“Like deliveries?”
“No, collections.” He chewed on his food and looked out the window, his mind drifting to the past. The violent memories came and went like clouds. Jack didn’t like to linger.
“Shit. So you were the muscle?”
Jack glanced at him but didn’t respond.
Tyson continued chewing slowly. “So you learned in his gym?”
“No, a close friend taught me. Someone like Nicky.”
Tyson smiled and shook his fork at Jack. “You know, Jack, my ma believes God has a path for us all. I’m not sure I believe her half the time but if I wasn’t mistaken, I’d think our paths crossed for a reason.”
“Maybe. So what does it take to get a fight?”
Tyson stopped chewing and a grin spread on his face.
Chapter 10
After checking into a two-star hotel on the main strip in Telluride and listening to Zach whine about getting two rooms instead of one, and finding the cheapest hotel in the town, she’d finally got him to give up the full forwarding address.
She shook the paper in front of his face. “A PO box? You made me come all this way for a PO box?” Kelly said. “We could have phoned and asked them if it was still in use. Hell, we could have—”
They stood out in the hallway. Her room was directly across from his and since arriving he hadn’t stopped pestering her by coming over and wanting to go get drinks. He was treating the whole trip like one big vacation.
“Listen, I told you the trip was going to be pointless, that’s why I said book into the Madeline Hotel & Residencies. At least that way we could have been sipping on champagne instead of drinking out of dirty cups. Instead you book us into the most run-down hotel on the strip.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “Do you know there is pubic hair in my bed, the washbasin looks like someone has taken a piss in it and I swear I saw a cockroach in my room?”
“No, Zach, that was just your reflection in the mirror.” She turned and walked back into her room with him in her shadow. He scampered in before she could close the door. “I can’t believe you,” she said.
“Would you have come if I’d told you?”
“No.”
“Exactly. Look, Armstrong, if she was living in Telluride, someone is bound to know her. This is a small town.”
“It’s a huge tourist location, Zach. It might as well be San Francisco!”
He brushed past her and went over to the mini fridge. “Ye of little faith.”
She turned and then pursed her lips. She was so close to speaking her mind. It was only because of his buddy-buddy relationship with Johnson that she refrained. When he opened the fridge he cursed. “No alcohol? No light?” He searched around the back and pulled out the cord. “It’s not even plugged in and look at how frayed the cord is. Oh man, this place is a joke. If it wasn’t for the fact that you paid up front and didn’t opt for the refund package I would be out of here in a New York minute.” He sighed. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to drop by the liquor store.”
“We’re here to work, Zach, or have you forgotten that?” she said unzipping her bag and filling a drawer with some clothes.
He got this grin on his face as he perched his butt on the edge of the dresser. “Anything lacy in there?”
“Geesh, do you not have an off switch?”
“Do you have an on?” he shot back.
She glared at him. Zach walked over to the thick drapes and pulled them back, dust filled the air and he began coughing. “Ugh. When did they last open these, a decade ago?” She ignored him and finished unpacking. She checked her phone for messages from the office, and Tom Hudson. He was an English teacher at one of the local schools, he taught sixth grade, had been married once and had a ten-year-old daughter. Of course he’d held that back. She’d started dating him a couple of months ago. As she was caught up in pursuing her career in a new city, her friend Megan had set her up on a blind date and well it had gone pretty well, at least Tom thought so. He was a nice guy, polite, well dressed and the kind of man any mother would have been proud to meet but he was… well, odd. It hadn’t taken her long to get beyond the thin veneer of pleasantries and talk about his career to realize that perhaps they weren’t suited. It wasn’t that he didn’t have interests outside of work, he did, probably more so than her but it was what he was interested in. Larping he called it. She had to have him repeat it because she thought he said laughing. Nope, had it been that, they might have connected. She had a sense of humor as skewed and dry as the best of them but that wasn’t it. Oh no. Larping stood for live action role-playing. She’d never heard of it. Although she really didn’t want to know, nevertheless she asked. His reply couldn’t have been any more clear or disturbing. Twice a month on weekends he got together with people who dressed up in period costumes, and fought them with foam weapons. To say that she nearly spat her drink over his face would have been an understatement. She thought he was joking until after a minute or so she realized he was the only one with a straight face. By the silence at the end of that night she assumed he’d taken offense and that would be the last she’d hear of him. If only she’d been that lucky. Instead, for days after he’d bombarded her phone
