Frankie and Gus started walking over to me. Frankie looked pissed as usual and Gus looked like he could care less. Like usual. But my eyes were on the new kid.
My dad’s words bounced around my head like a pinball in one of those trucker games at the arcade. He’d said not to worry about the new kid.
Yeah, right.
His eyes darted around the alley as I approached him, like he was trying to look at anything but me. He bounced up and down on his heels, his elbows locked at his side. He was getting ready to run.
Seeing his nerves made me slow my approach. I’d met plenty of street kids over the years. The syndicate always seemed to have low risk, odd jobs for them that paid in hot meals or a ride somewhere. The kids got something out of it and the syndicate got practically free labor from minors that didn’t know anything about the organization. It was a win for everybody but the FBI who would rather arrest someone integral to the brotherhood, someone that they could prosecute. As long as they were low level jobs, I never worried about what happened to the kids. But this was different.
Pulling one into an actual con meant an extra witness, someone that hadn’t pledged their loyalty to the crew.
I smelled him before I reached him and my heart kicked in my chest. He was like a stray puppy. With a broken leg. And someone had just cut off his tail, stolen his bone and then dragged him through the sewer.
Seriously, what was that smell?
“Hey,” I called out softly, trying not to spook him. “I’m Caroline.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “Uh, hey.”
He looked away again, dismissing me. I recognized the look. I was dismissed a lot around my dad’s associates. Nobody thought much of the little girl that was always tagging along with her part-time loser of a dad. Nobody noticed me when they talked business in hushed tones or passed money back and forth in dimly lit bars that smelled like piss and old men. I was just the sometimes useful child of a bookie.
But it irked me that this homeless kid treated me the same way.
At least I had showered this morning.
“I’ve never seen you around before,” I pushed, my voice harder, my body stiffer.
He tipped his head back and looked at the narrow strip of sky visible between the two tall buildings surrounding us. “Huh.”
He kept his mouth open and I got a good look at his teeth. He had all of them that I could see, which was surprising. And even more confusing was that they were mostly white. He smelled bad, but with teeth like that, he couldn’t have been homeless for too long.
“Do you have a name?”
“No.”
I resisted the urge to growl. “If we’re going to work together, I should know your name.”
His head dropped and he finally met my eyes. Bright, deep, impossibly blue. I wasn’t prepared for eyes like that. Against his dirty face, they shined like lasers. “We’re not working together. I’m doing something different.”
My curiosity jumped inside me, like bubbles fizzing in a Coke. “What are you doing?”
His gaze shifted to Jack and Vinnie. “Something different.”
I had decided to kick him in the shin when Frankie and Gus stepped up next to us. Irritation buzzed beneath my skin. I liked Frankie. I did. But she was so pretty. And now the new kid would only pay attention to her and I would never figure out what his role was.
Or what his name was.
“Who’s your new friend, Caro?” Gus asked, all wide smiles and happy energy.
Frankie adjusted her worn baseball cap. “New recruit?”
The kid quickly shook his head. “Nah. This is a one-time thing.”
The three of us exchanged a look. We’d heard that before. Not with kids our age, but men that got sucked into the life. Everyone said that. The job, whatever the job was, was always a one-time thing. Nobody set out to live a life of crime. It was something you fell into ass-backward and then spent the rest of your life trying to figure out how to crawl your way out.
Or you just succumbed.
Either way, it always started out as a one-time-only promise.
“You hungry?” I guessed.
His too-bright gaze cut to mine. “Fucking starving.”
I backed up another step at his harsh language. It wasn’t the words that surprised me, it was how he said it. The tone that punched through the air and hit my cheek with a bruising blow.
This kid was desperate. And that made him something more than pathetic or worrisome. It made him feral. Predatory.
He wasn’t here because he wanted to be, but because he had to do something to survive. And for some stupid reason, that made me want to help him.
I had a tiny, beat up little black kitten in the corner of my bedroom for the very same reason.
“Enough with the cats, Caro,” my dad had groaned last week when I brought the battered thing home. “You can’t save all the stray cats in DC. You know that, right?”
Maybe Dad was right about the cats, but I could save this kid.
“What’s your name?” I asked him bluntly.
He glared at me until I wanted to look away, until I wanted to let him win this staring contest and pretend like I hadn’t said anything. “Sayer,” he finally admitted. “Sayer Wesley.”
“Sayer Wesley,” I repeated as if I couldn’t help myself. The words whooshed out of me on a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding. It was probably a fake name, but it sounded so real. So right. Like the first real piece of truth I’d ever heard.
His expression turned into a sneer, “That’s right, Caroline. Got a problem with my name?”
I felt Gus and Frankie look at me, their eyes curious and accusing. Nobody called me Caroline. Not even my dad. I was always Caro. But I had introduced myself to this kid as Caroline.
Why had I done that?
Feeling weird and off my game and completely unnerved by this street kid, I rolled my eyes like it wasn’t a big deal. “Frankie, give Sayer your hat.”
She tugged it down over her eyes. “No.”
Shooting her a frustrated scowl, I jerked my chin at Sayer Wesley. “He’s not doing what we’re doing, and there are cameras all over those streets. Let him protect his face at least.”
She sucked in her bottom lip and contemplated my suggestion. Turning to him, she asked, “What are they paying you?”
He lifted one shoulder, his jaw ticking near his ear. “Food. Maybe a place to stay tonight.”
The three of us shared another look.
“Caro, Frankie, let’s go!” my dad shouted from across the alley.
“Give him your hat, Frankie,” I hissed. “At least give him a chance to get away from the cops.”
Sayer’s body had tensed at my words, keen awareness rocking through him and transforming his face from desperate to terrified.
Someone else shouted at us to hurry up. Frankie ripped off her hat, her black curls cascading down her back like a waterfall. I watched Sayer’s expression, waiting for him to be momentarily mesmerized, but his expression stayed the same. He had a good poker face. I could give him that.
She tossed the hat at him. He caught it and slammed it on, pulling it low on his forehead.
“Let’s go,” Gus suggested. “It’s not worth pissing them off.”
Frankie and Gus turned toward my dad and the rest of the crew, stalking off down the alley already playing the part of obnoxious kids without supervision.
Sayer started to walk after them, but I grabbed his forearm, unwilling to let him enter into this unprepared. “Make them realize you’re valuable,” I told him quickly.
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything.
Not knowing if he got it or not, I went on. “If you want food or a place to stay you have to earn it. And if you don’t, they’ll let you get caught.” I glanced over my shoulder toward my dad and his associates. “Or worse.”
When I turned back to Sayer, those freaky blue eyes were glued to me again. “Why are
you telling me this?”
I shrugged. I didn’t really have an answer. “You’d do the same for me.”
His head tilted. “No, I wouldn’t.”
His honesty made me smirk. “Now you will.” I leaned in, dropping my voice to a whisper. “You owe me a favor.”
His eyes widened and his lips pressed into a straight line. I was too pleased with myself not to smile, so I quickly turned around and hurried to catch up with my friends.
“Let’s go, kid!” Jack shouted after Sayer. He stepped forward, out of the alley and into the confidence game that would irrevocably change his life. The confidence game that would change us both forever.
I didn’t know what happened to Sayer until later that night. Frankie, Gus and I did our thing. We walked into the electronic store and cased the joint for an hour. We never intended to steal anything, but we acted suspicious as hell until all of the store employees had their eyes on us. Just when the manager made a beeline over to kick us out, I pulled out pockets full of crumpled one dollar bills and with tears in my eyes, asked what I could buy my dad for his birthday.
He took me over to a display of watches and feeling sufficiently guilty, he gave me all his attention. Frankie and Gus crowded around when he bent over to pick one up for me and I pickpocketed his wallet just for fun.
I had a bad habit of taking something for myself whenever I was on a job. Frankie called them my trophies. But it wasn’t like I wanted to remember the job or show off or anything. It was more like insurance or collateral. I needed to start saving for the day my dad stopped taking care of me or got himself killed.
I paid for a cheap watch with a black cuff and made sure to sniffle in gratitude at the counter. Frankie, Gus and I left the store. The alarm rang just as we stepped on the sidewalk.
A delivery truck driver came sprinting around the corner, shouting after his truck that was speeding off down the street, already lost in traffic.
After driving another block, the truck would pull into a parking garage that happened to have no working security cameras, where it would quickly be unloaded into another truck and abandoned for the feds to find.
Sirens blared through the afternoon bustle of downtown DC and two cop cars screeched to a halt in front of us. Frankie, Gus and I stared at the entire scene with wide-eyed fascination—like ten-year-old kids were supposed to do. We moved out of the way when asked, but hung around while the cops took statements and talked to witnesses and tried to figure out what had happened.
Turns out the security cameras had been turned off during the heist. And the delivery driver had been somehow locked in the dumpster behind the building. Nobody saw the thief or realized anything was wrong until the driver had been able to get free of his trash prison. Nobody could even identify the driver since it hadn’t seemed that anything was amiss until after the truck was gone.
The manager of the store was dumbfounded. The driver understandably furious. And the cops totally befuddled.
They even asked us if we had seen anything. To which we replied, “No, officer, we were just buying a birthday present for my dad.”
“Why don’t you get on home then,” they suggested. “You don’t need to be hanging around a crime scene.”
We nodded solemnly and headed off down the street. Our job was over so we had the rest of the day to kill. We decided to grab pizza at our favorite place.
Later that night, my dad would tell me what a great job I did and hand me fifty bucks for being such a good girl. I would ask him how much his cut was and he would smile slyly at me and say, “Don’t you worry about it, baby girl. Just know that we don’t need to worry about anything for a while.”
That was always his answer. He was obsessed with this idea of not worrying about anything.
The irony was that because of his job, I worried about everything all the time.
But we didn’t get caught today. So at least there was that.
And neither did Sayer Wesley.
I wouldn’t know what happened to him for a couple of months, but I would think of him every day until then.
Chapter Two
Present Day
They say old habits die hard. Which was why I was currently biting my thumbnail and trying to talk myself out of grabbing the twenty-ounce bottle of Cherry Coke from behind the refrigerator glass.
Soda was bad for me.
I believed that.
I told myself that every day.
And yet here I was, in a Mexican standoff with the gas station cooler. “No, Caroline. You don’t need it.” Talking to myself was another bad habit I couldn’t seem to break. At least mumbling under my breath didn’t lead to cavities, cellulite or cancer.
“One Coke isn’t going to give you cancer,” I whispered argumentatively. I opened the cooler door and reached inside, my fingers brushed over the smooth plastic of the beverage I wanted so badly. It had been a rough day. I was tired and bone-deep exhausted. Two separate symptoms that should go hand in hand but had totally different origins.
One came from a fitful night’s sleep. The other from a lifetime of waking hours that never seemed to go like they should.
Slamming the cooler door, I ripped open the next one and grabbed a Vitamin Water instead. Coke probably wasn’t going to give me cancer, but it was for sure going to give me cellulite and my ass did not need any help in that department.
Making my way to the checkout counter, I glanced around the small space, noticing the cameras behind the clerk’s head that showed squares of the store, the gas pumps and all the various people in both spots.
I got in line behind a middle-aged woman with a coffee in one hand and her cellphone in the other and a kid trying to pay for his gas in change and ripped dollar bills. Both of them were so self-absorbed with their purchases that neither of them noticed me step in line behind them.
Not that I wanted them to. But how people stood in line said a lot about what kind of people they were. For instance, the teenager at the counter needed to stop spending all his money on weed and take a shower. He was also $2.47 short if he wanted to put an even twenty dollars of gas in his tank.
And the woman in front of me had two kids, or at least two kids she was willing to brag about on Instagram, a cheating husband, and eczema. She also had a six hundred dollar fall collection Marc Jacobs purse hanging over her shoulder. She had no idea how easy it would be for someone to brush by her on their way out the door and snatch the wallet half hanging out of her flashy handbag.
Not that I would do that.
Not anymore at least.
But like I said, old habits die hard.
To be honest though, these days I’d rather have her purse than her identity.
But not the cheating husband. From the text messages I read over her shoulder to her friend Sherry, he was a real piece of work.
Weren’t they all?
When it was my turn, I placed my Vitamin Water, the small bag of pistachios I’d grabbed last minute, the big pack of Swedish Fish and white cheddar popcorn on the counter. “Thirty dollars on pump six too,” I told the clerk.
He started to ring me up while I kept my eyes glued to the security monitors. Lucky for me, they even clearly displayed myself and the people behind me.
Old instinct burned through me and I fought the urge to duck my head and hide my face. Innocent people didn’t have a reason to hide. The normal, everyday American woman walked around with a smile on her face, totally oblivious to how many times she’d been caught on camera. She didn’t snarl at Big Brother. She blissfully went about her day unaware of all the different ways her life was recorded.
That was me now. Blissfully unaware.
Or maybe willfully ignorant was a better way to describe it.
“Credit or debit?” the kid behind the cash register asked.
I swallowed down the constant anxiety that followed me everywhere. “Credit.”
Pulling out the card from my less expensive but better-secured wallet than the lady be
fore me, I read the raised words, Caroline Baker, with the same kind of accusatory disbelief I always did.
The machine processed the card and blinked that my purchase was approved in understated victory. A gentle breath of relief puffed out of me.
I had a good job and a steady paycheck, but I would never be able to stop the anxiety that came alongside every purchase.
Would this be the moment the card stopped working?
Would this be the moment I realized my account had been cleaned out?
Would this be the moment they found me? The moment they ripped my safe haven away and dragged me back to hell?
When I’d come face to face with the past I’d worked so hard to escape?
“Do you want a receipt?” the clerk asked.
I nodded. “Yes, please.” Proof that my card worked. Proof that I was still free.
Outside, the cool evening wrapped around my body, cocooning me in fall and campfire scents and crisp mountain air. I smiled at the burnished sun dipping behind the peaks of bare mountain tops. It was Friday night. Finally.
I couldn’t wait to get home, strip out of these work clothes and curl up on the couch for the rest of the night.
Did that make me old? Was twenty-five old?
No, I suppose not. But for me, Friday night movie nights were the highlight of my week. My days of clubbing and partying and living wild were so over. Welcome consistency and dependability and normalcy. I was having the time of my life getting to know them.
I reached my black Murano with the plastic sack of goodies swinging at my side. With my thumb on the keyless entry, I was just about to open my door when a white paper tucked into the window seam caught my eye. It was only a small square, but it had been purposely placed on the driver’s side so I would see it.
My mouth dried out immediately and I resisted the urge to glance around. What would a normal person in America do? What was the protocol for a flyer tucked in your window?
“Read it,” I whispered in answer.