Five years and six months later,
Present day…
Rule
A lot of people believed I liveda glamorous life. As though being a sin eater for the rich and famous somehow made me royalty. It didn’t.
Yes, it paid ridiculously well. Why wouldn’t it? I did illegal shit to cover up stupid shit. I was taking all the risk, so yeah, I insisted on being paid well for it. Could you blame me?
However, there was no glamor that came along with doing this job. It afforded me a nice place to live and work, but that was all window dressing. Underneath was where it got interesting.
Parking my car at the curb, I got out and fed the meter. I could’ve driven down the alley behind the building and parked in the lot we shared with a few other businesses, but this was easier. Waiting for the gate to retract was a test of my patience, and everyone knew I had very little on a good day. It was still too early to tell whether today qualified as good.
The tree-lined side street was fairly empty, but the same couldn’t be said for Sunset Blvd, which was packed with commuters at this time of morning. This small section of West Hollywood was where residential met commercial, and the building I owned just happened to be an eclectic mix of both.
It had once been someone’s house but was converted into commercial space long ago. The first floor still resembled someone’s living room that opened to an eat-in kitchen. There was a bathroom and a bedroom on that floor for the nights Rhyan decided she was too tired to go home. The second floor had been gutted and redesigned for our needs. It provided a central place for my employees to congregate as well as an address that put my clients at ease. As for me, I didn’t care one way or another. I came in each morning because people expected that of me, but spent most of my day in my car.
“Give me an update,” I said as I reached the top of the stairs and started across the rustic hardwood floor toward my office.
As was the case each morning, my employees sauntered out of their workspaces, following behind me to give me the daily news. It was a routine I started several years ago when I realized there was far more going on than I was aware of, and keeping a finger on the pulse of this company was as important as fixing things for my very rich, very famous clients.
“Clark Huxley and Wayne Parson have officially settled on their private island, set up to live out their lives in seclusion.”
I glanced at Wallace Hoffstadtler, more adequately known as Red Wally, thanks to the fire-red hair that matched his equally fiery temperament.
“Anyone looking for them?” I asked, pulling my chair out from my desk.
“No.” He tucked his hands in the pockets of his worn and faded jeans. “And based on our research, no one’s going to. They weren’t exactly liked by many people.”
No, they definitely weren’t. Both men had caused tremendous emotional and physical trauma to those they tormented—specifically, my best friend Creed Granger and the people he loved. Wayne’s and Clark’s deaths had been far too kind, in my opinion. Not to mention, too abrupt to set up in advance. There’d been no way to set up a crime scene without running the risk of dragging innocent people into the resulting investigation. So we’d gone with the cleaner option of burying the bodies in the desert and creating a trail to a private island so that, in the event someone did go looking for them, it looked like the men had gone off together.
To be honest, I didn’t expect anyone would even miss them. Perhaps some pain-in-the-ass detective hoping to make a name for himself, but other than that… The world was a better place without them.
“In all fairness, you did warn Wayne.”
I glanced up at Red Wally’s identical twin brother, William, a.k.a. Willy.
I didn’t bother telling Willy I wasn’t losing sleep over either man’s death. Nor would I. I’d dealt with the fact I had put a bullet between Clark’s eyes. It was in the past with all of my other transgressions, buried as deep as those bodies had been.
“Moving on,” Rhyan Ambrose said as she strolled into the room with her coffee cup that read: LET’SKEEPTHEDUMBFUCKERYTOAMINIMUMTODAY.
Rhyan liked to refer to herself as my Girl Friday. She wasn’t wrong. I relied on her for everything, and she was damn good at what she did. No, she wasn’t quite the wiz with a computer as Jinx was, but she kept this place running smoothly and provided a second set of hands when I needed them, always willing and available. The thrill for her was the risk of getting caught. So the riskier the job, the better she was at it.
As always, Rhyan looked like she’d just rolled out of bed. Her short, inky black hair was chopped at a million different angles and somehow managed to look sexy. In a grungy, disheveled way. Plus, her preference for thick black eyeliner went perfectly with her monochrome wardrobe and the chunky boots she favored, which somehow made her look menacing despite being barely five feet tall and thin as a rail.
“Hold this,” she told Red Wally as she passed him her coffee cup. “Don’t drink it.”
He grinned, then winked as he took a sip when she turned her attention to the iPad in her hand.
“You’re gonna pay for that,” Rhyan told him. “I promise.”
She tapped the tablet screen, her nose scrunched as she focused. When she lifted her head, she turned the iPad so that the screen was facing me.
“These are the most recent pics of Laikyn,” she said, skimming her fingertip across the screen to flip through the images.
“Who’s the guy she’s with?” Red Wally asked, tilting his head forward to look.
“Wes Carver,” Rhyan explained, stealing her coffee mug back.
