Never Again, Seriously Read online




  NEVER AGAIN,

  SERIOUSLY

  Forrest Steele

  Copyright © 2018 Forrest Steele.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the places, characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Archway Publishing

  1663 Liberty Drive

  Bloomington, IN 47403

  www.archwaypublishing.com

  1 (888) 242-5904

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

  ISBN: 978-1-4808-6749-9 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4808-6748-2 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018910134

  Archway Publishing rev. date: 09/11/2018

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  About the Author

  For

  Anne Nichols Reynolds

  Christine Yarbour

  Acknowledgments

  Foremost, I thank my fellow members of Ridge Writers. But for your encouragement and sometimes gentle prodding, I would never have finished this project or had the courage to publish it. Members of the Scribophile community have also given valuable guidance to my development of this story and as a writer.

  Mauricio Guzman at Smooth Move Logistics provided expert advice when I needed it. Thank you, Mo.

  Countless family members, neighbors, and friends have supported me with their interest and positive comments. I think the only skeptic was me.

  Chapter 1

  The image of Malcolm Weaver barged into Jake Foster’s consciousness unbidden, and he wondered for the umpteenth time how long he could continue working for this bully. He sighed. I have no good options.

  The scruffy, ponytailed man on the bar stool to his right spoke in a tobacco-stained voice. “I didn’t mean nothin’ special. Just you’re good-lookin’ and talk like you’re smart. Tall, curly hair, hooked nose. That happen in basketball?”

  What is this lanky guy talking about? “Sorry. My mind was somewhere else.”

  “You could be at Guajiro. It’s only a block away, and the chicks there like to party. If that’s what you like.” The guy’s grimy hands and soiled clothing said drifter. He smelled of motor oil.

  Jake drew away for a better look. The quick motion made his head swim.

  The man said, “Hey, I ain’t hittin’ on you. Sometimes I don’t say things right is all. Sorry. Name’s Paul.”

  Jake shrugged and shook the extended hand. “Jake. No offense taken. I’m comfortable here at Billy’s Dog.” His words came out mushy.

  Paul’s hand clapped Jake’s shoulder, fingers trailing briefly down. “I hear that, good buddy.”

  Jake’s shudder went unnoticed by Paul, who examined his beer bottle. “I’m passing through Miami. Left Marathon over a fight about my bike. Some jerk thought he was gonna hold it until I paid for repairs, stuff he didn’t even do right. Put the guy in the hospital. I’m goin’ up north. If it’s too cold, I’ll come back. Especially if there’s a reason to.”

  Jake shifted on the bar stool and leaned slightly away from Paul. “Yeah, you get used to the weather here. Blood thins.”

  Jake recognized boozy bar talk as a waste of time, although he indulged in it more than he liked to admit. I’m in a rut. Time to stop indulging my worries and chart a course.

  Jake muttered to himself, “Life is what you make it. Forget Arlene, forget Malcolm, and use your God-given talents.”

  He must have spoken louder than he thought because Paul turned toward him.

  “Sorry,” Jake said. “Wife left me three years ago. Took her stuff and left in a hurry. Still on my mind.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We all got some kinda crap, don’t we?” Paul swallowed the last of his beer and talked about the owner where he last worked, making local deliveries. Something about unfair schedules, how management favored the other drivers. How he never got his last paycheck. “I took care of him too. Beat the tar out of him. Should’ve killed him. Now that I think of it, that’s what I’ll do. Go back and finish the job, then head north.”

  Fury assaulted Jake. The world was full of narcissistic takers, including Weaver, Arlene, and this drifter’s boss. Never giving or helping, just taking advantage. Why did they get away with it? Couldn’t kill ’em though. Of course not. If this guy meant what he was saying, Jake didn’t need to be around him. Or even if he didn’t.

  I don’t own a gun because I don’t trust myself with one.

  He had reason to fear losing control. Once, after returning from Afghanistan, he’d gotten into a senseless fight in the parking lot of a roadside bar. It started when the other guy made a remark about his appearance, which didn’t fit in with the seamy clientele. This escalated to a shoving match, and then everything went red. When Jake came to his senses, the guy lay on his back in the gravel. Jake knelt and checked for breathing and a heartbeat. The man opened his eyes and mumbled, “What happened?”

  Jake went back in and told the bartender he found the man on the ground and asked him to call 911. When he went back out, the man was trying to sit up. Jake bent over him and said, “Just stay here. Someone is coming to look at you. I’m sorry, man, but you started it.” He strode to his car and left, sure no one there knew him.

  When Jake returned from his thoughts, Paul was looking up at the screen above the bar. The announcer’s voice boomed out a news item about fraud at a local jewelry chain. The company’s chief financial officer had vanished with several hundred thousand dollars in cash and jewelry.

  “I would rip off my boss if I knew how to do it.” Paul grimaced. “Hey, sorry what I said about killing the guy. I was just lettin’ off steam.”

  Jake cleared his throat and nodded toward the screen. “I’ll bet that gu
y’s boss is a jerk too. Bet he deserved it.” He sipped his scotch. “Fraud can be simple if conditions are right and you know what you’re doing.”

  Paul gazed at Jake. “Yeah?”

  “I could make off with a couple million dollars from my sonofabitch boss before anybody found out. Boy, would he deserve it. That’s not enough money to put Global Source Enterprises out of business, even though I know some of the loss wouldn’t be covered by their lousy insurance. But it would wipe the grimm—grin—off his face.” The words crawled across Jake’s tongue in a sluggish procession.

  Paul’s eyes opened wide. He lowered his voice. “How could you get away with so much money?”

  “Security flaws all over the place. For example, I know where the spare key is kept for a supposally—um, secure area in the warehouse.” Jake’s stomach churned with alarm as he realized he was blurting out details he should be keeping to himself. How stupid to be running off at the mouth with a guy like this.

  Paul lit a cigarette and gestured toward the mirror, where they could see out through the open double door. “Check that out. How some people live.”

  Miami Beach was at full throttle. Ocean Drive, the park, and the beach beyond were teeming with beautiful people, affected, on display, and posing as though for photo shoots. Riotous colors in the blazing sunlight—Spandex in neon hues, shiny old cars in pastels, hair from bleach-blonde to violet to fire-engine red. Oiled bodies buffed in the gym. Rollerblades.

  Paul didn’t fit in at this hotel bar. In the attached dining room, a sprinkle of well-groomed tourists laughed and talked, celebrating their time in world-famous Miami Beach. More people dined in the covered area outside. The lone bartender bustled about filling orders from the service bar, appearing before Jake when needed.

  Jake turned to look at the only additional bar patron, a slight man in tan slacks and matching loafers without socks, who lounged on a stool, facing the open doorway. He leaned an elbow on the bar and rested a foot on the bottom rung. His dusky face, below a short-brimmed fedora, showed amusement. Overhead, rattan blades stirred the damp, salty air wafting in.

  The slender man watched two arm-waving men decked out in tight shorts, muscle shirts, and spiked, streaked hair. They blocked the area in front of the restaurant’s sidewalk greeting station, talking loudly. A waiter shooed them away, but they only retreated as far as the curb as they yelled back and forth.

  Jake saw the man in the fedora glance in his direction, then back at the argument outside.

  Jake’s words echoed in his mind. It was more than bar talk. Embezzling from his employer was an outrageous notion bubbling up within—outrageous but doable. His chest tingled with excitement.

  Jake glanced with hooded eyes at his companion. He manufactured a resigned sigh, raised his hands, and dropped them to his knees. “Ah, I’m lettin’ off steam too. Those guys with the big houses, the boats—they’re all ripping somebody off one way or another. You’d like to even things up. Know what I mean? But I don’t have the ba—I mean, it takes a rare brr—uhh, bird to pull off a corporate fraud.” A soft belch escaped his lips, and his next words came in an airy rush. “Plus, what’s a guy gonna do if he’s caught?”

  He grunted in pain when he banged his knuckles on the edge of the bar while trying for an indifferent flip of his hand.

  Paul’s attention remained on the mirror, where he watched the reflection of the two men outside. Jake hoped Paul would hit the road and not remember this conversation. If he went through with a scam, he wanted this guy hundreds of miles away.

  Jake touched his knuckles to his lips while waiting for the bleeding to stop. Irritated at his own awkwardness, he shook his head. He grabbed a used bar napkin, careful to touch the wound with the cleanest part.

  Realizing this conversation needed to end, Jake tapped the bar with his uninjured hand. “Hey, man, I need to go. Just remembered something I’m supposed to do.” He put a twenty and a ten on the bar. “I’m paid up. This’ll buy you one. The rest is for the bartender. Hope you have a good trip.”

  As Jake passed behind Paul, he glanced in the mirror and caught him watching. The drifter’s blue eyes conveyed a sharp curiosity. Was he thinking about Jake’s embezzlement talk? Or was he reliving the awkward pickup attempt? Paul turned his face away, and Jake’s gaze landed on the hem of his shirt, which he wore outside his jeans. Sitting on Paul’s left, Jake hadn’t noticed the bulge on his right hip before. The guy hadn’t impressed him as the type to carry a gun.

  Jake ignored the man in the fedora, who nodded as he passed. He ignored the men outside too, edging past them as they braced up, one accusing and the other denying. He strode around the corner for a Cuban coffee to clear his head.

  While driving in his old brown Mercedes across the causeway back to Miami, he dwelled on the fraud idea. He’d never done anything dishonest before, unless he counted the time the store delivered a widescreen TV twice. He kept both.

  Could he do this? He’d heard plenty of stories over the years about people who stole from their employers. The victimized company often preferred to keep it quiet. If he got caught, he might offer restitution and negotiate a deal for himself. After all, it was just a white-collar crime.

  Of course, stealing from the company would be wrong. But the way he had it figured, everyone else in the company would be okay, and Malcolm would have to scramble for the first time in his life. It might even make him aware he needed to change his management style, which would be to everyone’s benefit.

  He knew it was the booze, but sometimes booze logic was right. Jump off this slow train to oblivion and have a real life. No harm to anyone who didn’t deserve it.

  Sure, it was risky.

  A couple million dollars was a lot of money. Enough to disappear and live in luxury.

  He wouldn’t miss his crap-ass job.

  Driving with the window open and relishing the cooling twilight air, he saw the yellow light too late to stop without locking the brakes. He made a split-second decision to keep rolling. Luckily, he slipped under the light before it turned red. Double lucky—he didn’t know how fast he’d been going, but when he glanced at the speedometer, it read only thirty. A cop who’d been waiting in his car for the light to change nodded and crossed the intersection behind Jake. A good omen.

  Hell, if Jake were caught, a slick lawyer could create a defense that he was intentionally exposing weakness in the company’s procedures, was making a drastic bid for attention from an employer who wouldn’t listen. Jake liked that. Even if the idea wouldn’t hold water legally, Malcom Weaver would want to avoid having a scandal naming his company in the news.

  He smiled to himself, enjoying the fantasy of making a major play, relieved for the time being of his uneasy moods. In recent years, as his career slid laterally and drifted down, the emptiness inside him had worsened. His youthful energy was gone, and his options for the future were dwindling.

  On top of all that, Arlene, the bitch, had left him without warning. Said she needed more than he could give. He never understood more of what. Later he found out that, whatever it was, the yacht salesman two apartments over apparently had plenty. She moved in with him, and Jake fled to another apartment nearby.

  Approaching the next intersection, he lifted his foot from the gas and paid attention to the light. He coasted through under green.

  As Jake turned on the street toward his apartment building, dusk had turned to darkness. The single light of a motorcycle rounded the corner behind him, the streetlight illuminating a slender rider with a ponytail sticking out under the helmet. The bike stayed back as Jake slowed to turn in his parking lot, then roared past.

  No. It couldn’t be. Lots of bikers out, many of them with ponytails. Can’t let my imagination rock the boat.

  Chapter 2

  Malcolm Weaver flipped through the stack in front of him and looked around the table at his subordinates. “I do
n’t see the customer activity report in this package.” His gaze landed on Jake Foster. “Aren’t those your responsibility?”

  Startled, Jake stopped reading the first report. “I didn’t know you—”

  Malcolm raised his palm in a familiar gesture, commanding silence and attention. “Excuses and success don’t go together, Jake. Why would we want a customer activity report if we didn’t want to review it with our financials and sales projections?”

  “I assume sales projections are here.” He glared at Willis Turek, a threatening edge in his voice.

  “Mr. Weaver, I turned them in last week. If the report’s not in this package—”

  “Did I ask you for the history of your life? Just tell me if it’s here.” Weaver laughed to himself, a quiet heh-heh, and thumbed through the reports again. He favored Turek with a flat grin while he ran his fingers across his freckled scalp, smoothing the few blond hairs into place.

  He turned back to Jake. “Jacob Landon Foster. Is that for Alf Landon, the guy who lost to FDR? According to your personnel file, your Wonderlic test indicates you’re a smart boy. University of Miami on the GI Bill, plus an MBA. I understand you were last in your class.”

  His lips pulled back, and he swiveled his head to display glistening dental implants. “My bet is you didn’t put in the effort. Like our own all-star screwup, the Miami Heat’s one and only Bagger Bassett. We should call you ‘Bag Man.’” Another soft heh-heh.

  “Manager of logistics. Sometimes I wonder why I gave you such broad responsibilities. Just don’t let anything fall through the cracks.” Malcolm held his gaze on Jake, then cast his eyes over the rest of the group as though to say, “You either.” Okay, let’s go through the reports that were provided on time.”

  Jake kept his eyes unfocused. His jaw ached from grinding his teeth, and a hot flush crept up his neck despite his efforts to suppress it. Broad responsibilities, my ass. Unless you mean someone to blame if something goes wrong in the office.