by Maria Luis
Turning on my heel, I erased the distance to the hallway. Men’s bathroom. Women’s bathroom. Ah, here it was—the elusive General Storage Room. Sending a quick glance down the hall, I pried open the door, surprised to find it unlocked, and entered the so-called closet of Whiskey Bay. Then immediately took the stairs two at a time.
Like the main room downstairs, the Basement lacked a lot of its mystery during the day. Light glistened from the large windows, the curtains flung open wide to reveal a view of the winding Mississippi River and the grassy West Bank just across the width of the water. The stages were idle, empty, the chairs and settees and couches that circled each platform all arranged neatly in preparation for tonight’s activities.
“I see you’ve decided to show your face, cherie. How utterly daring of you.”
At the delicate sound of her voice, I breathed hard through my nose, expelling my nerves, and then turned to face her. Her evening gown had been swapped out for a skirt with larger-than-life patterns and a deep, V-neck top that plunged down to expose the inner swells of her breasts.
Straining for a nonchalance that I did not feel, I smiled. “It’s surprisingly less difficult than I thought it’d be.” My smile stretched a little wider. “Tell me, was it incredibly hard for you to lie to me for all these years? Or are you surprised that it wasn’t that hard after all?”
If I hadn’t been watching her face so closely, I would have missed it—the gentle arch of her brows and the twitch of her upper lip. Casually, cruelly, she murmured, “To be surprised entails that I was emotionally invested in the outcome of your life. I can’t say that I’ve given much thought to it until recently.”
Ouch.
Her words were like little pinpricks needling my arms. As though they were an actual physical threat, I ran my hands over my arms, swiping the little bastards away. If I could flick Nat into nonexistence, as well, I would have without second thought.
At the very least, I couldn’t let her see how she’d wounded me, however minimal the puncture.
Slipping my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, I swept my gaze over the Basement, touching on everything and nothing all at once. Rocked back onto my heels when I said, “I won’t lie, Natalie—from your cards, this isn’t so far off from what I thought you did for a living.” I paused, drawing in her curiosity before slipping in the verbal knife: “Only, I always assumed that you were the one putting out. Although perhaps that’s a more recent venture with the city’s favorite university president?”
It didn’t take long for my implication to click with her, and Nat’s elegant hand lifted, hovering like she wanted nothing more than to strangle me, before snapping back to her side. “Acting a cunt doesn’t become you, Laurel.”
I turned to Whiskey Bay’s queen, refusing to shrink before her. “How fortunate,” I drawled, “that me and Laurel had a falling out some years back. Turns out I was too much of a cunt for her liking.”
Her brows arched.
I stood my ground.
Seconds passed, and I watched her—a woman I’d considered a friend until yesterday—work through the scenarios in her head. Pristine white teeth sank into her red-painted lower lip. “You’re here for a reason.”
It wasn’t a question. Wasn’t even a statement, really—more like a thought voiced out loud.
“Yes,” I said. Striving to appear casual, I kept my hands in my pockets, thumbs hooked over the denim fabric. With no one around to overhear, I opted to skip beating around the bush and go in straight for the kill. “Whatever deal Hampton planned to offer Asher, I’d like to take it on.”
Take it on?
Because that sounded convincing or even halfway lethal.
And it seemed that Nat agreed with me.
Unblinking, she stared at me. “You couldn’t handle it.”
If I argued or protested, I’d sound like a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum—and I couldn’t afford to lose this opportunity.
Big Hampton’s threat still rang loudly in my ears, and I’d yet to shake off the worry that I was hours away from meeting my fate: death. Whatever Joshua Hampton wanted, whatever he needed of Asher, I was willing to make happen.
For that to even be a possibility, I needed to play it cool.
Stay unfrazzled.
If only my heart would get with the program.
I shoved aside the concern that Nat could hear its incessant thumping in my chest and zeroed my gaze on her face with a silent prayer that she couldn’t read my inner feelings. “What’s he want?” Pulling my hands from my pockets, I dropped my arms to my sides. Look confident. Act confident. “For Mayor Foley to die?”
Nat’s mouth quirked. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To be the one who finally ends your stepfather’s life?”
Yes. I wanted nothing more. Had never wanted anything more than to see the blood pool around his body, his eyes unblinking, just like he’d had done to Momma.
Still, I said nothing.
Waited, hoping, for Nat to give up because of my silence and divulge more information.
She didn’t . . . at least, not in the way that I’d hoped.
“I’ve always found this city so fascinating,” she began, moving toward the closest stage and leaving me to follow. With an elegant fluff to her skirt, she settled into a velvet-padded chair. Her hands curled over the lip of the armrests, and she glanced at me as though she were actually peering down at me from a throne. Without waiting for me to take a seat, she continued. “You never know who you can trust. It was such an odd adjustment when I moved here.”
“From Hungary?” I asked, thinking of her accent and her mention of her immigrant parents.
“No.” She gave a thin-lipped smile. “Baltimore, actually.”
Right.
I took the seat opposite hers, careful to remain facing the stairwell up to the Basement. Just in case. After last night, I’d never look at Nat with a sympathetic eye again—and I’d come armed with my gun in my purse since my taser was probably in the Gulf of Mexico by now.
“It took me no time at all to understand that I would never understand the way New Orleans works. My first year here, a few of our finest men in blue murdered a man just over there”—she pointed toward the window, and I had the feeling that she meant across the river—“but, of course, they couldn’t just let that slide. Couldn’t risk having a target on their back if anyone found out that a drug stop had gone so wrong.” She propped an elbow up on the armrest, positioning her chin in the palm of her hand to watch me with glittering eyes. “So, they torched him. Shoved his burnt body back in his car. Drove him up onto the levee and fled.”
Bile climbed my throat, and I swallowed hard.
Nat smiled, slowly. “But, of course, that wasn’t enough. They set the car ablaze before they left, too, just to be sure.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I can understand why you wouldn’t have gone to the police when your mother died.” Forehead creasing, Nat’s expression turned sympathetic. “You must have been terrified, cherie, not knowing who you could trust. Not knowing where to go. A man like your stepfather is supposed to be one of the most trustworthy—a family man, an overseer of our precious jewel of a city, a protector for those who can’t protect themselves.”
My soul cried out at the truth in her words, and just like that, she’d shoved me back into my thirteen-year-old body. Listening to my stepfather argue over my disappearance, my nose buried in my bent knees, my arms clasped around my shins. The fear that clung to me as I scrambled to my feet and slipped out a cracked-open window on the first floor.
Physically, I’d escaped that night unscathed.
Mentally, emotionally, it felt as though the chains of those long-ago fears would never break.
“Jay Foley is a bastard,” I whispered, the curse sounding so underwhelming in contrast with the pure hatred I felt for the man. A word like I needed just didn’t exist—not in English, at least, and I didn’t know any other languages. I’d
dropped out of school the year we were finally offered a language elective.
Nat nodded, her hand dipping with the force of the movement with her chin still in her palm. “Yes, cherie, he is. But I must say . . . of all the cocks I’ve sucked in my life, his is perhaps the best.”
“I—”
The words died on my tongue.
Everything went rigid: my limbs, my heart, my blood, if that was even possible. It felt possible. In this room, in this old factory seated along the Mississippi River, in this city which had stolen so much from me, every iota of heat dissipated from my body.
“What did you say?” My tone was hard, unforgiving, and Nat smiled like she’d been waiting for this moment. Possibly even for years.
“You were right,” she said after a moment, crossing one leg over the other, her skirts moving like silk, “I did put out. I do put out, as you so politely put it. And Jay is by far one of the best customers I’ve ever had. Your mother was a very lucky woman.”
Hatred seethed like poison in my veins, twisting and turning and nearly strangling me with the force of it. “My mother was murdered.”
“Oh, I’m aware. He let that slip, once, when he was deep in the liquor bottle.” Nat straightened in her seat, hands clasping together in her lap—the very image of demure respectability. “He has a photo of her by his bed, his precious Catherine. Anytime he fucked me, it was with me on my knees, your mother’s picture inches from my nose. I could have kissed it, especially when he got carried away in the fantasy and thrust too hard.”
Stop. Stop, no more. Please.
The urge to dry-heave overwhelmed me, and it was only a testament to my strength that I didn’t turn and vomit all over the floor. I despised the images she planted in my head. Didn’t want to think of Foley—
“Catherine, he’d whisper into the crook of my neck as he fucked me,” Nat went on, a nasty smile curving her red lips. “And next to her picture was one of you.”
I couldn’t stop it.
My body twisting, my hands landing on the chair’s armrest, nails biting down into the fabric, my chest dropping as my stomach unloaded itself.
“With the number of times I put out for him, I had the opportunity to learn your face very well, cherie. The crook in your nose with the scar right over the bridge. The birthmark near your hairline. The smattering of freckles over your cheeks, and the green ring around your hazel eyes. You may have swapped out your blond hair for black, Laurel, but one glance at you in the square was like a time portal to every fucking I ever received in your stepfather’s bed.”
Eyelids screwing shut, I exhaled through my nose. “Please,” I edged out, my palm scraping across my lips. “I don’t want . . . I can’t—”
I heard the creak of Nat’s chair, and then her hand gently landed on the back of my head, stroking my hair in much the same way Hampton had done to her last night. Her touch reminded me of Momma’s, soft and soothing—and that alone had me wrenching away, jumping up from the chair before the sensations of wanting love, my mother’s love, could sink me back under.
“No wonder you came to see me so often,” I worked out, my stomach still queasy as I stood out of reach, arms locked around my middle. “How much did you report back to Jay once you found me, huh? Everything?”
Nat’s nose scrunched as she glanced down at my vomit, then hooked a foot around my rejected chair, her hands on the back, and dragged the chair over the spot where I’d literally lost my lunch.
Satisfied, she returned to her seat, turning her head slightly so I remained in her line of sight. “Nothing. I told him nothing.”
Highly doubtful. Suspicion laced my tone as I spoke, “And why should I believe you? You clearly told Hampton about me.”
“I like to have people in my debt, cherie. It doesn’t work in my benefit for your stepfather to know anything.”
“And it works out for you if Hampton knows?”
Her shoulders lifted in a delicate shrug. “It earned me his trust. Joshua is a powerful man, and he and Jay claw at each other’s throats at every chance. So, yes, him knowing about you put me in place for what I wanted.”
There was something in her tone that I didn’t like.
I stepped back, gaze dropping to my purse—which had fallen from my lap when I’d made the leap of faith from the chair. Dammit. Amateur move.
Nat’s voice cut through my thoughts: “I wouldn’t do anything drastic just yet, mon amour. I’m about to offer you the deal of a lifetime, and it’d be a shame if you were to grow too hasty before you could enjoy it.”
The deal of a lifetime, huh?
Casting a quick glance over my shoulder, I was once again treated to pure emptiness. The sense of isolation was both a blessing and a curse, and I chose to focus on the blessing part of it all as I asked, “Is this the same deal Hampton planned to offer Asher last night?”
Head cocking to the side, Nat brought her hand up, index finger and thumb millimeters apart. “With a change or two, but yes.”
“And if I take on the job, will you continue to keep my secret from Jay?”
The room seem to still, the energy itself grinding to a halt, and then: “Cherie, there won’t be a secret to keep once you kill him.”
7
Avery
“Why?”
Like a queen, Nat leaned back in her seat. “Don’t play the idiot, Laurel. You know exactly why.”
Yes, but—
I shook my head, trying to right my thoughts when everything seemed so terribly confusing. “I know why Hampton does, but why would you want him dead? Because he, what? Called you by my mother’s name and hurt your feelings? That’s enough to kill someone?”
Visibly stiffening, Nat kicked up her chin. “Those reasons lay with Hampton, and he was incredibly disappointed with Sergeant Asher’s decision to walk out last night.”
“He shouldn’t have kidnapped us.”
“He prefers to do things on large scales.” Nat sniffed. “He’s just that sort of man.”
“A limo pickup service would have been better appreciated by all parties. Maybe pass the information along.”
Dark eyes narrowed in my direction, and I had the distinct feeling that my most frequent tarot client was running through all the reasons she’d like to kill me off—in her head.
Out loud, however, she only slipped back into the role she played so well: the owner of Whiskey Bay, elegant and all too proper. “You want Foley dead, cherie. Hampton wants him dead. So, dead he shall be.”
My mouth gaped. “I’m sorry, but are you hearing yourself right now? Dead he shall be? First, who talks like that—you’re from Baltimore, Nat, not the Gilded Age. Second, you’re expecting me to kill him? Me. Kill the mayor of N’Orleans. I didn’t spend the last twelve years hiding out just so I could end up in prison and someone’s lady friend.”
“So, you what? Hid for twelve years to . . . keep hiding?”
Well, no. Obviously not.
It’d always been my aim to kill my stepfather, but the how’s, the where’s, and the when’s had always eluded me. They still eluded me.
After all, I wasn’t Lincoln Asher—murderer extraordinaire.
I didn’t even know how to use a gun, let alone stage an elaborate plot to kill the city’s most elite politician.
Opening my mouth to tell Nat that she had the wrong girl, I was soundly cut off.
“I’ll set up everything, cherie. It’s what I’m good at, after all, and I do have a few people who I can ask to help with the logistics.”
Throat dry, I croaked, “If you’re handling all of the logistics, then why don’t you or one of your minions take him out?”
“I was under the impression that you wished to avenge your mother. Here I am offering you everything you’ve ever wanted and you’re balking. Am I to assume that you want your stepfather to learn about you?”
“No, of course not.” Why couldn’t I breathe? Why was it suddenly so hard to draw air into my lungs? I fisted my right hand
and set it against my heart. Through my black T-shirt, I could feel the heavy thud of my heart against the fleshy outer part of my fist. “I-I want this.”
“Then why the fuss?”
Because I was a coward, as Asher had so politely told me, and that was something that needed to stop. Now. “I want to bring justice to my mother,” I said, voice shaky. “I can do it.”
Nat’s answering smile was wide and serene. “You’ve waited a long time for this.”
I had, she was right.
I’d lived in fear and worry, slept on the streets and on the hardest beds the city had to offer in the homeless shelters. I’d been pawed at by greedy, masculine hands and had been told countless times over that all my troubles would disappear if I just opened my legs and gave up my self-worth for a quick buck.
“Is this like a calendar-coordinating thing?” I asked. “Planned far in advance with maps and backup plans so I don’t end up incarcerated after?”
Tipping her head back, Nat released a healthy laugh. “All of the above.”
Maybe it wasn’t so difficult to be Lincoln Asher, after all. Maybe he looked at each kill with a series of pros or cons. The way I looked at it, the pros far outweighed the cons in my book for murdering my stepfather.
Hell, the only con, really—besides the possibility of getting caught—was the matter of my own moral conscience.
I wanted to save the world. I wanted to save every stray animal. I wanted everyone to feel safe and loved and happy.
At the end of the day, however, I could handle my guilt over ending a life.
I had to do it for Momma.
I had to do it for myself.
If I wanted to make myself feel even more justified, then I was also doing it for Nat, who’d been forced to screw Jay Foley while he called her by another woman’s name. My mother’s name.
“Great,” I said with a short nod. “I’m glad we got all this settled and squared away. I’m just going to grab my purse”—I crouched low and snapped it off the floor—“and be on my way. I’ll wait for your call or something. Give you some time to figure it out. It’s all been a great talk.”