Deuces Wild

by Christina C Jones

  I closed my eyes, and as soon as I did, I saw my sister’s face again, clear as a bell. Only it wasn’t her as she was now, but younger. Much younger, with tears in her eyes and pink and silver braces fixed to her teeth.

  “Do you think they’re still alive?”

  “Stop talking Dacia, they’ll hear us!”

  “But what about daddy? And where is mama? Did you hear what that man said?”

  “Dacia, please. If you aren’t quiet, they’ll find us and—”

  “Ahhhh! Alicia, please! Please!”

  “Don’t touch my sister!!”

  My brain shut the door closed on that memory with so much force that I actually stumbled a bit, grabbing a nearby railing to keep my balance. I put my free hand to my face, frowning when I pulled it back to discover it wet with tears. Quickly, I dried my face with my hands, glancing around to make sure I hadn’t been seen, even as my mind raced, trying to process what had just happened.

  Don’t touch my sister!!

  Was this validation, or confirmation bias? Was I really just imagining this shit?

  I shook my head, knowing there was no real way to get those answers on my own. Taking another deep breath, I stepped up to Cree’s door, and knocked.

  And didn’t get an answer.

  I knocked again, knowing that I probably should have called first, instead of showing up without warning, on today of all days. He’d just buried his partner, and now here I was to undoubtedly be awkward and demanding and insensitive and awkward again.

  But I was on a mission.

  I knocked one last time, on the off chance that maybe he was home, and simply hadn’t heard the door. That seemed to do the trick, because just before I turned to walk away, the door swung open, and Cree appeared on the other side.

  And my heart stopped.

  Kerri - good friend, employee, badass who lit the match to burn that warehouse down -- was obsessed with romance novels, so I’d downloaded a few under duress, with every intention of teasing the life out of her over the content. I started out considering it research – not just for roasting material against Kerri, but an attempt to further re-humanize myself by figuring out the dynamics of relationships, and “love”.

  I’d long thought those silly romance novel bitches were either exaggerating or just insane when they talked about “butterflies” and “crashing waves” and all that other bullshit. Those intense, “caught by surprise” feelings were completely foreign to me, so I just flat out didn’t get it.

  Until right then.

  Because when I saw Cree’s face, all I wanted to do was kill whoever put that desolate, melancholy expression there.

  “Alicia… what can I do for you?” he asked, eyes narrowed in confusion.

  I blinked once, then twice, then pushed past him without being welcomed inside, and with no regard for the possibility that he already had company over. Immediately, my eyes traveled around the space, taking the mental inventory I would use to make myself at home and feign confidence I didn’t quite feel over my imposition. I put the bag of food down on his coffee table, dropping my notebook beside it before I turned to him, arms crossed.

  “If you’re done crying over your partner, you and I have shit to figure out.”

  His eyebrows went up, and then his gaze went to the still-open door, instantly clueing me in that I was on the verge of getting kicked out. Instead of letting him get comfortable with that idea, I moved to the door to push it closed, stepping right in front of him to take a different, hopefully more appealing, tact to get what I wanted.

  “I brought food. Since I know you probably haven’t eaten.”

  I expected – hoped for – a warm response to that, but instead, his eyes narrowed a little more. “Why?”

  “Why not?” I shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. I was hungry, so I grabbed something for you too. Don’t make it more than it is.”

  “I’m not, I’m making it exactly what it is. A nice gesture. From… you.”

  I frowned. “Just because I don’t walk around all happy-go-lucky doesn’t mean I’m not capable of doing something nice for someone.”

  “I know that,” he drawled. “But if I’d known all I had to do to be the recipient of your congeniality was throw some dick your way, I would’ve done that a long time ago.”

  “Don’t get too comfortable, asshole,” I warned. “Besides… it’s just a burger and fries – not Red Lobster.”

  He chuckled. “Damn, that’s how you do me?”

  I didn’t respond, just gestured for him to dig into the bag while I took a quiet moment in his kitchen, pretending to look for cups.

  Was this really happening?

  Is this what it was like to be… dick whipped? I’d gone from hating his guts, to tolerating him, to having him in my guts, to… bringing him dinner.

  What the hell is wrong with you Alicia?

  Ever since seeing Dacia – Dacia. Dacia. I remember her name now… - my whole world had been flipped upside down, and it was driving me more than a little crazy. I wasn’t a robot, though the Belroses had tried their very best, so I had to accept that along with my humanity came all these feelings, and emotions.

  Emotions that apparently had a mind of their own, and chose to roam and grow freely, without my permission or assistance.

  “Thanks for the grub,” Cree spoke up from his couch, with a mouth full of burger. His words drew my attention in his direction, but he wasn’t even looking at me, apparently more focused on the food I’d brought.

  Remembering Camille’s concerns about him not eating, I stepped closer to where he was, weaving my fingers together in front of me. “You’re welcome. Seems like you were pretty hungry. Careful of your fingers.”

  “Funny,” he croaked, mouth still full of food – a new, oversized bite. Somehow, I wasn’t grossed out by his complete lack of manners – I was just glad to see him eating. While he kept working on that burger, I took a bit more time to look around, quickly realizing that he’d probably been using his couch to sleep. There was a rumpled blanket there, and socks on the floor, and most notably… several half-empty liquor bottles at his feet.

  I bent to pick one up, holding it in front of me. “Is this why you haven’t gotten back to me about that autopsy? Too busy getting sauced to follow-up on important leads? Should I be petitioning the city to make cops take breathalyzers before they release you into our communities?”

  “I’m on suspension.” While his mouth was empty, he turned to stare me in the face, his tone dry and bleak. “Well… paid leave.”

  My eyebrow went up. “Oh? You requested it, or they’re making you do it?”

  “Making me. Gotta take a psych eval before I can go back, some bullshit about how getting my partner’s brain matter all over me probably gave me PTSD. But I’m not stupid. It’s a punishment as much as a “gift”.”

  “Gift?”

  He nodded. “Getting paid to sit on my ass and “grieve”.”

  “Right. And… punishment? Punishment for what?”

  “For being somewhere we weren’t supposed to be. At Sebastian Gray’s. We shouldn’t have gone. We’d been taken off the case.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course you had.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Cree’s head was slanted, face set in a scowl, waiting for me to answer, even though I didn’t understand his sudden animosity.

  “It means that I’m not surprised to hear how easily money pulls strings with LVMPD.”

  He scoffed. “Yeah, well… maybe I should’ve just let the shit ride. Look what trying to follow my sense of justice got me. If I’d just let the shit go, pushed back about it, not let myself get looped into talking to Gray…” he stopped speaking to let out a sigh, pushing the food away from himself on the table. “Fuck!” he muttered to himself as he tipped his head back, resting on the couch cushion and staring up at the ceiling.

  An uncomfortable silence followed, one where I went back and forth with myse
lf over what I could possibly say. But even if I was better-versed with “saying the right thing”, it would’ve been impossible without some sort of clues about the landscape. So instead of making any sort of statement, I asked a fairly simple question.

  “Are you pissed at me?”

  My question made him lift his head, meeting my gaze. “What? Pissed at you why?”

  “For bringing you into this. If I hadn’t told you about Brielle, asked to see the autopsy photo… if I hadn’t clued you in that there was something more than what was on the surface with Sebastian Gray, you might not have been so intent on talking to him. So maybe you wouldn’t have gone. If you hadn’t, Detective Russel would still be alive.”

  He shook his head. “Nah, Alicia. I’m not mad at you about this shit, for what? Sebastian Gray was connected to my dead jogger either way, and it was suspicious as hell for us to be taken off that case. I would have wanted to question him anyway. Vivica would’ve wanted to question him anyway. But we both knew better, and did it anyway. And now, I get to watch from the sidelines as Gray wiggles his way out of this shit, cause I know he’s involved.”

  “He is,” I said, taking a few more steps, putting myself close enough to take a seat at the other end of the couch. “But not in the way you think.”

  Cree’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Well… it’s… it’s going to sound far-fetched to you, but I swear I know what I’m talking about. I just need you to believe me.”

  “Fine,” he shrugged. “Speak your truth. I’m listening.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Vivica wasn’t… the target. I mean, she was, but she wasn’t – not her specifically. Sebastian Gray didn’t kill her, and neither did his people. This is Belrose work, but not just… any. It was retaliation.”

  “Retaliation for what?”

  “For Brielle. Brielle was a Rose, sent to get rid of Sebastian Gray. She ended up dead, and so… blood had to be paid with blood. If Brielle had been a man – a Thorn – you would’ve been the one with a bullet in your head. But since it was the other way around, it was Vivica.”

  Cree shook his head. “Okay, but… why us?”

  “First innocents to cross the enemy’s threshold,” I responded, repeating words that were embedded in my memories. “Whoever they sent must’ve been young – they were supposed to wait until you were at least at the door, but they got too excited. They’d been in those woods, waiting, for days. I guarantee.”

  Cree’s face was pulled into a deeply confused expression, that I honestly understood. This Belrose shit… it was a lot. It was a lot for me, so it had to be even more overwhelming for an outsider, who undoubtedly thought this type of thing didn’t exist outside of the imagination of the people who wrote this stuff for TV.

  Unfortunately… that wasn’t the case.

  “This… sounds like some blood feud type shit,” Cree muttered, maybe not even intentionally saying it out loud. “Why would they murder someone who had nothing to do with their beef with Gray?”

  “Chaos. The entire point is to cause chaos, confusion, and stress. They do it at your front door, or in your hotel room, or the dining room at your beach house, and call the police, call the news. Time it so that you can’t clean it up, or just make it go away. Sometimes if you own a gun, they might use the same one – not enough to fully frame you, but enough to be another stressor. And it’s just the beginning. They’re going to stalk him, terrorize him.”

  For some reason, that made Cree sit up a little straighter. “Put slaughtered pigs on your front door?”

  My eyes went wide, remembering when, nearly two years ago, Cree had shown up at Kingston’s house to accuse him of harassing Sebastian in that way. I hadn’t seen it then because I didn’t know there was a connection, but now it was crystal clear. “Slaughtered animals and threatening messages are very classic Belrose warning techniques. Which means that whatever beef they have with Sebastian has been building for a while.”

  “But if the Belroses are so… elite, I guess… how the hell did their assassin end up dead in the first place? I know you’re not about to tell me Sebastian fought her off and killed her himself…”

  I scoffed. “No, absolutely not. Sebastian isn’t the one who killed Brielle. But based on the autopsy… I have a pretty good idea who did.”

  “Who?” Cree asked, eyes locked on me. “One of his security people?”

  “No,” I shook my head. “Well, not technically. Not in the way you’re thinking. If Sebastian knew that the Belroses – or whoever they were hired by – were coming, he enlisted special help.”

  “… someone with knowledge of Belrose tactics and all that, right?” he asked. “Someone like you. A former Rose?”

  Again, I shook my head.

  “No. A former Thorn.”

  &

  “You gotta be shittin’ me. Him?”

  I smirked at Cree’s reaction to the picture I’d pulled up of Reo Tanaka – half Japanese, one-quarter Black, one quarter Middle-Eastern MMA superstar. He liked to point out his racial makeup himself, to the point that it was part of his brand, something he insisted on having announced with his “cage name” at every fight.

  His cage name?

  Mr. Tokyo.

  “I really can’t believe I used to purposely fuck this guy,” I muttered under my breath, shaking my head. In reference to Cree’s disbelief, I enlarged one of the pictures, zooming in on the ring of thorns tattooed around his bicep. It blended in so well with the rest that you barely saw it if you weren’t explicitly looking for it.

  Like me, Reo had built a life after Belrose – something that wasn’t necessarily a common occurrence. For most, the exit was accompanied by death. You didn’t come in willingly, and you didn’t leave that way either.

  I never had found out what Reo’s special circumstances were.

  When we were “together”, we hadn’t exactly done much talking that wasn’t about the job.

  “So you believe this is who Sebastian Gray used to kill Brielle?”

  “I know this is who he used. Reo is incredibly uncivilized – smart, but a brute. He’s not the kind of guy you use for quiet killings, not usually. He’s messy, and arrogant, and… he cuts his name into his victims. The slashes that your medical examiner couldn’t understand, over Brielle’s rose? Kanji symbols.”

  Cree frowned. “That seems…”

  “Dumb? Yes. But he’s – obviously – never been caught. I only know about it because I worked with him.”

  “Just worked?”

  I glanced at Cree beside me, his gaze unwavering as he waited for an answer. There was no jealousy in his eyes, just amused curiosity that made it hard not to smirk when I responded.

  “We did a lot more than work.”

  At that, Cree did his best impression of our orange president – head pulled back in mock offense, eyebrows raised, then slacked, then he tipped his head as I laughed.

  “I mean, I guess if you like oily, bronzed, big ass, buff ass, tattooed motherfuckers that can fight, I mean… I guess I can see it, like a little bit, but not a lot.”

  “Fuck you okay?”

  He laughed. “I mean, nah, don’t get mad, I’m saying… he honestly seems like exactly your type. Exactly your type. What did y’all do on dates, pull trees out of the ground and spar with them? Climb mountains with bare feet and bare hands? Drink kale and horse heart smoothies or something?”

  “Okay first of all, we didn’t date. Let’s be clear about that. We were… coworkers, if you want to call it that, and at that time… I wouldn’t really say we had any emotional needs. Definitely physical ones though, and we chose each other to work those out,” I corrected him, with a playful shove. “And secondly… I don’t have a type. And if I did, it wouldn’t be Mr. Tokyo.”

  “Don’t be shamed of that nigga now, he was your boyfriend.”

  “I’ve never had a boyfriend, excuse you.”

  Shit.

  That comeback spilled from my lips so q
uickly that I hadn’t even thought about it, but now that it was out – and I saw Cree’s reaction to it – I realized my mistake.

  Don’t make it a thing. Don’t make it a thing. Don’t make—

  “You’ve never had a boyfriend? Like… never?”

  I shrugged. “Not that I can remember. When would I, between getting abducted as a teenager, brainwashed into a cult, trained into an assassin, and then sold to the highest bidder?”

  He shook his head. “Not even once you were with the Whitfields?”

  “No. I was busy doing my job. Keeping their hothead son alive. Don’t cry for me though – my physical needs have been well taken care of, and from what I can tell, the emotional stuff isn’t exactly something I’m missing out on.”

  Cree offered a dry laugh. “I mean, that’s one way to think about it, but like… I don’t know. I… I don’t know.”

  “You do know, you just don’t want to say. What are you thinking… that me never having had a boyfriend makes perfect sense, based on what you know of me?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’m thinking that it’s fucked up that you were stripped of your chance for normal events. You deserve to be jaded and suspicious of love, based on messed up experiences. Just like the rest of us.”

  “Is that why there’s no Mrs. Cree Bradley? You’re jaded and suspicious?”

  Cree shrugged. “Not really, actually. I just… haven’t vibed like that with anybody. Good sex… that’s easy. Anything beyond that just hasn’t seemed to pan out.”

  “That sounds like bullshit.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” he chuckled. “It’s the truth though. There have been a few women who, on the surface, I would’ve loved to make something happen with. Great on paper, just didn’t vibe.”

  Something about the way he said that sparked something in my mind, and instead of letting it go, I asked, “Was Vivica Russel one of them?”

  That made him laugh again. “Nah. Vivica was dating her husband already when we met, and I’ve never been that guy. Only ever friends.”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” I countered. “Somebody not being single has little bearing on what happens between the two of you in your head.”