But the man in my chair spoke again and he seemed the type of guy who liked to have people’s attention when he talked. He also seemed the type of guy you didn’t piss off, seeing as he was cool with breaking into a woman’s home with his minions, one of whom pointed a gun at her.
“You should know who I am, of course,” he stated. “I’m Benito Valenzuela. Perhaps your man has mentioned me.”
I stared at him, fighting my body quaking, so aware there was an actual gun pointed at me and scary people I did not know in my living room that both these things felt like physical touches slithering against my skin, making the fight to stop shaking an extremely difficult one.
“Has he?” the man asked.
I kept staring and did it awhile before it hit me he’d asked me a question.
“Sorry?” I croaked. “Has who what?”
“Has High mentioned me?”
Oh fuck.
Fuck, fuck, FUCK!
This guy was here because of Chaos.
This man was in my house with his minions, one of them training a gun on me, because of High.
It was then I belatedly saw the crate sitting next to my cuddle chair.
The crate I thought was lost.
The crate with the pictures in it that I’d mourned.
Until two weeks ago.
Now, like a bad penny, it was back.
But now I knew this man had taken it.
Which meant he had an eye on my house. High coming. High going. Pictures of High and me in that crate.
He had the wrong idea.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“I see he hasn’t,” the man muttered, and my attention sliced back to him. “Chaos. The only thing we agree on is keeping gash out of our business.”
I felt my mouth get dry.
He tipped his head to the side. “You’ve taken a lot of resources.”
“I... what?” I asked when he didn’t say anything further.
“Having a man at the airport waiting for you,” he told me. “Two weeks. That’s a lot of man hours.”
More cold slinked over my skin.
Why would he do that?
“Weak link,” he said softly, something in his eyes changing, and I didn’t like him or this situation before, but that change made me like it even less. “With Arlo out west and the situation here deteriorating, I had to find the weak link. The one with the hot head. The one who understands how the game is played. The last bastion of a lost empire. The one I could nudge to set things in motion.” He lifted his finger, wagged it up and down my way, and whispered, “I’m nudging.”
“I don’t know...” I cleared my throat quickly when the words came out choked. “I don’t know what you think but I don’t have anything to do with Chaos.”
He shook his head, moved a hand, tapped the top of the crate beside him, and said, “High Judd fucking you on your desk in that pretty little house out back says different.”
Oh God!
“You watched?” I wheezed.
He shook his head again. “Not me, I missed that show. But I heard it was a good one.”
Oh God!
Now I was terrified and humiliated.
“Now,” he went on, “I’ve waited some time for your return and I’d rather not wait any more. You’re home, so you can deliver a message for me.”
Since delivering a message usually included being capable of doing that, this gave me hope that perhaps this scenario was not going to end how I feared it would. In other words, culminating in a variety of horrible, degrading, painful, and possibly deadly ways.
So quickly I asked, “What message?”
Eyes on me, slowly, he stood.
I braced, doing it fearing my body would splinter into pieces, my attention keen on him.
I experienced that sensation for far too long as he just stood there, staring at me.
When I thought I’d scream, he said one word.
“Nudge.”
Then, just with that, he gave me a weird, frightening smile, looked to the men in the room, jerked his head, and they all walked to my hall and disappeared.
I heard my front door open and close.
I stood frozen to the spot, breaths coming in rasps, torn between running the other way and running their way to make sure they were gone.
I heard a car start up outside and I also heard it drive away.
When I heard it no more, I moved.
I did it fast and I did it without thinking.
My movements took me to the drawer in my kitchen that held a variety of things, all of it meticulously organized in trays.
I grabbed my car keys and dashed out the back door.
I didn’t lock it.
I ran to my car, got in, tossed my purse to the passenger seat, started up, turned the SUV around in my courtyard, and headed down my drive.
I then took a trek I had not taken in twenty years.
I drove to Broadway, down Broadway, direct to Ride Auto Supply.
Direct to Chaos.
I pulled in, drove down the side of the store, and saw the big garage in the back where they built their bikes and cars. I headed into the massive forecourt of the garage, turned left, and parked outside the long building that ran the length of the space from the back of the store to the end of their property.
The Chaos Compound.
I parked, got out, and ran into the Compound.
I skidded to a halt in a place I knew like the back of my hand, hadn’t seen in decades, and with the little I took in, noticed it hadn’t changed a bit.
I’d skidded to a stop at the curve of the bar that ran along the front of the room.
There I saw Big Petey on a stool and seeing a man I once cared about deeply, I couldn’t hack it.
So I looked behind the bar to a good-looking, young, blond guy I didn’t know and snapped, “Who’s your president?”