Frankenstorm: Category 8

R
AY
G
ARTON

PINNACLE E-BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

The barrel of the shotgun looked like a gaping black mouth about to close on Latrice’s head. Her umbrella slipped from her suddenly slack right hand while her left arm hugged the package.

“Leland sent me,” she said, frozen in place, afraid to move. “Leland Salt. In Sacramento.”

“Where’s Leland?” the man said. “
He’s
supposed to be here.”

“He had to leave the country.”

“He had to—the fuck you mean, the
country
?”

“I . . . I mean . . . well . . . the country. He had to go to another country to live. That’s what I mean. And he had to do it right away. He asked me to bring your package and said he’d let you know I was coming.”

The man slowly lowered the gun. “Goddammit, Leland!” he said with more frustration than anger. “He’d let me know, huh? Well, he
didn’t
let me know.” He took the package from her. “Who’re
you
?”

“Latrice Innes.”

“You Leland’s girlfriend, or somethin’?”

“No, just friends. I work in the bail bonds office he frequents.” She stood between her Highlander and another SUV, somewhat protected from the wind, but she was getting soaked by the rain.

“I guess you should come on in outta the rain. Unless you got somewhere else to go. The hurricane’s gonna hit tonight and they’re tellin’ everybody to take cover. It’s all over TV.” He reluctantly turned around and headed for the house, glancing over his shoulder to see if she was coming.

Latrice bent down and groped for her umbrella on the muddy ground. She found it, but got her hand muddy. She didn’t care, was too scared to care, and shook the mud off. She’d never felt such strong wind in her life. Had she opened her umbrella, it would have been destroyed.

The first things Latrice saw upon entering the house were two dark, beefy pit bulls rushing toward her out of the dark, their claws clicking on the hardwood floor. She held up her hands defensively and started to back up when she saw their pink tongues flopping from their snouts and heard the excited, puppylike whining sounds they were making. One reared up, put his paws on her hip, and tried to lick her face while the other rolled over on her back and peed a little as she excitedly wiggled over the floor.

“Get down,” the man ordered the dog as he closed the door. He leaned his shotgun in a corner, stomped his foot, and shouted, “Go on, you two, get outta here!” When the dogs ignored him, he kicked the one rolling on the floor. “Get the fuck out!” The kicked dog squealed and scrambled to get out of the foyer. The other followed and tossed back a single wounded glance on the way out. He shouted, “Hey, Marcus! Put the dogs in the garage, will ya?”

She heard movement deeper in the house then and a man’s voice called the dogs.

“Take your coat off,” her host said, nodding at the coat tree as he removed his own. “Sorry about the dogs. They always get excited when we have company. They’re not very good watchdogs. Somebody broke in here to rob the place, they’d probably just play with him.”

He was tall and somewhat pear-shaped. He pulled back his hood as he removed the coat to reveal a thick shock of red hair, which matched the freckles on his round, puffy face.

It was cloyingly warm in the house and Latrice wanted nothing more than to remove her coat, but she didn’t want to stay.

“Look, I’ve really got to get back home to my kids,” she said. “If you could pay me, I’ll just get back in my car and—”

“
Pay
you? The fuck you talkin’ about,
pay
you? For
what
?”

Latrice felt panic swelling upward from her gut. It had never occurred to her that she might not get paid. She’d trusted Leland. But at that very moment, she had no idea
why
she’d trusted him because she hardly knew him.

She remained calm and quiet, in spite of her panic, as she said, “Leland told me you would pay me for the delivery.”

“Oh. Well . . . you want, I can cover your gas.”

“Leland said it would be five thousand dollars.”

His facial expression became almost cartoonlike in its shock. “Five thou—what the fuck is he—when did Leland start doin’ drugs? ’Cause he musta been doin’ some good shit if he told you I was gonna pay you five thou—oh, wait.”

He frowned down at the floor for a moment and scratched his head, deep in thought. Then he cocked a brow and studied her with suspicion.

“Leland said he was gonna call me and explain all this?” he said.

“He said he already had, but he’d missed you, so he left a message.”

“Yeah, he left a message, left me a
couple
, but he didn’t
tell
me nothin’. Just that there was some kinda change in plans and we needed to talk. Well, uh . . . it just so happens I owe Leland some money. Comes to about five grand. But I ain’t givin’ it to
you
till I talk to Leland. I mean, he wants me to give it to you, I will, but he’s gonna have to tell me himself. I’ll try to get him again, but he hasn’t been answerin’ and it’s pissin’ me off.”

Latrice felt guilty for doubting Leland. He’d tried to cover up the fact that he was giving her five thousand dollars owed him by his friend. She was touched by his generosity, and his attempt to avoid embarrassing her with charity. But at the moment, she wanted to kick him in the junk for sending her to this place. There was a torchiere lamp glowing in the foyer, but through the archway ahead, she could see nothing but darkness with occasional flickers of light—a television playing somewhere in the next room.

“Take your coat off and I’ll try to reach Leland again,” he said.

Once she’d hung up her coat, he led her into the living room, which was lit only by the fifty-two-inch flat-screen TV on the wall, where two voluptuous, naked women were mud-wrestling in a ring surrounded by a screaming crowd. Two young men slumped on a couch watched the TV with heavy-lidded eyes. In front of them, a coffee table was cluttered with boxes of crackers, bags of potato chips, a few handguns, beer bottles, and a lot of drug paraphernalia. A young woman was curled into a sleeping ball on a love seat and sitting next to her was a fat, stubby Japanese guy with long hair and thick glasses, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, reading a book.

There was a brick fireplace in the corner that looked like it hadn’t been used as a fireplace in a long time. Instead, it was being used a storage space. Books and magazines were sloppily piled in the fireplace as if wearily waiting to be burned for outliving their usefulness. At the right end of the hearth stood a four-piece set of black iron fireplace tools—poker, shovel, broom, and tongs—hanging on a rack.

“I’m Giff, by the way,” her host said as he sat down in a recliner and put the package on his lap. He nodded toward the love seat. “That’s Jada, but she’s wasted. Next to her is Tojo, but he’s reading. He’s always reading.” He turned on a lamp beside the chair, produced a pocket knife, and cut the box open. Once he looked inside, he closed the box and put it on the floor, saying, “Yeah, that’s the shit Leland was supposed to bring.” Removing a cell phone from his pocket, Giff waved toward the men on the couch. “That’s Jimmy and Marcus, by the way. Turn that fuckin’ thing down, guys.”

Jimmy aimed a remote at the TV and lowered the volume. He was so small and wiry that, at first glance, he looked like a boy, especially in the torn jeans and plain white T-shirt he wore. Marcus filled out his snug wife beater undershirt with plenty of muscle. His sandy hair was short and mussed, and he had tattoos on his arms and neck and metal in his face. He seemed unaware of Latrice’s presence.

This is not the kind of company you wanna be keeping, girl,
Latrice thought, looking at the guns and drugs on the coffee table. She stood there feeling stupid, wondering if she should sit down in one of the two empty chairs in the room or stay where she was and wait for Giff to make his call.

He leaned back in the recliner as he put the phone to his ear.

Marcus suddenly noticed Latrice and jolted to his feet as if he’d been poked with an electric cattle prod. He turned to Giff and said, “What the
fuck
, dude?”

“Shut up, Marcus, and deal with it,” Giff snapped. Then he shouted, “Hey, Rosie! We got company!” He listened to the phone, then said, “Goddammit, Leland, where the fuck are you? Your friend is here and she wants your fuckin’ money! Call me back right away and explain what the hell’s goin’ on, here, goddammit.” He put the phone on the end table and turned to Latrice. “He say where he was goin’?”

Marcus stood beside the couch, silently glaring at Latrice. She tried to ignore him.

“Only that he was leaving the country,” she said.

“He say why?”

“He said he stole something from somebody who’s going to kill him for it if he sticks around. This was yesterday, and he said he was leaving right away. But if he hasn’t called you back by now . . . well, I hope he’s okay.”

She glanced at Marcus. He had not moved nor taken his eyes from her.

“The fuck’s wrong with you, Marcus?” Giff said.

“Well, who the fuck
is
she?” Marcus said.

“She’s a friend of Leland’s. You can shut the fuck up and watch your show or go back to your fuckin’ trailer.”

All three men were about the same age—late twenties, early thirties—but Giff spoke to Marcus as if he were a child.

Marcus stalked out of the room saying, “You gonna be bringin’ niggers around, Giff, I’m outta here.” A moment later, the front door opened and the sound of the storm rushed into the house until the door slammed, shutting it out again.

Giff looked at Latrice and shrugged. “That’s just Marcus. He don’t like your kind, is all.”

Oh, yeah,
Latrice thought,
this is a fun evening waiting to happen.

She had to get out of there.

A moment later, a young woman walked in and stepped in front of Latrice, grinning.

“Hi, I’m Rosie,” she said, smiling. She had thin, stringy, blond hair, extremely pale, splotchy skin, and a black patch over her left eye. Her face was gaunt and her sweatshirt and sweatpants seemed to be a few sizes too big for her. She appeared to be made of sticks, unable to hold still, constantly twitching or turning or slightly bouncing. “Who’re you?”

“Uh, I’m Latrice.”

To Giff, Rosie said, “Who’s Latrice?”

“She delivered a package for Leland. I need to reach him but he ain’t answerin’ his goddamned phone.”

Although neither sentence answered her question, Rosie seemed satisfied. She turned to Latrice and said, “C’mon in the kitchen, I’ll get you something to drink.”

Just us girls,
Latrice thought. She followed Rosie, wondering just how weird the night was going to get.