by Stacy Green
This was my fault. I should have told him over the phone, but I needed time to create my version of the story.
“What information?”
My eyes lock with the uniform’s. His face is pink. His body is vibrating with adrenaline.
“What information?” His hard tone doesn’t intimidate me.
“None of your business.” I’m up on my feet now, heading toward the ambulance. Cage has been intubated and the exit wound packed.
“I’m going with you,” I say to the paramedic who tried to pull me up.
“Fine. Just stay out of the way.”
The uniform has followed us. I jump inside the rig and sit down before he can put his hands on me.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like? Call Detective Myra Bonin—she’s his partner. Let her call his wife.”
“We need to take your statement.”
“Then you can do it at the hospital.”
“We’re leaving,” the medic said. “She’ll be at Tulane.”
He slammed the door.
I don’t want to look at Cage. All the medical stuff somehow makes the whole thing worse instead of reassuring.
Cage’s right hand twitches, his fingers barely moving. His eyes keep opening and closing.
“Agent Foster,” the medic says, “you’re going to be all right. Just hang with me.”
What a load of crap.
But I guess we’re supposed to offer comfort to the dying.
I scoot closer and take his hand. His skin is cooler. I hope they can keep him alive long enough for Dani to say goodbye.
Cage’s fingers move again, trying to squeeze my hand.
“He’s right,” I say. “It’s going to be fine. You’ll be fine.”
I’ve always been a good liar.
28
AGENT BONIN
Bonin’s hands refused to stop shaking. The rattle had started when her cell rang. She’d woken up in a cold sweat around four a.m., overwhelmed with the urgency to get back to New Orleans. She’d left her poor mother to fend for herself and risked losing her license for excessive speeds on I-10.
She’d just hit city limits when the call came. She didn’t remember changing course for Tulane or where she’d parked.
Calling Dani consumed her memory. That was a call no cop ever wanted to make.
She flashed her ID at the registration desk. No blowback; the staff knew better when an officer had been shot.
Bonin headed straight for the trauma area. The bright hallways hurt her eyes.
Who had done this? Spider’s guys? Would they be that stupid?
Lyric leaned against the wall, holding a blood-soaked sweater. More blood caked her fingernails. Her jeans looked as if she’d rolled around in it, her knee so saturated the blood appeared black.
“If he lives, it’s because of her,” the sergeant had said. “She blocked the chest wound and slowed that bleeding. And I’ll tell you something I’ll never forget—besides sweating, she looked like a robot. Zero emotion. Freaked me out.”
Lyric excelled at that. Bonin empathized with everything Lyric had gone through, but she saw her differently than Cage. He believed she bottled things up to survive but that she still had humanity. Bonin disagreed. Lyric’s sole drive was self-preservation because it was all she knew.
“Why were you there?”
Lyric seemed to look through her. Nothing in her eyes. No nonverbal reaction.
“Because I asked him to meet me. I had information.”
“You had information and lured him there? Isn’t that convenient?”
“Fuck you.”
Bonin came nose to nose with Lyric, who stared back, unblinking. What humanity did Cage see in her? Lyric was a killer—and Cage knew it.
“You’re involved in this somehow.”
“I tried to save his life.” Not because she felt remorse. Did she want to make herself a hero? Lyric loathed attention.
“You will be tested for gunshot residue. Don’t even think about washing your hands.” Residue only hung around a while, but the more evidence, the better.
“Then you need to get your nerds here now, because I know my rights, and I’m not staying like this for long. Now back off.”
Bonin wished she’d answered Cage’s call last night. Maybe he would have mentioned Lyric’s involvement. What could she possibly have to tell him? She already admitted to having the blue book. And she was skilled enough to hold back anything that didn’t advance her agenda.
“I have to call Annabeth, and I don’t know what to say.” Lyric stared down at the floor, her scarred lips drawn tight.
Annabeth—another one of Cage’s weak spots. Whatever Lyric had done to their captor she did to save Annabeth. And she stayed in New Orleans to take care of her.
Cage’s death would devastate Annabeth and set her recovery back—possibly for good.
As much as Bonin hated to admit it, Annabeth was the sole person Lyric would give her life for. She wouldn’t destroy her like this.
“What did you have to tell him?”
Lyric raised her head, back in control. “I think they used a silencer.”
“What?”
“I was walking down the street toward the cemetery.” Lyric stared past Bonin. “I saw him go down and then someone running. I never heard a sound.”
Professional hit?
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I know.”
“Did it have to do with Masen or the missing girls?”
“The shooter wasn’t that far away from him. Cage must have moved, or they’re a really bad shot.”
“You sure observed a lot.” Bonin didn’t have Cage’s patience to pick at Lyric’s defenses.
“How do you think I survived all those years being locked up?”
“Right now, I don’t care.”
“Me either.”
Bonin tried to think positively, but she had pushed any hope somewhere down deep. Even if the bullet missed his heart, all the arteries and organs were so closely connected. He didn’t have to be shot in the heart to die. And the blood loss …
A nurse rounded the corner. She had blood on her shoes. “Are you Agent Foster’s next of kin?”
“No.”
“Get them here, soon.”
29
Cage raced down the dark hallway at The Black Sheep. Where was the back door? He should have reached it by now. The hallway had become a narrow tube of darkness with no end in sight.
Maybe he was going the wrong way. He would go back to the beginning and figure out what the hell was going on. A white light flashed at the end. The exit.
He jogged ahead. As the light grew larger, a tingling warmth swept through him. The light was so beautiful—he had to touch it. He reached through the warm brightness, tears flooding his eyes. A peace he’d never imagined possible rushed through him.
Should he go back? The beginning of the tunnel was dark and cold and miserable. He wanted to stay.
He shut his eyes against the powerful brightness and stepped into the light.
Warm air brushed Cage’s face. He smelled jasmine and wildflowers.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
His eyes flew open, and his heart burst. His sister Lana sat on the tire swing, alive and beautiful instead of the bloodied and broken body he’d identified so long ago.
“I want to be here.”
“Still the same,” she said. “Everyone’s been trying to warn you, and you never listen.”
Euphoria almost brought him to his knees, and he finally understood why so many drug users chased the feeling. “I want to be here with you.”
Lana jumped off the swing and started walking toward him. He reached for her hand. She swatted it away. “Too bad. You’re not supposed to be here.”
He blinked. Lana and the oak were gone. He was in his mother’s kitchen. She stood at the counter, full of life and plump as she’d been when Ca
ge was younger.
“Mom.”
“Did anyone come for you?” He’d forgotten the sound of her voice before the disease attacked. She was strong and ran the house. “Did I come for you? Did your sister?”
He shook his head.
“Haven’t I always said your loved ones come for you?”
“I want to be with you.”
His mother smiled and touched his cheek. Same soft fingers, same callous from gardening.
“Mom.”
“You’re not supposed to be here yet. I will come for you.”
He seemed to be ripped away from the warmth, the tunnel opening again. What was going on? Why couldn’t he stay?
“Someone help me, please. I don’t want to go. Is anyone there?”
“Cage.”
He opened his eyes again. Ginger sat up in bed, her silver hair tousled.
“Where am I?”
“You need to go back. It’s not your time.”
“I want to stay with them.”
“I know you do, sweetie. But you just can’t.”
He didn’t understand. Why had he been teased like this? Where was he supposed to be?
Ginger got out of bed and took his hands. “You need to go back. For your wife and daughter. Emma, right? She needs you.”
Pain gripped him. He couldn’t breathe. His chest felt like it had exploded.
People were talking, fast and loud.
A man lay on an operating table. Surgeons worked frantically, talking about blood transfusions and flatlining.
Cage moved closer, peeking between the two surgeons struggling to stop the bleeding.
Death … carry the root … don’t trust the root … the bullet slamming into his chest.
He was the dying man.
30
Bonin rested her hands on her forehead, reading her notes. She’d lost count of how many times she’d gone over them.
Lyric tested negative for gunpowder residue. Her phone records confirmed the call. Annabeth had cried in Lyric’s arms, and Bonin swore she actually saw moisture in the woman’s eyes.
She’d scratched her off the suspect list.
Her boss had interrogated Spider for hours, managing to get a couple of his associates’ names. The video equipment in that room had strangely malfunctioned while he secured the information, but Bonin didn’t care. Spider ran drugs, and he’d shot Cage once. One of his guys was the logical suspect.
He and Agent Rogers tasked themselves with tracking the associates down. Bonin hoped she could tell Cage about their loyalty one day.
That left Ginger and the Hughes family, along with any high-ranking member of the London Club—and therefore Atlas—thanks to Cage’s impromptu visit.
Loyola had no record of Zoey Roberts. Cage had been at her apartment the night before the shooting. He’d left Bonin a long message that night about Layla being Zoey. He was convinced she’d stuck the doubloons in Masen’s pocket because she wanted to lead the police back to the London Club. He believed she must have been desperate to get out of The PhoeniX.
Is that why he’d been shot? Did someone see him at Zoey’s apartment and realize he was getting too close?
She played Cage’s last voicemail again. Masen had screamed accusations at the blonde woman Big Gary identified as Zoey in the photo of her and Trish.
Layla. Goddamn.
Masen talked about Layla from day one, but everything else pointed to him, and Shana’s uncle had never heard of the woman.
She read her notes from Shana’s file. Masen described Layla as tall and blonde, fair and “muscley-skinny.”
He and Shana had met her at a bar downtown just months before. When Layla offered them ecstasy, Masen thought she was “all right.” He had a vague memory of watching the two girls make out, but Shana later insisted he’d imagined it. Shana started spending more and more time with Layla, and he worried she would get Shana in trouble. In those first hours after he and Shana fought, he’d assumed she’d gone to Layla and would come home eventually.
He said Shana never told her uncle about Layla because she didn’t want him to know about her wilder side.
Acid churned through Bonin’s stomach. She’d accused him of making up the story about Layla because he’d been jealous. Her friendship with Layla and her stripping sent him over the edge, and he killed her.
Would he still be alive if Bonin hadn’t been so stubborn and twisted up with her brother’s issues? Would Trish be here?
And Cage …
She swallowed the knot in her throat and went back to her notes. Zoey’s fake identity extended to social media. All less than a year old, the accounts were full of standard twentysomething nonsense, cluttered with selfies. Kyle and Trish showed up in a few pictures, but most were filtered shots of Zoey from the chest up. A search for Layla pulled up a dozen different women in the area, and none of them resembled Zoey.
Kyle and Trish met Zoey in the fall when Trish answered her ad for a roommate.
Bonin had served the gruff apartment manager the warrant for his records this morning. Zoey Roberts filled out the lease and put down three months’ rent in cash. Since she had a steady job and cash money, he’d ignored her lack of social security number or driver’s license.
Did Layla use Fatbacks diverse crowd to fish for clients? Had she done the same thing at the strip club she’d lured Shana to?
Bonin needed the name of that club. What if Layla did her business at Fatbacks because the owners knew what she was doing? They owned at least one other place in the city.
Bonin opened the Louisiana’s Secretary of State site. Most small businesses like Fatbacks were registered as an LLC with the owner’s contact information. Big businesses like Redmund’s restaurants had an incorporated registered name as well as an LLC, which blanketed all of the family’s businesses.
Fatbacks was registered under Cypress Lane LLC. Multiple subsidiary LLCs came up under Cypress Lane, including CPL Inc. and J.J. Inc. She double-checked the other bars Zoey and Trish had stopped at that night—none of them were owned by Fatbacks or its subsidiaries.
Cypress Lane LLC’s listed an office in Wilmington, Delaware—likely the agency that provided the legal services since Delaware thrived as a tax shelter state. For a few hundred bucks, a business could set up its corporation as operating out of Delaware to avoid higher taxes. Most usually had local contacts listed as some form of employee or subsidiary. The whole process took about fifteen minutes.
“Sonofabitch.” G Leighton, Leighton and Hughes, had been listed as the local contact for every business associated with Fatbacks’s owners.
Bonin’s phone rang, and her heart slammed into her throat. The bullet tore through Cage’s lung and blood loss had sent his body into shock, requiring several blood transfusions. He’d flatlined twice. Twenty-four hours after surgery, his blood pressure remained low. The ventilator helped him breathe, and the surgeon hoped a few days of sedation would give him time to heal enough to remove the vent.
He warned the odds were against Cage.
Every phone call terrified her.
This one came from an unnamed number.
“Detective Bonin.” Her mouth had gone dry.
“This is Officer Robins from District 6. We’ve got a body, and we think it may be one of your missing women.”
Cold wind buoyed by Lake Pontchartrain lashed Bonin’s face and ensured that anyone within twenty feet of the dock smelled the rot.
Officer Robins quickly briefed her: the yacht owner currently dry heaving in the bathroom had discovered the body hidden underneath a black tarp on the bow of the gleaming cruiser, aptly named Miss Conduct.
“The smell wasn’t a hint?” Seasoned or not, the stench never failed to shock her system.
“Owner figured maybe rotten fish or something tangled under the dock. Was checking on the boat and bringing supplies for spring. Need a hand?”
Normally she’d snap a “no thanks,” but exhaustion eclipsed her pride. She grabbe
d Robins’s hand and stepped onto the boat. The coroner’s people crowded the bow’s plush seating area. At least she wouldn’t have to wait around for him. Dead bodies in luxurious yachts took precedence over the everyday crackhead.
“Good Lord.” Bonin blocked her nose and breathed through her mouth. Tasting the stench was even worse.
Despite cooler winter temperatures, the sun had still baked the body beneath the black tarp. Bodily fluids had turned the expensive wooden planks to a tar black. Maggots covered most of the decaying blouse.
A splat of bird crap landed on the coroner’s shoulder, and he glared up at the scavenging crows and gulls. Dried bird droppings covered the tarp. Was there a scientific way to use the bird shit to figure out how long the body had been here? Her cheeks heated; thank God she hadn’t said that out loud.
“The Scream,” Robins said.
“What?”
“You know, that famous painting with the distorted dude on the bridge, screaming. Only thing that’s missing are hands clutching her face.”
Bonin’s stomach churned as she realized what he meant. Between the skin’s discoloration and slippage, the hair slicked back and matted, and the decaying mouth gaping open, the body did resemble the mass-produced painting.
At least her teeth were intact. Trish’s family had already provided her dental records.
Bonin didn’t need the official identification. Trish Millwood had been dumped here to rot. Kyle couldn’t remember if she wore any jewelry other than her cheap, leather watch with the crack in the glass. Its listing on the BOLO had been the reason Robins called.
Trish had been left-handed; the bloodied watch peeked out from the right sleeve of her sweater.
“Any idea what killed her?”
“Not yet,” the coroner said. “No immediate sign of a wound. Hopefully imaging will give us something.”
A couple of crime scene techs from homicide had joined them. “Dust every surface for prints. Take everything that isn’t nailed down.” She pointed to the cozy seating that wrapped around the bow. “Cushions too. Any idea how long she’s been here?”