Geek Mafia: Mile Zero by Rick Dakan (reading tree txt) 📖

shadows. As she moved, she noticed that the fireside conversation had stopped, and all she could hear was the crackling flames and the occasional scrape of metal on metal as someone spooned soup out of a can.

She froze in her tracks as some unspoken signal passed between the group and they all stood up. One of them took a stick out of the fire, its end a red hot coal. They were all looking in her general direction, although she didn’t think they’d spotted her precise location yet. She pulled her stun gun from its holster at the base of her spine and wondered if it would still work after being soaked in seawater. She wondered what they would do to her if they caught her here. She still had some money in her pocket - about fifty bucks. Maybe she could buy them off.

Assessing the threat in front of her, it took her a second to move her focus beyond the fire-tipped club and the empty wine bottles that others had gripped in their hands like clubs. But when she did, she realized that the one person still sitting by the fire was the killer. He was eating a can of corn, his face covered in uneven stubble and his hair a dirty, greasy mess. But he still wore that same blue shirt, and his hands were cleaner than they should have been if he actually spent much time on this island. He wasn’t homeless - he was just dressing the part.

She needed to get the others out here. Indeed, she should’ve had Winston get his boat ready for the occasion, assuming it was still nearby. But she hadn’t really believed that Cassie had found the guy and, well, now it might be too late. She started to retreat away from the fire, hoping that she could find her way back to the boat.

“Hey guys!” shouted Cassie, bursting out of the dark and into the circle of firelight. “What’s shakin’ bacon?”

Chloe saw a visible wave of relief sweep through the crowd. “Jesus, Cass,” said the man with the firebrand. “What’re you doing sneakin’ around like that?”

Cassie dropped into a low crouch, holding her hands out like they were pistols. “I’m a two-gun commando!” she said. “Blam! Blam!” The men and women laughed and moved back to their seats.

“We thought ya might be that sick creeper guy come back,” said a woman.

“Me? Sick? Creeper? Guy?” replied Cassie. “No way! I’m hot creeper chick!”

“You wanna drink?” someone else asked.

“Do fish fuck in water?” Cassie said, plopping down in the dirt next to the man and taking a swig off his wine bottle.

Chloe ignored the conversation for a moment as she pulled out her phone and got set to send Paul a text message. Problem. While the stun gun may or may not have survived the salt water, her cell phone certainly had not. It was dead, the battery probably fried. She should’ve thought to bring along a plastic baggie for the damn thing. Stupid. She wondered if the phone she’d given Cassie still worked.

Then a new voice cut through the night, low and commanding and not slurred by drink or mental defect. Chloe looked up and wasn’t surprised at all to see it was the killer talking. “You got a boat?” he asked Cassie.

“I walk on water,” she replied. “Skate over the waves like a mongoose.”

The man ignored her ravings. “Think you can give me a ride back to the island?”

“Do I look like a taxi to you?” Cassie said. “Besides, I just got here. My feet are tired.”

“I’ve got money,” he said, pulling out a bill from his pocket.

“Oooh!” said Cassie, pulling out a bill of her own. “Me too!”

“I got a boat, fella,” said one of the others. “Gotta good engine too. I’ll take your money.”

“Lemme finish my corn and we’ll go,” the killer said, digging into the can with his spoon.

Chloe wondered just who the hell this guy was. How had he gotten to the island if he didn’t have a boat? Why was he leaving now? She needed to follow him once he got back to the island, but there was no way she and Cassie could tail him on the open water without being noticed.

Cassie, who had to be less crazy than she seemed, must have been thinking the same thing. “Oooh!” she shouted. “We can race!”

“Don’t want no race,” said the killer. “Just need a lift.”

“A race! A race!” Cassie said, leaping to her feat, bottle in hand. “I finish my drink. You finish your corn! Gimme five minutes and we race!”

“Don’t want no race,” the killer insisted.

“I win, I pay you twenty bucks. You win I pay you fifty!” Cassie said to the other boat owner. Chloe reflected that the nice thing about being crazy is that no one thought twice when you said something insane. She just hoped she could find her way back to the boat in five minutes.

“You gotta deal,” the boat owner said.

“No race,” the killer repeated through a mouth full of canned corn.

“She’s gonna pay me twenty just for losing,” the man explained to the killer. “I been losin’ the last three years and ne’er got paid for it. It’ll be a slow race, don’t you worry.”

The killer must’ve known that any attempt to convince his ride not to take easy money would raise suspicion he didn’t need, so he just grunted and let the matter drop.

“A race! A race! A race!” Cassie sang, delighted. “In five minutes we RACE!”

She wasn’t subtle, thought Chloe, but she gets the job done. She turned away from the fire and tried to find her way back to the boat. She caught a whiff of urine on the wind and thought that might be the right direction. Stun gun ready, she picked her way through the trees. She passed the couple who’d been fucking, now lying in each others arms in the sand at the base of the tree. It was a surprisingly sweet sight. She tiptoed past them and found the water. She waded through ankle-deep surf the last hundred feet to the boat.

She didn’t know where the other guy kept his boat. It could be hidden in the trees twenty feet away for all she knew. So, just to be safe, she climbed into the boat and lay down in the water inside, out of sight from anyone who might pass by. It stank of mildew and rot and was ice cold. On a normal night she would be out on Duval somewhere right now, looking for marks or maybe at the party with Paul and Sandee. Someplace comfortable with good drinks and great pot. She tried to comfort herself with thoughts of getting back to those pleasures soon, but was surprised to realize that she felt more alive now than she had in months. “Fuck,” she thought as cold saltwater seeped through her shorts, “this is not the glamorous life, but I do love it.”

The truth was that nothing about life in Key West had been very glamorous or exciting. Ok, sometimes the party could be more than a little awesome, especially when Sandee was on his A-Game. But it was hard work scratching out a geek grifter’s life here. She and Paul had both agreed that flat-out robbery and theft and even extortion were not the business they wanted to be in. Nor did they want to steal from anyone who couldn’t afford it. They were supposed to be Robin Hood (or at least that’s what they told themselves so they could sleep at night). All fine and good. But that didn’t leave a whole lot of opportunity. And with even Miami a good three-hour drive away (if there was no traffic), it wasn’t like they could branch out to other cities very easily.

There’d been talk of getting a condo up in South Beach and splitting their time between the two cities, but the truth was, they didn’t have the capital or manpower to expand. The four of them were running themselves ragged just to keep up with expenses here. Those fucking cameras of Bee’s cost a fortune, even when they were stolen. Maybe this plan of Isaiah’s would open things up for them. She sure hoped so. She needed something. 206 Geek Mafia: Mile Zero

It was more like fifteen minutes before Cassie showed up. Chloe didn’t hear her untie the boat. All of a sudden it was moving and Cassie was laughing and they were out in the water. The engine roared to life and the race was on.

“Hey!” shouted Cassie over the engine. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” Chloe said, laughing. “Good call on the race. Thanks for covering for me like that.”

“I can tell a hawk from a handsaw,” Cassie replied.

“Really? I’m not sure I can,” Chloe responded from her prone position. “So where are they?”

“Coming around the island now. Keep your head down. Your friend is looking right at us.” Cassie gave the other boat a big wave with her whole arm. “READY? SET! GO!!!!” she shouted.

But instead of pouring on the acceleration, Cassie just eased the engine a bit, and they puttered along. “The other guys aren’t really racing,” she reported. “Or maybe they are. Porky’s boat has a really small motor.”

The other boat must’ve been slow, because it took them five times as long to get back to shore as the outbound trip. “They’re not going into the marina,” Cassie said in a low voice between shouts at the other boat in which she urged them to go even slower. “They’re headed for Simonton Beach.”

“Crap,” said Sandee. “Are you sure?”

“I think so. We’re almost there.”

Simonton Beach was a tiny public piece of beachfront property sandwiched between two hotels, one of which was unfortunately Eddie’s place, the Hyatt. It made sense as a landing place if the killer was going to check in with his bosses. But there was just a single cement pier there, and it would impossible for Chloe to disembark without being noticed.

“Hey, does your phone work?” Chloe asked.

“I don’t have a phone,” Cassie replied, her tone implying that Chloe had just said the most ridiculous thing imaginable.

“I gave you a phone. You called me on it.”

“That’s your phone,” Cassie pointed out.

“Ok, but does it work?”

“Sure!”

“Can I have it?” Chloe asked.

“Sure!” said Cassie, but she wasn’t making any move to hand it over.

“Can I have it now?”

“I hid it on the land. I didn’t want it to get wet.”

“Good thinking,” Chloe said with a sigh. “Ok, well, give up this slow boat race crap and speed me around to Mallory Square. I’ll jump off and then run over before they make land. I’ll pick up his trail there.”

“Ok!” The engine roared to life and Cassie cackled as they made a sudden swerve to starboard and sped through the channel. Less than two minutes later, Cassie repeated her fast break maneuver, again stalling out the engine and slamming into the seawall by Mallory Square to boot. Ground level was a good five feet above the water-logged floor of the boat, but Cassie gave her ass a push and Chloe managed to clamber onto shore with only a few scrapes on her knees. She blew her crazy friend a kiss and then sprinted across the wide plaza, dodging tourists on her way to Front Street. She had a killer to catch.