Chapter One: What Happens When the Victim Grows Teeth?
Clay stomped to the bar and grabbed the nearest open domestic beer, draining it despite it being an unpleasant tepid temperature. "Fuck," he shouted as he slammed his open palm on the bar.
"Whatsa matter?" Tig asked as he pointed at Rat to fetch Clay a fresh beer.
"Fucking Hale wants us to find his niece."
"The chief?" Juice asked, looking up from his phone.
"No Jacob fucking Hale, Mr. white collar needs his runaway niece found off the record with the election coming up."
"So where'd she go?" Tig asked.
Clay shrugged, "she robbed his safe, stole his car. He got someone to track her phone to a hotel before she turned it off."
"Why doesn't Hale just go pick her up then?" Chibs asked and rooted around in his pocket for a battered pack of cigarettes.
"He doesn't want to risk getting any attention or get those soft hands dirty if shit goes south," Clay said with a toothy smile as he waved his fingers in the air.
"Where're her parents?" Juice asked as he swiped right on a woman's profile.
"Dead," Clay said and drank deeply from the fresh carbonated beer before adding. "Hale's her legal guardian, she turns twenty-one in a few weeks and then was getting complete control over her parents trust."
"So why didn't she just wait?" Juice asked.
"I don't fucking know Juice, Hale wasn't too specific, just a lot of money for her to be brought back quietly."
Tig, Juice and Rat all lapsed into silence and watched Clay finish the beer before drops of condensation could even begin to form on the outside of the bottle.
Clay let the empty bottle thud to the top of the bar before digging a scrap of lined paper from his pocket and passing it to Tig. "I want you to go fetch his missing brat, shouldn't be difficult."
"Why're we even helping him out?" Juice asked.
"Just currying some favor son, this'll keep Hale real close."
Juice nodded before shrugging and peering over the bar at Clay's cramped writing on the paper he'd passed to Tig.
"That's only a few hours from here," Juice remarked.
Clay nodded, "Hale said it's a cash-only joint off the interstate."
"Hale say why she took off with his cash?" Tig asked as he reread the address and stolen license plate number. Inside he was irritated he had to go on the impromptu errand for the ratfuck Hale, it would've been better suited for a couple prospects.
Clay shook his head, "he's withholding something, but he already wired half the cash, he's gonna send over a picture of her too."
As the men discussed the particulars of playing a highly paid game of hide-and-seek, across Charming in his air-conditioned cushy office, Jacob Hale Jr. stared at his empty wall safe. He slammed his hand on the surface of his mahogany desk after he ripped his gaze from his missing money, jewels, and bonds. His eyes fell on the picture of his niece he was just about to send to Clay. His manicured nails with their neatly trimmed cuticles tapped out a message to go along with the photo before he hit send.
Jacob's message was broken down into binary code as it was transmitted to the nearest cell tower before it arrived on Clay's square screen.
Clay glanced down at the grainy face that appeared on the screen. "Meet Rosamund Marie," Clay grumbled before he passed his phone over to Bobby.
Clay's phone traveled the men standing around the bar, from Chibs to Juice before Tig got his hands on it.
As Tig stared down at the poor-quality photo of Hale's niece Rosamund, hours away at the rundown hotel, the corporeal body of Rosamund Marie Vinzenci recounted the money she'd stolen. She whistled lowly as she thumbed through the stacks of crisp bills before looking up and meeting her reflection's eyes in the dull mirror hung over the pressed wood dresser. Her lips pulled up into a smile as she thought of her weaselly uncle finding his safe cleaned out. She smiled wider when she thought of how much she'd disrupted her mayoral uncle's grand plans at expanding his reach in Charming and elevating his fish-belly white, reptilian self that barely passed as a human being to larger political arenas.
As Rosamund paced the small cheap room with its threadbare carpet, back in Charming, Tig checked the fluid levels of the generic black van in the Teller-Morrow shop.
Juice walked over as Tig read the engine's dipstick for the 10W 40 oil level. "This is a bullshit job for Hale," Tig muttered after he replaced the flexible metal shaft.
"It shouldn't take long," Juice remarked as he looked up at the shop's wall clock. "You'll be back in plenty of time for the festivities."
Tig chuckled as he thought of the new girls that were working at Cara Cara who were coming over to properly introduce themselves after the shop closed.
As Tig finished checking the tire pressure and eventually headed out towards the cheap hotel off the interstate, back in Jacob Hale Jr.'s office, he tore up the mint green sticky note that Rosamund had left on the top shelf of the emptied safe.
"I'm not your property, you can't hurt me anymore."
A couple hours passed for everyone, during that time Tig found traffic cooperative and arrived at the hotel sooner than he anticipated.
As he circled the hotel, he saw Hale's car parked near the battered dumpster, sloppily hidden.
Tig sent a quick message to Clay that he'd arrived and then silenced his phone as he narrowed his crystalline blue eyes at the string of shabby rooms after he set the van's emergency brake.
As Tig sat in the van and watched the single-story hotel row of rooms, behind the faded brown door of room number eight, Rosamund grunted as she finally got her leather gym bag zipped closed, she hadn't realized the amount of space the stacks of cash would take up once she transferred them all to one vessel.
After she scanned the room one last time, Rosamund opened the thin door and walked urgently to where she had barely obscured Jacob Hale Jr.'s luxury sedan. She squinted as she was met with the bright sunlight and popped the trunk to deposit the bag of cash and backpack.
Rosamund was unaware of Tig's eyes on her, she didn't see pupils dilate within his cerulean blue orbs as the living embodiment of the still frame image from Clay's phone appeared in his field of vision.
Tig slipped from the driver's seat and maneuvered through the parked car towards where Rosamund was now patting the front and back pockets of her jeans.
Tig heard her give an exasperated sound and paused as she jogged back to room eight where she left the car keys in the center of the faded floral comforter.
Rosamund would never forget everything about the exact moment she heard the room door squeak on its hinges as it was opened.
"This is the end of your road trip Miss Hale."
At the sound of Tig's voice, Rosamund stood up straighter and turned around with excruciatingly slowness.
Rosamund's eyes opened further than they ever had as a single eyelash lacquered with mascara fell onto her cheek as her gaze drank in Tig standing in the doorway before he shut the door and engaged the deadbolt.
She met his unblinking, brilliant blue eyes fringed with dark lashes as she cleared her throat nervously.
"It's not Hale, it's Vinzenci, I took my mother's maiden name," Rosamund spit and stepped back until the back of her legs were met and stopped by the side of the bed.
Tig watched Rosamund's forehead pull into a frown, a billion fears and worries reshaped her exquisite face. He watched the skin pull tight over her cheekbones that could cut glass as she met his cerulean eyes, polar opposite of her brown eyes that were nearly black. Her eye's rods and cones were a sudden and veritable cataclysm of cellular activity, torn between the vast spectrum of emotions she cycled through at once, her cells osmotically raped.
Rosamund tensed but remained resolutely still, "are you one of my uncle's hired fucking thugs?" she seethed.
The tiny cochlea bones in Tig's ears vibrated at the sound of her rapid exhales, saturated with encroaching panic as she kept her shoulders square.
"I don't work for Hale," Tig snarled and watched Rosamund's eyes flick around the room, desperate to escape to anywhere but there.
"Do you know why I'm here?"
Rosamund avoided Tig's eyes as she smoothed her sleeves down and plucked invisible lint from the slate-grey sleeves. "I took some money," she finally said.
Tig chuckled, "you stole a lot of money from your uncle's safe. It's time to head back to Charming," he added easily.
"You're being paid to being me home?" Rosamund asked, trying in vain to keep her voice steady. The pressure in her skull grew and she would've welcomed a neurological event or life-ending stroke to not feel the weight of Tig's sparkling and penetrative gaze.
"To bring you home to your uncle and fiancé Zach."
"He's not my fiancé," Rosamund hissed angrily. "My uncle is insisting that it's important that I marry Zach and have children with him."
"So, you were stealing the money to do what?"
"I thought cash could get me to Canada and a new life."
"How much research did you put into it?"
Rosamund cleared her throat, "I'm sure I could've read more."
"Tell me about this Zach."
"He's a piece of shit on my uncle's board, he's disgusting," she managed before lapsing into silence shaking her head.
"So, if I deliver you to your uncle and get paid, he'll force you to marry this Zach?"
"He'll force me as much as he can," Rosamund murmured vaguely.
"Cash and being on the run seemed like the best plan?"
"Anything is better than going back to Charming," she said quickly.
"Anything?" Tig asked in an unreadable tone as he seemed to stand up taller.
Rosamund swallowed hard and nodded slowly. "Anything," she breathlessly reiterated.