Chapter 38 Zeth
Zeth
I arrive at Jacob’s compound at nightfall.
Somewhere in the city, Rick’s waiting impatiently for direction from me.
Michael is already here, too, having been told to watch the compound since he learned of Alexis’s presence.
The place is way out in the boonies, skirted with a ten-foot-high concrete wall.
It encircles the whole place apart from the front entrance, which bears a fierce-looking wrought-iron gate with formidable spikes on the top.
No fucker gets in or out of here, if not without Jacob’s direct say-so, then at least without his knowing about it.
Two beefy guards smoke joints by the gateway, scowling at me with dark eyes as I pull the Camaro up out front.
Their hands move to the weapons on their hips as I step out of the car.
“Turn around, friend. This ain’t the ’burbs. You ain’t got no business here,” the short, fat one tells me. I arch an eyebrow.
“Sure I do. I got an open ticket with Jacob.”
The other man spits on the ground and then draws deeply on his joint. The smell of pot blossoms in the night air. “We ain’t got no piece-of-shit enforcers on the guest list tonight, brother. You need to go on home.”
I walk up to the gate’s railings and lean my face close to the bars. “Better check your list again. Brother.”
The two of them look at each other. I’m not driving a Benz, so I’m obviously not their regular clientele.
The size of me doesn’t seem to be doing me any favors, either.
A tense minute follows—them staring at me and me staring right back at them—before the tall one tuts disapprovingly and turns his back, mumbling into a small walkie-talkie.
He quickly turns back around and gestures upward with his chin. “Smile for the camera, fuckhead.”
A camera mounted to the wall to my right swivels around to capture me. I plaster a fake grin on my face, arrogant as hell, flipping off the blinking lens.
Distorted speech squawks out of the walkie-talkie in the taller guy’s hand.
The voice sounds angry. Both guards’ faces solidify into aggravated steel—sorry, motherfuckers!
—as reluctantly they open the gate for me.
I get back into the Camaro and make sure to spin desert sand up into their faces as I burn past them.
Outside the huge, single-story building that lies within the walls, a dark, lithe shape paces down the steps to meet me.
The figure of a woman. I park and take a moment to get my story straight in my head: I’m just passing through, looking for a place to crash. Charlie knows all about this.
Charlie has no fucking idea I’m here. Charlie has no fucking idea I’ve even left Seattle, or that I decided to go against orders and didn’t kill Rick like I was supposed to.
My mood is still blacker than black over the prospect that the old man might have been the one to tell the police I killed Murphy.
If I’d seen his fucking face before I left, I would have beaten down on it until his whole head had caved in.
The woman who comes out to meet me is called Alaska.
I remember her from the last time I was here with Charlie.
More specifically, I remember her tits. She’d danced for me at Jake’s insistence.
The girl has beautiful tanned skin and the body of a fucking gymnast. She splits me a wide smile as I make my way toward the building.
“So you came back to see me, huh?” she laughs. “Only took you four years.”
Four years wasn’t long enough away from this place. She places her hands against my chest as she leans up to kiss my cheek. I bear it as long as I can. The woman sells her body at Jake’s behest, but that isn’t what bothers me. I didn’t come here to fuck. And she isn’t Sloane Romera.
I take her by the wrists and remove her hands. “Sorry. Just came to pay my respects to your boss,” I say flatly. She pouts, pretending to be offended by my rejection.
“I’m a lot friendlier than Jacob tonight.
Come on, come inside. I’ll keep you to myself for an hour before you go talk boring business.
” I just look at her. When she reads on my face exactly what I think of her advances, her coy smile fades.
“I see. Fair enough.” Raising both eyebrows, she cants her head to one side, pointing toward the well-lit building.
“He’s by the pool. Don’t get lost finding it.
” She turns and storms back into the building, hips swinging, fizzing with fury.
I find Jacob exactly where she said he would be, sitting on a lounger by the pool. He sips from a cut-glass tumbler, grinning when he sees me. He’s put on even more weight since I saw him last, and he was already obese to begin with. Probably on the verge of coronary failure by now.
“Zeth Mayfair? Well, I’ll be.” His accent is thicker than ever; he must have gone home and visited his mother in Tennessee recently.
“Why you waited so long to come see me, huh?” He doesn’t rise from the lounger.
Just holds his hand up for me to take hold of in some semblance of a limp shake.
He points to the lounger beside me, groaning as he reaches over himself for a decanter of amber liquid.
He free pours three fingers into another glass and holds it out to me.
Smells like whiskey. I accept. I’d be shitting on his hospitality otherwise.
Bad start to an already precarious meeting.
“Where’s that ugly English bastard? He come down here with you?” Jacob asks.
“No, I’m flying solo. Long drive to Las Flores. Thought you might lend me a bed for the night.” I am oh-so-casual. “Maybe I’ll impose on your hospitality two or three nights if you’re feeling generous. There are a few old friends I wouldn’t mind catching up with while I’m in the area.”
Jacob takes a deep sip from his glass, dark brown eyes pensively studying me over the rim of the glass.
He probably thinks Charlie’s sent me down here to spy on his business.
These bastards pretend to be thicker than thieves, but they don’t trust each other one fucking iota.
Which, by default, means Jacob doesn’t trust me, either.
“Sure thing, my friend. My house is your house, as the Spanish say.” He smiles, but there’s no warmth in his eyes.
“You’re very kind.” I drink from the glass—definitely whiskey—savoring the burn.
“Your timing’s impeccable actually,” Jacob says conspiratorially.
“If you stay ’til Tuesday, you’ll be able to attend our little event.
” The emphasis on the final word tells me exactly what kind of an event he’s referring to.
The kind I used to hold myself until recently.
Until Sloane. “I got plenty of fresh meat ready to be well seasoned,” he laughs, and his belly shakes like a half-deflated waterbed.
“This one’s a bit different, though. You gotta bring someone to the table.
You catch my meanin’? If not for touching, then at least for looking at.
” He gives me an exaggerated wink, his jowly cheeks swinging like a basset hound’s.
“I doubt you’ll have any problem finding someone to come with you. ”
Tuesday. If Alexis is here, then she’ll definitely be attending a party like that. Today’s only Friday, though. I hadn’t really planned on staying that long.
I’ll just have to make sure I run into the girl before then. I nod, taking a healthy swig from the whiskey. “Yeah. Sounds fun. I doubt I’ll have a problem.”
SLOANE
The sleek black car follows me from the highway all the way to St. Peter’s.
Lacey sees it first—I’m having to take her to work with me, which is all kinds of fucked—and points it out as I drive.
The car passes the entrance to the hospital’s parking lot when I pull in, but it draws up on the curb outside the coffee shop across the street, the engine cutting as we get out of the Volvo and make our way to the building’s entrance.
The generic-looking dark vehicle has blacked-out windows, so it’s impossible to see inside, although Lacey seems to have a good idea who it is.
“That’s one of Charlie’s boys for sure,” she announces. She’s disturbingly nonchalant about this tail. I’m on the verge of bolting inside the hospital and hiding in a cleaning closet or something. “Bet they’re there when we leave,” she adds.
“If they’re there when we leave, I’m calling the cops.”
She snorts. “Good luck with that.”
“What do you mean?”
Pulling one shoulder up to the side, she looks at me like I’m stupid, eyes rolling. “The cops are all in someone’s pocket. Mostly Charlie’s. They probably wouldn’t even show up, let alone do anything about it.”
Well, that’s super fucking concerning. It feels like I’ve been sucked into a 1950s gangster movie, except this is real. And not being able to call the cops? Just great. Seriously. Just great.
I deposit Lacey in an on-call room. I’m already nearly late for my own rounds, so I don’t have time to baby her.
“Don’t step one foot out of this room,” I command.
“You were a patient here not that long ago. Plenty of people will recognize you, and Zeth’ll murder me if you get put on a psych hold while I’m at work.
” Fucking Zeth. The guy has done nothing but cause me problems. If he hadn’t killed Eli, I might have gotten the information I was after, and Alexis would already be back home.
She’d be heading to church with Mom and Dad at the weekend, accompanying the choir on piano and singing along with the parishioners.
I try to hold on to my anger a moment, but it fizzles out like an extinguished firework when my mind decides to remember other things instead.
Like his painfully big cock, teasing me as he readied to push inside me.
His deep brown eyes watching my expression closely as he sank himself as deep as he could, groaning under his breath.
Shit.