“No, I’m a retired firefighter. My name’s Dylan, and this is my boyfriend Lark.” He indicated the twink with a nod as he hauled me to my feet. “Yolanda’s a nurse, so maybe she can take a look at that ankle. She’s the one with the bat. And that’s JoJo, her wife.”
Hallelujah, I’d managed to land in an LGBT household. “I’m Jack,” I said, as I balanced on one foot and leaned on Dylan. “Again, I’m so sorry about this. I can only imagine how it must look.”
“I’m just glad you escaped your date from hell,” JoJo said, as Dylan began to guide me toward the back door. “There are a lot of jerks out there.” Truer words were never spoken. In fact, they were currently helping one of them.
They ended up bringing me into their kitchen. It was pink, white, and purple, and it looked like its last remodel had been in about 1975. I absolutely loved it.
While Lark made me some tea, I took a seat, pried off my loafer, and put my foot up on a chair so Yolanda could examine it. “It’s starting to swell up pretty good, but there’s no way of knowing if anything’s broken without an x-ray,” she said. “Would you like a ride to the ER?”
“No thanks. I don’t have insurance. Even if I did, I hate hospitals and would only go if it was a matter of life and death. I think I’ll just give this a day or two and see if it starts to improve.”
“It’s your call,” Yolanda muttered, as she studied me carefully. She was the smartest one of the bunch, because she was the only person who seemed suspicious of me.
Not that she had a reason to worry. These were decent, working class people, like my mom. I’d never steal from them, not in a million years. As a matter of principle, I only stole from rich people. I was like Robin Hood in that respect, except that I kept the loot for myself. I was poor, so it still counted.
Yolanda tried a different approach for getting rid of me. “After I bandage your ankle, I’ll find you some crutches. We have a pair in the garage. Then I can give you a ride home.”
“It’s okay, I can just call a cab. I don’t really know what I’m going to do when I get home though, because I live in a third-floor walk-up.” The bit about the apartment was true. I just left out the fact that I didn’t want to go outside because a huge guy with a gun was hunting me.
Lark put a mug of herbal tea on the table beside me, along with a bear-shaped squeeze bottle of honey. Then he turned to Yolanda and said, “Jack should just spend the night here, because he’s injured and there’s no way he’ll make it up three flights of stairs. Plus, it’s really late.”
JoJo nodded. “I agree. He’s had a rough night, and I don’t think he should go anywhere.”
Yolanda caved under the peer pressure and asked me, “Would you like to spend the night on our couch?”
“I’d love that,” I said. “Thank you.”
* * *
Sometime later, I found myself tucked in on a comfortable, plum-colored couch in their cozy living room. I was dressed in a pair of Lark’s flannel pajamas, which had cartoon unicorns on them, and my bandaged foot was sandwiched between a towel-wrapped bag of ice and a stack of pillows. Even though my ankle was throbbing, the fistful of ibuprofen I’d taken was dulling the pain, and the herbal tea was making me feel warm and relaxed.
Everyone had gone to bed, but I was pretty sure Yolanda was sleeping with one eye open and totally prepared to clock me with her bat if need be. All the housemates were great, but I was a fan of hers because she was such a little bad-ass.
I shifted a bit to settle in. Then I pulled up the sleeve of my absurd, soft, and very comfortable pajamas and took a look at the watch around my forearm. I instantly felt a pang of guilt, but I shoved that aside and tried to concentrate on the watch itself. It was classy and elegant, and the kind of thing I could never hope to own in this lifetime.
I slid it off and examined it closely. There were three initials engraved into the back in a diamond shape: a large D surrounded by a smaller P and A. It was common to put the initial for the last name in the center, so two of those letters fit. I didn’t know what the P stood for, though.
I turned it over and ran a fingertip along the edge of its face. Okay, so maybe I’d hang onto it for a week or two. There was no reason I couldn’t enjoy it a little before I sold it. As gorgeous and expensive as the Rolex was though, I still couldn’t quite believe Reno had pulled a gun on me over it.
After returning the watch to my arm, I reached for my jacket. One of the sleeves had gotten torn, probably from the bushes in front of the townhouse. That was a shame, since it was my best suit.
I dug through the pockets and located Reno’s business card. I found myself with a lot of questions about him, but it didn’t tell me anything. The only two words on the card were Adriano Dombruso, above a phone number with a Las Vegas area code.
Who did that? Who made super expensive cards for themselves with almost no information on them? Players, maybe, to impress people in bars. That fit with what little I knew about him. Aside from that though, who else?
Well, a gangster might have a card like that. What else would they do, have stationery printed up announcing themselves as a crime boss? Hell no.
Actually, that fit with what I knew about him, too. It could explain not only the huge handgun, but how perfectly at ease he’d seemed when he was wielding it. Then there was his noncommittal reaction when I asked if he left Vegas because he’d pissed off the mob.
Maybe it would also explain why he’d leave a box of valuables sitting out like that, because who’d be stupid enough to…
Fucking hell, had I just robbed a mafioso?
If so, I was seriously screwed. They weren’t exactly the type to forgive and forget, and they had a lot of resources at their disposal when it came to tracking people down.
Okay, so maybe I was being paranoid. I was obviously going to avoid the bar where we’d met, so how could he possibly find me? He didn’t even know my real name, and I’d only been here for a few weeks, so it wasn’t like anyone knew me and could point him in my direction.
Then again, it also wouldn’t be the worst idea to get the hell out of Dodge. It wasn’t like I had any ties to this place, so once my ankle healed maybe I’d pack my suitcase and pick a new destination—another big city to get lost in, the latest in a very long line. I’d spent my entire adult life totally adrift, moving every three or four months to stay ahead of the law and the men I’d robbed. San Francisco wouldn’t be any different.