Lawyer Trap

12





DAY THREE–SEPTEMBER 7

WEDNESDAY MORNING


After spending the night at the cabin, Draven came out of the mountains Wednesday morning to see if the bikers had broken into his apartment.

They had.

The place was a disaster.

It smelled like urine.

They’d pissed all over the carpet and furniture and walls.

Black magic marker on the living room wall said, “Dead man.” The TV was shattered. In the kitchen, the refrigerator door was open. Food had been thrown everywhere.

He went into the bedroom, slid the bed over, and pulled up the carpeting to see if they’d stumbled across his secret money compartment.

They hadn’t.

“Dumb shits,” he said, smiling.

He pulled a pillowcase off a pillow, stuffed the money inside, and tied a knot in the end. Then he grabbed the clothes that hadn’t been ruined, stuffed them in another pillowcase, walked down to his car, threw everything in the trunk, and drove off.

He stopped at Starbucks and got a coffee to go, then headed over to I-25 and pointed the rusty front end of the Chevy toward Pueblo. When he got into town two and a half hours later, he went to his old hotel and knocked on the hooker’s door, the one who had given him such a good blowjob Monday night.

Gretchen.

Wearing pajamas and no makeup, she now looked even more average than before, and the five extra pounds now showed as ten. He didn’t care.

She answered, groggy.

Looking like she just got dragged out of hibernation.

“Hi,” he said. “Gretchen? Right?”

She studied him, confused, not quite placing him.

“Monday night,” he said. “I had the room next to yours.”

She smiled and opened the door.

“I remember you,” she said. “You were nice. Come on in.”

He sat on the bed while she disappeared into the bathroom. The shower turned on and he could hear her adjusting the temperature. Then the curtain pulled back and she stepped in. Ten minutes later she was out and toweled off.

Looking very nice, actually.

She walked over, pushed him onto his back and straddled him. Then reached under his shirt and played with his nipples.

“So what’s your pleasure?”

“How much for the whole day?” he asked.

She looked stunned.

And stopped.

“You want me for the whole day?”

“Yep. Until midnight.”

She thought about it and he could tell she was trying to figure out how much she’d make otherwise, it being a Wednesday.

She shrugged.

“I don’t know. Three hundred?”

He smiled.

“How about a thousand?” he said.

“A thousand dollars?”

“Right. Up front.”

“You got it.”

She unzipped his pants but he grabbed her hand.

“Part of it might be a little dangerous,” he said.

She didn’t care.

“And I call the shots, all day long,” he said.

“Fine.”

He zipped up his pants, then pulled ten hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and handed them over.

“Let’s start with getting some breakfast,” he said. “I’m starved.”

She looked confused.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

She ran an index finger down the scar on his face.

“No one has ever taken me out to eat before,” she said. “Not on the clock, anyway.”