I sighed, quietly, feeling the gentle wind blowing back my hair like a lover's fingers, and thought of what I'd do once I was back home. There really was only one option.
Go to the police. File reports, press charges, and begin civil lawsuit proceedings. Put Petersen away for years, and let him be someone's cell bitch. Watch his bank account transfuse into mine, and wait for the networks to call. Good Morning America, Today, Bloomberg, Doctor Phil, all of them, vying for my attentions.
Someone would write a book, and someone else would make the movie. Hell, it could be a two parter. A series, even, and I would be rich beyond my wildest dreams.
That's what a normal person would do.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
MADDOX
Highway 95 ran all the way up the Florida coast. It was an eight hour drive to Sandfly –an affluent little burg southeast of Savannah.
My phone's navigation system bitched and moaned about the toll roads, delays, and construction zones, but I didn't give a shit. I wanted to keep the ocean in my sights as I drove. I would have shut the damn thing off altogether if I'd happened to remember how to get to my parent's house. But I didn't know how to read a map.
I rolled my eyes at myself, leaned my elbow out the window, and kept my right hand draped over the steering wheel. Kicked back and truckin'. One cool dude just rockin' down the highway.
If I smoked, I'd have a Camel hanging out of the corner of my mouth to complete the profile. I was going for a James Dean kind of thing, I suppose. A real rebel without a cause. Were there any redheaded bad boys? Other than dead pirates or serial killers?
I didn't think so.
Taking a quick glimpse in the rear-view mirror, I ran my hand over my head. I wasn't used to seeing myself anything but bald. It'd been a long time since I had hair.
A tiny grin curled just one side of my mouth. Martin almost shat himself when he saw me.
I'd wanted to slip in and out of the office undetected, a ship in the night, but I knew that would be impossible. Especially since it was mid-afternoon when I finally showed back up at Petersen & Stiller. I couldn't rightly blame me. My interior clock was all messed up. A few hours sailing sailing over the bounding waves in the cabin of a lobster trawler will do that to you. To say nothing of the days previous, being held sexual captive on a tropical island by a hostile Latina.
My cock twitched.
I shifted in the bucket seat, and pulled at the crotch of my pants. Some things never change, God bless them. Some things do, however, and when I tried to explain that to Martin, he just looked at me like I was some strange, new species recently uncovered by a group of rogue paleontologists.
I certainly looked the part. I didn't exactly bother sprucing up after the Dicey docked at New Providence.Captain Rogero had radioed ahead, and the ambulance was waiting when we pulled into port.
Ramona's rich brown eyes looked like glassy, chocolate marbles when they put her on the gurney. She was six ways from out of it as I kissed her forehead, told her everything was going to be alright, and would later blame a loss in translation when the EMT suggested I get into the ambulance, too.
Martin was literally beside himself when I waltzed into his office, appearing not unlike a castawayed zombie, and told him I quit. He followed me to my suite, asking me a shitload of questions I wasn't about to answer. Poor bastard.
“Dude,” he said, watching me take a pair of needle-nose pliers out of my desk drawer and head toward the bedroom. “What in the ever-loving fuck?”
“You can be more articulate than that,” I said, crawled onto the mattress, and began unscrewing the metal ring from the headboard.
“Not right now I can't,” he replied. “You, um, want me to call someone? Like, a doctor? Psychologist?”
My pliers lost their grip on the ring, and gouged an inch-deep scratch into the very expensive woodwork.
“A carpenter?”
“Nope,” I said, sticking the needle nose through the ring and cranking it counter clockwise. Righty tighty, lefty loosey, dumbass.
“Maddox? Seriously, man. You should tell me–”
Crrrack. The ring came loose, splintering the headboard in the process.
I pulled it off the pliers, and tossed it into the neighboring trashcan. Three points.
“It'll all come out eventually,” I said, scooting off the bed, taking the trashcan, and heading for my office. “Trust me. The less you know the better.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ. You killed somebody, didn't you? God fucking damn it, Maddox. Didn't I always tell you this fucking fuck addiction you have was going to get you in trouble? Didn't I? What'd you do? How old was she? Tell me she was at least at the age of consent.”
Age of consent? Was he fucking serious? I was fucked up, yes, but I didn’t mess with minors.
I rolled my eyes.“Not sure what that age is in the Bahamas,” I said.
I stood before my bookcase, hands on my hips. God, I still smelled like salt, sweat, and bootlegged rum.
Rogero's barge had a liquor cabinet that could rival the wine case at the Hunstman. I admired the fuck out of that.
I picked up the award from Forbes, let the light reflect off it for a minute, then tossed it in the trashcan. The one from the Wall Street Journal would go next.
“Was it… messy?”
“Was what messy?” I said, not looking at him, never liking the crystal cube Bloomberg was kind enough to bestow on me. It made a satisfying blam noise when it fell on top of the other accolades.
“The um… you know...” he cleared his throat. “Murder.”
“I didn't kill anybody, Martin. Re-fucking-lax, okay?”
“Then what the fuck, he asks again,” Martin growled, referring to himself in the third person. He
