Page 39 of Poisoned Promise
“Excuse me.”
A burly man sits inside with his feet raised on the desk and his arms crossed over a pot belly.
A dramatic explosion rises from the tablet he has set up on the desk playing some movie and he grunts but doesn’t look at me.
“Could I get in to see?—.”
Wait a second.
“Wanna earn two grand?”
His silvery eyes snap to me. “What?”
“I’ve got a storage unit I need cleared out,” I say as distant traffic dulls to the echo of several angry car horns. “Donate it. Trash it. Sell it. I don’t care. I just need it cleared out.”
Removing his feet from the table, he turns in his chair to face me and barely hides the glance down my body. “For two grand?”
“Mhm.”
“Why?”
“Two grand doesn’t buy questions, does it?”
He stands slowly and a greedy smile creeps across his lips. “No. No, it doesn’t.”
“Good. The Unit’s under the name Sylvia Grant. Here’s the key.” I fish it out of my back pocket and lay it on the counter. “We got a deal?”
He takes the key and twirls it around his fingers. “And the money?”
“Wait here.” Hurrying back to my car, I dig around in the back seat for my emergency stash. Ideally, I’d wanted to give this to Mary as a thank you but suddenly having this guy act as a complicated stop-gap should anyone come looking is a much wiser use of these funds. With the stacks in hand, I walk back to the counter where the guard continues to twirl the key around his fingers.
The twirling stops when I place half the money down on the counter.
“So, we got a deal?”
He doesn’t even attempt to hide the dollar signs in his eyes. “Hell yeah we got a deal.”
“Excellent. Pleasure doing business with you.” I add the second two stacks and lean forward. “I trust two grand also buys some issues with your CCTV?”
He smirks at me as he picks up one of the bundles of bills. “That shit ain’t worked in years. It’s just for show.”
“Wonderful. Have a nice life.”
“You too, Sylvia.”
When Felix traces me here, that guy and Sylvia should keep him busy for a while which will buy me more time to fully make Alex and me vanish in the middle of Florida.
If Felix’s even half the man I remember, he probably already knows about that Unit.
Returning to my car, I immediately put it in gear and drive slowly away from the storage units, following the GPS to get back to the motorway.
A yawn pulls at my jaw despite my best efforts to fight it, so I shake my head and turn up my music.
I haven’t slept since Felix.
Haven’t really slept since I killed the Rossis but Felix keeps me awake like no other. I’m torn between aching to see him again and terrified of what he might bring to my door before I get Alex away from here.
Music isn’t helping. Shaking my head again, I turn down the music and resort to conversation.
