Lawyer Trap

42





DAY EIGHT–SEPTEMBER 12

MONDAY


On the car seat next to Draven sat the keys to Mia Avila’s tattoo shop, Draven’s knife, and a half-empty flask of Jack. Normally the Colorado topography on the drive to Pueblo excited him. This afternoon, however, he could only think about getting the two thousand dollars and the note out of the bitch’s safe and then getting the hell out of that damn town once and for all.

Getting the keys to the shop was easy. They were in the woman’s purse. Getting her to tell him the combination to the safe, however, required more than a little persuasion.

But he was a good persuader when he needed to be.

A very good persuader.

Right now the little bitch was drugged and tightly secured to the bed. He had almost killed her as soon as she gave him the combination, but at the last second he stopped himself, just in case she was screwing with him and had given him the wrong numbers.

He’d need her alive, if that happened.

Swinging by the farmhouse to tell Gretchen he’d be tied up with work today had been a good idea. She’d started to get lonely—horny, too. He took care of both those needs in style and promised he’d be back this evening. In the meantime, he gave her some more money to buy more things that she’d thought of for the house.

He could still smell her on his skin.

He pulled into Pueblo mid-afternoon. In a perfect world he’d wait until dark. But he needed to get this done fast so he had enough day left to get the stripper, Chase, up to the cabin for tomorrow’s client.

Not to mention having to kill Mia Avila.

He swung past the tattoo shop and found everything exactly as it had been before. He expected yellow crime-scene tape on the front door but found none. Good. He parked the beat-up Chevy two blocks down the street and doubled back on foot, wearing a dark blue sweatshirt with the hood over his head.

He slipped on latex gloves, entered through the back door and locked it behind him.

Not a sound came from anywhere.

The only break to the silence came from the movement of air in and out of his lungs.

Perfect.

He found the safe exactly where the bitch said it would be, in the corner of the back room under a white sheet. It turned out to be a freestanding unit, not bolted to the floor, about four feet high and big enough to hold a good-sized dog. It looked to be at least fifty years old. He pictured it starting life in an old western saloon.

Now to open it and then get the hell out of Dodge.

He pulled the combination out of his wallet and set it on top of the safe.

27-42-61.

He dialed it, being careful to land exactly on the numbers.

It didn’t work.

Shit.

He tried it again.

It didn’t work again.

What the hell?

Sweat beaded on his forehead and he wiped it off with the back of his sleeve.

This time he tried going to the left first, LRL instead of RLR.

Again nothing.

“Bitch!”

He tried it a dozen more times, varying the number of passes, but couldn’t get the little a*shole to open.

Goddamn it!

It had taken him over three hours to get here.

For nothing.

The little bitch would pay for this.

Big time.

She wants to play games?

Well, he could play games too.

He picked it up to get a feel for the weight. Using a bear hug, he got it off the ground, but barely. It had to be every bit of two hundred pounds, which would have been manageable if the damn thing wasn’t so bulky and awkward. Even if he waited until dark and pulled the Chevy up to the back door, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to muscle it into the trunk.

Or whether it would fit.

He kicked it.

So hard that a tingle shot all the way up his leg.

“You little bitch!”

He covered it back up with the sheet, opened the rear door a slit, peeked outside, saw nothing, stepped outside, and then locked up.

The sun beat down and he knew he looked suspicious with the hood over his head, but he left it there anyway. He got to the street without encountering anyone and then walked toward the Chevy.

Then he saw something.

A Harley sat in front of the car.

A biker with greasy black hair stood behind the vehicle, by the license plate, talking into a cell phone and making animated gestures.

Shit!

Draven backed up and hid behind a pickup truck.

Almost immediately a deep-throated rumble came from a distant street. Several bikes were coming this way.

Draven headed away from his car, walking as inconspicuously as he could. By the time he turned down a side street, three more Harleys had pulled up to his car.