Off the Beaten Path (17 page)

Monica felt Jake's body wince and heard tires squeal on the street in front of her sister’s house. She looked over Jake's left shoulder just in
time to see the tail lights of a car speeding up the street and disappearing around the corner.

Later that night in the lobby of the emergency room she would tell the police that she did not see the license plate number of the car, but she thought that it might have been a silver BMW.

Kristin was sitting next to Monica holding her hand when she heard her tell the police officer what type of car she thought she saw. Kristin's entire body flinched and her grip tightened around Monica's fingers. Kristin let out an audible gasp when she heard the words leave Monica's lips; her gasp drew the attention of the police officer. The officer stopped taking notes and turned to look straight at Kristin, he could tell that something Monica had said had triggered a reaction from the lady holding her hand.

“Miss Palmer, do you have something to add?” The officer asked in his best cop interrogation voice.

Kristin composed herself and tried to explain away her sharp reaction to what Monica had said. “No, I just realized that this could have been much worse. What if the bullet had hit Monica, it was Monica's turn to shutter.

Jake was released later that night from the emergency room to the waiting arms of his girlfriend and a full bottle of Vicodin. The small caliber bullet, probably a 22 had gone in and out of the fleshy part of his shoulder just above his collar bone and about six inches to the right of his spine. After the Vicodin wore off and the pain subsided Jake would realize that Monica's punch in the ribs had probably saved his life or at least kept him out of a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

First thing the next morning Kristin asked Becca and Dean to come to her office. Becca took one look at her best friend and thought that she must have had a very rough night. She was right, Kristin had been up most of the night and she needed to unload what was eating away at her on the two people she trusted most in this world. She began by telling them about the feeling that she was being followed, the man in the Silver BMW, and finally she recounted the conversation between Jake's Girlfriend and the police officer. By the time she was finished she was on the verge of tears, she blurted out through red swollen eyes,

“I could have got Jake killed.” Becca got up and walked around the desk. She placed her arms around Kristin's head and pulled her close to her body to comfort her.

The only thing they had to go on last night after the attempt on Jake's life was shock and wild speculation. Everyone in the room was numb with the deadly possibilities. It could have been a jealous ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. It could have been a stalker or some nut-job fixated on Monica from when she was a model. But after what Kristin had just told them they were all thinking the same thing, Clarence Palmer.

Clarence was the kind of Bastard that didn't just inflict pain on the person that he was trying to get even with he wanted everyone around that person to suffer. Dean was the first one to move he stood up
quickly knocking his chair over backwards and placed both his hands palms down hard on Kristin's desk.

“We all know who was behind what happened last night.” Dean Snarled with a level of hatred that neither Kristin nor Becca had ever seen before.

“That no good, slimy Son of a Bitch has finally gone too far, and I'm going to put a stop to it.”

Dean spun around and bolted for the door like the building was on fire, he was beyond angry, he was enraged. He was so blind with rage that he couldn't hear Kristin and Becca screaming at him to Stop, to calm down. When he reached the door of Kristin's office he felt a dull thud hit him firmly right between his shoulder blades. The sensation he felt was not painful but it shocked him back to reality. He stopped and slowly turned around to see Kristin staring blankly up at Becca from behind the desk and Becca standing next to the book shelves with a guilty smile on her face,

“Sorry, big guy, I had to get your attention before you went off and did something we all would regret.”

Dean looked down to the floor to see what she had thrown at him. The thing that had got his attention was one of Kristin's prized possessions. The object lying on the floor at Dean’s feet was a baseball that her father had given her. It had been signed by both Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr. when they had both played for the Seattle Mariners at the same time.

Becca uncrossed her arms and walked toward Dean with her arms outstretched in a gesture of apology. When she got to where he was recovering from his shock Becca reached down and picked up the baseball, them she grabbed his upper arm like he was a prom date. She escorted him back to his chair and placed the baseball back in its honored place on the shelf.

When everything was back in place Becca said calmly,

“Now, where were we?” Becca could be almost charming when she wanted to be, and right now she really wanted to be.

Kristin took a deep breath and continued, “Dean, I don't want you take this the wrong way but this morning I hired a security company to provide twenty four hour a day protection for everyone associated with this firm.”

She could see the wounded look on Dean's face and before he could protest she held up her hand and continued, “Dean, no matter how good you are, there is no way you can protect all of us by yourself, especially with Jake recuperating. Besides, I have a very special job for you,” Kristin said with a wink. This seemed to brighten Dean's spirits a little.

“Does it involve tormenting a certain defense attorney,” He asked with a smile.

Kristin did not answer him she merely gave him a confirming wink and a smile. This brightened up Dean's spirits a lot. After a moment of assuagement she continued,

“There are a couple of things we need to do, things that you might not like or agree with.” Her two associated bustled at the insinuation. They sat quietly and waited.

Kristin reached into her top desk drawer and pulled out a stack of papers and slid them across the desk in front of Becca. Her best friend looked down at the thick stack of paperwork in front of her, they were clearly legal documents.

“What is this?” Becca asked, there was a tinge of apprehension in her voice.

Kristin responded like she was negotiating a business contract,

“You are taking over the Palmer Agency.”

Then in a softer tone she added, “If you want it.”

Becca asked a one word question, “Why?”

“There are a couple of really good reasons, if you will hear me out?” she paused to gauge how receptive her two friends were going to be. After a moment she continued, “Absolving myself of any connection to The Palmer Agency is the best way to protect it from Clarence's frivolous law suit.” She took a slow sip of her coffee to let her first reason sink in.

“Second, and most importantly it will protect everyone affiliated with this agency form becoming a target.”

“Kris, if you do this aren't you surrendering to that Bastard, Giving him what he wants?”

“Just the opposite, because his name has always been on this building, Clarence has always looked at this agency as another one of his little pet projects. In fact, I would like to suggest that if you take the deal I offer you, I strongly suggest that you change the name of the agency as soon as you possible.” She could see Becca rolling this around in her mind as a smile slowly spread across her face,

“Anything I want?' She asked,

Becca’s last question made Kristin more than a little nervous, she could see the wheels turning behind Becca's dark blue eyes.

“Yes, anything you want.” Kristin said cautiously.

“How much?” Were the next two words out of Becca's mouth.

Kristin grabbed a pen and a piece of stationary off her notepad, wrote a number on it and slid it across the table face down. Becca picked up the paper and turned it over like she was turning over a hole card looking for a royal flush. She gasp when she read the figure scrawled on the paper and gazed at her best friend like she was looking at a total stranger.

“That's the deal, take it or leave it.” Kristin said with an unyielding clarity.

Becca had known Kristin long enough to know when she wasn't bluffing. She hadn't ever met anyone that was more thoughtful or open to new possibilities, but when she made up her mind that was the end of the discussion. Becca reached into her purse and pulled a crisp one dollar bill and slid it across the desk, “Deal.' Was all she said.

They signed the stack of paperwork using Dean as a witness. When everything was done the two women stood and shook hands to seal the deal. There were glistening tears in both of their eyes, and let the truth be known Dean was a bit misty eyed as well.

Kristin opened up one of the book shelf doors and pulled out an unopened bottle of George Dickle Sippin Whiskey, “I think that this calls for a Toast.” Kristin said as she poured three shot glasses of whiskey almost to the brim. The three of them lifted the glasses clinked them together and downed the whiskey in one gulp. Then they slammed the glasses down on the desk hard enough to make the shot glasses shutter like they were about to break.

“Alright, what are you going to call it,” Kristin asked, bracing herself.

Becca puffed her ample chest out and swung one arm wildly up into the air like she was making an official proclamation, “The S.Y.C. Modeling Agency.”

Kristin and Dean looked at each other with blank expressions on their faces. They were rolling around in their minds what the initials stood for and neither one of them had a clue. Becca let them wrestle with the possibilities for a moment or two trying to figure out what the SYC stood for. Kristin couldn't take the suspense any longer,

“Okay Becca, Spill it. What does SYC stand for?”

Becca announced loudly and proudly,

“S.Y.C. Screw You Clarence, Modeling Agency.” They all burst out laughing until little lines of tears were spilling down their cheeks. When they finally got control of their laughter and their tears Kristin poured three more shots lifted her glass and said in a defiant voice, “S.Y.C. Screw You Clarence.”

Her comrades chimed in together, “Screw You Clarence.”

When the levity subsided Kristin said softly almost apologetically, “I don't mean to be the wet blanket in the group, but there is one other thing that needs to happen.

Becca got the feeling this was the part that they weren't going to like.

“I am going away until the trial.” She blurted it out without any hesitation.

Becca could see the pain in her friend’s eyes. It was Dean's turn to comfort her. He moved around the desk and wrapped his massive arms around her. The big man swallowed her up like a small child in her father’s arms. He stroked the hair on the back of her head and said with genuine support,

“K, we think that is a hell of a good idea, don't we Becca.” Dean winked at Becca.

She responded by lightly touching Kristin's arm, “Just what the doctor ordered.”

The inconspicuous man sat in the darkest corner of the dingy bar with his back to the wall and a 9mm tucked under his faded denim jacket. There was a bottle of cold beer in his right hand and a half a pack of cigarettes lying on the table in front of him. That is why he loved places like this, it didn't matter what the pompous city council said, and the people that came to a dump like this didn't give a shit if you smoked ten packs of cigarettes a night. This was the kind of place that when you walked in the front door they frisk you, and if you didn't have a gun they gave you one. And tonight this was the spot he had chosen for what needed to be done.

The man was dressed the part from head to toe, he was wearing scuffed up biker boots, faded jeans with at least a half dozen holes in varies places, a torn black t-shirt with “Kill Em' All and Let God Sort Em' Out” across his chest in blood red, and an old baseball cap with the Delta Force patch on it. However, all of it was just for show. The man had never been in the military, the fact was he had never done and honest day’s work in his entire life, and he damn sure didn't believe there was a God to sort things out. His clients knew him by Girard but he had a different alias for each job he chose to accept.

Girard saw himself as a self-made man. He had tried to enlist in the army after he was thrown out of college his freshman year for riding his motorcycle through the lunch room at the height of lunch hour, the Army did not want him. The fact was that none of the branches of the Military would take him, he tried them all.

The Marine recruiter tried to explain to him that despite Hollywood's depiction of the military in the movies, the armed forces were not a bunch of blood thirsty killers looking for the next opportunity to murder, rape, and pillage every country on the face of the earth. When the recruiter informed Girard that the United States Marines were not interested in men that were in a hurry to kill people Girard became highly agitated. He screamed at the recruiter that he knew exactly what the military was all about, and that Bull Shit about the military being a force for peace was just that, Bull Shit. Then he leaped to his feet knocking over the recruiter’s desk lamp in the process, spit on the recruiter’s desk and called him a pussy.

That was Girard's first mistake, the next thing he knew he was crashing through the front door of the recruiting center with glass showering down on him. Girard landed flat on his back on the sidewalk with a broken jaw. As he looked up through bleary out of focus eyes he saw the recruiter standing over him. The stout man in his early forties squatted down next to him and said,

“Son, I believe that you just experienced firsthand the lesson that I was trying to explain to you in my office, peaceful until provoked, capish.” Then the former gunny Sergeant stood up dusted his hands off over Girard and before he turned to go back inside his office he said with a wide smile on his face, “And that concludes today's lesson.”