Ami

Chapter 8 Keeping Secrets

Ty casually walked down the seedier side of the city trying to keep an eye on his back looking for a tail. He didn’t know if Samil had someone following him nor did he care at that particular point, but one could never be too careful. As Ty was one of the more decently dressed men in the area at the moment trying to blend in was absolutely ridiculous. He had taken the excursion on a mission to meet a man about some intel and a few items that Ty felt he would need.

He kept his eyes cast straight even though he could still see the city refuse laying about the brick laden pavement. Dirt, garbage, and the occasional street rat scurrying through the day light over and under the cardboard dwellings of the people that cowered in the shadows. The people were great in number, so many of them abused and battered and unwanted by communities that shown smiling faces and upturned palms out for money to those that could give while they can but when those same people were in need they turned to them with blind eyes and deaf ears. It was as shame and made Ty shake his head and wonder how people could come to such a state of being.

Once he neared the white washed walls of the building his contact was located he gave one sound knock and the door swung open as if by some unseen hand. His cell phone rang out and he answered immediately, the voice on the other end void of emotion telling him to take the stairs to his left up all the way to the fifth floor.

Taking a step into the building, he sensed no living being on the floor then proceeded to taking the stairs two at a time only stopping to make sure that he was the only one occupying the next flight of stairs. Ty made it up to the fifth floor within seconds coming to yet another door. Once again, his phone rang and the caller instructed him to press his palm on the door and let it swing open. Ty did as commanded and stepped over the threshold coming to a stop in a studio empty except for a desk and chair, a lamp, a phone and a lone man sitting perched on the corner of the desk.

The man looked to be about forty-five years of age with a hint of grey at his temples. His clothes clean yet wrinkled, looked a little too loose on a body that seemed to have been fit at some point in time. He was of average height and he was too long in the face. Ty couldn’t smell any sickness or booze on him so his health seemed to be in order except for the bags under his sad and hollow eyes. He would have been just like any other man walking about this side of town, a man that used to be about something more than what went on in the night, except this man had an aura about him, the way he held himself suggested that his outer shell gave off the just the impression he manufactured. There was nothing else about his person that made him stand out amongst the crowd of down trodden people of the lower income part of the city, other than the gold band around his third finger of his left hand.

“Manos?”

“You’re early,” the man said foregoing any introduction.

Ty nodded his head, “I get the feeling you were expecting that.”

“I was. You got what I want?”

“Do you?”

Motioning Ty further into the room, the man stood up picking up the manila envelope taking a few short steps towards Ty. “Everything you requested has been completed,” the man said placing it in Ty’s hand.

Placing his own package in the man’s other hand. “Ya know anybody could walk in here.”

Smiling a bit at the observation, “Yeah, they could.”

Ty turned to leave the room when the man spoke up, “You’re not human,” the man spoke. Not so much asking a question but making a statement.

Turning to the man once again Ty gauged that he meant him no physical threat; his beast didn’t sense anything about him to be weary. After studying the man for a while Ty finally responded, “And how’d you come up with that observation?”