Fiction

Two Before The Wedding Part 7

A Sunny Alexander-Johnson And Henry James Series

My name is Sunny Alexander-Johnson, and I’m Henry James, and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth magazine.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

There’s a large part of what we do as writers for Dark Sides that’s really cool. Like the natural excited high, we get when Rick McDonnell chooses one of our stories as a feature.

But it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. If you’re a new subscriber to our mag, you probably don’t know about some of the really nasty stuff we’ve had to go through to get a story. And you probably don’t know about all the hours of tedium we go through when we’re trying to track down information.

Just like now, sitting in a car parked across the street from a construction company, waiting for Angela Stringer, A.K.A. Angela Bartley to come out.

It doesn’t always happen, in fact, it seldom happens in our line of business, but this time we caught a lucky break.

We took the exit ramp off of 360 and drove to our first pick of construction companies Charlie Ruiz had given us, and as we were driving up, we saw Angela exit her car and walk toward the front door of the company.

Now we were waiting for her to come out.

“Should we just wait until she comes out then talk to her?”

“Not sure, princess. What we need to discuss with her, she may not want anyone else to hear.”

“Okay, but you do realize Henry once she gets back to Ashton Wheaton, Charlie Ruiz is going to blow our cover, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And like you said, we’re probably the last two people she wants to see right now.”

“Yeap.”

“So I’m thinking about dying my hair burnt orange and painting my entire body pink.”

“That’s nice.”

“Dammit, old man. Have you been listening to a word I said?”

“Yes, burnt orange and a pink body. Shaundrika, take a look at that car parked across the street.”

“There are about twenty or thirty cars in the parking lot. Which one?”

“Not in the parking lot. The silver Chrysler with the tinted windows parked just outside the parking lot.”

“Okay, what’s so special about it?”

“You see the dude sitting behind the wheel? What the hell is he doing?”

We watched as the man sporting a goatee and shoulder-length black hair raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes, held them there for a couple of seconds and then lowered them.

“What the hell?”

“Sunny, that dude’s scanning the parking lot. He’s probably doing what we’re doing.”

“Waiting to talk to Angela? How’d he know she’d be here?”

“Ask yourself a question, princess. If you were a hit man hired to kill somebody, wouldn’t you want to know the person’s habits so you could do the job at the most optimum time for a clean getaway?”

“Holy shit Henry. You mean he’s been following Angela around all this time?”

“Think about it. The fixer said we had five days. This dude may be the fixer’s insurance policy if we can’t get her to stand down. I’d be willing to bet he’s been tailing her for at least the last two days.”

“So if the fixer hired this dude to do his dirty work who hired the fixer?”

“Hang on. She’s coming out.”

We watched Angela exit the building, a tote purse draped at an elbow, keys clutched in her hand. In her opposite hand, she was swinging a satchel briefcase which seemed filled to bursting. We saw the rear brake lights flicker as she unlocked her car. Then she opened the back driver’s side door, tossed the satchel in, closed the door and got behind the wheel.

Angela guided her grey Mercedes to the street, slowed to wait for traffic, then turned right and sped up.

Seconds later, the Chrysler turned into the street and drove past us, heading the same direction as Angela.

“Oh, my God, Henry.”

“Yeah hang on, princess. I’m making a U-turn, and we’re going to hunt the fox that’s hunting our chicken.”

It was the same routine at Angela’s next stop, except we drove past the construction company and the silver Chrysler. We kept going until we found a side street and turned onto it.

After performing a roundabout, we crossed to the opposite side of the street and parked, far enough away hoping to not arouse suspicion, but close enough to keep tabs on both the parking lot and the Chrysler.

“Now what?”

“Okay, at some point, we’ve got to make contact with Angela, but if this dude’s stuck to her like a fly to a glue stick, he’ll make us the very moment we try. We’re going to need us a little help.”

“Donnie Sullivan?”

“You guessed it, princess. Give Cynthia a call and see if we can borrow her chauffeur for a couple of days. If she’s good with it, then talk to Donnie and have him meet us at Ashton Wheaton downtown. In the meantime, we need to find out what Becca and Donnie Martin have on Sterling and Bartley and have them run the plates of this dude’s car.”

As Angela exited the building of the last contractor and got in her car, we pulled into the street, then passed the parking lot and the silver Chrysler.

The plan was pretty simple at this point. First, park our car in the same downtown parking garage as we had this afternoon. Then wait in the lobby of the high rise housing the offices of Ashton Wheaton Homes until Angela came strolling in.

We were pretty confident the dude would be in a surveillance mode a few more days, so that meant Donnie Sullivan would need to take point on keeping track of the Chrysler.

After making the calls and getting Cynthia’s blessing and with Becca and Donnie Martin racing to pull up as much information as they could, we both slipped into silence on the drive back downtown.

We were doing what we’ve always done on a story, checking what we knew for sure against what we thought was actual reality.

“Henry?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t like what I’m thinking right now.”

“I usually never like what you’re thinking right now.”

“Bite me, old man.”

“Okay, princess, what are you thinking?”

“So, assuming Angela Bartley is the adopted daughter who was in Howard Bartley’s photo…”

“I’m assuming the exact same thing.”

“So if she’s running the show on a project that if it gets awarded to Ashton Wheaton could cost Bartley billions of dollars, is it possible Howard Bartley contracted a hit on his own daughter?”

“Adopted daughter. Not technically a blood relative. And a lot of people have killed for a lot less princess. And that includes some of their own flesh and blood kin.”

“Damn Henry, this is bad. This is really bad.”

“I know, Shaundrika. Hopefully, Angela will listen to what we have to say.”

Whatever our dislike for the woman was at the moment, and the hell she’d put the magazine and us through, she at least deserved to know what was going on.

The trouble was, would she even believe what we had to tell her?

Read On — Two Before The Wedding Part 8

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