Nailed (Marked For Love #1)

  Nailed

  Amie Stuart

  Copyrights

  NAILED ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  NAILED Copyright © 2015 Amie Stuart

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  Chapter One

  Nothing, and I mean nothing, pissed me off more than having people stand around watching me work. And right now I had about a half dozen of them clustered around the pool's security gate. Dressed in bikinis, one piece swimsuits and cutoff, they shuffled from foot to foot, chatting among themselves, praying I didn't ruin their day.

  You couldn't blame them, really, for wanting a swim. Not when it was 103 in the shade, but if they'd stop leaving their shit in the pool to get picked up by the filter or sucked up the drain, and stop burning up parts and…Sweat trickled down my cleavage. My head dipped under the weight of my ponytail, the aforementioned heat, and a healthy dose of frustration.

  I sighed and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, wishing I could go swimming today. August in Southwest Texas was the equivalent of a vacation in hell—in more ways than one. I'd about had it with doing apartment maintenance. Maybe it was time for me to move on, find something less taxing. Something cooler, like maybe being a supermodel or an exterminator.

  I closed the cap on the poor drain thingy (technical lingo is not my forte) and crossed to the pump, switching it on. It slowly chugged to life, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd tried everything I could think of, and I didn't think the assembled crowd would be pleased if I had to take off for Cielo's one and only internet café for more troubleshooting. Since coming to Cielo, everything I'd ever learned about fixing anything, I'd found on the internet.

  I loaded up my tools and gave the assembled crowd a stern look while briefly ticking off each familiar face, then tossed Tara Woods a bikini top that looked suspiciously like the one she'd been wearing last week, except more mangled. "I'd really appreciate it if you'd keep your swimsuits out of the drain."

  In addition to the swimming attire I'd finally dislodged, the pool was a particularly bilious shade of green that said too many carpet creepers had pissed in it. I didn't even bother smothering the bubble of glee as I cheerfully called out, "Pool's closed today, folks."

  I'm sure in some former life I'd been a sadist, and in some future life, I'd pay for my enjoyment of their misery. In the mean time, I'd take what I could get.

  Scowls, grumbles, whines, and gasps of outrage were the response I got. Please, people, if you want to use the pool, don't piss in it!

  "Thank Tara, everybody."

  Tara smirked in return and walked away. The polka dot bikini she was currently wearing barely held in her naughty bits. Of course, the only person complaining was Mrs. Hollis in 3-A. Guess she'd gotten tired of watching her thirteen-year-old wander around with a mini hard-on. He was in the laundry right this minute, washing his sheets. Yeah, I know...ew! Not something I wanted to spend too much time thinking about.

  "Sen'rita." The sound of my assistant, Tony Ramirez's, voice got me moving. And for the record, he spoke English just fine, he just liked to keep me on my toes by playing the "dumb wetback"—his words not mine. "The Johnsons need a new garbage disposal."

  Toolbox in hand, I stepped through the metal gate that surrounded the pool and let it clang shut behind me. A new garbage disposal meant a half-day trip to Home Depot, which is why we normally tried to keep at least one around for emergencies, but we'd had a run on them lately. I didn't even want to know why. Regardless, I'd come to love Home Depot as much as I'd once loved Neiman's and Saks.

  Okay, not totally, but life gives you lemons and you make Lemondrop Shots.

  The residents of Marquez Terrace Apartments were nothing to write home about, but then I had no home to write to anymore. No more Neiman's Christmas catalog, no more manicures, no more gourmet cooking classes, no more sister to go shopping with.

  Guess that made us even.

  One thing you had to understand about Cielo, Texas, and Southwest Texas in general, was that if you weren't born here, you came here to get lost. This is where Tony Ramirez had probably come to get lost, where Tara and Jeanette and maybe even Old Homer had come to get lost.

  And it's why I was here.

  Chapter Two

  Wynn Collier pulled into Cielo, Texas, and eased down the main drag, taking note of various landmarks. Seventeen and a half months of his life, most of it spent on the road, retracing the footsteps of a woman who'd turned out to be more clever than he'd imagined, had brought him to this. The ass-end of Texas.

  He laughed softly to himself and turned down the sound of Mötley Crüe coming from the SUV's speakers.

  Despite its name, Cielo was a long way from heaven. Some might even say it was pretty close to hell, being miles from anywhere and surrounded by desert. Hell indeed, even the nearest Wally World was an hour away.

  Police station—four cops and the sheriff. Check.

  Volunteer fire department—with less than three thousand residents, anything that caught on fire would probably be an inferno by the time the troops were rallied.

  His dark blue SUV slid past the café, three gas stations, an assortment of tourist traps disguised as antique stores, and stores selling Western/Texas'y paraphernalia that women like his mother went nuts for. Not that the town had a bustling tourist trade; it was too far off the beaten path. Which explained why his quarry had chosen it.

  Nearly eighteen months of hunting down Julie Burt had brought him here, to the end of nowhere.

  Most of the time, Wynn's job involved going after bad men, the dregs of society. Drug dealers, thieves, murderers, con men. People smart enough to know that when they played with fire, they risked getting burned. Not ordinary, middle-class people who believed crap like the Sopranos was purely a result of someone's overactive imagination.

  He didn't kill people, much to his father's disgust, but he knew how to get information out of them. That was his job.

  Hunting down people like Julie Burt and her family had left a really bad taste in his mouth. Unfortunately, he hadn't been in a position to tell his dad no. But he'd follow his dad's instructions to the letter, find Julie Burt, and discover where her sister and brother-in-law were, get the information they had so Dad could get it back to the client.

  Nothing more. Nothing less.

  At Main and Elm he took a left and proceeded to drive the entire town, familiarizing himself with the streets and landmarks, like the poor dinky elementary school and just a few blocks over, the equally small library next to a non-descript city hall. The houses range
d from a few single-and double-wide trailers to World War II bungalows with deep porches to modern ranch houses. Nothing fancy, though, and nothing too new.

  Cielo wasn't that sort of town.

  The world seemed to have passed Cielo, Texas, by. Everywhere he looked, everything seemed dead, lifeless, and flat but for the mountains shimmering in the distance. Just the type of town no self-respecting, normal person would live in; just the type of place someone could easily hide in.

  But, oh, what a long way the slippery Ms. Burt had fallen. From designer suits, a Lexus, and selling commercial real estate to...a town practically burned to a charred husk by the searing heat.

  He pulled his navy blue, ten-year-old Blazer, which was guaranteed to not stand out, onto the shoulder of the road with a crunch of tires on gravel. It came to a rest underneath a giant scrub oak whose oversized branches didn't even move but did provide some shade.

  The beige brick apartment building across the road practically faded into the landscape. The grass around the sign was the greenest thing he'd seen since he'd left downtown. These were the best Cielo had to offer. Hell, they were all Cielo had to offer. He'd laugh if he didn't have so much riding on this job.

  He saw neither hide nor hair of any humans as he pulled his digital camera from the bag on the seat beside him. He snapped pics of the four dust-covered vehicles in the parking lot then made the short drive back to his hotel.

  At the Shadyside, Wynn stepped inside his darkened room, quickly closing himself off from the stifling heat, and dropped a two-inch thick file containing everything on Julie and her family onto the bed. He scrubbed a hand across his head and caught his reflection in the dresser's mirror. He looked tired. A lot more tired and older than he really was. And if his mother could see him, she'd say he needed a haircut.

  ***

  He spent the rest of the afternoon going over his notes, and thanks to his wireless card, shot the photos he'd taken to his mother. He knew better than to hope that a motel in the middle of nowhere would have decent internet, let alone wireless, so he'd brought his own. Judging from his room's gold and avocado furnishings and the nightmare-inducing bedspread covering the queen sized bed, he was lucky they even had HBO.

  When he'd done all he could, he stretched out on the bed with the file. Julie Burt, formerly a successful commercial realtor in Scottsdale, Arizona, had up and disappeared within hours of her sister's apparent death. He'd been tapped for the job when the first two "companies" had failed to produce Julie or her sister, Karen Lyons.

  In the ensuing months he'd come to admire Julie's resiliency and her ability to stay a free woman, to stay under the radar. But the clock was ticking, and the client was turning the screws, wanting the job finished in two weeks. He didn't know why, and he didn't care. It wasn't Wynn's place to ask why. It was his place to do his job and, if possible, get out undetected. Life was less painful that way.

  He dozed off, bothered by dark dreams of Julie and buzzards, until the phone ringing woke him up. Outside the tightly closed curtains, a bit of red-tinged light seeped in, alerting him to the coming night.

  "Does an eighty-four Corolla look as bad as it sounds?" his mother asked, referring to one of the license-plate photos he'd sent her.

  "It's a nice shade of rust, with a little sky blue for accent." Smiling, he sat up and took a swig from the bottle of water on the nightstand. It was warm but wet, which was all that mattered. "Any of those cars belong to Julie?"

  "You didn't think she'd have one registered under her real name." Her chuckle was a rusty but comforting sound.

  "Of course not, but everyone slips up eventually."

  "True. I gather you haven't found Ms. Burt yet, then?"

  "Not yet." He sighed, thinking of the job ahead.

  "You'll be fine, dear. I have complete confidence in you," she reassured him. They could have been talking about a job promotion he was up for, not the latest assignment his father had thrown his way.

  Hunting down Julie Burt wasn't much more than table scraps in the scheme of things but (a) it kept his father off his back, and (b) it gave Wynn a chance to redeem himself after botching that last job. He honestly hadn't meant to blow off three of Doug Garrofolo's toes. Matter of fact, he normally didn't even work with guns, preferring more subtle means of persuasion than his father and brothers. But his oldest brother, John, who had come along to supervise, had insisted Wynn carry.

  The Colliers were men of few words who usually let their guns speak for them, and as such, they had fine reputations as hitmen.

  Then there was him, Wynn, the bane of his gun-toting father's existence. To be honest, he preferred to use his intimidating 6'5" height and muscular body (and well-known name) speak for him. Wynn enjoyed the challenge of getting what he wanted or needed from people by using his wits and words, not violence—unless it was absolutely necessary. When faced with one of his ham-sized fists, most people didn't put up much of a fuss, and if they did, well, it didn't take much arm twisting to convince them to give up the goods.

  He might be the shame of the Collier clan, but he had the respect of those who preferred a more subtle, less violent information-collection method. And he was damned good at what he did.

  "Wynnie...are you still there? Do you have everything you need?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "What about a sweater? I heard it gets cool there in the evenings. That mountain air, you know."

  "I'm fine, Mom. I promise." He scribbled notes while she rattled off the names and background information on the other car owners, gave her his love, and rang off.

  It was dark outside; time to get moving.

  Chapter Three

  The sun had finally set when I stepped outside dressed in battered Sketchers, cutoff sweats, and a tank top with no bra. The barest hint of a breeze lifted damp pieces of my freshly washed hair and struggled to blow away the day's heat. A near impossible battle.

  From the open window, Clyde meowed his protest of my desertion. You'd think he'd have gotten used to it after a year. Every night after dark, I walked the complex, greeting the occasional swimmers, and the few people who sat outside drinking beer, and I listened...and watched. My guilty secret. I refused to name it, to call it what it was.

  I'm sure people who smoked crack said the same thing, but the first time had been an accident. Eight months ago, I'd been walking the back of the complex, working off nervous energy, the edge that had ridden my back ever since I first ran. The fear, the paranoia it had taken me nearly two years to shake, and even now, another year after, I still couldn't completely let my guard down. Where was I? Oh, yeah...walking. I'd rounded the corner and spotted a couple in a parked car. It had been fall, still warm in the evenings, but they'd had the windows up, and a hint of fog had obstructed my view. The movement of the car had said it all though.

  Inside, a topless woman had been riding Dinky Smith like she was going for the Triple Crown, her ginormous breasts bouncing happily.

  I'd been helpless to move, a prisoner of my body, of my need, of my own frustrations and loneliness. There I stood after two years of celibacy, watching Dinky Smith have something I couldn't...sex...intimacy...affection.

  Call it whatever you'd like, the weight and depth of it all had almost killed me that night.

  That had been a Wednesday. I'd gone out on Friday, to Busters, and picked up a tourist, thinking if I fucked him, I'd never spy on Dinky again.

  I was wrong.

  I found myself lying in wait for him (he apparently liked having sex in cars). Then I found myself following him, watching him. He'd never caught on...I'd been real careful. And, you know, he wasn't the brightest lightbulb in the package. The legality, or illegality, of what I was doing was irrelevant when held up next to the Big Picture.

  Trust me on this.

  After a while, the weather turned colder, and I'd gotten bored with Dinky. I found myself drawn to casually peeking in kitchen windows—a dark hoodie could hide a multitude of sins.

  An
yway, the windows were huge, forty-eight inches wide and sixty inches off the ground. I'm 5'5" and that made us a perfect match. Not to mention,.

  Then came the bedroom windows, listening, straining my ears in the dark to hear couples fucking and fighting.

  Anyway, tonight was Thursday, and Darcy McKnight's boyfriend was coming over. Normally boyfriends were no big deal, but Darcy was cheating on her husband, Chris, and for the record, she wasn't the only cheater at Marquez Terrace.

  Chris was a long-haul trucker who came in on Sunday and left first thing Wednesday morning. Darcy wasn't dumb enough to have her boyfriend come on Wednesday; she waited a day. No one ever told on her; no one dared. Chris was a giant who'd probably kill the bearer of bad news.

  Guess you could say we had our very own Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy.

  And besides, Darcy's peccadilloes weren't worth dying for, but her boyfriend Brad was.

  He came by around 9:00 every night, slipped in her front door when most people were ending their day, and, well, Darcy had a bad habit of leaving the kitchen curtains open, and the window too.

  My stomach was a tangle of excited nerves as I spotted Brad slipping into Darcy's apartment, the open door briefly spilling lamplight on the sidewalk. I walked the upper floors at a steady pace so as not to raise suspicion. Then I took the stairs, greeting Old Homer, who sat in a lawn chair he kept just outside his front door.

  "Gonna be a hot one tonight."

  "And sticky too," I said, pulling my T-shirt away from my body and fanning myself for effect.

  Hands shoved deep in my pockets, I walked the front of the U-shaped complex, then circled around the back, taking my time. I knew already that Brad's truck was parked at the convenience store half a block down, and the owner was a friend of his.

  The front of the complex faced the street with the complex's sign and the pool blocking the view of just about anyone from the road. An old SUV sat on the gravel shoulder across the street. Probably overheated, which was a common occurrence around here in the summer.