Dream Maker (Dream Team 1)

He did not hesitate to walk to me.

I braced.

Mag was out there, watching.

He had me.

I had this.

“Evan Gardiner?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Twenty-two left, thirty-eight right, seventeen left. Trader Joe’s bag. Grab it. Keep it safe. I’ll text you in a couple of days with instructions.”

He then turned to walk away.

Wait.

What?

“Hey!” I cried, starting to follow him.

He turned back. “Twenty-two left, thirty-eight right, seventeen left.” He jerked his head to the sliding steel door on unit six. A door that had a combination lock on it. “Trader Joe’s bag. Keep it safe, Gardiner. Or Mick’s got problems.”

With that, he got in his car, reversed a little, then his massive vehicle chugged forward and rounded the units at the other end, disappearing.

I muttered to myself, “Twenty-two left, thirty-eight right, seventeen left,” as I approached the door.

I had to shove my keys in my pocket and get out my phone to engage the flashlight to open the lock.

This I did, and it made a huge, loud ruckus as I lifted the door.

The contents were shadowed, but I could tell there were a lot.

I swung my flashlight around, found a switch, flipped it, there was a hum and recalcitrant tube lights overhead came on. I entered just as my phone rang.

I dug it out of my back pocket, saw it was Mag, engaged and put it to my ear, searching for a Trader Joe’s bag.

“Okay, that wasn’t too bad,” I said.

“Nab the bag, do not look in it, put it in your car, and go. I’ll meet you at your place. I’m in position until you pull out,” he stated, and I didn’t know him very well, but he didn’t sound happy.

He also didn’t wait for me to confirm.

He disconnected.

It appeared this guy, or Mick, or someone collected a lot of junk.

And thus, it was not easy finding the Trader Joe’s bag.

Though I found it in an old cooler.

Mag (and possibly others) was watching so I didn’t look in it.

I just grabbed it, found it wasn’t heavy, but it made a noise that didn’t make me very happy. In fact, it made my breathing go wonky.

But I got out of there, pulled the door down, locked it, entered my car, stowed the bag, and got the hell out of there.

I drove five miles under the speed limit on the way home, which might be stupid, but I was freaked and I didn’t want to be freaked and in an accident where someone would find whatever was in that bag in my car and I might end up in the hospital.

And after that the pokey.

I needed to focus on something, which I decided, for once, would be my driving.

I would find Mag drove a lot faster for he left his position and he was on my tail the last five miles of the drive.

I swung into my covered spot.

He swung into a guest spot.

When I met him with the bag, he took it from me, and we both jogged up the steps to my second-floor pad.

I let us in.

He closed and locked the door behind us.

He then put the bag on my coffee table, and I stood beside him as he pulled out a wad of plastic sheeting that was stuffed in the top. Sheeting that would remain on this earth long after I was gone, and in its lifetime probably suffocate a number of dolphins.

But, for once, I had no mind to that.

What I heard bouncing around in that bag Mag reached in and pulled out.

A prescription pill bottle.

“Oxy,” he growled.

Oh no.

No, no, no, no, no.

He was peering into the bag as he declared, “There’s gotta be twenty, thirty bottles in there.”

He reached back in and pulled out a little baggie filled with milk-colored crystals.

“Ice,” Mag bit off. “Meth,” he said when I did nothing but stare at him.

“Oh no,” I whispered. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“There’s maybe a hundred of these in there,” he shared.

Oh God.

“And this,” he stated, reaching in and pulling out a brick of white covered in plastic wrap and crisscrossed with duct tape.

I’d seen those before.

In movies.

“Coke,” he grunted unhappily. “Two of these in there.”

I closed my eyes.

I opened them and quipped, “Man, you can get a lot of drugs in a Trader Joe’s bag.”

“This is not funny, Evan,” he clipped.

I pressed my lips together.

He was right.

So right.

Something else.

My brother was totally down with putting me in a dangerous situation.

I had never done drugs.

Considering my father, I’d never even smoked pot.

Except for my father’s (and brother’s and sometimes stepdad’s) pot, I’d never even seen any illegal drugs.

I had no earthly clue how much all that was worth and how badly a variety of unsavory characters would want to get their hands on it.

I just knew it was probably worth a lot.

And it was sitting on my coffee table.

I also had no clue why the dude in the long car, since he knew the combination to the lock and where the drugs were, couldn’t just grab them himself.