Chapter Seven
Roe
By the time I made it back home, my feet were killing me, but I’d managed to walk off the too-full feeling from lunch.
That, combined with no longer being in such close proximity to Milo and all his disarming attractiveness, made me think a lot clearer.
And the dominant thought was: what the fuck?
One could make a case for the money drowning out any argument against doing this.
The money was still incredibly tempting. Especially since my TV was becoming pixelated and my laptop had been glitching so hard that I could barely use it anymore. There were upgrades my life needed. And, yes, an exit. A future.
Milo’s money could provide all that.
That said, the risks for me were high.
My relationship with Frank was tenuous at best. It was a careful dance, one where the music and steps were changing constantly as it was. Making me have to engage with him more was only going to make it harder to keep myself safe.
Also, I was aligning myself with a man I didn’t even know. I didn’t even know his real last name.
But I was trusting him.
To pay me, first of all.
And to keep me safe if things went bad.
“Maybe I have two investigations to work on,” I told Alley as she climbed up on the arm of the couch to hang with me.
She wasn’t an affectionate cat. She didn’t make biscuits on my leg or figure-eight between my legs.
She never climbed on me to ask for pets and only tolerated touch if she knew a treat was coming her way.
But she did enjoy hanging out with me wherever I was.
And she seemed to like when I talked to her.
Since I had no actual friends to do it with, I liked talking to her too.
“I can earn my money by trying to look into Frank. But I can also start looking into Milo too. If I’m going to align myself with someone, I should at least know who it is, right?”
Alley slow blinked her one blue eye.
“Exactly. I don’t want to be anyone’s pawn. Well, it’s time to tidy up. So you might want to go hide under the bed because I’m going to have to take out your arch-nemesis,” I warned her, meaning the vacuum.
I climbed off the couch and gathered my supplies. Because I was usually too busy during the week to catch up on housekeeping. But also because I thought better when I was cleaning.
So I started my cleaning routine the same way my grandmother taught me when I’d been staying with her. I shook out the curtains, cleaned the blinds, and used a wall mop to clean any dust and cat hair off.
I grumbled, like I did every week, that I wasn’t allowed to paint the ugly stark white satin finish paint that looked shiny no matter how low the light was in the space.
I tried to soften it by having several large art pieces on flat canvases in light, feminine shades.
The couch, too, was a shade of dusty rose.
This was a girl’s apartment—just Alley and me—so I didn’t care about it being too girly.
The front room had a large window that opened to a catwalk, which meant that people passed by my apartment day and night.
From the looks of the place, I was relatively sure it had once been a cheap motel for tourists but had been renovated (if you can call it that) into apartment units.
Which would explain the layout: the postage-stamp-sized living room and the bathroom where the door slammed into the tub, and the sink was attached directly to the wall because there was no room for a cabinet below.
The kitchen was laughably tiny. It had an apartment-sized fridge, a sink that barely fit a plate, let alone a pot, and no oven. Just a microwave and a hot plate that was so old I was too afraid to ever actually use it.
I’d learned to be a big fan of salads and healthy sandwiches since I moved in here.
The bedroom was barely big enough for the full-sized bed I had in it, but I was glad to have a roomy closet with a mirrored door.
I’d been so used to living out of hotels in my life that the noise was something that I barely even noticed anymore. Even if I did sometimes worry about how easily strangers could access my apartment.
Or, you know, not strangers.
I had a chronic nightmare about Frank showing up at my door.
On the plus side, the minuscule space meant that from climbing off the couch to when I lit my ‘everything is clean’ candle was only about an hour.
As I showered off, then got dressed and grabbed a ride to the pet store, there was a nervous, jumpy sensation in my veins, a fluttering of my heartbeat.
I had the feeling as I walked through the sliding doors of the pet store that it had nothing at all to do with the potential danger of this situation I was agreeing to do… and more to do with the man I was going to be working with.
As much as I tried to convince myself that the nervousness was about not knowing who he really was or what his motivations truly were, and that I could fix that by investigating him a bit, some (illogical) part of me said it was something else, something more personal.
I made my way to the cat food aisle.
I ordered her litter to be delivered in discreet packaging since I was typically walking and didn’t want to have to haul that around.
But Alley was surprisingly picky about her food considering she used to, I assume, eat random mice, birds, or dumpster leftovers.
I could never tell when she was going to decide she suddenly hated a flavor she previously loved.
I saved myself a lot of frustration by purchasing various flavors and brands to keep her interested.
My little hand basket was filling up as I kept glancing around while trying not to look like I was casing the joint.
Was he not coming?
Was this whole thing a scam?
God, did he work for Frank?
To see if I was loyal or not?
I wouldn’t put that kind of thing past Frank.
He was paranoid and didn’t seem to trust anyone.
I’d once seen him accuse one of his security guards of letting an ‘assassin’ in to murder him. When, in reality, it was someone too drunk to be able to read the Employees Only sign.
The guard had been fired and blackballed so hard that he had to move out of AC to get another job.
It wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities that Frank was testing out his employees. Especially one like me who always held myself just out of reach.
I was in full panic mode by the time I walked down the cat food aisle, ready to start looking out the windows for Frank or one of his men.
And then there he was.
Standing there, staring at the wall of aquariums, head tipped to the side.
“I thought you stood me up,” I said as I moved up beside him to watch the tank full of goldfish swim around.
Milo glanced down.
“Got distracted,” he admitted.
“By fish?”
“Had one of these as a kid. Won it at some fair game.”
“Let me guess. It died in a week.”
“It died on the day of my high school graduation.”
“Wait… what? Doesn’t everyone have a tragic goldfish story?”
“I was an unusual kid. Didn’t take much seriously. But when I did, I fully committed to it. Drove my mom fucking nuts with how many trips to the local fish store I demanded as I kept upgrading the tank and messing with the water to get it just right.”
“What was his name?”
“Capone.”
“Did he look like these?” I asked, nodding toward the goldfish.
“Nah. He was a Telescope. The ones with the big eyes,” he explained at my blank look.
“I bet my cat would get a kick out of watching goldfish. I put videos on the TV for her sometimes. But I’m already pushing it having her illegally. And I’m not sure the floors of the place could handle the weight of an aquarium. Are you thinking about getting another one?”
“Not right now. But maybe eventually. Get one of those fancy-ass built-in ones. How fat is your cat?” he asked, glancing down into my basket.
A little laugh escaped me at that.
“She is very picky. She likes having options.”
“Well, we can’t fault her for having discerning taste,” he said, starting to walk up toward the counter. “Do you have a bag?” he asked as I set the cans on the counter.
I handed it to him, thinking nothing of it until he finished stacking the cans into it, then handed it back to me.
Then there it was.
A black zippered pouch sitting on top of my cat food.
I hadn’t even seen him slip it in there.
“That was slick,” I said, slinging the bag over my shoulder.
“Then you’re really going to be impressed by the ride share waiting for you,” he said, waving toward it.
“When did you order that?”
“When I came in and saw you browsing the cat food.”
“Wait. I have to pay,” I said as he started to walk away from the counter.
“He already took care of it,” the clerk said, making me look between them.
“What? When?”
The clerk smiled and shrugged as Milo went to the door, looking smug as he glanced back at me.
Oh, yeah.
There was more to this guy than met the eye.
And that’s why I made one stop on the way home, finally getting myself a working laptop.
Because I needed to figure out who, exactly, this Milo “Grant” was before things went any further.