Page 19

LATER THAT MORNING , Tim, with Margo in the backseat, drove the limo through the security gate at Brax’s estate. It had been a while since they had to pick up the boss, but he was heading back to Europe that morning and Margo needed to brief him on stateside matters on the drive to the airport. She was remaining in town. But the fact that they hadn’t been to the boss’s house didn’t stop them from their usual game.

“Wanna bet again?” Margo asked Tim.

Tim glanced at her through his rearview. “What this time?”

“The same thing all those other times. That a woman spent the night with him once again, and I’m willing to bet serious cash that he doesn’t remember her name.”

“Which is crazy.”

“You wanna bet?”

“Yeah I can go for that. How much?”

“A hundred?”

Tim looked through the rearview again. “Have you forgotten when the boss docked our pay for making just this same kind of bet a month-and-a-half or so ago?”

“Who’s gonna tell him? You? Or are you scared of losing again?”

Margo knew Tim was a betting man. He went to Vegas every vacation he took. He had a poker game going every week. “Are you in?” she asked him.

It didn’t take much for Tim to agree. He was always going to be in. “A hundred it is,” he said. “But if the boss finds out, you’ll pay me every dime he docks from me.”

“Don’t worry. If you don’t tell, I won’t.” Then she smiled. “It’ll be like taking candy from a baby.”

“That’s what you think,” said Tim.

But when the double doors of the mansion opened, and the estate valet came out with Brax’s luggage, it all seemed to be going according to plan. But just after the valet had placed the luggage in the trunk of the limo, the doors opened again.

“Here she comes,” Margo said.

But when Brax came walking out with Roni beside him, Tim turned all the way around to get a good look at Margo’s shocked face. He couldn’t stop grinning.

But it was no laughing matter to Margo. After her initial shock at seeing Roni walking out of that house, she watched Roni as she walked down the steps with the boss. She was high-stepping in her high heels and her short leather skirt and her waist-high leather jacket that buttoned in a crisscross along her sizeable chest, all adorned to give her the look more of a high-class supermodel than a cop. She looked more like a high-class whore than a cop, if you asked Margo, but that was apparently what the boss wanted. And that Angela Davis-looking afro? It made no sense to Margo. Why her? Many of those random women he fooled around with had more class in their pinky than she had in her entire body. But what did she know? She was just his flunky. She was just a working stiff. And he liked what he liked.

But Tim, on the other hand, had no distress about it. He was enjoying every second of her dismay. “Still wanna bet he don’t know her name?” he asked her.

“Ah shut up,” she said, and he laughed.

They both watched as Brax walked Roni to her Porshe that was parked along the driveway, too, and he sat her down on the front driver seat.

Roni looked at him as he buckled her seatbelt. “When will you be back in town?”

He crouched down inside her car’s open door. “I should be back by Friday.”

“In time for the Chamber of Commerce Awards.”

“That’s right.”

They stared into each other’s eyes. Being apart was becoming harder and harder. “Call me when you get to Belgium. It’s tough out there for a pimp.”

Brax laughed. But then they both turned serious again. “Your ass better stay safe too. It’s tough out there for a cop.”

She nodded. He kissed her on the lips. She gave him a hug. And then he stood up, stepped back, closed her door, and watched as she drove away.

“They’re kissing now,” Tim said.

“They’ve been kissing all along,” said Margo. “Just not in public.” Then Margo shook her head. “I still don’t see Lady Millicent letting a maid’s daughter, a policewoman no less, become a member of her hoity-toity family.”

Tim looked through the rearview. “Who says she wanna to be in old girl’s family? A woman like Roni Ross got prospects of her own okay? A girl like that don’t be on nobody’s begging list.”

“You don’t even like Roni. Why are you acting like you do?”

“What like got to do with it? She’s the boss’s girl. Which makes her my boss too. I tolerate my bosses because they pay my ass. I don’t have to like them. But the truth is still the truth,” he added, and Margo rolled her eyes. Tim laughed as the valet opened the passenger door of the limo, and Brax got inside.

“Top of the morning to you, sir,” a satisfied, hundred dollar richer Tim said to his boss.

“Good morning, Boss,” Margo said. “Don’t mind Timmy. He’s full of himself this morning.”

“Just this morning?” Brax asked and Margo laughed.

“Very funny,” said Tim as his smile evaporated.

“Okay, what we got?” Brax asked Margo and she began handing him, one by one, all of the contracts that needed his signatures. A man that read everything before he signed, it became a slow, arduous process. But by the time they were on the long stretch of highway to the airport, he was nearing the last one.

“ Boss !” Tim screamed with a bloodcurdling scream that scared Brax and Margo so completely that the contracts they were holding flew from their hands. By the time they looked up to see what was terrifying Tim, they saw it for themselves: A big SUV was barreling down the highway, on the wrong side of the road, heading straight for their limo.

“Swerve!” Brax yelled, but Tim panicked and jumped out of the limo, leaving it driverless and causing Margo to begin screaming from the top of her lungs too.

Brax was attempting to crawl over the seat to grab the steering wheel when the SUV slammed into the limo with a head-on collision that caused the limo to spin like a toy on a top and then begin speeding out of control down an embankment that led to a cliff.

Brax, like Margo, had been tossed around with the hit and the spin, causing him to fall onto the backseat once again, but he knew he had to get control of that limo before it got to that cliff.

He crawled over the seat again, hopped onto the front driver seat, and slammed on brakes just as the limo was within twenty feet of going over the cliff.

Only the limo was still sliding as if the brakes no longer worked. It slid and slid. Brax began turning the steering wheel as sharply as he could. He was half out of his seat trying to steer that limo from that cliff and hold down the brakes, although he knew, if he steered it too harshly, it could flip the entire car.

Within inches of the cliff, it finally swerved. But it was so close that the backend of the limo was hanging over the cliff.

“Crawl up front!” Brax yelled to a still-screaming Margo as he knew they only had seconds to get out of that car. “Crawl up front!”

With one feet out of the car for leverage, Brax reached back in for Margo to grab his hand. She was panicking, and still screaming, but she nervously began crawling over the seat.

But her movements caused the limo to move and it was slipping further and further over the cliff. Brax reached in as far as he could and just as the ground that was supporting the limo’s weight gave way, Margo grabbed hold of Brax’s hand and Brax, with everything within him, flung her over that seat and out of that limo. They fell backwards to the ground as the limo completely gave way and went over the cliff.

Brax leaned over and saw his limo crash against the rocks and then flip into the sea.

Terrified, he laid back down, with Margo still holding onto him as if her life was still endangered. She was still screaming. She was still as panicked as she was inside that car. But as Brax laid there, all he could do was thank God Almighty that Roni wasn’t in that limo with them.