A Wanted Woman Part 45

"I didn't get stabbed in my sleep. Didn't get cut like a pig in a slaughterhouse."

"I was lucky to survive and I have moved on. I a.s.sure you that I have."

"You have kids and you can only move so far. If she's on the island, this small island, you guys are on the same roads, see the same people, have the same friends. You can't move on. You'll run into each other at the grocery store, give each other lights on the road. You can't move on. I moved on. Glad I can pack up my georgie bundle and go on; divorce myself from a man and his lunatic ex and their family and personal issues. Your feet have dried in the concrete."

"All that aside, I'd like to take you out on a date. Just a simple date. It can be fancy; we could go to a restaurant, or we could just go to Oistins on a slow night so we can sit, eat, talk."

"A smart businessman shouldn't become involved with his customers."

"I could make an exception."

"An intelligent woman would never become involved with the help."

"'The help.'"

"Crazy women. Fights. You are offering what I've already escaped."

"'The help.'"

"Never processed how I felt in detail, not until tonight. So, thank you for that relief. Also, thanks for the invitation to a front-row seat at your drama. I'm honored, but no thanks."

I went to him. His stiffness was spongy, like cotton. I didn't tingle anymore.

I whispered, "This isn't Pretty Woman in reverse."

"I know."

"Sorry I called you the help."

The room felt as cold as my words. Winds picked up. Rain would come soon.

He whispered, "'New d.i.c.k never cancels out old d.i.c.k when a woman is in love.'"

"That's the truth." I straddled him. "You have good d.i.c.k. Be glad she didn't cut it off. I'm glad she didn't cut it off. I enjoyed it."

He laughed a little. "You're heavier. You feel at least twenty pounds heavier."

I kissed him. Gave him my tongue. We kissed for a long time. It was nice. It wasn't the s.e.x that was worth the money. It was the conversation. I could've f.u.c.ked anybody. But not many would have given me the conversation that nailed in the realization that what I'd had with Johnny Parker was no good.

I was free from that prison. I'd never ping-ping-ping him again.

My lover's alarm sounded again. That meant my time was up with o.r.g.a.s.m Man. I traced my finger across his softness, kissed his lips, untied one of his hands, then walked to the door.

I said, "All the best."

I walked out the door, into the wind and rain. While we had talked, I had opened my overloaded backpack and put on my concealment clothing, had debated with him as I dressed for war. Two pistol-grip Pepperblasters. Four blades. Handguns were worn in my concealment clothing, .38 rested underneath my left arm, a Glock was strapped to my right hip, another gun on my right side, and a .380 was on my belt clip. There were more toys of death in my weighted backpack.

Again my throwaway cellular rang. The ID displayed Black Jack's contact number, Bajan digits I never should have seen again. Something was wrong. Could have been whoever separated his head from his body and made soup in the plunge pool. Could be the police finally getting around to playing detective. Cops could've had Black Jack's phone and were redialing his last calls.

The island went dark. Lights in every business in the area shut off. Not everyone had a generator. No streetlights. That made the roads shrink, made headlights brighter. Right away, accidents. Everyone was forced to slow down, the abrupt darkness like a total eclipse. The cellular rang again and again. I pulled over to the side of the road at a rum shop. Black Jack's number still flashing on the caller ID. In the new darkness, the digits glowed like a ghost. Reluctantly, I answered.

A frantic, desperate voice said, "Reaper?"

It was indeed a call from the dead, from far beyond the grave.

FIFTY-THREE.

The power outage hit St. Lucy, St. Peter, St. James, Michael, and Christ Church while I was on the road. The East Coast might have been just as dark from St. Andrew down to where the Atlantic side kissed the other side of Christ Church as well. The major power outage and Black Jack's call disrupted my nerves. Within minutes, Barbados was darker than the '03 North American Blackout.

By the time I pulled into Sheraton Mall, the car park was a bat's cave, empty of vehicles, the bleak weather a deterrent. I entered the parking structure near Olympus Theatre and found a lone car on the far end of the second level. A dirty Mini Cooper branded with the British flag. I parked fifteen car lengths away, then left my bike facing the car, running, lights on and in their eyes, blinding them to my position. I removed my helmet, took out a gun, and called for them to get out of the car, but not too fast.

At first, I thought I was facing a child, was being set up Iraqi-style, that a child strapped with a bomb was about to come running toward me, but I was wrong.

I marched her way. "If I hear any sound, see anyone, you're f.u.c.ked. Understand?"

"I understand."

Her legs were thick, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a woman's size, her body curvaceous, only she was four feet tall, maybe four-foot-five in her heels. She was a girl with clear skin, hair thick and in powerful dreadlocks. She wore tight jeans, a red T-shirt with a political message: T'INGS DREAD WE VOTING FA DE RED. Nothing was in her hands. No one was in the shadows.

I asked, "Who are you?"

"I'm Hacker."

"Hacker is dead and is a two-piece at Downes Funeral Home."

"I'm not dead."

"Who died?"

She told me that she had been at Black Jack's townhome, had been trying to hack into the LKs' system again, had broken in, extracted information, but a firewall went up. She had enjoyed the game, outsmarting the LKs. Then another girl came over, another UWI student, a Bajan girl that Black Jack was sleeping with. Black Jack hadn't expected her. It was a surprise.

I lowered my gun, said, "She came over and you left?"

"I kept working and they went upstairs to the bedroom."

"When did you leave?"

"Black Jack received a phone call, then asked me to pick up a package, said it was down by the docks, down at Bridgetown Port. He said it was an easy job. I'd pull up, blow my horn four times and someone would put a few boxes in the car and I'd drive off and go back to his place."

"So you were gone when he was attacked."

"Soon as he asked, I walked out the door. It was time-critical. I was lucky."

"Did you see the garbage truck? Bright-red cab with a dull-gray dumpster?"

"They gave me lights when they pa.s.sed."

"They saw you leave the community, but had no idea who you were."

"If he hadn't sent me to go pick up the package, if the other girl hadn't come over . . ."

"Where have you been since then?"

"Hiding. Scared to death. Constipated and sleeping in my new car."

"Scared."

"Very f.u.c.king scared. I saw them dead, before their bodies were discovered."

"How?"

"I went back by the town house."

"Doors were locked."

"I have a key."

"You have a key? Were you sleeping with Black Jack too?"

Her voice trembled. "Long time ago. Last year. A one-off, became a two-off, became a three-off. We had s.e.x. Two or three or ten times, depends on how you count it. By number of days, three days. Three good days. By number of times, between ten and twelve."

"You and Black Jack."

"We sort of ended up in bed, cuddling, playing footsie, and you know."

"Plunge pool and air-conditioning and home-cooked meals."

"It was the best."

"Okay. But you're not . . . weren't in rotation anymore?"

"I guess we ended up being friends. Guess he did it out of curiosity. Many men want to try to hook up with me, well, because, well, I'm unique and I'm a fetish, so to speak."

"Okay. Why did you go back after they had been killed?"

"The computer was mine. I needed it for university. It was gone. So whoever has it has my information. I'm scared. I found his cell phone. I knew your number was in there, so I went down the line, called everybody Black Jack had called until you answered. Wanted to get this illegal stuff out of my car, and since it was for you, I figured that you should get it all."

We went to the car's trunk. Two boxes too heavy for Hacker to lift. I opened the boxes.

She saw what was in one of the boxes and asked, "Are those hand grenades?"

"Sure are. Grenades. C4. Timers."

"He sent me to pick up explosives?"

"His contact came through. What else did you find when you hacked their systems?"

"Reaper, they're looking for you. Last thing I saw before I left Black Jack's place to make this run was that they had followed you from Trinidad to wherever you went next."

"How do they track me?"

"Two doses of facial recognition software, a dose of luck, and a pound of patience."

"Still not easy to find me, not if I stay in poor lighting, not if I use makeup, not if I keep my head down so they can't get a full profile, not if I keep my sungla.s.ses on, keep my hair long and loose to frame my face, or find one of a thousand ways to partially cover my face and I change my walk. I never have the same walk twice; never have the same posture or body language."

"When you were in a bank, you raised your head for a second. Something about a shootout. The video is on YouTube. Saw it. It's posted in a collection of street killings in Trinidad. You raised your head long enough for them to get the information they needed."

"s.h.i.te. Yeah. Guy pulled a gun, so I went into survival mode, raised my head."

"They are using a high-end algorithm to a.n.a.lyze the relative position, size, and shape of the eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw, then using that info to search for other images with matching features. They went through every pa.s.sport that left Trinidad. They ran that for about a month, then restarted, brought in another expert, upgraded to software that uses 3D sensors to capture information about the shape of a face. It looks at unique features: the contour of the eye sockets, nose, and chin. They're doing, or have done, a skin-texture a.n.a.lysis as well. They matched the blood vessels in your derma. You're lucky that they haven't found you already."

"Sure it was them? Black Jack had his hands in many things. He was an arms broker, hired contract killers, and I have no idea what else. The hit here, you're sure that it was the LKs and not something else that Black Jack was involved in?"

"Positive. I broke back into their site again, only I did it up at the library at UWI. Two of them flew here and flew right back. Didn't check into a hotel. They flew business cla.s.s."

"You broke in again."

"As my way of saying f.u.c.k you, from a safe distance. I'm smarter. I needed to see what they knew about me. My contact list was synced from my phone, plus I have some personal p.o.r.n I really don't want anybody to see because if they did I'd have to move from Barbados. Anyway. They have my handle, they know about Hacker, but they thought that they had killed Hacker, so I will let Hacker be dead for now. They came to kill me, Black Jack, and anyone in the house."

"You said you saw the aftermath, saw them beheaded."

"After I spent some time with this guy and he made me bowlegged, I went back around five in the morning, opened the door, walked in, figured they were upstairs bupping the headboard. Then I stepped in something sticky, turned on the lights and saw blood on my shoes, looked up and saw their b.l.o.o.d.y heads two feet away from me on the counter. I slipped in the blood, ran to the back door, was running to get away and I stumbled. I f.u.c.king fell into the plunge pool. I fell in face-first with headless bodies. Face-first. Almost drowned in their meat and blood."

"Wow."

"Be glad it wasn't you he had with him upstairs making bowlegged that time."

"We were all business. I had no interest in letting him make me bowlegged."

"If the other girl hadn't come by, it might've been me up there naked and dead."

"Thought you said those days of bupping his headboard were behind you."

"He was good in bed. I had hopes. I wasn't over there all the time and flirting and working for him for free just because. Sure you weren't sleeping with him?"

"Strictly business. No other interests."

"When did you get there?"

"When the garbage truck was leaving, after four in the morning."

"I left as the truck was arriving just past midnight."