by Cat Porter
After all, I was haunted.
Two years later, I’d found my stride as a stylist for photographers and independent films and music video productions.
“Really? You like this shirt on me?” Eric, the lead guitarist for an up and coming band who were shooting their second video today, shifted his weight for the umpteenth time, wiping his wavy light brown hair behind his ears.
“No, I love this shirt.” I tugged at the slanted edge of the ripped shirt I had created for him. “It’s hot. You’re hot. You in the shirt—way hot. See how that works?”
His hazel eyes lit up, and he let out a nervous laugh. “I guess. I don’t know. I’m just used to wearing my jeans, old tees, and flannel shirts. What a cliché, huh?”
“If you tell me you’re from Seattle, then yes, that would be a cliché.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I’m not from Seattle. I’m from South Dakota.”
“Oh, really?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been there?”
“No,” I lied.
“Where are you from?”
“Chicago originally,” I lied again. “Now I’m here.”
“Now you’re here.” He held my gaze, an index finger flicking at one of my long beaded earrings. “And I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too.”
He traced a zig zag over my shoulder and down my upper arm where my latest tattoo design sprawled over my skin, and I stiffened, moving away from him.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
“A treasure hunt.”
I had continued my odyssey with tattoos, getting more and more. Erasing the scars the Smoking Guns had left on me was important to me, but it had quickly transformed into commemorating the beautiful that could arise in the aftermath of hell. I needed to remind myself every moment of every day that I was persevering, that I’d found a way, even though the price I’d paid had been extraordinarily high.
The ultimate price.
Eric chuckled. An eyebrow quirked, a lopsided grin. He was cute. The boy next door who gave good hugs and whose gaze lingered on you when you spoke. “A treasure hunt, huh? I like hunting. What am I looking for?”
I stood up and eyed the results of my Eric Lanier makeover. “Treasure, of course,” I replied.
Yes, treasure, but it wasn’t for anyone to find. It was for me, buried in flowers and fairies and suns and moons, in stars and sea waves rippling over my skin. A desperate symphony of my endurance.
“Your whole damned body is a treasure,” he blurted.
I let out a laugh. “Well, don’t you say the nicest things?”
He laughed with me. “You think? Jesus, I’ve been a jerk lately, just ask my manager. All this promotion and publicity shit makes me nervous. So many details, so many new people involved all of a sudden.”
“People like me?”
“Yeah. It’s not just me and the boys anymore. Everything’s different, and it’s all moving and changing so fast.”
“You’re on the verge. You guys are good, Eric. Everyone’s saying this album is a winner. I really like the song for this video.”
His shoulders relaxed, his features eased as if I’d pulled a string and made it happen myself. “What’s your name again? Sorry, I’ve just met so many people today, and I don’t want to not remember you.”
“You don’t have to remember me,” I replied.
I often wished people didn’t.
“I want to,” he said, his tone playful, easy. “Aside from the fact that you’re incredibly pretty and totally hot, it’s so good to have a normal conversation for a change.”
I tossed the safety pins onto my worktable and held his gaze. “Yeah, normal is nice, isn’t it?”
“Sure is. Let’s do some normal together.” He stepped closer to me, his lips tipping up. “What’s your name, you beautiful, unforgettable girl?”
I let out a tiny breath, my face heating. “My name’s Lenore.”
31
As promised, I’d gotten out of jail early after having delivered all my Silver Crows intel along the way. Over the three years I was inside, I’d created an actual bond with their Prez and VP, which I kept to myself.
I’d learned a lot of things in prison.
Jail was rough, it was shit, but it made me rely on myself more than anything ever had. For three years I’d been stripped not only of any external power and control but also of my own ideas of the power and control I’d always assumed I had over things, over people, situations. Letting go was gut wrenching, but illuminating. Accepting this from early on had only made me realize the bitter truth that the only things we really do have control over in this life are our own selves, our actions. Essentials.
Others dictated when I slept, where I slept, who I lived with, what work I did, what I ate. There was plenty of sliced white bread too, and I had to steel myself in its presence. I did it, considering it another form of daily exercise along with the five hundred push ups I did to keep my hands and arms strong. I’d read books that I’d never otherwise gotten a chance to read, I made new alliances, new enemies. I had brutally honest conversations for the first time in a very long time.
Keeping organized and clean, fit and strong, was my way of exercising the control I did have; my routine, my success. Some read the Bible, others took education courses, some got obsessed with chess or fitness. Whatever I was engaged in, I used my time wisely to expand my consciousness of myself and stay sharp.
You got a lot of time on your hands in prison, time to panic, time to think, time to worry, to obsess, to be angry. Time also stands still for the prisoner. Somehow we believe that when we get out, everything—friends, family, work—will be the same way we’d left it. But over these past three years the world kept on moving without me, and at a clip that was almost incomprehensible.
The day I got out, my one thought was getting to Serena. Drac and Slade met me on the outside, bringing me my old Heritage Softail. My hand shook as it stroked over the saddle. I hadn’t ridden in three whole years. A lifetime. We went to Chicago, and after one night on the town together, I told them I needed a couple weeks on my own before going home. They returned to Nebraska, and I headed to Tania’s. I’d had Rhys keep an eye out for Serena, but after the first few weeks, he’d told me she’d disappeared. I’d told myself she was being cautious now that I was in jail, leaving no clues behind.
I found Tania. She blinked at seeing me in her doorway.
“What?”
She shrugged. “You look different. Bigger, meaner.”
“I’ve been inside for three years, Tania.”
“I know. Come in. ”
I went in.
Her eyes went to my colors. “You on your way back to Nebraska now, to your club?”
“Yeah, of course, but I wanted to see her first. Got to see her. And I can’t find her.”
Tania’s lips pressed together. “I don’t know where she is. She left town after you got arrested. We kept in touch in the beginning, but I haven’t heard from her in over three and a half years now.”
“Jesus. She’s protecting you by keeping away.”
I couldn’t find any trace of “Ashley Wyeth” anywhere, and neither could Rhys. Had she gotten a new name and ID?
“You remember that friend of hers, Ciara?” I asked Tania.
“I do.”
“You got her number?”
“I used to. I’ll look.” Tania found Ciara’s phone number in an old notebook and called her, asking if she’d heard from “Ashley” and if she knew where she was.
Tania listened and made a face at me. “All right, sorry to bother you. Thanks anyway.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said she hasn’t seen Ashley for years. That Ashley started blowing her off a while before that, and she just gave up on her. She sounded irr
itated.”
I got in touch with Rhys, and we met at his apartment in Chicago, which was more of a shabby garage than a normal living space.
I opened another can of beer. “Anything new with Med?” I’d been keeping tabs on him and his crew from jail through word of mouth, through the internet, through Rhys.
“His club is still having a hard time bouncing back from that series of surprise attacks. He hasn’t been on his home ground in maybe two years now.”
“You’d told me, but I figured that was temporary.”
“He’s still keeping himself on the move. No one ever really knows where or when he’ll pop up, posse in tow.”
“So he’s spooked down deep.”
“Oh yeah. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd that suddenly all these fires blew up around him and he’s been on the run? Moving around only with a core group of men, keeping his head down low? Is it the eighties all over again, and nobody sent us the memo?”
Rhys shrugged as he lit a cigarette. “From what I hear, the famiglia isn’t happy with this mess.”
“The Tantuccis? The Smoking Guns always worked with the Tantuccis,” I said.
“Yeah, them.”
“The Tantuccis got any enemies?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Rhys let out a tight laugh.
“I mean a specific rival. Someone who’d benefit from a branch of the Tantucci labor force being shut down.”
Rhys took in a breath, leaning back in his ratty vinyl sofa. “Well, I got to say, the hate the Tantuccis got for the Guardinos is legendary around this town. Those two families have been enemies from Prohibition days. You think maybe Med got himself in the middle of that lasagna, and the Guardinos are using him for target practice to keep the Tantuccis in line?”
“Why not? I followed one of the Guardinos’ hit men years back. Remember, when you were helping me out, keeping an eye on—”
“DeMarco, right?”
“Yeah. Turo DeMarco.”
“He’s top tier now, dude.” Rhys shook his brown hair from his dark blue eyes as he played with his lighter, adjusting the flame. “He’s risen up in the world since then. His name turns heads, that’s for sure. Started low level over a decade ago, but he’s a decision maker now. Played his cards right. He’s real smooth.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh yeah.”
Real smooth. I grabbed the bottle of bourbon and gulped down a mouthful. “If Med’s got Turo DeMarco after him…”
“Boom.” A chuckle rumbled deep in Rhys’s big chest.
“Huh.” I wiped at my mouth, my throat burning in a blaze of bourbon. Med’s business targeted and Med on the run. My veins raced with heat, and it wasn’t from the booze.
Med had pissed someone off and in a big way. But what intrigued me was that only someone from the inside would know how to pinpoint all these hotspots that had been raided, spots that had been in his territory and notoriously under the grid. Med was a paranoid psycho to begin with, and now he was shaken up, freaking out, and on the run like a cockroach scurrying across a bullet ridden wall in the darkness.
I saw the connection like a map spread out before me. And on that map flashed a route between DeMarco and someone who knew the inside of Med’s club.
And that someone could only be, had to be, Serena.
Rhys tamped down on the leaves in his pipe, lit it, and took a couple of stiff inhales. “Ah. You always come through for me, man. Damn. Shit’s fine.”
He passed the pipe to me, and I took a hit.
“You game for something crazy?” I asked.
“Fuck yeah. It’s what I breathe for.”
During his third tour of duty, Rhys had been discharged after going overboard on a mission where he’d ended up slaughtering a family of women and children in Iraq. Enthusiastic. Focused. Unpredictable.
“I need to talk to DeMarco.”
He stared at me, his head slanting as if he were listening to the undercurrent beneath my words. He never asked me why. Ever.
Maybe Turo had figured out who Serena was. Maybe he’d twisted her arm to get information from her, and she’d complied and took off. I was glad that Med was getting his ass kicked, but what would stop Turo from going after other clubs, manipulating any club in Med’s orbit?
Did Turo know where she was? I needed to know and then stop anyone else from finding out. I needed to stamp out any connection there was between them. If I had suspected, maybe a Smoking Gun would too?
I sat up, putting the bottle down. “Do it.”
He only nodded, taking another drag on his pipe, his head lifting as he savored the weed.
“After, you can do whatever you want with him.”
Rhys’s full red eyes met mine.
“You do this for me, man, and you won’t be just my go-to guy no more,” I said. “I’ll share your talents. Set you loose officially with the Flames.”
He exhaled a plume of smoke, his head shaking. “I don’t think I can do the group bro thing. I’m just not—”
“I know, I know. We’ll figure it out.” I slid my arm over his shoulders. “A nomad, yeah? It’s all good.”
“Nomad, huh? Long term benefits included? Health, disability, retirement fund?”
We both laughed.
His eyes remained grim, hanging on mine through the haze of smoke. “I’m with you, brother. You know that. To the end, wherever this takes me.”
I let out a heavy breath.
I wasn’t sure what I’d find out about Serena—why she’d taken off, cut herself off, any connection she had with Turo—but I had to cover all the possible angles until I got to the end, as Rhys said.
I lifted the bourbon bottle in the air. “To the end.”
No matter how bitter.
32
Rhys studied Turo DeMarco and nabbed him on the tenth day. He had his chest and legs wrapped in plastic to a chair on the roof of a building in Serena’s old neighborhood. Turo finally came to from the drugs Rhys had shot him up with earlier in a coat check room at a restaurant.
I stood over him. His hair was mussed, his pretty face unbruised.
So far.
DeMarco blinked, his head straining. “What the fuck is this, and who the hell are you?”
Rhys faded into the darkness. I had the floor.
“Ashley,” I said.
His cold light-colored eyes betrayed nothing.
“I need to find her.”
“I don’t know any Ashley.”
“I know a Ciara,” I said and his jaw tightened ever so slightly. “Shouldn’t you be at The Vine right now listening to her sing her cabaret songs? Don’t worry, one of my men is there, hanging on every note that comes out of that mouth.”
His eyes hardened and went to my patches. “Why should I talk to you? Are you after Ashley to kill her?”
“Did you force her to rat for you?
“I never forced her to do anything.”
My pulse ratcheted up a hundred notches. “I’m sure you laid all sorts of pretty words on her. Threatened her. She isn’t stupid, but she’s vulnerable.”
“She’s made of steel,” he said, his voice clear, sharp. Did he think he was telling me something new? Something I didn’t already know?
I took in a deep breath against the idea of this douche knowing my woman. Knowing her in any way at all.
My hand snaked around his throat and tightened there. “She’s disappeared, and I think you helped her get new ID and take off.”
Turo’s forehead wrinkled, his eyes sheets of tinted glass. “Who the fuck are you?” His tone was cold, it was hard, but it wasn’t defensive. It was protective. He was protecting Serena.
I got in his face. “I’m the one who got her out of that shithole. I’m the one who g
ot her to Chicago.”
His eyes flared. “You’re the one?”
Had I answered a mystery he’d been wanting to solve?
My hand fell from his throat. “I’m the one.”
“I’ve been wondering who was crazy enough to go in there and get her out.”
“Someone with nothing left to lose.”
He smiled at me, his eyebrows lifting, his features relaxing for the first time. “I don’t know where she is. She didn’t tell me where she was going.”
“Her new name. That’s what I want from you. I want her name. You put her in danger by having her rat. If I figured it out, I’m sure her old club isn’t too far behind. Were you going to protect her once they came gunning for her? I doubt it. Would’ve gotten your suit messy. I figure you would’ve left her hanging in the wind. She took a risk, and it paid off for you big, didn’t it? For her? Not so sure.”
He gestured at me with his chin. “They did that to you? You were there with her, and they—”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” He studied me.
“Believe me, I’m glad you’ve been making Medicine Man tap dance to your beat. Like it a lot. That sick fuck deserves that and much, much more.”
“It’s been a long, joy-filled ride. I wanted him to suffer first, have him watch his little paper kingdom rip and burn around him. Now his time is up.”
“I need to make sure she isn’t your collateral damage,” I said.
“I’ve had eyes and ears on Med’s crew for a while. There’s been no chatter about Rena. None. She’s good. Wherever she is.”
“I’m supposed to believe you give a shit.”
“I give way more than a shit. Where were you when she needed help?”
My vision went red, and I roared, “I’ve been in jail the past three years!”
His brow wrinkled again. “They came after her. That’s why she came to me, to clean it up. Her wanting new ID came later.”
My heartbeat skidded to a halt. “Who came after her? Clean what up?”
“She killed a Smoking Gun. He attacked her in her apartment. She got him with his own knife and didn’t want to call the cops.”