Chapter 1
Her voice was soft in my ear. “Hi, John.”
I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, and gripped the phone tighter.
“You know who this is, don’t you?” Her voice was throaty now, filled with hints of long-ago lust and forgotten playfulness.
Several seconds passed before I slowly exhaled.
“It’s me, baby.”
Opening my eyes brought back my current reality. Several empty beer cans and a discarded pizza box cluttered the coffee table. Nearby, a pile of dirty clothes lay beside a tipped-over laundry basket. In the kitchen, dishes and glasses were stacked in the sink, clamoring for attention. The smell of last night’s dinner—the take-out pizza—hovered in the air.
“Are you still there?”
“How’d you get this number?”
“Aw... That’s no way to talk to an old girlfriend, is it?”
Pushing down on the footrest, I snapped the ratty recliner upright. “Been a while.”
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound it. “I should have called sooner.”
It only took a couple of steps to the kitchen, where I pulled the last beer from the fridge.
“But you could have called,” she said. The mischievousness had faded from her voice to be replaced by something new. Was she pouting? That didn’t seem like her.
After snapping open the can, I took a sip.
“I kept waiting to hear from you.” She wasn’t pouting. It was guilt—just applied more smoothly than I remembered.
A long pull off the beer now. Then a second.
“Hello?”
“Why’d you call, Paige?”
“Because I missed you.”
“No, really.”
She paused. “I need your help.”
“For what?”
“To get something.”
I set the beer on the counter and massaged my forehead with my palm.
“Somebody stole something,” she said, “and I want it back.”
“What’d they take?”
“Come to Seattle, and I’ll tell you.”
From the counter, I shook a cigarette from a slightly crumpled pack of Marlboros. Using a blue plastic lighter, I lit it and inhaled. Grabbing the can of beer, I returned to the recliner. “Why me?”
“I need someone I can trust.”
I dropped into the chair, and the footrest snapped back into place. “Call the cops.”
“I am.”
“Funny.”
“Are you blaming me for that?”
I shook my head even though she couldn’t see the effect. “I did that to myself.”
We listened to silence for a bit until she said, “I’ll pay for you to come.”
How much would it take for me to see her again?
She must have sensed my question. “A thousand.”
Another inhale on the cigarette, then an exhale. A thousand bucks. How long would it take her to make that much money? Three days? Maybe two if they were good. It was probably a couple of weeks of work for me. Could be three if things were slow—a far cry from my former self.
I said, “Tell me what they took.”
“Will you do it?”
My gaze flitted about the small unit. A thousand dollars would give me some breathing room in child support, but it meant going back there—home—where everything went wrong.
“C’mon,” she goaded, “it’ll be fun to see each other again.” It sounded forced. We both knew there was no way it would be fun.
“Make it two.”
Half of me prayed she wouldn’t agree. I wasn’t sure what the other half wanted. That’s the part I hated.
“Yeah, okay. A thousand to come over and a thousand when you get back what’s mine.” When I didn’t respond, she chuckled lightly. “I knew you’d do it.” Confidence filled her voice. “When can you be here?”
A final swallow of beer, and I set the can on the floor. I slipped the remaining cigarette into the opening, causing a hiss. “Still in the same apartment?”
“I’ve moved up. Got a nicer place.”
I grabbed the empty pizza box from the coffee table and wrote down her new address as she recited it. It rolled off her tongue as if she’d been there for some time. “I’ll head over in the morning.”
“I start work at one.”
“Leave your apartment unlocked.”
“I’ll put a key under the mat. I can’t wait to see you.” Again, it sounded forced.
I murmured, “Uh-huh,” snapped my cell phone shut and dropped it to the floor.
My fists clenched, and my jaw tightened. The best thing I could do at that moment would be to throw that pizza box away and ignore any further calls from her. I stared at my handwriting until my jaw hurt.
With a flick of the wrist, I tossed the thin box across the small room. The recliner snapped upright, and I stepped over to the window.
Across the way, an Amtrak pulled behind the combination bus/train station. In front of the building, a Greyhound let its passengers out. A couple of guys in faded green Army jackets wandered away from the building, each carrying a duffel bag. They headed toward Slammer’s, a nearby country bar.
They looked the type for trouble.
