My Ugly Suitcase

She looked at me in that weirdly intense way, as if she was really liking what she was seeing. I couldn't blame her, as I probably looked at her the same way. I just couldn't get enough of her. I couldn't imagine a life without her. I figured I'd have to find out someday, but was quite willing to postpone that day into the indefinite future. The sex was great, the love was obviously real, but everything else was uncertain. I guess I must have looked pretty happy.

"Yeah, it's the same for me. I've never felt it before, not like this," she told me after watching me for a while.

"Really?"

Wrong answer, and it earned me a semi-loving punch in the ribs.

"What do you think? That I do this all the time? Just for your information, mister, my job pretty much turned me into a loner. I might have gotten even less sex than you, buddy."

"I seriously doubt that. What is your job anyway?"

"Saving idiot American vending machine technicians for the Uzbek government. It's a deal they made with the Pope to appease Greenpeace."

We both had to snort.

"You must have been pretty busy then."

"It has its moments. What about you?"

"I'm an idiot American vending machine technician who needed to be saved."

"I know that, smartass. Why did you need to be saved anyway?"

"Time travelers try to kill me because of a vending machine service I will fuck up in the future, which will eventually lead to World War Three."

"Ah, I see. The usual story."

Those conversations were fun, but I was also tired of avoiding that enormous elephant right in the middle of the room. If our relationship was to have a chance, we'd need to be honest. Problem was, I just didn't dare to.

"Move in with me," she said out of the blue.

"What?" Damn, she already mockingly called me the What-Man. I needed to get rid of that.

"Really. I own a big house. I would..." She surprised me by blushing like a schoolgirl. "Forget it..."

"No, no. I'm honored. You trust me enough to invite me?"

"I do," she shyly answered.

"Oh my. Of course, I'd love to."

One evening, we were cuddling in front of her fireplace. It was one of those perfect moments. She looked into my eyes for what seemed like hours. I would have loved to break the tension by looking away, but was totally unable to. Looking away from her had always been a task, and it turned out to be impossible when she looked at me like this. I decided I didn't really want to look away from her, anyway.

"Okay," she just stated, as is that explained anything. I sensed that she had come to an important decision, but had no idea what that meant.

"Okay?" I answered, hoping she hadn't decided to kill me.

"Okay," she confirmed.

"Good."

"You're Michael Wilson."

"I know. Hey, wait..." How did she know my surname? I couldn't remember ever having mentioned that.

"I'm glad you do. I'm Dani Everson. That is my real name."

"Cool. Michael Wilson is real as well."

"I know."

This was among the weirdest conversations I ever had, and I'd had quite a few recently.

"By rights you should be dead now."

"I know."

"You've had a lot of bad luck, starting with your choice of a wife, continuing with having to travel with that atrocious suitcase and not ending with ending up with 3 million dollars of drug money you never wanted."

I was too stunned to answer. She had known everything all the time.

"You are also pretty clueless. You didn't manage to properly disappear, even with a suitcase full of unmarked money. You didn't notice your wife was cheating for a long time. You didn't even manage to hide the location of your money from me."

"Wait, you know..."

"Of course, I do. One of us has to be smart, right? Anyway, you're lucky to be that nice, charming and damn good looking, or I wouldn't have chosen you as my retirement companion."

"Wait, what?"

"You've heard me right. You don't even have to worry about your damn money, I have much more than you do. That suitcase mix-up turned out to be the best thing that happened to you in a long time."

"Okay, now it's getting ridiculous."

"You better shut up now, as this mix up was what brought us together. If you know what's good for you, you better not deny it."

"Okay, I admit that's a distinct advantage. Still, that's not worth much if we both end up being killed."

"That won't happen. You're in the hands of a professional now."

"What are you anyway, Dani? Some kind of mafia killer?"

I hoped she wouldn't be insulted, but she just shrugged it off.

"Not exactly, although it was a tempting career option for a while. The best term for describing what I did might be skip tracer. I find people who don't want to be found."

"And you killed them afterwards?"

"No, not usually. I only killed in self-defense if it couldn't be avoided. There are specialists for that kind of work."

Shit. She found people for the mafia and had no problem finding me.

"Okay, so there will be a specialist waiting for me?"

"No, as I haven't reported you. I've been wanting to retire and have just been looking for an unlucky sod to share my retirement with. I'm sorry, but I've chosen you, and there isn't much you can do about it. I have you under my spell."

I was elated, but tried not to let it show too much. Instead, I acted as if I considered her proposal.

"So what you propose is that we enjoy the money we have, remain a happy couple, fall in love even more than we already have and just enjoy life in general?"

"Yes, and don't forget lots of sex and me keeping you alive. Does that sound like a deal?"

"Hmmm, I guess it sounds better than being shot in the head by Vinnie."

"But only slightly better, I guess?"

I stopped the bantering with a prolonged kiss.

"Does that mean you accept, Michael?"

"Of course, I'd have to be the biggest idiot ever to refuse that offer. No, don't say it," I added when she lifted her finger to say something. "Still, aren't you a tad optimistic about our chances against the whole mafia?"

"The whole mafia," she snorted. "As if. Yes, there are some bigger organizations, but a lot is just some local half-wits doing some shady business together. In this case, it's Vinnie trying to expand his business from fencing and broken cars to drugs. He borrowed your 3 million from Fat Alberto, which is a problem for him if he doesn't pay it back.

"Vinnie doesn't have some kind of cartel. He only had a handful of people at the best of times. I don't know how many are left, as he seems to have encountered some cash flow problems. He wasn't even able to give me my down payment, which was the reason I stalled reporting you in the first place. I don't know how many guys he still has when he can't pay them. Their loyalty is usually strictly based on cash.

"In any case, it's funny how this started. Your loving cheating wife Doris found it amusing to buy the same ugly suitcase twice and give one to her lover and one to her husband. Of course, she couldn't know that little joke would lead to her own demise."

"Wow," was all I could say. "That's interesting, but also a bit scary."

"Why?"

"You know a lot about me, much more than I knew myself. What's my star sign?"

"Scorpio, and that's a good thing, as I would have had to kill you otherwise."

We both had to laugh.

"Okay, you're wrong about that, but it's still scary. You know so much about me, I know nothing about you."

"Yeah, you are a bit at my mercy. That's cool, I can live with that."

"Mercy, my ass," I said, picked her up and carried her into the bedroom while she giggled happily.

"Well, metaphorically speaking," she added before I silenced her for good. Well, not actually for good, but it was a while before either of us felt like talking again.

"Seriously, what do you need to know?" she resumed our talk after it was interrupted by a round of fantastic sex.

"Your age, for example. Your history."

"My, don't you know anything? You never ask a lady about her age, which is 32 in this case."

"Lady, as if. A hired hand for the mafia, I'd say, corrupted by my irresistible charm."

"Yes, a hired hand, but not just for criminals. I wasn't just hired by guys like Vinnie, but also by corporations or wives looking for ex-husbands who forgot to pay their child support or even the authorities," she answered after a loving punch in my ribs. "You should stop referring to the mafia when we talk about him anyway. He's just a small-time criminal, although a dangerous one."

"Glad to hear that."

"I'm dangerous as well. I won't say it's going to be easy, but I think we can make it," she said, suddenly opening up and sounding very serious and a bit concerned.

"We will. I'm sure we will," I tried to convince both of us.

A few days later, Dani returned to the subject. "This needs to be resolved one way or other. I won't run from those assholes for my whole life and end up being caught by surprise. We need to fight them, and we need to do so on our home turf."

"I don't know. I'm just a vending..."

Her lips were taut and her eyes flashed as she interrupted me. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. A vending machine technician. Keep hiding behind that title. You know what you mean when you say that? 'I'm a loser, and this is my excuse for fucking things up again later.' You refuse to see yourself as a winner. Doris fucked up. She should have pulled you out of your misery, built you up, given you confidence. She tore you down instead, and then was unhappy about the result. You, on the other hand, feel comfortable in that role. It means you don't need to be ambitious, daring or creative. You can keep your ass on the sofa until your life has passed you by."

To say I was shocked would have been an understatement. I thought we had a good thing going. It really hurt to hear what she truly thought about me. Mostly because it was absolutely true.

"I...," I began, but ran out of steam immediately.

"But I'm not Doris. It doesn't matter if she took your confidence away or if you never had any. She could have had a great guy at her side if she had just seen your potential. You're damn good looking, caring and genuinely nice and I can fix the rest."

I had to laugh out loud. She was right. It had been obvious as hell all the time. I was a lazy loser. Whenever something had happened in my life, others had driven me. Doris, Vinnie and now Dani.

"So you want me to stand up against people manipulating me?"

"Damn right. I'm the only one manipulating you from now on." She laughed and placed a big kiss on my mouth. "We're going to be equals. That's why I'm asking you if we should fight them, so we can live without the threat they pose."

"Okay, so we'd meet them here at your house?"

"That would be my vote. It's secluded and we could take our time preparing it."

"Okay, cameras, traps, sniper rifles?"

"That's the way to go, Honey."

"Okay. I agree. Let's do this together."

Okay, she had gotten her way, but she was the expert. The important thing was, I had been asked for my opinion. I could get used to that, I decided.

"How are we going to lure them here?"

"No problem. I know how to discreetly let them know our whereabouts when the time has come."

"They are here," she whispered while still shaking my shoulder.

"What? Who?" I answered, still dazed from being rudely yanked out of a very pleasant dream.

"What do you think? The milkman?"

"What? Oh, sorry. One of the motion detectors?"

"Yes, at the front gate." I briefly wondered how I had managed to miss the alarm sound. "They don't care much for subtlety."

"Okay, let's check the cameras."

I was fully awake by then, but still wanted my dream back. Shit, this was serious. Either we or they were going to be dead in the morning, and the outcome solely depended on how good we were. We had prepared ourselves well, but our strategy had one major flaw. One person in our team was just a vending machine technician. Okay, I was not supposed to think like that anymore, but it was still true.

Dani's property was pretty big, and her house was as secure as a normal house could be. She had eight security cameras near the house anyway. We had taken the time to install seven additional ones, each with separate infrared lights. In most cases, we had placed them where we had electricity anyway. That meant the whole area wasn't completely covered.

After waking the PC, we had a good idea what was going on. They had chosen to simply use the main gate. That was wise, as the area was pretty inaccessible otherwise. They jumped over the gate, probably assuming it was wired. They were right about that, but we had installed additional light barriers, which had tripped the alarm.

Thanks to the infrared lamps, the camera picture was crystal clear. We saw two guys, armed to the teeth, but without night vision goggles. One was clearly Vinnie, but I didn't know the other one.

"That's Fat Alberto himself," Dani informed me. "He's the one Vinnie borrowed the money from."

What I saw on the monitor looked like a guy fresh from a fitness convention.

"How the hell did he get that name?"

"I have no idea. Some say he's ex special forces or some shit, but I'm not convinced. I think he's always been a small-time thug. Still, everyone agrees he's extremely dangerous and ruthless. He might have been trained by people who know what they're doing."

"If he's the money in the background, what is he doing here?"

"Oh, he's definitely a hands-on guy, and he rarely relies on anyone doing his work. I'm not surprised to see him."

Meanwhile, they had wandered out of the camera image. We still had plenty of time before they reached the house.

"Okay, what do we do now? Plan A?"

She had to snort. "Smart ass. As if we had more than one. So yes, let's follow plan A. See how they want to do this and try to stay alive."

Our plan was a bit more detailed than that, but not much. The two of us would never be able to cover all routes they could choose to get us. We'd just have to keep watching them and then react as best as we could. We had played through a lot of scenarios, but agreed that reality would probably not follow any of them. The first deviation was already that there were just two of them.

"Why didn't they bring any cannon fodder?" I asked Dani.

"Not sure. I'm a bit surprised, as well. I was just as surprised Fat Al could come up with 3 million. It might be all he had or maybe he borrowed it himself. I guess they don't have the cash for troops anymore."

They surprised us by following the dirt track straight from the gate to the house. We had more or less only covered that route with cameras and other features because they were very convenient to install there. We hadn't really expected them to be that straight forward. In any case, it gave us camera coverage again after a few minutes.

"There they are," I exclaimed, totally unnecessarily.

"You don't say," she snorted.

"Wait, they can't possibly be running straight into..." I began, but was rudely interrupted by Al stumbling into a hole I had dug earlier. I really hadn't expected those traps to be of any use. The area was huge and I lost interest in digging after just twelve holes. His stepping in one was akin to winning some negative lottery.

"They did," Dani dryly commented.

"Shit, that has to hurt." I honestly felt for the guy. He may have come there to kill me, but I still winced imagining what just happened to his foot. I had once seen a Vietcong documentary about the traps they built. One was some kind of funnel of downward angled spikes. That was what kept his foot right where it was, in a very painful way.

"You really feel for that guy?"

"No, of course not. Still... My god, that has to be gruesome."

She suddenly kissed me, briefly obscuring the camera picture.

"What was that for?"

"For being such a nice, caring guy. He deserves it, but you still feel for him. Hey, you even built that trap."

"Yeah, that was the one occasion having a service technician around was pretty handy, right? I'm really good at welding."

We heard Al scream like hell from the distance, even without the microphones. He must have tried to yank his foot out, driving the spikes deep into his foot. Vinnie calmly turned around as the picture showed Al obviously pleading for help. Vinnie watched the scene, but didn't do anything.

"He's assessing Al's usefulness," Dani remarked.

"You don't think..." Again, I was rudely interrupted by reality. Vinnie stepped behind Al and shot him in the neck. Al slumped forward like a wet towel and I felt slightly sick.

"So far, this is pretty easy," Dani remarked in her usual laconic way. "Hey, you don't chicken out on me now! Would you have felt better about killing him yourself?"

"No, of course not. You're right, Vinnie did us a favor. But why did he do it?"

"Al wasn't useful anymore. Vinnie just got out of having to pay back 3 million.

"Speaking of Vinnie," she added, "things will get interesting now. He really is pretty good, and this is where we should think about starting to fight for our lives."

"You have done this before, right?"

"I've had to kill people before, but never in a situation like this. Vinnie is much more experienced in this, I'm afraid. Let's get going."

Vinnie had vanished from the camera image again, and we couldn't spot him in any of the other cameras. Shit. The moon was full, so he'd probably be able to move around without a problem, but I hadn't expected him to spot the cameras. Maybe it was just bad luck. At least the house itself was completely covered and the forest around it was brightly illuminated.

"Shit, I can't find him," Dani said a bit too frantically to soothe my nerves. She was still zapping the cameras, but he had vanished from the face of the Earth. "Okay, that's it. We need to get in position," she added. "He will be here any moment. Get your rifle and try to spot him."

We moved to our positions in opposite corners of the house, each with a rifle and a handgun, scanning the forest. I stared until my eyes almost popped out, but still couldn't see the slightest movement. We had trained for this situation, but when we did, it had been a bright sunny day and things looked pretty easy. Now it was dark, scary, and someone had already died. This was dead serious. To make things worse, the death wish I sometimes had while still married to Doris had completely vanished since I had met Dani. I really wanted both of us to stay alive.

A loud boom shocked she shit out of me. Debris flew through the hallway, coming from the kitchen. Shit, he had used some kind of grenade. I needn't have bothered locking the front door.

The following silence was deafening and the darkness absolute. It seemed the explosion had knocked out the power supply. Shit. We hadn't expected any of this, or we would have gotten ourselves some night vision goggles.

I stared into the darkness with wide open eyes and tried to listen to every small sound. Nothing. Then a shot shocked me, followed by another one. I had no idea who was shooting at whom. The question was interesting enough to get my ass moving towards the kitchen, where Dani had been. The shooting had stopped, but there was clearly some fighting going on.

My first instinct was to keep out of it, but the woman I loved was in trouble. I needed to help her. I needed to step up and fight for her. I heard the typical thuds of soft bodies hit by something hard. I just hoped Dani was the one doing the hitting.

I finally stumbled into the kitchen and saw mostly nothing. Moving shadows, no idea who was who, and those damn sickening thuds again. I hoped it was Dani doling them out, but I had my doubts. I could clearly hear her moaning now, and she didn't sound happy. I so wished to have some light and wondered how they were able to fight in the near darkness anyway.