“No. It’s clean.” Clean enough, he thought, gazing at the horizon. Clean as he could make it. “How much?”
She told him. Shit. A hundred thousand more. That was a lot of goddamn money. Much more than he’d suspected. Plus, he knew she was lowballing him, asking for much less than what she really needed. She was a proud woman—she worked two goddamn jobs, shitty jobs with shitty pay, because it was all she could get.
He sucked his teeth. Jesus Christ. The sick kid of a single mother. Couldn’t they give her a goddamn break? He couldn’t let them end up on the street. But paying off those bills, even in part, would burn through much of what was left in his account. Most of the payment for Finney’s job—this goddamn shitty job—was on the back end. Thank Christ it was over. He needed what Finney owed him. Now.
I need that money.
He promised to transfer more than enough to her by the end of the day.
She thanked him, and said, “So. You sound okay.”
“Yeah. I’m all right.”
“Can you tell me where you are?”
“No.”
A pause. “Can you tell me when we’re going to see you again? Sammy keeps asking about his favorite uncle.”
His only uncle. His only family, besides his mother and sister. Sammy and Sierra’s dirtbag father had split years ago. Sebastian had toyed with the idea of tracking him down, so he could kill the asshole (slowly, of course), but decided the prick wasn’t worth the effort. The boy needed a father figure, something Sebastian had never had. The girl, too. “Soon, Sis. Soon. I’m finishing up a job now.”
“What kind of job?” Her voice was thick with suspicion.
“Just a job.” He added quickly, “Legit, Sis.” Legit enough.
“Don’t bullshit me, Brother.”
He sighed. He knew changing the subject wouldn’t help. She was a fucking pit bull: Once she grabbed ahold of you, no force on God’s earth would make her let go. “Look. It shouldn’t take more than a few weeks for me to set my shit straight. Then I’m coming to see you guys. And I’m staying, Sis.”
“How long?” she said after several seconds.
“Long enough for me to find the boy some goddamn proper stimulation.”
She laughed, and he knew he had her. They spoke for the next half hour, then, only as twin brother and sister could. And then, when exchanging good-byes, she said something odd—something she hadn’t said in years, not since he’d re-upped after his first combat tour.
“Just, be careful, Brother. Please. Be careful.”
She hung up.
Be careful.
His arm holding the phone went slack and dropped between his legs. He stared at the dark clouds gathering over the ocean.
Sick.
He was sick to death of this whole goddamn business. Thank Christ he was about to be done with it.
It was time to check in with Finney and get his final payment. He sighed and tapped the Fruit Punch Drunk icon on his phone. The audio in his earpiece crackled to life.
RITA
… and when Rita opened her eyes again, another Rita was lounging in the chair next to the bed, the same chair in which Chase had been sitting. She was wearing a hospital gown, just like hers, and staring at her. Her legs—muscular and firm, the legs of a runner—were crossed. Her hands were interlaced in her lap, casually, as if the two were having a chat over coffee. Just-us-girls.
“I knew, Dr. Wu,” the other Rita, the one sitting in the chair, said. She spoke with Finney’s voice, which Rita could hear only in her left ear. “I knew that you were drinking before my wife’s surgery.”
Rita stared at the other Rita in the chair, and replied, “It was all you, wasn’t it? That weird compulsion I had to operate this morning, and the bleeding. All of it. I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve destroyed my career. My life. Everything that means anything to me.”
The other Rita said, “You set yourself on this path, Dr. Wu, when you operated on my wife drunk. Besides. You fail to see the bigger picture. Your self-immolation has ensured the success of the auto-surgeon. Delores performed magnificently in front of very important people.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” Rita grumbled.
The other Rita said nothing.
“I wasn’t drunk,” Rita insisted, and propped herself up on the pillow.
“The report Dr. Montgomery alluded to suggested otherwise,” the other Rita said.
Rita said, “The report of one disgruntled nurse, who accused a lot of women at Turner of totally bogus things before he was fired. None of his complaints ever went anywhere.”
The other Rita said, “Dr. Montgomery arranged that, though, didn’t he? At least in your case?”
Rita looked away.
The other Rita said, “I’ve read the complaint. The nurse accused you of drinking before you operated on Jenny. He claimed he smelled alcohol on your breath.”
Rita pressed her lips together, and said, “That doesn’t prove anything.” It didn’t. It was in fact one of the reasons why Chase had been able to make the complaint go away.