TEN
…and Grace will lead me home.
Through trained instincts, I felt the shadow of someone fluttering around me even while in deep sleep. Slow and deliberate, I cracked my eyes only a peek to determine where and who.
The environment wasn’t mine. I was in a strange place, pleasingly more open and airy. Sumptuous and comforting.
The passing shadow tickled my psyche again, and my eyes opened to their full almond-shaped view.
A plump, Hispanic woman was by the bed, contentedly setting a dress down and smoothing it over with her palm.
With light effort, I jackknifed up, and from that rush of movement the memories of the night before came back all at once.
Shit.
I was at Chad’s place. This room was mine—temporarily. I was still in my attire from the night before, still at the edge of the bed.
“Ah, good morning, Miss. You up. I just about to wake you,” came a heavily accented voice. “I am Vivian, the housemaid. I here to attend you. I now ran your bath, and choose fresh clothes for you to wear today. Light and airy, yes? If you no happy with what I choose, it is okay, you choose for yourself. Now I go make breakfast. Is there anything you allergic to, Miss?”
For a moment I just stared at her, unsure of what to make of this. “Mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, egg plants, and lima beans,” I lied.
I was allergic to neither. Not allergic, just hated. I hated them and would prefer if she didn’t use them in anything she was preparing for me.
“Ah,” Vivian said with a smile, “You much like Mr. Niiveux. He allergic to all those, too.”
When a laugh garbled in my throat, Vivian looked at me funny.
Chad was a liar, like myself. He was allergic to none of those things. Like Ricardo and me, he just didn’t like the stuff. We used to pull this allergic thing on my father. And I couldn’t fathom how my father didn’t question the strange coincidence of Chad, Ricardo and me all being “allergic” to the exact same things.
Though why Chad would lie to his housemaid instead of flat-out telling her he hated the awful excuse for healthy foods was beyond me. Old habits die hard, I guess.
Biting my lip to quell my amusement, I gestured for Vivian to carry on.
Nodding, she made straight for the walk-in closet and I followed. It was spacious, neat, and organized, filled with tagged new clothes and shoes. “Is this…all mine?”
“Sí,” Vivian answered. “Mr. Niiveux make room and closet new for you last week. Strange he never do this for others. You must be very special. Very special.”
Last week? He did thislast week? Well, wasn’t he a cocksure piece of shit? To be so damn positive I would walk into his trap and he would succeed in capturing me. Like a bird. Locked in his cage.
Vivian led me to a safe in the wall at the very back of the closet. “Your cash and passports here. The temporary code be 0000. When you ready, you change it. Now I leave you to have good shower and change from your stinky clothes.”
Affronted, I glared at her. “Are you saying I smell bad?”
With a shrug, Vivian reached out and scornfully pinched my biker jacket, then fanned a hand under her nose as she reiterated, “Stinky.” Heading out of the closet, she spoke with hand gestures. “I choose lovely white sheer for you. Sheer will make you more like beautiful lady.”
Then she was gone, and I was left staring after her, wondering what I was supposed to make of her. She was neither nice nor mean, just neutral. She wasn’t old or young, just in between, and she was pretty, as most Hispanics were, while nicely dressed in a close-fitting maxi dress.
Shaking my head, I took the duffel bag from the safe and opened it. All my cash was still there in stacks of twenty thousand. Ten different passports, three burner phones, and an all-purpose knife. Fifteen different fake IDs and driver’s licenses. I searched around for my Ruger LCR small handgun, but should have known better. It’s a miracle he left the all-purpose knife.
Although I’d given up on trying to escape while on assignments, I always traveled with a just-in-case duffel bag of cash. I had about three and a half million dollars scattered around the world in safe deposit boxes. Cash that I took with me to each country I was sent to, then rented a safe deposit box and left it there…Just in case.
The Voice forced me to kill, but he also paid me for each successful hit. Depending on the risk and difficulty of the assignment, after the job was done, I would receive anywhere between two hundred to five hundred thousand dollars.
However, I wrote the payment shit off as a tease and a headfuck. If I didn’t have freedom, what purpose was money to me?
Zipping the bag shut, I stuffed it back into the safe, changed the code, then went to the bathroom, where a warm bath was waiting for me, just as Vivian had said. Shedding my clothes, I looked at myself in one of the full-length mirrors on both sides of the long, marble vanity.
Below my ribs, on my right side where Chad had kicked me, was a disgusting purple bruising, but it was nothing I wasn’t used to. Thank hell he hadn’t caught my ribs, or I’d be in some serious pain right now. My cheeks were still red and slightly bruised from his slaps, but gratefully, they weren’t black and blue discolored or swollen. Nothing a little extra make-up couldn’t fix.
