Читать книгу Body Movers Books 1-3 - Stephanie Bond, Stephanie Bond - Страница 12

Wesley swung his legs over the edge of his bed, put on his glasses and stared in the predawn light at the empty wall unit where a dozen monitors, hard drives, routers, keyboards, joysticks and printers had once sat, all interconnected. Damn, the police had cleaned him out. They’d even taken his software cabinet, games and landline phones.

He smiled to himself. It was a good thing that he kept all his good equipment at his buddy Chance’s apartment.

He stood and stretched the kinks out of his neck, a bothersome side effect of spending so many hours bent over a keyboard.

Whew. Thank goodness the business with the police had been settled yesterday in court. Liz Fischer was a godsend…and a hottie. Too bad a woman like her would never take him seriously—movies like The Graduate and PS gave guys like him false hope.

Walking to the bathroom connected to his room, he rubbed his sore mouth, working his jaw. He wished he knew who had sent the guy who’d jumped him in the courthouse bathroom, but the thug seemed to prefer to talk with his hands. In truth, the guy could have been working for either one of the people that he owed—Father Thom being his biggest creditor. Then again, the guy robbing him could have been a coincidence.

But he doubted it.

The worst part was that he’d been carrying the fifteen hundred that Chance had paid him for deleting the speeding tickets—money he’d planned to take to Father Thom this morning. Instead, he’d have to scrounge together a few hundred from his various hiding places and beg for more time.

He thought about showering, but decided that fresh deodorant and mouthwash would suffice. If he got the ass-kicking he expected from Father Thom’s thugs, a soak in a hot tub of water was probably in his near future anyway.

He rooted around the floor for a cleanish pair of jeans and pulled a T-shirt from the laundry basket of clothes he hadn’t gotten around to folding. He dressed and shoved his feet into his old Merrell slip-ons, mourning his brown suede Pumas, and kicked Hubert’s decaying shoes near his trash can.

In the fifty-gallon glass aquarium on the other side of the room, a mouse scurried around, terrified. A pang of remorse hit him and he walked over, unlocked the pin and slid the screen top aside. With a practiced hand, he captured the mouse and held it up by its tail.

“Relax, buddy, you got a reprieve. Einstein must be fasting again.” He stared down at the black-and-gray spotted axanthic ball python, all six feet of his longtime pet coiled disinterestedly in a corner. “Finicky reptile, are you sure you aren’t female? Or vegetarian?”

Einstein didn’t move, and would likely stay in his stoic position for the next several hours. The police search, with all the activity and noise, must have traumatized him.

Wesley slid the cover closed, locked the pin, then returned the lucky mouse to a smaller container. Sometimes he thought that Einstein didn’t eat out of sympathy for his prey. When he did feed, it was as if he would begrudgingly relent, then coil around and squeeze his prey to death before it had time to react, and swallow it promptly, as if to get it over with. Carlotta thought the snake was a man-eater, but Wesley could barely get him to eat enough to sustain his monstrous size.

Wesley sometimes wondered, though, what his pet could kill and consume if it were motivated.

Hearing a noise in the hallway, Wesley frowned. He’d hoped to be out of the house before Carlotta got up, partly because he didn’t want to worry her, and partly because he didn’t want to face her. The fact that she wasn’t normally an early riser told him that she probably hadn’t slept well, and no doubt he was the cause. Frustration tightened his chest. He just needed some time and space to get things worked out with his creditors and to investigate his father’s case. Although he appreciated his sister’s concern, her hovering was making things more complicated.

He made his way around the room and checked various hiding places—the hem of the curtain, the hollow leg of his metal bed, inside his worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye—and counted up three hundred sixty dollars.

He heard a muffled voice and realized that Carlotta was calling his name. God, he hoped she hadn’t set the kitchen on fire again.

He grabbed his backpack and stuffed his iPod, cell phone and money inside. Then he stepped out into the hall and closed his bedroom door. It was a house rule that his bedroom door be closed at all times because Carlotta lived in fear that Einstein would somehow escape his enclosure.

“Wesley!”

“I’m coming,” he yelled. But when he reached the living room, he stopped short. Sitting next to Carlotta on the couch was Tick, the tub of lard who had forced his way in the house last week and called Carlotta at work.

“Mornin’, Wesley,” the guy said, smiling and patting Carlotta’s knee.

Carlotta, clutching the newspaper, looked terrified. Tick must have been waiting for her when she stepped outside to leave for work. Fury balled in Wesley’s stomach—he wanted to kill the guy. He had always wished he was big and beefy like Chance, but never more so than at this moment.

“Leave her alone,” was all he could say.

“Where’s the money?” Tick asked.

Wesley pulled himself up to his full height. “Maybe you can tell me.”

Tick laughed. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“I was jumped yesterday. Guy took all that I was carrying. I figured it was for Father Thom.”

Tick wagged his fat head. “Nope. Must have been someone else you owe.”

Wesley couldn’t tell if he was lying—but then, did it really matter?

Then the man’s eyes grew mean. “So like I said, where’s the money?”

Wesley reached into his backpack. “After yesterday, three-sixty was all I could get together.”

Tick laughed. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”

Wesley extended the money and, as he hoped, Tick lurched to his feet to count it. “This ain’t enough, Wesley. Father Thom gave me strict orders not to leave here with less than a grand. You don’t want to get me in trouble with my boss, do you?”

Wesley swallowed. “No. But you can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip.”

Tick grinned. “Sure I can.”

“Wait a minute,” Carlotta said, her voice trembling. “Nobody’s going to squeeze blood out of anybody. I have the money.”

Wesley and Tick both looked at her. “You do?” they asked in unison.

Wesley frowned. “How?”

“Get it,” Tick said. “I’m beginning to lose patience with you two.”

Carlotta pushed to her feet and dropped the newspaper into a chair, then marched out of the room toward her bedroom.

Tick watched her leave and sucked his teeth. “Your sister’s got a smokin’ bod.”

“Watch your mouth,” Wesley said, clenching his fists.

The big man looked at him and laughed. “I guess if my sister looked like that, I’d be stupid about it, too.” Then the man sobered. “But you are stupid if you think that Father Thom won’t go after her if you’re late again. Remember that real hard, little man.”

Wesley opened his mouth to say something foul but stopped himself when he heard Carlotta’s footsteps. “Here’s the other six hundred forty,” she said, extending a stack of cash to Tick, her expression tight. “Now, please leave.”

The big man took his time counting the money, then shoved it into his pocket and smiled. “See how easy that was? Do this every week and pretty soon, you’ll be debt free, just like all those commercials on TV promise.”

“Get out,” Carlotta said through clenched teeth. “Or I’ll call the police.”

Tick laughed. “Yeah…right.” Then he looked at Wesley. “Remember what I said, little man.”

Wesley’s throat burned with bile as he watched the man walk heavily toward the door. At the last second, Tick turned his head and glanced at the aluminum Christmas tree in the corner of the room.

“Merry fucking Christmas,” he said sarcastically before banging the door shut behind him.

They were both quiet for a few seconds. He almost couldn’t bear to look at his sister. When he did, her eyes were stormy, her arms crossed, her back rigid.

He gave her his best little-brother smile. “Where did you get the money?”

“A cash advance on my credit card,” she said quietly. “My last credit card.”

“Well…thanks,” he said. “I’m sorry that had to happen here. I was going to take care of it—”

“Shut up, Wesley!”

He blinked.

“You. Have. To. Get. A. Job.”

“I’m supposed to upgrade two of the Sheltons’ computers this week.”

“I mean a real job,” she said, walking toward him slowly, stabbing her finger in the air, “with a paycheck and maybe even something as radical as health benefits. And you’re not allowed to work on computers, remember? You’re on probation for computer tampering! And that toad Lucas told me that if you violate your probation, he’d nail your ass to the wall. Is that what you want, Wesley? To go to jail?”

“Relax, sis,” he said, raising his hands and backing toward the door.

“Relax?” Her dark eyebrows drew together and her finger started to shake. “Listen to me, Wesley, and listen good. The free ride is over. Get a job and start taking responsibility for your debt, or—” Her throat constricted. “Or get out.”

Wesley reeled as if she’d slapped him. He blinked rapidly as she picked up her purse and walked past him and out the front door. He heard the dull hum of the garage door going up, and the growl of her car starting. When the garage door came back down, he exhaled.

Maybe it would be better if he slept on Chance’s couch for a while. Maybe Carlotta would be better off without him. And maybe it would give him the space he needed to look into his dad’s case.

He returned to his room and tossed a few things into a duffel bag. Chance wouldn’t mind him crashing there for a while—his friend was stoned most of the time anyway. Einstein would be fine for a few days. Outside on the stoop, he locked the door and was heading down the sidewalk toward the Marta train station when a black Cadillac pulled up to the curb and the passenger-side window zoomed down. A man’s face came into view, and Wesley’s knees weakened.

“Hey, Wesley, where you going?”

Wesley shouldered his duffel bag higher. “Nowhere, Mouse.”

“Really? Looks to me like you’re trying to skip town.”

“Nah, Mouse, I was just going to visit a friend.”

“You missed your last payment,” the man said pleasantly.

“I know. I ran into some trouble with the police.”

“I read the papers,” Mouse said. “Thought I’d give you a chance to get square with The Carver before you go to jail.”

It occurred to Wesley that it was probably The Carver’s guy who’d jumped him in the courthouse john. “I got probation,” he said, trying to sound upbeat.

“Good for you,” Mouse said. “So you’re going to make your next payment on time?”

“Sure thing.”

“Terrific,” Mouse said, nodding amiably. “Because I wouldn’t want to report back that you got the money to pay that crook Father Thom and not us.”

Wesley considered lying but decided to remain silent.

“Don’t be a stranger.” Mouse nodded toward the town house. “We know where you live.”

The car window buzzed up and the car pulled away from the curb. Panic curdled in Wesley’s stomach as he stood watching the taillights, weighing his options. Stay and continue to expose Carlotta to the dangerous men he’d gotten himself involved with…or go and leave her at home alone where she might be even more vulnerable.