Southern Comfort - Natasha Madison Page 0,13
starts off slow and then gives you all the important stuff at the end. “In and out of juvie until he was eighteen, and then did six months for intent to sell. Graduated to full-blown murder by the time he was twenty. The case was tossed out when he asked for a lawyer and they continued to question him, so his confession was not admissible and he only did two years. During that time, he made lots of friends in Rikers. The kind of friends who don’t send you Christmas cards either. Got really close to Jake Biotti who was in there for money laundering but more importantly for killing someone and all kinds of shit that screams mob.”
“Why do I need to know this?” I ask, and he laughs.
“Trust me, I would not be telling you this for no reason. He got out, and suddenly, the only witness to the case for murder was missing. Turns out, she still hasn’t been found, but her parents get a letter every year with her hair. That’s how he got his nickname “the barber.” From then on, he became his own contractor. They have him associated with about seventy-two missing witnesses, but nothing sticks to him.”
“Where is he going now?” I ask, looking into the room where Olivia puts down the spoon and leans back in the bed. She is too pale, I think to myself.
“I’m waiting for them to place him, and then I’ll get eyes on him,” he says. “According to what I can find out, it looks like he was hired by Dominic to get to Olivia. Dude, this guy has nothing but bad news written all over him.”
“Jesus fuck, why the fuck would he want to take her out when she knows nothing?” I ask.
“I can’t answer that,” he says, “but I’m trying to find out.”
“Let me know if anything changes, and I want only you working on this. I also want more eyes on my house. This guy literally walked up to my house, and nothing was triggered.”
“He found the wires,” Derek says. “There is a feed of him arriving today, finding the one wire, and snipping it.”
“Well, you know what that means. We need to get some wires that are triggered when cut,” I say, and I feel the headache coming on.
“On it,” he says and disconnects. The door opens, and Jacob comes out.
“Everything okay?” he asks as I put my phone away.
“No,” I answer him. “Nothing about this is okay. Something isn’t adding up,” I say. Olivia’s door opens again, and Kallie steps out into the hallway.
“Did she eat?” I ask, and she nods.
“Just a bit, but then she threw up,” she says. I’m about to charge into the room, but then she adds, “The nurse said it’s normal.” I look into the room now and see she is turned on her side. Her eyes are closed again, and my heart speeds up, thinking that it’s too soon for her to go to sleep. She should stay awake a little longer. I see the nurse writing something in her chart.
“Casey.” Kallie draws my attention back to her. “You need to relax a bit.”
“I am relaxed,” I lie to her, and she just rolls her eyes. “Listen, she lives in my house. I just want to make sure she is okay. All this happened on my property, so it’s my responsibility.”
“Is that what you're telling yourself?” Kallie says, trying to hide the smile on her face. “We are going to go to the cafeteria and get some coffee. Do you want anything?”
“No,” I say as I walk past them to enter the room. The nurse looks over at me and puts her finger to her lips.
“She was tired,” she whispers. “Push the button if you need anything.” She walks out quietly. I walk over to the bed where she’s lying on her side. I sit in the chair watching her, and it finally dawns on me the danger that she was in. It finally dawns on me that she could have lost her life today. Everything that Derek told me makes this even more real. He would have killed her without a second thought. And then what? I would have gotten strands of her hair for the rest of my life. I watch her chest rise and fall, trying not to think of the look on her face when I walked into the media room. Seeing a gun pointed right at her face and all the