Without warning, Lia’s face came back into my head, and for once I just let it happen.
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the bench as the whole time she was with me raced through my brain. I remembered seeing her out there on the dry, dusty road walking aimlessly towards my cabin, and I remembered thinking I might just have to shoot her.
I didn’t do it – I made her dinner instead. Once night fell, she crawled into the little twin bed and I ended up inside of her minutes later – really inside of her. I didn’t push for a blowjob or anal – we just had straight sex. No condom, no barriers, no pretenses. I came in her over and over again, and I couldn’t get enough.
Even though I had told her I’d be there when she got back, I knew it wasn’t something I could ever have. I didn’t get the kind of promises she could offer. I didn’t deserve them. According to Rinaldo, I didn’t even understand that sort of shit.
I did, though. I knew exactly what I was missing.
Why did I keep thinking about her? I didn’t want to think about her. I’d been spending all my time since I left the cabin in Arizona doing things to stop myself from thinking about her, and it still wasn’t working. Whether I was sweating at the gym, researching the next target, or firing at the shooting range, she was always in my head.
Silk-soft hair running down her back, easy smile that made my heart beat faster for no reason at all, and that shy, quick blush that had my cock ready to go again at a moment’s notice.
From right behind me, the obnoxious sound of the parking garage door warning system went off and brought me out of the memory. I scowled over my shoulder at the car that moved out of the garage and around the loop North Field Boulevard made as it circled the park. The garage door went back down again.
What was I going to do about Bridgett? Did she really hear things I said in my sleep and tell Greco’s men about them? Who did she even know in his organization? I couldn’t quite fathom how she could have hidden such things from me, but then again, I was usually completely exhausted by the time I went to pick her up.
I remembered how quickly she talked about going to work over by the warehouses and considered maybe she had been working for them the whole time. Maybe her connection had always been there. Maybe she contacted Terry.
I wasn’t sure. They had both completely disappeared.
That didn’t make sense, though. What would she have been doing on Melvin’s corner, then? Not waiting for me – I had never even picked up a girl at that location before. I had always gone further south and used one of the hotels you could pay for by the hour.
She was chosen because I was in a hurry, wanted to fuck her at my apartment, and because she had the roundest ass of the group. There was no way that was a plant. Someone had to have gotten to her after they realized I was fucking her regularly.
I was back to the list of those who knew about her and frustrated that I had been so stupid as to take her out in public where we could have been seen by anyone. It made the list insane.
Top possibilities, then.
Melvin.
Jonathan.
Terry.
Mario.
One of the other hookers – Candy, maybe. What did I know about her?
Michele with one “L” at the bar.
There were too many and very little else to go on. Maybe I needed to figure out just which one of Greco’s boys was getting the information and see if that led me in the right direction. Something had to show itself, but it wasn’t going to happen out here in the park. The parking garage door was going to drive me over the edge before I came to any reasonable conclusions. I grabbed Odin and headed back upstairs, knowing there was one name that came up more than anyone else’s.
Only name that really made any sense.
Terry Kramer. His phone logs were far more interesting than Jonathan’s with several to a prepaid phone that seemed to find itself in the vicinity of my apartment pretty frequently, especially at night when a certain hooker should have been asleep in my bed. I dug back to earlier in the year and found two calls to Bridgett’s number from the last surviving payphone in Chicago, as far as I knew, which happened to be near Terry’s place.
There was no doubt that Terry would look for an excuse to get me run out of Moretti’s organization – I was his superior in skill and position, and he knew it. As long as I was around and the favorite, he couldn’t move up from where he was – nothing more than a two-bit thug.
Was Terry stupid enough to be working for the competition or just trying to get me out of the way?
My hands were jittery, and I was starting to feel really nauseated. I lay myself down to try to get some sleep, but it didn’t come easily. When it finally arrived, it brought forth some of the worst of the nightmares, and I woke sweating with a scream in my throat.
I took the dog out for a midnight walk to clear my head. It wasn’t particularly successful, but it w
as probably better than nothing. My cell phone began to ring just as Odin and I returned to the apartment.
I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered it.