Page 16 of Guarding Grace
It always was with him.
“What are you involved in?” I demanded. “I deserve to know, now that you’ve dragged me into your shit.”
“You’re not at home.”
Of course he couldn’t give me a straight answer. “How do you know?”
“I stopped by.”
“I spent the night at a friend’s house.” He didn’t need to know any more.
“I need the key to the warehouse.”
Once again, not even a please. I shook my head. “Why?”
“I gotta hide out for a while.”
I’d figured that. I owned a tiny section of a larger warehouse. “Why? What kind of shit are you into?”
“Meet me at that first burger place I worked at. You know the one.”
“Just meet me at my apartment.”
“It can’t be a place they know about.”
This was getting worse by the minute. “Who arethey?”
“Come on, cuz. I’ll explain everything when we meet.”
There’d been a string of burger places, since he hadn’t been a model employee. “Okay. You mean the one on?—”
“Don’t say it. They might be listening. You know, the one with the mean boss.”
He’d considered all of his early bosses mean, but I knew the one he meant. When I’d gone to bat for Elliot and explained that he’d been late to work because of a power outage, Fat Fred, his manager, had crudely suggested that he’d give Elliot another chance if he could“give me a spin.”
I’d spat on him after telling him what I thought of that. “You mean Fred?”
“That’s the one.”
“I don’t have the key on me. I’ll have to swing by home to get it.”
“I’ll see you in a half hour.”
“You need to tell me what’s going on.”
I didn’t get a response because the call had disconnected.
A few minutes later, I sneaked out to the street, away from Serena’s windows, and waited for the Uber I’d called.
Elliot needed me. He was my only remaining family, and I couldn’t let him down. There was no way Terry would let me go meet Elliot without tagging along, and that would be a recipe for disaster.
Terry and Elliot were like oil and water, or maybe gasoline and a match was a more appropriate analogy.
A minute later, a little Prius pulled to the curb to collect me.
The entire drivehome to get the key, my phone felt like a hot potato in my hand as I dreaded thewhere-are-youcall from the tyrant. I silenced it, just in case.
When we stopped in front of my building, I climbed out and thanked my driver. Since she had been nice enough to not comment on my bruising, I gave her a five-star review and a nice tip.
