Page 12 of A Daddy for Christmas 2: Kitt

Good, let him worry. I waited until he bent close to my face to check my breathing before making my move, slamming myforehead into his nose as hard as I could again, like I’d seen people do on those cop shows on TV. I had no idea how much that shit would hurt though. It was the second time that night, and I thought I might have broken his nose this time.

I almost couldn’t believe it when it actually worked. Taken off guard, he yelled out, clapped a hand over his nose and fell backward, blood spurting through his fingers. Though my forehead was throbbing, I managed to stumble to my feet and hobble around the car. I jumped inside, locking the door with only seconds to spare, right in front of the gaping valet parking guy, who’d been standing by, watching the show.

Rio, meanwhile, was right behind me all the way, yelling and calling me names and banging on the door, slinging drops of blood all over the side of the SUV. I had to admit I was kind of horrified, but I started the engine, threw the car in reverse and backed out of there. Rio was halfway hanging onto the door, and when I realized it, I panicked and slammed on the brakes. That knocked him off, and he went flying off and rolling across the pavement. Really scared now, I waited to make sure he wasn’t dead and then when I saw him stumble back up to his feet, I threw the car in gear and took off, peeling out of the parking lot and making the tires squeal.

As I raced out onto the street, I saw him shaking his fist at me in the rear-view mirror and yelling something I couldn’t hear over the tires squealing. I thought that was probably a good thing. My head ached, and tears streamed out of my eyes because it was all a little overwhelming, and I really hoped I hadn’t hurt him. I had never done anything like that in my life before, and I knew it was outrageous and over the top. Maybe I’d really gone too far this time. I knew he was going to be furious, and if he ever caught up with me, he might really kill me, like he was shouting he would when he was holding onto the door handle of the car.

I raced the SUV down the street, dodging traffic and glancing into the rear-view mirror, halfway expecting to see Rio catching up to me, blood still streaming down his face, like in a horror movie. I was headed for the interstate, though I had no clear idea of where the hell that was. This was my first time to actually drive in the city. This was a big SUV and had more power than anything I’d ever driven before, too, so I slowed down and tried my best to calm myself and stop speeding. The last thing I needed was to get pulled over by the cops. There was no way I could explain this car being in Rio Jeffries name. Plus, I thought the Atlanta PD might have put out some kind of lookout on me by now. Come to think of it, Riordan Jeffries would probably call and report this to the New Mexico police too. I was a wanted man in two states!

I’d really screwed up in Atlanta, and I still wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of this mess. Or even if I could.

The whole thing had started with a friend of mine I knew from my college days, Jeremy Kline. I saw him around town often at some of the clubs I liked. I’d go to the clubs most weekends to dance and have a few drinks. Jeremy was gay, like me, so we had a lot in common, though there was never any attraction in that way, as we both considered ourselves to be dedicated and enthusiastic bottoms. If anything, we competed in a way for some of the same guys. Like I said, I’d known him a while, and he was fun to hang out with.

Jeremy’s cousin, Cherry, worked at a local nightclub downtown called the Golden Pony, and she was one of the exotic dancers there. It was located in Five Points, in downtown Atlanta, not too far from Underground. They called it Five Points because that was where five streets met—Marietta Street, Edgewood Avenue, Decatur Street, and two legs of Peachtree Street.It was also where the MARTA Five Points Station waslocated, which was the largest and busiest station on the whole MARTA train system.

So needless to say, there was always a lot going on down there. When I saw Jeremy at the club that fateful Friday night, he was worried because she’d called him sounding a bit nervous and scared, and asked him to come and pick her up at the club. She said something about there was going a big fight brewing in the club, but she didn’t want to give any specific details. She just told him to come around to the side and she’d come out. She asked him to hurry.

Which he totally would have, I’m sure, if not for the fact that he was wearing his new club clothes and looked totally fabulous in them. Plus, the man he’d been after for weeks had just agreed to go home with him that very night. Well, what was he to do?

He was definitely in a quandary. He didn’t want to leave his cousin Cherry stranded—but some things were just thicker than blood. Things like the fact that he’d put a lot of work into this man, and it had finally all come to fruition. Now Jeremy’s ass had seen more action than the front seat of an Enterprise rental car, but he was sure this man was “the one.” That’s what he told me anyway as he begged me to help him out and asked me to go pick his cousin up. He made lavish promises about how he’d repay me if I just did him this one favor, this one time, and I finally told him I’d go pick her up.

He gushed all over me and texted the girl, telling her I was on the way and told her what kind of car I drove, so she’d know what to look for. I pulled to the back of the Golden Pony about thirty minutes later, but there was no sign of Cherry or anybody else standing outside and no place to park except in the street, and that just wasn’t much of an option. I decided to go around the block again, and this time I got stopped by a long redlight.

I was sitting in my car waiting for the light to change, when I heard loud rap music playing beside me as a car pulled up nextto me at the light. I glanced over, as you do, and saw a car full of young guys, just vibing to the music and waiting for the light to change. Just then, another car pulled up on its other side. I was in the far-right lane, the guys with the music were in the middle, and the newcomers were in the far left. I reached in my pocket for a cigarette and lit it up. Just as I leaned over to get the lighter out of the dash, all hell broke loose. Two guys literally jumped out of the car next to me and were met by two from the car on the far-left. They began slugging each other, yelling and cursing with furious faces, waving their hands in the air, obviously embroiled in a heated fight. It seemed to have spilled out of the cars and onto the street. They weren’t more than a few feet away from where I sat, but nobody even so much as glanced my way, so I didn’t think they noticed I was even there. As it was, I had a ring side seat for whatever was about to happen, and it didn’t take long to go down.

Suddenly shots rang out right next to me. In fact, bullets started flying everywhere and people were screaming.

I dived down to the floorboard and stayed there as the shots continued to zing through the air. It seemed to go on for a long time and when it finally stopped, I peeked my head up to take a look.

The light changed then, at about the same time as the ones in the car farthest away from me, noticed me watching them. They started yelling at me and coming toward me. I didn’t know what to do, but I did the only thing I could think of. I started flashing my headlights on and off at oncoming traffic and leaned down on the horn.

I just wanted it to stop, and it stopped all right—as they all came running at me. I totally panicked. I threw the car in Drive and got the hell out of there. By the time I managed to pull out onto the next street, they were already banging on the trunk and the top of my car.

I drove as fast as I could to the nearest gas station outside the downtown area, where I pulled in and sat under the lights with my doors locked to call 911. I told them I had just seen some guys get shot on the street near the Golden Pony and to send everybody as fast as they could. Then I hung up and drove the hell home. I figured Cherry must have made her own way home, or she could take a fucking Uber, because no way was I going back.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Emergency Services had my number, and the CCTV cameras gave them everything else they must have needed. I got a call from the detectives the next day, and they brought me in for questioning. It turned out that the murdered guy and a few of his friends were well known to the cops. So was the guy they suspected of killing him from the other car. They had shown me mug shots of him and his known associates, and I was able to pick out the killer right away. The detective told me the men were both drug dealers and all-around bad guys you just didn’t want to mess with. By the time the cops had arrived, the other guys were gone, and no one claimed to have seen a thing. I was their only witness. Even the film from the cameras that had identified me just fine had now been “conveniently” misplaced.

I told them I would testify, but that wasn’t good enough for them. They said the murderer was very “connected,” and would be coming after me to shut me up, because without my testimony, he would walk. They kept at me for hours, but I just kept telling them I intended to testify, but I was not going into protective custody. No way. Forget it. With the court system the way it was, the trial might be delayed for weeks or even months while the guy appealed and stalled. And all that time, I had to put my life on hold? No fucking way.

They wouldn’t let it go though, and came to my house to talk to my brother about it. He told them he was my legal guardian,and when they found out why, they talked him into involuntary protective custody as the way to go—on account of me being “mentally incompetent.”

I was raging on the inside when they told me that, though I acted meek and tame on the outside. I asked if I could get a few things, and they’d let me go upstairs. Big mistake on their part, because I ducked down the back stairs and made a run for it, winding up a few blocks away. I went to an ATM and drew out all the money I could and decided to take a bus to go visit my friend, who lived in Albuquerque.

I knew the cops would be after me, but I never would have dreamed Jazz would privately hire someone to track me down too. I was in worse trouble than I’d been in to start with, and I literally had no idea how I was ever getting out of this mess.

Chapter Three

Rio

It was as I limped back to the elevator to go upstairs that I began considering my life choices and how our firm had come to take this job in the first place. It all started when Kitt’s father, shortly before his death from cancer, asked a judge to make his brother Jazz his younger brother’s guardian. It was an unusual move for a person Kitt’s age, and I’d never heard of it being done before. But I guess if you were rich enough, anything was possible.

State laws varied with regard to the rights of a guardian over their ward, but as a general rule, it was an extreme and restrictive option that required petitioning the court to declare that an individual like Kitt lacked sufficient “capacity” to make their own decisions. Why would the father take such an extreme action? And how did he get a reputable doctor to sign off on it? Again, it was all about money. The very wealthy old man, a member of the Georgia legislature, had judges in his pocket, not to mention unscrupulous doctors who were willing to sign off on whatever he wanted them to.

Jazz said their father had done it for Kitt’s own good. That he had found Kitt to be what he’d called “unmanageable” and obviously incompetent to make decisions in his own best interests. It was still a dick move, it seemed to me, but maybe the old man had really thought he was protecting Kitt. Jazz told me, however, that his father also had other reasons, one of which was that he found out Kitt was not only gay, but, as Jazz put it, “he had bizarre kinks” that Jazz didn’t want to share with me. He said it wasn’t relevant, and he’d rather not discuss it.

It was okay with me—for now. Knowing his secrets wasn’t necessarily a deal breaker if they weren’t illegal or had nothing to do with the job at hand. But if it became relevant, the brother was going to have to tell me what was going on. I’d met a lot of crazy people in my line of work, and Kitt seemed fine to me. Maybe a little immature, but he was still young.

I found out a few things about what had made the old man so upset. Apparently, Kitt had used a fake ID and gone with friends to a gay BDSM club and then got caught doing whatever it was by the detective hired to follow him. Apparently, it was so kinky that it was the last straw for his ultra-conservative father. The old man had written Kitt out of his will, cut him off without a penny and had him declared incompetent. It was a wonder to me that he hadn’t locked him in the attic.

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