If you haven’t read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, make sure you check those out first!

Thoughts On The Way Home

The two spent the rest of the morning talking. Mikhi revealed he had never been married because he had attachment issues, rarely staying with anyone for more than a couple of months. 

Men said anything to avoid getting caught.

Despite his physical appearance, after hearing his story, he appeared dull.  He kept to himself. He went to work and the gym. He did not want his roommate to know that he had no game. So, he rented women like the one that left and rooms at motels like this. 

He lived a simple, boring life and couldn’t understand why someone would want to find him.

He wanted answers as much as she did. Letty watched as he worked himself up into a fervor, spouting out details about his life. At one point, he fell off into a rant about identity theft that she couldn’t follow. 

Ultimately, her plan failed. Mikhi hadn’t offered to pay her, and she hadn’t called the client. There would be no way to get paid if he vanished.  But the mystery appealed to her too much. She would have to risk him disappearing in the wind and hoping that she could find him again if he left. She found him once; it probably wouldn’t be that hard a second time.   

So she left the hotel, her target, and her payday. 

She felt thankful that she hadn’t told him how she had found him.  He might change his pattern if he knew she stalked him again. For now, she would settle for a phone number. The number worked when she called it before she left. Anything could happen once she left the room. The corner market whose roof she had been on all night sold burner phones. He would simply have to walk a few feet to get a new one. 

She walked through town, heading back towards her sister’s apartment. She did her best, thinking as she walked through the darkness. The street lamps on most of the street had been out for quite some time now and never repaired. The Northerns thought the money would be better used to develop something on their side of the city than repair the damage done here. But they never think about what the darkness creates.

Every time Letty crossed a street, she could sense movement just down the alley, yet she didn’t fear anything. Most people in-between the buildings were shooting up or having sex. The ones that might be dangerous and jump out could sense when someone from their side of town walked by. There’d be no point in mugging someone from the South after all. They were on the Southside because they didn’t have any money. 

The fresh night air helped her think about why someone would hire her to find someone like Mikhi. What he presented to her was a boring man of modesty funds. The more Letty thought about Mikhi, the more her mind drifted to how enchanting his eyes were. 

She didn’t believe his story. Not completely, at least. 

He might be shy around ladies. He might even be desperate enough to buy a girl for the night, and he did enough to keep up a physical appearance. But men did strange things. 

Still, the fact that he hadn’t been to work in a few weeks spoke to her. He was hiding something. She just needed to find out what.

She wondered if he was the only one hiding something from her. If what he said was true and he had never been married, who was the woman looking for him? She had never had to check if someone she had investigated had been married to the client.

But nothing added up. 

She took a drag from a cigarette. She flicked it into the street and watched as the sun peeked out on the horizon. She would make it to Grace’s apartment just as the sun came up into the sky. The orange and pink light protruded out over the horizon, bringing a new day. 

But her mind wasn’t on what was ahead of her, but on who was lying to her the most. 

The Rest of the Story

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