Page 65 of A Life Imagined
“Have dinner on the table when you get home?”
“Now you’re getting it.”
Rayan opted instead to return to bed.Later, he walked into town and wandered from store to store, buying things he didn’t need.He’d just returned home and was finishing a late lunch in the kitchen when he heard the thud of someone banging on the front door.Peering through the peephole, he saw a flushed and frantic-looking Elise.
Rayan opened the door, and she spilled inside.“He told me to come here.”
“Mathias?”
She nodded.“They came to the warehouse, looking for the drugs, and he’s there right now with them.We have to do something—”
“What drugs?”
“The shipment from Indonesia.He didn’t tell you?”
Rayan swallowed a barb of anger, recalling the crate of smashed clay figures.No.Apparently, he doesn’t tell me shit.
“It was my fault.I sourced the pieces, and when they arrived, they were fake and filled with these plastic bags of white powder.Then this woman shows up, asking about Asian artifacts.Mathias must have known she was trouble because he told me to keep an eye out for her, but I didn’t really make the connection until the pig’s head showed up outside the warehouse—”
“That’s enough,” he said curtly, cutting through the panicked recap of information Mathias had blatantly kept from him.
Rayan strode through the house to the study, Elise trailing behind him.He spun the wheel on the concealed safe beneath the desk and opened it to retrieve a holster, a pistol, and a box of ammunition.He shrugged on the holster and began loading the gun, his fingers moving with surprising dexterity.
Guess it’s a skill you don’t forget in a hurry,he thought as he strapped the weapon to his chest.
“Christ, you too?”
Rayan glanced up.He’d forgotten Elise was in the room.She was staring at him in horror, like he was a complete stranger.
“What is going on here?Who are you?”she asked.
“That’s a loaded question.”
He pulled open Mathias’s laptop on the desk and tapped in the man’s password.Navigating to the location tracking app, Rayan synced it with Mathias’s phone.He waited for the red dot to appear, but when it did, it was nowhere near the warehouse.And it was moving.Quickly.
“He’s headed along the highway toward Capécure.”
“How can that be?I have his car.”Elise held up Mathias’s car keys.
“Then he must be with them.”Rayan took his phone from his pocket and connected it to the application, the little red dot now appearing on his screen.“Did he say anything about where he might be going?”
Elise shook her head wordlessly.
Not so chatty now.
He held out his hand for the keys, and she placed them in his palm.“Trust me—the less you know, the better.”Rayan led her back to the entranceway and opened the front door.“Go home, sit tight.He’ll be fine.”
As he watched Elise walk down the path to the street, he stifled the fear that accompanied the lie.He had no idea if Mathias would be all right.He had no idea what the man had gotten himself into.He just knew he had to get him out of it.
For a second, he was gripped by a cold terror.Did I kiss Mathias before he left this morning?For the life of him, he couldn’t remember.Rayan jerked his head to dislodge the thought.He refused to entertain the possibility that it might have been the last time.
He got in the car and reversed out of the driveway then sped down the street toward the highway.As Rayan drove, his mind trawled through the events of the past few weeks.There was the crate and the import license and the way Mathias had brushed off the interest from the Albanians when Rayan pressed him.And all that time, someone had been after him.
It was one of the man’s exceptional skills.Rayan had seen it often enough in the time they’d worked together—the ability to find himself backed against a wall and still act like he held all the cards, his confidence alone wielded like a weapon.
Rayan cursed himself.He’d let Mathias do it again—placate him with his self-assurance as danger closed in.Rayan had been so preoccupied with his work at the camp and the housing project that he’d let Mathias shut him out and play him for a fool.
Rayan gunned through an orange light and headed toward the on-ramp.He glanced down at the screen of his phone.The little red dot was still moving.
