Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,93

different. How do people enjoy this shit?” She glanced at my phone and took a sip from one of the ever-present drinks.

“Did you want to talk about structural deficiencies with the Philadelphia club construction manager?”

Another drink, this one longer.

I dialed in early and put the hold music on speaker, then shuffled a few papers and watched the butler stack towels through the patio door.

“You could drive into town. There’s a lot to see and do in Nassau, and it’s just over the bridge.”

“I don’t sightsee.”

“You could open an account.”

She looked over, the first time she’d looked me full in the face for the entire trip.

“The Bahamas are a banking center. Millions of businesses use accounts here to protect their assets. It would be good for us if we didn’t have all our eggs in one basket. Safer.”

She got up and went swimming again, striding into the surf like she expected the ocean itself to back down from her.

I left the topic alone, going through the daily reports, running the business that one of us had to run, until two days later she took the keys to our rental and demanded a copy of the articles of incorporation. I emailed it to her with an inquiring look, but all she said was, “I’ll be back later. Tell them not to salt the fish so much tonight. I feel like I’m digesting the fucking sea.”

And that was all it took. Four days in a paradise luxurious enough to bore the crap out of her and we had an offshore account in Strike’s name, bearing Logan’s signature.

* * *

Aaden instructed me to move slowly toward the sinks. I did, although my first instinct was to run. I’d never had a gun drawn on me before, never felt the jerk of bowel-liquefying fear in my intestines. Clenching my ass, every ounce of manhood on the line, I lifted my hands—still clad in driving gloves—and walked as normally as I could in the direction he indicated.

Overpowering him wasn’t going to be an option. I could run ten miles and bench press two hundred pounds, but I was a fifty-year-old man whose knees popped every time I stood up from a chair. He was a twenty-four-year-old who’d been training nonstop for a decade, a machine with reflexes, reach, and speed I could never match. Any overt move would be a fatal mistake.

“February twenty-eighth. Cash deposit. Cedar-Riverside branch. $9,500.”

He scrolled down the screen one-handed, the other still training the gun at my chest, and read the virtually identical details from a second deposit before looking up at me, waiting.

“If you need some kind of counseling, financial or otherwise, I can get you in touch with several people.” Keeping my hands up, I edged further over to one of the granite counters and leaned against a sink. The mirror behind me would show him his reflection. It would remind him he wasn’t a killer.

“My father died when we were living in Nairobi, already refugees, already unwanted. I have no memory of him.” He lowered his phone and considered me, as if evaluating whether I had taken that from him, too. I swallowed, maintaining eye contact, wishing to God I’d ignored privacy concerns and had security cameras installed in the locker rooms.

“My mother knew we needed to leave Kenya. She gave everything we had to a man who promised to secure visas for us, so we could join some of our relatives in Minnesota. She never saw him again.

“I didn’t know. I was a young boy. Years later, after we finally made it here and she started her business, she told me about this man. She talked of how pleasing he was, how he sympathized with her situation and had answers, all the news and reassurances she had been seeking. He knew her concerns before she had even voiced them, and outlined in great detail the journey and the martisoor, the hospitality, that awaited us here.”

Aaden seemed to be looking straight through me now, at a point far beyond the Strike locker room, and I didn’t know if the gun was pointed at me or a grifter in Kenya.

“She told me one detail about him in particular, something I’ve always remembered. I don’t know what he looked like, his height or hair or whether he was fat or thin. She didn’t mention any of that, but she told me about his eyes, how they never wavered. He was never distracted by the traffic outside or the noise or smells