holds a gun?”
“Funny story,” Mr. Goatee says. “This is Elena’s son Tonio.”
The man glances at Antonio. “I remember,” he says. “I’m Ned. You probably don’t remember me, but your mother and I go way back. We were friends when we were kids.”
“Oh, how fun!” Antonio responds with some odd rise to his voice. “I kind of just want to go home, please? Ha… You know… it was lovely to meet you again and all. I can tell my mom you said hi.”
“So… let me clear this up. You really were just taking a break on the side of the road?” Ned asks.
“We were. These two got out to walk his service dog and their… pig.” We all look down at the pig in question. He’s busy scouting out the room. He knocks over the man’s trash can, decides there’s nothing interesting in there, and continues on his search.
“Yeah? So… a highly skilled runner who claims he left the business just happened to be outside of my place?”
Antonio laughs nervously. “Right? Like what the hell kind of coincidence is that? Well, we’ll just be on our way. It was a pleasure seeing you again. My mother will be thrilled to hear about it.”
Ned reaches back and lifts up a case that I hadn’t seen because his desk had been covering it. As he slides the very familiar case onto his desk, his eyes quirk up.
“So, an ex-runner just happened to stop outside of my place and… please, tell me whose gun this is? I have to assume the owner is the very same person who is standing in this room with a gun that surely doesn’t belong to him.”
Grayson reaches for the gun in my hands, and while I have half a mind to do a minor throat jab so he knows that the gun is now mine , I do wonder if I should hand it over.
Quickly deciding that I would like to think about this a moment longer, I smack his hand away.
He gives me a look, but I give him a challenging one right back.
I then fabricate a lie that might get us out of this.
“The gun is mine. Antonio is telling the truth, he left the business quite a while ago, but after he was nearly killed being dragged into something we don’t have time to get into, his mother insisted that he should have a bodyguard—which is me.
Do I need a rifle of that caliber to be a bodyguard?
No, you’re right, I don’t… or at least, I don’t think I should because not that long ago, I was forced to use it to push back some people who were trying to kill Antonio and his friends,” I explain.
“We were going to be three hours from home, and in my mind it was better to bring it and not need it than to not have it at all. Understood?”
“I see.”