So he knew I’d take Shift’s back.
Unless Shift tried to get me dirty. Then he knew I’d throw him right under the f**king bus even if I had to take my life in my hands to do it.
So he avoided that. Not that he cared about my life, just that I might succeed before he took me down.
The other good news was, Shift loved Ronnie more than anything in the world so he didn’t play me… too much.
The bad news was, he was in my life and therefore I was sitting outside a prison in southern California in my 2011 electric blue Charger with the two wide, white racing stripes that went up the hood, over the roof and down the trunk and spoiler waiting for a man named Ty Walker to be released from prison.
Shift did not give me a full brief about this assignment. He told me to be sitting right where I was at noon, to wait for Walker, to call him the minute Walker got released and then to take further directions from Walker. He also told me Walker would know it was me and my Charger waiting for him.
I took a week’s vacation to do this. I had nothing else planned for my vacation and Shift was footing this bill so I thought… whatever. I thought this mainly because that was the only thing I could think. Shift didn’t take no for an answer very often and Shift freaked me out. He loved Ronnie, this was true, they weren’t blood but they were closer than it. But Shift was not right. Not at all. There wasn’t something missing in Shift that most other human beings had. There were multiple somethings missing. And all the things that were missing were the good things like compassion, humor, decency, honesty. He knew about loyalty, he knew brotherly love. That was all he knew. Other than that, he had no morals that I’d witnessed. None.
And Ronnie was dead.
When Ronnie was alive, he stood between Shift and me and he stood between Shift, his world and my world.
But Ronnie was dead and I didn’t suspect loyalty and brotherly love for a dead man would stop Shift from doing what he had to do to get what he wanted, including from me.
I didn’t have to balance this line often but it was there. I knew I could push him and I also knew just how far I could push him. And, for whatever reason, me picking up Ty Walker was important to him, important enough that I knew Shift’s loyalty to Ronnie would vanish if I pushed him too hard and then I’d topple over that line.
I didn’t need that shit.
So there I was, waiting for a soon-to-be ex-con to walk out of prison.
I sat in my car in the hot sun, no breeze flowing through my opened windows thinking that it seemed like I spent a lifetime doing this kind of crap to steer clear of shit. It was exhausting. I was tired of it. Bone tired. And scared. Because I knew the odds were against me that I could stay clear of it. With Shift in my life and my number on his phone, someday, he’d need me to do something and it would be something where I’d get hit with shit.
I had to get out.
I glanced at my watch to see it was twelve oh seven then I glanced down the tunnel again and something was moving through the shimmers. That path was long and the heat on the day was immense so I didn’t see much but something made me keep watching.
And as the thing moving through the shimmers formed into a man, I kept watching as my breath started sticking in my throat.
Then the man kept getting closer, coming into focus through the heat waves and my breath grew shallow as my body got still.
I didn’t blink. I didn’t move. I just watched that man coming at me and my car.
Then he got even closer and my body moved for me. I didn’t tell it to move, it just did. Without taking my eyes off him, my hand reached for the door handle, released it and I unfolded out of the car, losing sight of him only when the roof was in my way for less than a second.
Shit.
Shit, shit, f**king shit!
He was huge. Huge. I’d never seen a man that big. He had to be six foot five, six foot six, maybe even taller.
His shoulders were immensely broad, the wall of his chest was just that. A wall. His h*ps were narrow, his thighs enormous. He was muscle from neck down, pure, firm, defined muscle. I saw it through his skintight black t-shirt, his tattooed arms, his jeans that tightened on his thighs as he moved.
His hair was black and clipped short on his head, another tat drifted up his neck.
His jaw was square and strong. No stubble. Clean-shaven. His brow was heavy, his eyebrows black, arched and thick but the left one had a line through it, a scar that matched the smaller one under the eye.
But this scar did nothing, not one thing, to mar his utterly perfect features. Strong, straight nose. High, cut cheekbones. Full lips. His eyes were shaped like almonds, turned slightly down at the sides and ringed, even when he was the width of my car away, I could still see, by thick, curling black lashes.
That said, his face, though sheer male beauty, was blank. Scary blank. Expressionless. Completely. His eyes were on me standing in my opened door watching him round the hood and turning with his movements. But there was nothing in those eyes. Nothing. Void.
It was terrifying.
Ronnie and Shift didn’t hang out with good people. There were the dregs of society but even dregs had dregs and the dregs of the dregs were who Ronnie and Shift hung out with. Again, it didn’t happen often but it wasn’t like I hadn’t come into contact with some of these people. And I didn’t like being around them but I learned a long time ago to hide that.