Four Seconds to Lose

“If it were Storm instead of Charlie, would you say the same thing?”

Dan hangs his head in response. That’s all the answer I need.

And Charlie knows how much danger she’s in. She’s known all along, from the first day we met to the night she left.

I’m probably never going to see her again.

“This is serious shit, Cain. If this is the guy we’ve been hearing about around the city, he’s moving some major quantities and he’s pissing the cartel off. Anyone willing to do that is either really stupid or really dangerous. We already know he isn’t stupid. You need to keep an eye out,” Dan warns. “I don’t know what she told him about you. I hope to God nothing.”

Maybe not. But I did. I gave him my fucking name. And that “uncle” of hers got a pretty good description of me. For all I know, he also got a picture.

I’m not stupid enough to think they can’t find me.

Or that they won’t.

chapter forty-four * * * CHARLIE

“Love, do you mind bringing table seven an extra order of gravy on your way by?” Berta asks in that heavy southern accent of hers that I could listen to all afternoon. Especially when she addresses me with one of a myriad of pet names. My shift just started an hour ago and I’ve already been called “Honey,” “Darling,” “Sugar,” and “Sweetie.”

Some people might find it annoying, but I absorb each one of them like a flower yearning for sunshine.

Because none of them sounds anything like my old pet name.

“Sure thing!” I wink at Herald the cook as I scoop up the food-laden plates from the counter.

“Oh, Katie, you’re such an angel,” the heavyset brunette croons, patting my shoulder as she grabs three plates. “I knew my instincts about you were right.”

Flashing my stage-perfect smile, I saunter over to the tables to deliver their orders. It was only two weeks ago that I sat at one of these very tables for hours, reading through paper after paper, hungry for any news coming out of Miami, wondering all kinds of things.

Was Sam there?

Was he looking for me?

Was he looking for Cain?

I hoped that the information I left for Dan on his doorstep, just hours before I got on the bus, was enough. It wasn’t much, but it was really all that I had. If I had been smarter, if I had ever believed that I’d be stabbing Sam in the back, I would have saved the pictures of Bob and Eddie before they vanished from the draft folder.

After my third cup of coffee, the middle-aged waitress with a long braid reaching down to her ass and a name tag labeling her as “Berta” had asked me what a pretty girl like me was doing all alone.

I wasn’t in the mood for idle chitchat or making up lies, so I very bluntly announced that I needed a job and a place to live. She asked where I was staying and, when I told her, her face pinched up with disgust. “Oh, that just won’t do.”

Now here I am, serving tables at Becker’s Diner and renting out a room above Berta’s garage, one block away.

It was almost too easy.

The room is small, but it’s clean and safe and comfortable. Most of all, it’s private enough that no one hears me cry myself to sleep every night.

Berta is sweet. She’s a thirty-eight-year-old single woman who inherited the family diner and has been struggling to find good evening-shift help after a string of disastrous attempts. I don’t completely trust her not to snoop, but my gun and my knapsack are hidden inside a vent, so I figure I’m fine.

And now I’m twenty-one-year-old Katie Ford from Ohio. I have a golden-brown chin-length bob, violet eyes, and I wear only light makeup. I have an ordinary family back home who is proud of me for graduating with a Humanities degree from Ohio State and who fully supports me while I experience life in the South. And I had my wallet stolen. That’s why I have no social security number or other identification. Temporarily, of course.

I even went to church with Berta last Sunday morning.

I’m a new person. A good person who does good things.

Who hides her silent agony well.

“Here’s your Philly steak sandwich, Stanley. Careful, it’s hot.” I set the plate down on the table in front of the regular—a forty-something-year-old hog farmer with orange hair and green suspenders who comes in at six forty-five every night and orders the exact same thing. I think he has a thing for Berta.

A lot of the customers here are regulars. It’s nice. They make a point of saying hello, and that makes me feel not quite so alone.

“Hey, Katie!”

I turn around to find Will, Berta’s nephew, hovering behind me with that goofy grin of his. “What are you doing after work tonight?”

“Oh, probably just heading home. I’m tired.” I fake a yawn, knowing I can’t make up an elaborate story with Berta on guard. She’s hopeful that we’ll start dating, promising that he may act like a hooligan but he’s a good boy who could use a girl like me in his life, instead of those “floozies” he keeps bringing in here.

There’s nothing wrong with him, honestly.

Other than the fact that he’s not him.

Just the thought now brings a painful lump to my throat.

“All right. Well, if you change your mind, my friend is having a party tonight out on Copper Mill Road. Live band . . . kegs . . . You should come.” His eyes shift down to my chest—only accentuated by the fitted “Becker’s” T-shirt—before meeting my gaze and knowing he got caught. At least he has the decency to blush.

“Thanks, Will. I’ll keep that in mind.” I watch him as he makes his way over to join a group of his college friends at a booth. And it reminds me that I’m supposed to be in New York right now, attending Tisch, living my dream. Not serving burgers and sodas at a diner in Alabama.

Pining over a man I unintentionally fell in love with.

With a deep, calming exhale, I begin clearing a table of its dishes. Katie Ford from Ohio never enrolled at Tisch. She never stripped for a living. She never met a man named Cain.

And she also never dealt drugs, nor will she ever. I can’t let that silver lining disappear within the suffocating black cloud.

A round of laughter erupts from Will’s table as one of the girls playfully flicks his ear, the movement revealing a purple streak on the underside of her hair.

I smile at the bittersweet memory it triggers.

I wonder how Ginger’s doing. I wonder if Katie Ford has any hope of ever making a friend like her. I’ve already reconciled myself to the fact that she’ll never find a man like Cain.

I wonder what he’s doing at this very moment. If he’s out in the club or hidden in his office.

If he’s thinking about me.

If he misses me.

Or if he has already moved on.

chapter forty-five * * * CAIN