A Ruby Steele Cozy Mystery Bundle: On the Rocks (Book 1) and Extra Dirty (Book 2) by Mia Gold

Author:Mia Gold [Gold, Mia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2021-05-08T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

Ruby checked her front pockets, a cold sweat breaking out on her skin. Nothing.

Damn it! I knew it! I knew he couldn’t be trusted.

She turned the pockets inside out. Wallet. Keys. Phone. No thumb drive.

Damn it!

She checked her back pockets, where she never put anything, and found it.

And then she remembered. When she had paid for lunch, she had felt the thumb drive almost slip out as she pulled out her wallet, so she had shifted it to her back pocket to be safe.

Ruby groaned.

I really need to more trusting, or at least less paranoid.

But the way my life has been going, who can blame me?

She put the thumb drive back in her pocket, her hands trembling with the aftershock.

I need to relax.

Ruby turned back toward the hotel, heading for the bar.

She got two steps from the door when she froze.

“What the hell am I doing?” she asked herself out loud.

She had promised herself that she wouldn’t drink any more, and at the first sign of stress she had run for the nearest bottle.

Shaking her head, she headed home.

As she sat in the back of a taxi, berating herself for her weakness and feeling guilty for mistrusting Tim, she stared out the window. The coastal resort area with its hotels and golf courses, its rental homes and fine restaurants, soon were left behind. They passed through a business area of Nassau that few visitors ever saw, then into a residential neighborhood for Bahamians.

And that neighborhood grew increasingly shoddy. The taxi passed decent, freshly painted bungalows with well-tended yards that gradually gave way to smaller houses and smaller yards. At this time of day many of the yards were full of Bahamian families, the children playing, the adults sitting on rickety chairs, everyone getting out of their overcrowded homes, often shared by two or more families, in order to catch the tropical breeze. No one had air conditioning here.

What did not change was the tidiness of the homes. Unlike poor areas back in the States, there were no cars up on cinderblocks, no broken bits of furniture or discarded plastic toys. The Bahamians, no matter what their income level, kept their homes and yards clean. Only the crowding, the faded paint, and the depressed look on people’s faces hinted that all was not well.

This was Ruby’s neighborhood. She had fled to the island with virtually no money and a questionable legal status. Moving to this neighborhood not only proved affordable, it was anonymous. Her landlord took payment in cash and her name did not appear on any utilities.

She was the only outsider in the neighborhood except for a Dutch hippie couple, who had been in the Bahamas for so long they had practically become locals, and an American drug addict who everyone ignored.

They ignored Ruby too. She did not make friends with her neighbors and had smacked down a couple of the guys who had tried to rob her when she first moved in.

Now everyone left her alone. She had become part of the scenery, as anonymous and uninteresting as the palm tree in her back yard.

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