Enslaved (The Inbetween Novels) (44 page)
In Too Deep
By R. C. Murphy
F
og in California’s Central Valley was a creature not to be trifled with. It swallowed up buildings, cars, and people without a second thought. The fog took more lives than automatic weapons. It was a trickster on par with Loki, manipulating distances, making people believe they had plenty of time to slow down when in actuality they were seconds from becoming intimate with the rear bumper of a semi truck. Surviving the fog was the most difficult part of life in the valley. Or so she thought.
Meghan Sterling tugged the scarf around her neck tighter and tucked the ends into the too-big uniform jacket hanging off her shoulders. Cold crept in on the heels of the fog. The warehouse parking lot she patrolled was damp, freezing, and not making her job any easier.
Whose brilliant idea was it to become a security guard?
She cursed and shoved her gloved hands in her pockets. It was time to make another pass around the back quarter of the property.
Whoop-dee-doo. More weeds and fog.
And being forced to deal with the two men stuck working the graveyard shift with her.
Walking with her chin tucked into her scarf, Meghan made her way to the rear of the massive warehouse. Why farmers were so protective of a warehouse full of oranges, she had no clue. The money paid her expenses, but it wasn’t worth the frostbite and vampire work hours. She’d need a month-long vacation on the beach when the job was finished.
“Let’s grab a bite to eat,” a male voice said from around the corner of the warehouse.
Meghan stopped before she stepped into view, listening to her coworkers, despite the lack of movement, which made her colder. She had no desire to trade not-so-witty banter with them anytime soon. They were okay on the eyes, actually possessed brains, but ran out of non-manly things to talk about after five seconds in her company. She couldn’t make herself pretend to be interested in the Superbowl.
“All you can think about is your stomach, Jarlan. Give it a rest. We’re not done here. You can eat on the way home.”
“I’m tired of fast food. When’s the last time you sat down to a nice warm meal, Rich?”
“Too long to remember, but we agreed to this job. We can’t leave Clara to watch the place by herself.”
Jarlan laughed. “She’d piss herself watching shadows if she knew the truth.”
Meghan held her breath. Six months of lurking and waiting were about to pay off. She tucked in closer to the warehouse wall. The heel of her boot caught a pebble and ground it into the asphalt. The noise was deafening to her ears.
This is why I’m not a ninja.
Cover blown, she plastered a smile on her face and stepped out to meet them near the back door, measuring her pace so it didn’t look like she’d been listening in. “Have the oranges turned into man-eating monsters yet?”
Rich shook his head and grinned. “No, not yet. All’s quiet here. What about the front, Clara?”
Meghan rolled her eyes, afraid for just a second they’d stick from the cold. “Not even a roach. What’s the point of babysitting produce at three in the morning?”
“Money.” Jarlan clapped Rich on the shoulder with one of his massive hands.
Could the guy be any bigger? He should be in the WWF, not in the middle of nowhere California.
Then again, if he was who she thought he was, his size had a purpose. She needed to keep an eye on him.
“Money isn’t everything, friend.” Rich tucked a strand of his long brown hair into the knit cap pulled down over his ears. “We’re almost done for the night. Will you be okay by yourself until dawn?”
Nodding, Meghan waved them off. “Nothing ever happens out here. If something does, I’ll eat my boots.”
Jarlan’s hazel eyes fell to her feet. “Not much leather there. You’d have better luck getting a full meal out of a rat. They’re big enough out here, away from the city.”
Rats?
Meghan had been trained to face a lot of things, but rats made her skin crawl. She stole a look around the employee parking lot. Something skittered over the pavement near the eastern fence line. Her shoulders tensed. She was ready to scream if it was a rat, or apprehend anyone stupid enough to cut the fence while three security guards stood in eyeshot.
A leaf tumbled into the jaundiced light puddled on the asphalt. Meghan shook her head and rolled her shoulders to shake off the tension.
The big man laughed. “Try not to bludgeon any foliage to death while we’re gone. If something posing more of a threat does come along, use the phone in the guard’s office. Stay out of the warehouse. Without the code, you’ll send an alert to the police and I’ll be stuck doing enough paperwork to level a forest. Take care, Clara.”
Rich flipped a wave and the men headed for their cars parked near the front gate. They couldn’t be more different. Rich was tall, but Jarlan stood easily a foot taller than her. Jarlan’s black hair never grew over a quarter of an inch long in the six months she’d been working security alongside them. She was fairly certain he’d scowled at it in the mirror one too many times and it refused to grow any longer for fear of incurring his wrath. Jarlan joked quite a bit, but when he didn’t want to speak, he wouldn’t. Rich at least attempted to hold civil conversations. And Rich didn’t look like he could bench press a car—okay, maybe a VW Bug, but it was still a car.
Neither of the men were safe to be alone with. Not if the intelligence she’d received was to be believed.
Meghan finished her walk around the back of the property and slipped into the small guard shack beside the locked front gate. Jarlan and Rich were gone. The taillights of their cars turned the fog beyond the fence line blood red. With them gone, she gave into her desire to curl up beside the small space heater she’d brought in. It clicked, warming up.
“Might as well take care of business.”
Picking up the phone, she braced the headset against her shoulder and punched in a number she had memorized better than her social security number.
“You’ve reached the Osbourne’s. We’re not in right now, please leave a message.”
“Hey, Mom. It’s Clara. Still no luck on the apartment hunt. Can you save the classifieds for me? I’ll pick them up tomorrow.”
Meghan hung up and rubbed her frozen forehead. Waiting for results was the worst part of going deep cover. It’d taken weeks to establish her legend as Clara Osbourne, working god-awful hours with the security firm until she talked her way onto the warehouse gig. It wasn’t like the CIA was going to send her the money she needed to pay rent. Her cover needed to be organic, untraceable. In other words, she actually needed the damn job she was pretending to work.
The heater clicked softly, filling in the silence inside the guard shack. Meghan wiggled her toes inside her boot and cursed. They were so cold, moving hurt. Was it possible to get frostbite without temperatures dropping below thirty degrees? She wasn’t sure, but her toes screamed, “Yes!” when she scrunched them together in a vain attempt to encourage the warmth from the heater to work into her frozen flesh.
After almost two hours hiding inside the guard shack, Meghan grabbed her flashlight and headed out to do her last sweep around the property. She made a pit stop outside the front door to the warehouse and jiggled the door handle. Like every night she tried, it was locked. She didn’t have enough know-how about the security system to disable it and slip inside to get a good look at what was actually stored in there. The security company said Emerald Produce stored citrus in the building. Then again they wouldn’t come out and say, “By the way, the company is a front for a Russian sleeper cell.” No, that’d make her job too damn easy.
She finished her walk around the property and ducked into the relative warmth of the guard booth to finish up the end-of-shift paperwork the guys left her.
How kind of them.
Her handwriting was nearly unreadable, but she refused to take off her gloves to scribble notes about how quiet it’d been during her 8-hour shift in the fog and cold.
Not even a rat to keep me company tonight.
Thankfully.
Grabbing her purse, flashlight, and lunch bag, Meghan locked up the shack and climbed behind the wheel of her truck. Saying a prayer, she turned the key and the engine sputtered to life. Along with the lack of help with her rent, the CIA refused to grant her enough to buy a semi-reliable vehicle. They gave her enough cash to get to Fresno, California, buy a car, and feed herself for about a week. Until the first check from her security job came in, she’d been living in her truck and begging showers from the handful of friends she made when she got to town.
It was a twenty-five minute drive up Clovis Avenue to reach her apartment. The complex wasn’t anything to write home about. Empty fields surrounded it, but the place had the lowest crime rate of everything she found in her price range. Meghan parked in the spot designated as hers and took a breath to brace herself against the cold outside. She bee-lined down the sidewalk into the middle of the sprawling complex, shivering despite the jacket, scarf, and gloves. The latter made finding the right key for her door a pain in the ass. She managed after calling the key an asshole—twice.
For you.
You gave me the strength to see this mad venture through to the end.
First and foremost, I have to thank my wonderful editor NL “Jinxie” Gervasio. and publisher Just Ink Press. Without their hard work, there is no way
Enslaved
would ever see the light of day, at least not in a way which has me thrilled to pieces with every step closer we got to publishing.
A special shout out to my “cheerleaders” who kept me going on nights when I didn’t think I could finish writing the book: LK, Sandi, Hugh, Jenn, Alli, and all the others who I can’t remember right now. You guys rock my striped socks. And of course, my constant companion and knight in camouflage armor, Quamaine, who has been by my side since day one of my mad writing venture.
Lastly, I send all my love to my mother and nephew, who knew when to leave the crotchety writer be and let me write until my fingers were blistered. I’m so glad you guys both know how to cook, otherwise it would have been salads and ramen during the last month before my deadline.
Most of all I thank you, darling readers. Without you I’d be a nut-job scrawling pretty things on the wall of a padded cell. But hey, I hear the white coats with the extra-long arms are really warm . . .