COLE (Dragon Security Book 1) (3 page)

Cole

I woke with a start. Something hit the windshield of my car. I sat up, confused for a second. There was dark…
fuck me!
Was that cow shit?

I jumped out of the car just in time to see a couple of kids running up the lane beyond the trailer I was parked in front of. They were laughing, and one of them threw another cow chip in my direction.

“You better run, you little brats!”

The smell was disgusting. I sat back in the car and slammed the door, turning on the windshield wipers to wash the mess away, but that only managed to smear the mess. Of course, the girl chose that moment to come out of her trailer and waddle in my direction. She tapped on the glass and waited patiently for me to open the window.

“What?”

“There’s a car wash up on Third, if you’d like. The windshield wipers aren’t going to do much.”

“Thanks.”

She smiled as she stepped back, resting her hands on the top of her swollen belly. “I’m going to run a few errands. But I’ll be back here about noon.”

She walked away, slowly, her hands moving from her belly to the small of her back. She was clearly miserable. I could see it etched into her face each time she looked at me. Served her right. Who the hell gets knocked up and comes looking for money from a dead man’s family?

She wedged herself into her piece of junk car, moaning loud enough that I could hear her through the closed window. And then she turned the ignition and nothing happened. I don’t know how she nursed that car along this far. The starter was going, I could hear that yesterday in the parking garage. And the engine smoked like a chimney. She clearly had a leaky gasket, maybe more. Could be a cracked block. It was a fucking miracle the car even started. But start it did, and she took out of here like a bat out of hell.

I had to drive with the window open so I could see where I was going. I was relieved when she pulled into a business park not far from her place and waddled into one of the buildings. I was pouring the contents of a water bottle I bought from a small convenience store on the corner, hoping it would provide enough moisture to get rid of the cow shit, when my phone rang.

“How’s it going?”

Megan. Great.

“Fine. She’s running errands.”

“Well, I put my investigators on her, and they gave me a little info. You want it?”

“Sure.”

“Her names Amber Elizabeth Zavalas, born May 11, 1996 to Meredith Zavalas. Father unknown. She has no arrest record; just a couple of parking tickets, but nothing outstanding. She dropped out of high school her junior year when her mother died, and she’s been working at Stan’s Diner in Ada, Texas ever since.”

“Sounds boring.”

“Yeah, well, her mother has quite the record. Prostitution, public intoxication, petty theft, credit card fraud, check fraud…you name it, her mother was arrested for it. Sounds like a great role model.”

I stepped back from the car a little, watching some of the shit run down onto the hood. I was really hoping this wasn’t going to cost me a paint job.

“So she’s the daughter of the town slut and she’s taken the family business up a step.”

“Don’t assume anything, Cole.”

“She’s a fucking gold digger, Megan. Surely you see that.”

“I don’t see anything until the facts are right in front of me. And if you want to be a member of my team, you’ll start thinking the same way.”

“Okay.”

“Peter gave her my business card, Cole. Told her I’d take care of her. Peter doesn’t do stuff like that without thinking it through.”

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s the baby’s father.”

“No. But it doesn’t mean he isn’t, either.” Megan sighed. “Just…keep an eye on her. Okay?”

“Will do.”

I disconnected the call and climbed back behind the wheel, turning the windshield wipers back on. The water helped. There was still a mess where the wipers didn’t reach, but I could see out the windshield now. Just in time to watch Amber come out of the office, push her hair back from her eyes with a frustrated gesture, and climb back into that multicolored thing she called a car.

She drove further into town and stopped at another small business building. I watched her go inside, her face set in this sort of pained grimace. Whatever she was doing, she was clearly not happy about it. Curious, I slipped into the building behind her. I couldn’t find her at first because the place separated into several different offices. But then I heard her voice.

“Come on! I only need three more days. I have half—”

“Half isn’t enough, Ms. Zavalas. And you’ve known for a month that the payment was due today.”

“I know. But I had to pay my rent. What good would it do me to have electricity if I didn’t have a place to use it?”

There was clear frustration in her voice. I stopped outside the office door marked with the name of a local electricity company and listened to the argument. It wasn’t going in Amber direction.

“We’ll take the partial payment, but we’ll still have to have the rest by the end of the day or your power will be turned off first thing in the morning.”

“You don’t understand—”

“No, Ms. Zavalas,
you
don’t understand. This has been going on for six months. We’ve been more than generous, giving you extensions on you bills. That’s how it got to be this large. But we can’t let this go on indefinitely. You have to pay your bill.”

“What about my deposit? Isn’t that supposed to be used for outstanding balances?”

“It was. Six months ago.”

Amber moaned, stepping back from the counter a foot or so and grasping her belly. The woman behind the counter stood and watched her, but she didn’t offer any help or even ask if she was all right. Whatever it was passed, and Amber moved back up to the counter.

“What’s my balance after this?”

The woman looked at her computer for a long minute, then used a calculator to figure out the answer.

“Two hundred forty-one dollars and fifty-two cents.”

Amber nodded, her face falling with defeat.

“Thanks.”

I stepped back into the shadows as she stormed out of the office—as much storming as a woman that pregnant could do. Two hundred and forty bucks. I’d had dinners that cost more than that.

I watched her go, thinking about the twist of pain I’d seen on her face while she was in the office. I knew what Peter would do. I’d once been with him at a grocery store where we’d run in to pick up a cheese platter for one of the infinite number of garden parties our mother threw and the family in front of us was having trouble paying for their groceries. They were about to put back a gallon of milk when Peter stepped up and offered to not only pay what they were short, but to pay the entire bill for them. Peter was generous. He was kind. Those people—they were so embarrassed they couldn’t even look him in the eye when they thanked him. But Peter…it didn’t matter to him. He didn’t do it for the praise. He did it because it was the right thing to do.

What if this was Peter’s baby?

Fuck!

I ducked into the office and convinced the sour woman behind the counter to allow me to pay Amber’s bill. It was only two hundred dollars. In the long run, it meant absolutely nothing to me, but it would mean everything to her.

By the time I got back outside, Amber was gone. But it was a small town, and I found her not five minutes later parked outside the diner where she worked. She was sitting at the counter, sipping from a glass of iced water.

“Have you eaten today?” I asked, falling into a stool beside her.

“I don’t need your charity.”

“It’s not charity. I need to eat, and I don’t want to eat alone.”

She glanced at me, hunger clearly shining in her eyes.

“What’s good? The burgers?”

She shrugged. “Not bad. I’d try the patty melt.”

I wiggled my fingers at the girl working the counter. “Two patty melts.”

Amber adjusted her position on her stool, her fingers working the edge of a napkin until she had it shredded into tiny pieces. I watched her, a little fascinated by how small her fingers were. They were swollen, anyone could see that, but that didn’t take away from how delicate they were. Tiny hands.

“He came in here?”

She glanced at me. “A lot.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “The first few times, he sat alone in the back.” She gestured toward a booth at the back of the room. “He had papers and a laptop. I thought he was a college professor or something.”

“And later?”

“He came in once with a guy. This bald guy that I told your sister about. They talked for close to two hours, then the bald guy stormed out.”

“You never saw him again?”

“No. But your brother…he came in a couple of times a month for like three or four months.”

“And the two of you became friends?”

She was quiet for a minute, her fingers still working that napkin. She was chewing on her lip, biting it hard enough to make it turn a bright red. When she looked up again, there were tears in her eyes.

“He was nice. He treated me better than anyone in this town ever has.”

That I believed. Peter was that way. He’d never treated anyone with anything less than respect, not even the bullies in high school who made his life a living hell his junior year.

“Then why are you doing this? How could you repay his kindness this way?”

Anger sparked in her eyes. She pushed herself up, struggling out of her stool.

“I’m not doing anything,” she said breathlessly. “I just wanted to find him. I didn’t know…how was I supposed to know he’d died?”

“It was in all the papers. Surely you get newspapers out here.”

“Do I look like the kind of person who reads the paper?”

“Your customers clearly do,” I said, flicking my finger against an abandoned paper sitting on the counter between us. “You don’t live with your head in the sand.”

“I didn’t know.”

She moved around the end of the counter, helping herself to more water. She stood with her back to me, drinking her fill then pouring herself more. I wasn’t sure if she was really angry, or if she just wanted me to think she was. But when the food came a minute later, it was pretty clear that she was torn between her hunger and her desire to make me suffer.

“Come eat.” I waved to her. “Don’t let it go to waste because you don’t like what I have to say.”

“I know you think I’m a gold digger. But I’m not.”

“Eat.”

She watched me wearily for a second then made her way back to her stool. It took her a couple of tries to get onto it, but once she was, she wasted no time tucking into that patty melt. She had it half gone in the time it took me to take two bites. I found myself wondering when she’d last had a decent meal.

I wasn’t going to feel sorry for her. But she was making it damn hard.

“You’ve worked here a while?”

She nodded. “Four years.”

“You ever try getting a job somewhere else?”

She picked a grilled onion off her sandwich and popped it into her mouth. “I moved to Austin briefly with a girlfriend, worked at a Denny’s there. But the tips sucked, and I made less money there than I could make here. So I came back.”

“You ever try another line of work?”

“Like what? Rocket scientist?” She laughed at her own joke. “I’m a high school dropout. There aren’t many jobs out there for girls like me.”

Her eyes darkened, and she picked at the crust of her sandwich before picking up a fry and popping it into her mouth.

“He was going to help me get my GED.”

“Peter?”

“He said he’d quiz me and help me learn the material.”

Again, textbook Peter. Didn’t mean anything.

“What was he like?” she asked suddenly. “When he was a kid and stuff.”

It was my turn to play with my sandwich, pretend that I was thinking my answer through. She caught me off guard with that question. I’d tried not to think about Peter that much these last seven months. It hurt too much. Peter and I weren’t as close as he was to Megan, but we were closer than most brothers were, I think. Even though he hadn’t chosen the military, he encouraged me to follow my dreams. Told me that I should do what would make me happy. I wasn’t sure the military would make me happy, but I knew the routine of college wouldn’t. I barely got through high school, what with all that reading and testing and the distractions of my friends, school just wasn’t my thing. Peter was the only one who understood that. Dad swore he wasn’t disappointed, but I could see it in his eyes. He’d wanted Peter and me to work at the company with him, to take it over when he was ready to retire. But I just couldn’t do it. The business world was more Peter’s thing.

And now Peter was gone.

“He was a good brother. Supportive. He was always there whenever Megan or I needed him.”

“He talked about you. Even showed me a picture once.”