TRIGGER: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel (24 page)

He grabbed the bottle of
whiskey that was sitting on the floor near the couch and took a huge guzzle,
feeling it burn down his throat. And then he lay down on the couch, stretching
out, closing his eyes. As he drifted off to sleep, he felt cold and wished he
had a blanket, or a warm body next to him. Not the girl, but someone else.
Someone he’d never met, but who, deep down where he could barely admit it to
himself, he wished he would meet soon.

~
3
~

I was almost done. Three
more rooms, and I’d have finished my duties for the day. I was more than ready
to clock out, change into real clothes, and drive away as fast as I could. Less
excited to arrive at home than I was to just get the hell away from work, I
knocked on the door of my next room before letting myself in. My eyes
immediately fell to a blue duffel bag sitting on a chair in the middle of the
room.

I picked up the duffle bag,
wondering how someone could have forgotten about it when it was just sitting on
the chair, declaring its presence at first glance around the room. It was
surprisingly heavy when I lifted it and set it down near my cart, meaning to
bring it straight down to the front desk once I was through with the room.

There was an odor in the
room that I couldn’t quite place. It smelled metallic, cold. But, blessedly,
that seemed to be the only major problem with the room. No vomit or spilled
beer here.

As I heaved the comforter
and sheets off the bed, back aching from performing the same motions over and
over again, I saw something that made my blood turn cold. I wanted to believe
it was something other than what I saw, but I couldn’t fool myself. That smell
was blood, and what made that clear as day was the small pool of brownish-red
liquid under the bed. And in the middle of that pool, just barely peeking out,
were two fingers.

Two fingers that were,
presumably, attached to a whole body.

I nearly pissed my pants and
threw up at the same time. I backed away from the bed. I’d seen a lot of things
in my time at the hotel, but nothing like this. Nothing even
nearly
as bad as this.

Maybe it’s ketchup and a glove,
I thought, irrationally, knowing
full damn well that it wasn’t. But something inside me insisted that I make
sure it was what I thought it was before telling everyone about how the sky was
falling. Tiptoeing around the bed, heart pounding, I kneeled down a fair
distance from the pool of blood (or, I still hoped, ketchup). Holding my
breath, I peered under the bed.

Yup. That was a body. Sure
as shit, that was a dead-ass human being lying underneath that bed.

Why even bother to hide it there…
I wondered, my mind moving slowly,
not quite processing what I was seeing. I shot straight up, mouth suddenly very
dry, heart beating faster than a drummer in a metal band. My eyes darted to the
duffel bag set near my cart.

I can only chalk my actions
after that up to divine intervention, or possibly shock, or maybe even just
morbid curiosity. The appropriate thing to do would have been to get on the
walkie-talkie and report what I’d found to my boss, and the police, and get the
hell out of that room before I further muddled up what was certainly a crime
scene. Instead, I walked to the duffel bag, leaning down and yanking at the
zipper with shaking hands.

Holy

Fucking

Shit.

That was a LOT of money.
Like, stacks on stacks. Of hundreds, not twenties. And mixed in with the money
was a lot of taped-up Ziploc bags full of what I’d come to recognize as
cocaine. Like I said, you find a lot of crap in hotel rooms after people have
flown the coop.

I took one large step back
before falling on my ass against the bed. Thinking of the corpse that was only
a foot away from me, I scurried away from the bed to the wall on my hands and
knees. If my heart had been pounding before, it was basically ricocheting out
of my chest at that point.

I guess, even then, I knew
what I was going to do.

See, there’s only so much a
human mind and body can take before it breaks. And everything in my life had
been working on me so long: Jeremy, the job, the dullness of my days, the
violence of my nights. I hadn’t thought I could ever get away.

And now?

It was like God was shining
a light down from the ceiling right onto that duffel bag. Tempting me, maybe
even taunting me.

Everything I needed to make
a clean break.

Right there.

And who’s money could it be,
anyway? It sure as hell didn’t belong to anyone good…and if whoever had killed
the person under the bed hadn’t seen fit to take the money with them, I was
pretty sure it didn’t belong to
anyone
at
that point.

Except me.

It belonged to me.

Once that thought came into
my mind, I acted like it was true. Propriety be damned. With that sort of
money, I could make straight for Mexico, or Canada, and change my name, and no
one would ever find me…

Not Jeremy. Not the cops.
Which, by the way, was pretty much the same thing, since he
was
a cop.

I scuttled forward towards
the duffel bag, hands itching to get around that money. But I stopped myself;
be smart, Gabriella. For once in your
stupid, pathetic life, use your fucking brain.

See? I even
thought
in Jeremy’s voice and tone. I’d
never thought I was stupid before getting involved with him, but he’d had me so
beat down that I believed him when he said I was a dumb bitch.

I straightened up, grabbing
two gloves from my cart and snapping them on. I took all the cocaine from the
bag.
Where…where…
I thought, looking
around the room. My eyes lit on the dresser; throwing a drawer open, I threw
all the little bundles into the drawer and then closed it, though I left it
slightly ajar.

I didn’t need the drugs,
just the money.

And, I figured, it would
probably help the detectives or whoever to know that whatever happened was a
result of a drug deal gone wrong.

As for the money…

And the body…

I leaned into my portable
laundry basket, pulling out the sheets and comforter I’d just stripped. Working
quickly, I made the bed in a way that looked as though someone had slept in it.
Not too messy, not too neat.

I needed it to look like I’d
never been there.

But the key…
I thought to myself. The keys at the hotel were
automatic, and wireless, and they recorded whenever anyone came or went into
the room.

I threw the duffel bag into
the laundry, covering it with sheets and comforters.

I took a series of deep
breaths, grabbing my walkie-talkie and preparing to lie like my life depended
on it.

“Rosa, Melanie, come in,” I
said, actually happy for the quiver in my voice, hoping it would make me more
convincing.

“Go ahead, Gabriella,” Rosa’s
voice came over the other end, her heavy accent hard to understand over the
crackly radio.

“I was just about to go into
303, and I just got sick everywhere. Had to run right to the bathroom. It
smells funny in here but I think it’s something else. I’m
gonna
come down, I need to go home,” I said. It wasn’t the best lie in the world, but
what else could I do? They would know I went into the room when they checked
the logs. The best thing I could do was pretend that I only went into the room
to throw up, that I’d never seen the body or even touched the bed.

Of course, once I never
showed up back home, and once someone discovered the body in the room, there
would be a lot of questions. And, with Jeremy on the force, those questions
would probably be broadcast across America once he figured out I wasn’t coming
back. I could only hope that by the time those questions were asked, I would be
safely on my way to Mexico.

“Make sure you flush,”
Melanie’s voice came over the walkie-talkie. “Clock out and go home. Come in
tomorrow?”

“Maybe, I’ll see,” I said,
letting the walkie-talkie fall to my side once more.

I looked around the room
once more, but knew I needed to get out of there as soon as possible. The
longer I stood there, the more I’d freak out, the more I’d rethink what I was
doing, the more I’d overthink how to cover my tracks.

Pushing my cart out the
door, leaving the lights on, the way they had been when I got there, I made my
way down to the basement, praying no one else would be down there. No one
should
have been down there. Rosa was
still doing rounds, the laundry room was a separate building, and Melanie would
be half-tossed and chain-smoking in the courtyard by that time of day.

And, as though God was still
smiling upon me, no one was.

I tossed my load of laundry
into one of the huge baskets, the sheets mingling together. Grabbing the duffel
bag once it fell, I didn’t bother to put my cart away or even change into my
regular clothes before going to my locker.

I had my own duffel bag in
there, my gym bag, for the three times per week that I went to the gym after
work. Today was not a gym day, but I kept a change of clothes in there all the
time in case Jeremy made one of his “suggestions”.

That was another thing, by
the way, about that marriage. When Jeremy didn’t want me to come home, so he
could do whatever – or whomever – he did when I wasn’t around, he’d “suggest”
that I go to the gym, and God help me if I didn’t take him up on that
suggestion.

Now, I was thanking God for
his little “suggestions”. I shoved the duffle bag full of money into my larger
gym bag, throwing my running shoes into my locker to make room. I grabbed my
purse as well, and threw my street clothes, which had been hanging up, into the
duffel bag.

I didn’t clock out.

I didn’t look back.

I was on the highway, pedal
to the floor (though not speeding), mind numb as I began to unravel what I’d
just done, what I was going to do.

Which, I realized, was a
total mystery.

I didn’t know how to start
over with a duffel bag full of cash. I didn’t know how to create a new
identity. I wasn’t wise in the ways of criminal behavior.

Jeremy was, but I couldn’t
exactly turn to him for help, could I?

Well, all I had to do, for
then, was get to Denver.
Just get to
Denver,
I thought.

Wait, no.

I didn’t realize I was
slowing the car down until I heard frantic honking all around me. I pressed my
foot on the gas once more.

Not Denver, not Denver, Utah, go to Utah,
I thought.
I was driving the wrong direction for Utah, but I knew it was the smarter
choice. It had to be. Jeremy had friends in Denver, cop friends. Utah? A whole
new state? A wild sort of state? Lots of open land, not too much in the way of
cell phone towers…

Utah.

I took the next exit,
feeling my stomach flipping as the car swerved around one of the mountain
highway’s many looping, high-octane turns, got back on the highway, going the
other direction.

Utah, Utah, go to Utah,
I thought, over and over again, my
mind only able to focus on that one word, that one destination. It was all I
could do not to throw up in my lap. The duffel bag, tucked underneath driver’s
seat, seemed to pulse and throb behind my feet.

Holy shit, what the hell are you doing, Gabriella,
you
stupid bitch, you’re never going to get away with this, you better fucking turn
this car around right now and go home before Jeremy gets there and wonders
where you are.
That voice, I realize now, was Jeremy’s voice in my
head. But it sounded like mine at the time. And it was loud.

Keep going, you’re never going to get another chance, this is it, this is
it, you have to go now,
another voice was saying, a voice that sounded strange
at the time but which, I’ve learned, is actually my voice. And it was louder.

It was 4pm. Another hour and
a half and Jeremy would be home, wondering where I was. Just as I had that
thought, my cell phone dinged.

Shit, I forgot about that fucking thing,
I thought,
panicking, knowing that cops could trace you by your cell phone signal. I
reached down, keeping my eyes on the road, and grabbed the phone from the
pocket of my maid’s uniform. It was Jeremy texting me.
Shit, shit shit,
I thought, my heart starting to race once more, my
mind leaping to imaginary scenarios – all of which ended in blood. It would be
my
body tucked underneath a bed this
time.