The Hard Bounce - страница 74

I set my jaw.

My eyes never left his face.

Junior picked up the envelope, said, “Does this mean we’re not spending Thanksgiving together?” He handed me the envelope, I’m sure in order to have his hands free.

Barnes glared. Then he went back to the car.

Cassie was looking out the window, eyes on the envelope in my hands. Then she looked at me, her eyes radiating hurt and understanding.

She finally knew what my use for her was. I wanted to say something. To tell her she was seeing it all wrong. I didn’t say anything, even goodbye.

Was she wrong?

The ride pulled away, taking them back into their own world.

Never even got a goodbye.

“Money!” Junior yelled, shocking me from my guilt.

“I’m going to use the little girl’s room and let you boys have your moment,” Kelly said with a smirk.

“What kind of moment do you think we’re going to have?”

“With that much enthusiasm, I’m not sure,” she said, walking into the apartment.

“Lemme see it,” Junior said, half-running to the steps.

“Here.” I handed him the envelope.

He held the envelope tenderly, as though he couldn’t decide whether to tear it open or start tongue-kissing the flap. “I can’t open it,” he said.

“Give it to me, then.”

“No! No. No, I’ll do it.” He ran the envelope under his nose, breathing it in. “Mmm. Nothing like the smell of Cheddar in the morning. Smells like… victory.” Carefully, he ran a finger under the fold and pulled it open. With the same care, he pulled two pieces of paper from the envelope. He chucked the one that wasn’t a cashier’s check to the ground.

“Dude,” he said with more than a little awe.

“What?”

“Dude.”

“Dude?”

“This is one big check, my friend.” He turned the check around. On the paper was the amount of $30,000. Five grand more than agreed upon. More money than we’d ever seen, much less had, in our entire lives.

I picked up the note that Junior had tossed. All it said was:

I hope the extra $5000 covers any expenses.

I am in your debt.

Thank you. You should receive the information

we discussed from my people within two weeks.

Unsigned, of course.

Two weeks. Two more weeks for information I’d waited twenty years for. What was two weeks, right? It felt like a fucking lifetime. Again.

“How soon can we cash this?” Junior asked.

I crumpled up the paper and tried to hide my… hell, I didn’t know what I was feeling, or why I was trying to hide it. Was it disappointment? “I’ll bring it to the bank tomorrow.” Junior didn’t have a bank account. Never trusted them. Far as I knew, he kept his money stuffed in a mattress.

“Because, frankly? I want to spread it on the floor, roll around in it nekkid, then rub one out while staring in Ben Franklin’s eyes.”

“Don’t ever ask me to break a hundie for you ever again.”

“Brother, from now on twenties are for lighting cigarettes.” Junior’s eyes flicked to my doorway. “Can’t help but notice you got one visitor left.”

“And?”

“And I’m going home and going back to bed.” Junior clasped my shoulder, looking at me like I imagine a proud father would. “You fuck her, Boo.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks, Junior. But I think she’s gotta decide to-”

“Fuck her blue, my friend.” He clapped my shoulder and walked backward to Miss Kitty, giving me the double-forefinger gunslinger.

“Dick.”

“Fuck her blue,” he said one more time in an Irish whisper and climbed back into the car.

When I walked back inside, Kelly was looking at me the way she had at Donnelly the night in the loft. There was admiration there, but there was something breathless on top of it now.

She stood and kissed me hard, pulling me down by the front of my shirt. Our tongues met as she put her hands under my shirt and brushed her fingers along my stomach.

I fumbled with the buttons on her blouse for a moment and couldn’t take it anymore. I tore the shirt open, buttons popping off and clattering to the floor.

What the hell, I could buy her a new one.

She pulled back, dug her fingers along the neck of my T-shirt, and ripped it down across my chest, laughing.

I stopped.

She stopped.

Stunned, she looked at the vicious patchwork of scar tissue that made up my torso. The long incision scar that started six inches under my Adam’s apple and ran to a point just above my navel. The burns. The smear of ruined flesh that took up a large part of the upper left side of my chest.