Page 21 of Dick

SIX

Dick

KNOWING our first night together would be our only night together was difficult to accept, but it was the way things had to be. It was fun while it lasted, but forgetting her was going to be more difficult than I originally expected.

I liked her. A lot.

But. In my profession, trusting the wrong person would get me a one-way ticket to prison.

We walked through the kitchen, down the hallway, and into the garage. I needed to take her back to her car so she could go home, change, and get to work. I motioned toward the cars. A Mercedes, GT-40 Ford, BMW M5, Ferrari F12, Jeep Wrangler, and a Maserati were positioned side by side. On the far side of the cars, six motorcycles were parked. Three of the cars were mine, and the other three were in my possession, but technically weren’t mine. I had taken them from people who owed me money.

“Which one of these do you want to take to get your car?” I asked.

She ran her fingers through her damp hair and shook it for a minute while she surveyed the inventory. “I get to pick? Out of any of them?”

It was the least I could do. “Yeah. Pick.”

She lowered her hands to her hips and shifted her eyes from car to car. After a moment, she pointed to the Ferrari. “The red one.”

Of all the cars, she had to pick one of the three that wasn’t mine. Not only was it technically stolen, it was expensive as fuck. I motioned toward the car, a 700 horsepower red Ferrari F12 Berlinetta well worth the $300,000 debt it was covering.

There was one car I had no business driving, and it was the Ferrari. My pride prevented me from telling her no. I tossed my head toward it. “Get in.”

I started the car and allowed it to warm up. The rumble from the V-12 engine shook the walls of the garage and provided me a reminder of its raw power. The power was only part of the reason I shouldn’t be driving it. The fact it would get me tossed right back in prison was the rest.

She delicately opened the door, got inside and buckled her seatbelt. “What is it?”

“Ferrari,” I said, knowing the other details were unimportant to her.

Her eyes bounced around the interior. “I like it.”

Who wouldn’t. I’d driven the car a few times right after I’d repossessed it, but hadn’t so much as started it in the last six weeks. I feared the owner turned it in as stolen in an effort to get an insurance check for the theft, all in hopes of paying his debt with me. His failure to pay didn’t mean he hadn’t reported it stolen, it simply assured me he had no intention of paying me anytime soon.

I pulled the car out of the garage, shut the overhead door, and got back inside. “Ready?”

She grinned and nodded. “Yep.”

As irritating as her attitude was at first, I found Jess to be a very satisfying person overall. She was entertaining, a great lay, and absolutely gorgeous. But. I couldn’t trust anyone enough to expose them to my personal life on a regular basis. Adhering to my single forever mantra kept me away from prison and out of the watchful eye of the cops.

It also left me wishing from time to time that I had another profession altogether.

This was one of those times.

“I bet this thing is fast.”

I checked for cross traffic and pulled out of the neighborhood. “It’s stupid fast. After we get on the highway, I’ll show you.”

I slowly sped up to the speed limit, pulling against the Formula One style paddle shifters on the steering wheel twice. Through the open windows, the roar from the twelve-cylinder engine acted as a reminder of the car’s potential.

The car was a seven speed manual shift, but as with many of the Ferrari line, it had no clutch pedal, only a + paddle to shift gears up, and a – paddle to down shift – located on each side of the steering wheel. The driver simply stepped on the gas and touched the respective paddle. It was designed to do one thing and do it well – go fast.

I stopped at the traffic light, flipped on the signal to turn right, and eased through the light. Once on the on-ramp to the highway, I glanced toward Jess. Her hair was flipping in the wind, half of it inside the car, and the other half was being sucked out through the open window. She returned my gaze, wearing an ear-to-ear grin.

She looked like a twenty-five-year-old child.

I tossed my head toward the road. “Ready?”

She looked confused. “For what?”