And I’d been extremely careful not to wall myself off, which was why Ben’s comments about hiding behind my camera had touched such a nerve. Okay, so I stalked the city streets when I should have been home preparing a meal for a husband and two-point-five brats. Big deal. But I’d found, in the shadows of this city—my glittering town of dollar buffets and neon dreams—a lack of judgment about such things as what was normal. When I took my camera to the streets, nobody cared about my past or my name. When I tiptoed through the shadows of ugly alleyways, looking into faces that stared fearlessly and openly back at me, I could stop striving and pretending to be whole. And I could just be whole.
But now some bum who thought he was a comic book hero was telling me someone was going to try and attack me again. Worse, there were reasons, despite the man’s incoherent rambling, to believe what he said. One, I already had been attacked. Pretty good sign. Two, our conversation had smacked of more than obscure riddles and hidden meanings. It’d mirrored Ajax’s, if not exactly, then in word choice and content. They both claimed to know me from my scent. They both declared I was special in some way. They each said I was still being watched.
Thirdly, other than my name, family, and past, that scruffy, stinking vagrant had spoken of details nobody knew, some of which I’d purposely forgotten myself. The clincher was, he knew the words I used to describe myself, words that defined who I’d become, filling the holes left in my psyche by a young girl’s inability to defend herself.
Weapon. Warrior. Hunter.
Because despite all my hard work to become a whole woman, and a relatively open one, I was still keenly aware that he—the attacker—had never been found. He never saw the inside of a cage…at least not for what he’d done to me. And he was still out there. I felt it in my ancient fractures. I heard his voice every time dusk set along the Strip.
But I had a place here; in this world, this city, these streets. I’d made it for myself through grit and determination, and I wasn’t going to give it up now just because an anorectic psycho and some deranged bum had knocked haphazardly into my life.
No, I swore, speeding home on the neon-slicked streets. Not me. Not without a knock-down, drag-out, fuck-you fight.
4
The first thing I do every morning is make coffee, put on sunscreen, and take my birth control…the goal, of course, to be alert and protected at all times. Today I added a couple of aspirins to my caffeine cocktail, showered away the stiffness from last night’s train wreck of a date, and readied myself for a last minute meeting with the infamous Xavier Archer. His secretary had called just after eight to say he wished to meet with my sister and me, and though she asked my availability, I knew it wasn’t a request.
I agreed to the afternoon appointment, then searched my closet for something Xavier might find appropriate, knowing, in truth, he didn’t think it appropriate to be seen with me at all. I was a gross embarrassment to him, for things I both could and could not control, and it was laughable to even try appeasing him, though long ago I had tried. By now it was just about keeping up appearances and playing the game.
As one might imagine for a gambling maverick, my father was big on games.
Comfort won out over making a good impression, and Isettled on a fitted T-shirt with three-quarter sleeves, stretch jeans, and my favorite leather boots—I’d already had them resoled twice—all in black. Throwing on a scarf and peacoat, I then drove the five miles from my modest tract home to my father’s custom-built compound. You couldn’t miss it. It took up an entire city block on the far west end of town. I was admitted by a guard with sideburns, large jowls, and a bodybuilder’s physique—Elvis on steroids—and moments later pulled into the circular drive of a home more suited to the Côte d’Azur than the Las Vegas valley. On the way in I met up with Olivia.
Physically, my sister and I were opposites in all ways that counted. I sported a straight, uncomplicated chin-length bob, while she seemed to walk around in a perpetual shampoo commercial. My face, though unlined and fine-boned, was rarely made up, while Olivia regularly held court at the Chanel counter. Today she was also dressed in Prada pink—obscenely cheerful for the month of November—and flanked by her favorite accessory, her best friend, Cher. I sighed as I looked at the two of them standing together beneath the dome of the marble portico. They were like pastry figurines atop a wedding cake; just looking at them gave me a sugar high.
I lifted my hand to shield my eyes as I approached. “I think I just burned my retinas.”
“Ha ha,” Olivia said to me before turning to Cher, dimples flashing. “Joanna thinks being caustic makes her appear intelligent, not to mention morally superior to those of us with a Neiman’s card.”
Damn, that was a good one for a woman who’d once worn bunny ears and a fluffy tail.
“You know, it could just be the sun, Joanna, dear.” Taking in my black-on-black ensemble, Cher snapped her gum loudly, also pink. “Olivia tells me you only come out at night.”
“Only if there’s a full moon,” I replied, trying not to let it bother me that Olivia would speak of me to Cher at all. She and I had a long-standing enmity, born on the day we met, half a dozen years earlier. She was a southern version of Olivia, a sharp-tongued shrew in the guise of a belle, with a manipulative nature that would make Scarlett herself blush. She didn’t take herself too seriously, which I rather thought a good thing, but she didn’t take anything else seriously either, and that I just found irresponsible. She also had the ear of the woman I considered my best friend.
“Well, that explains your color, darlin’.” Cher pressed a cool, bejeweled finger to my skin. When she lifted it, the color didn’t change. She repeated the test on herself with more satisfying results.
“Touch me again and you’ll lose your finger.”
She lifted that finger to her lips and blew me a kiss.
I barely contained a snarl. “Flirting won’t work on me, Cher. I don’t have a penis.”
“Are you sure?” She smiled, lashes opening and closing like butterfly wings, and before I could answer, turned away. “I’ll be waiting for you in the drawing room, Livvy-girl. Don’t forget, we have a date for high tea at four.”
“It’s a fucking family room,” I muttered, watching until she disappeared from sight. I turned to find Olivia regarding me with sad eyes. “What?”
“Why do you have to take shots at her?” At us, said her expression.
“Easy target.”
“She’s my best friend.”
“I know.” The words settled uneasily between us. Finally, I cleared my throat. “Come on, let’s get this Daddy Dearest moment over with. I wouldn’t want you to miss high tea.”
“You could come with us,” she said as we entered the wraparound hallway leading to the office wing.
And maybe after that I could stick burning pokers beneath my fingernails. “I don’t think so.”
“What about tonight?” she persisted. “Want to come over?”
“What’s wrong? Malibu Ken already have a date?”
“No, but my sister is having a birthday. I thought we might have a party, just the two of us.”
The need in her voice both softened and hurt me. It had been a long time since we’d done anything together, just for fun. Then, remembering the way she’d stared, I also wondered how much of our alone time was reported back to Cher. I love you, Olivia, but…“I already have plans.”
And I was desperate to tell her about them, about Ben. I just couldn’t with Cher’s face and voice so fresh in my mind.
Olivia’s lower lip popped out. “But aren’t you curious to know what I got you?”
“Does it involve the color pink, or a grossly overvalued designer initial stamped on it?”
“No. It doesn’t involve crosses or holy water either. You’re perfectly safe.”
“Ha ha.”
But Olivia linked her arm in mine as we continued walking, making it hard to cross my arms over my chest, and utterly defeating my snarl
. Damn it, she was like PMS kryptonite. She instinctively knew how to sap a bad mood of all its energy.
“Stubborn,” she muttered, singsonging it, as if to herself. “Too stubborn to admit any weakness—”
“Don’t start this again.”
“And too in love with life to just shut down completely.”
In love with life? I raised a brow. “Olivia, I sleep all day—when I’m not training—and wander the dirtiest, grittiest morasses of this city’s butt crack at night.”
She only smiled. “You volunteer at the soup kitchen once a week. You take portraits of the homeless to raise awareness, and as a tribute, marking that they’re here. You let them know that you, at least, see them. And you’ve helped dozens of teen runaways return home, and if they couldn’t do that, found them a new one.”
I stopped dead. “How do you know all that?”
She shot me that secretive smile over her shoulder and kept walking. I had to rush to catch up. “Because I don’t just chair the events that cater to the rich who feel better about themselves for eating a five-hundred-dollar dinner that they can write off at the end of the year. I talk to the people who talk to the people you help. Those who pay for plates might call me Ms. Archer, but those who are given a free meal call you ‘friend.’”
“I’m going to puke now,” I said, embarrassed…and secretly pleased.
“Mind the carpet.”
But by this time we were making our way across a room of marble, one markedly different from that of any other in the house. The floors were bare, the three windows unadorned, and its core was shaped like something called a “stupa.” That, Xavier had once explained, was a mound the old Tibetan lamas built to house the remains of great meditation masters when they died.
Now, I don’t know what a Tibetan stupa was supposed to look like, but other than the white marble adorning every surface, ceiling included, this looked just like the inside of a crypt.
Xavier had jazzed it up a bit, of course. There was a glass case in the center of the room, spotlit from above, holding the first full English translation of a thirteen-hundred-year-old manuscript—The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Nice and cheery. There was also a dais at one end of the room, large enough for a throne, which was what Xavier eventually planned on putting there. Right now there was just a large gold-framed oil painting, featuring snowcapped mountains hovering over gently sloping grassland, and wildflowers combed over by gentle winds while mountain yaks grazed between them.
Now, leading up to the dais things got a little less pastoral and a little more interesting. A phalanx of vertical prayer wheels sat aligned like wooden soldiers, though I’d never seen anyone spinning them and I didn’t know what they were for. What did an overbearing, self-centered, egotistical gaming mogul pray for anyway?
But none of this was as weirdly perplexing as the masks. Xavier claimed they came from a Sherpa village, high up in the Himalayas, and while there was no reason to doubt him, I had no idea what connection Xavier Archer thought he had with the Himalayans. He was from the Bronx. Exotic in its own way, but slightly different.
The first mask was made of copper, an elongated devil’s face that leered at us as we entered the room. That one never failed to make me shiver. Halfway into the room some round-faced god of corroded burlwood blew visitors a wispy kiss through pursed lips. Yet another god attended the office door, this one wearing a pointed crown, crimson mouth open in a silent painted scream. If these weren’t enough to ward off all ill intent, the security camera staring from the corner with its cycloptic red eye would certainly finish the job.
A buzzer sounded next to the door. “Come in, ladies.” Then a clicking sound as the oak doors unlocked.
Xavier’s office was more in line with what you might expect from a gaming mogul. Gone were the spiritual hoohahs and totems. This room was all dark wood, oversized furniture, and chocolate walls. The coffered ceiling soared with smoked mirrors and crown molding, and hand-painted cabinetry held an impressive collection of dusty hardbound books, spines uncracked. The man himself was no less grand and imposing.
Xavier Archer has the sort of presence that rocks lesser humans back on their heels. He often waves his hand through the air like some European monarch, indicating that his subjects should sit. He did this with us, his daughters, and the only sign that this appointment was different from an acquisition merger or a meeting on quarterly earnings was his refusal to look up from the notes he was scribbling at his desk.
We sat in a pair of uncomfortable mahogany chairs. He’d changed little in the months since I’d last seen him; still built like a field ox beneath his custom Armani. His jaw was squarely defined, and he had one bushy brow that arched singularly across his forehead, which I knew he was sensitive about but refused to change. If you didn’t know any better you could mistake him for an aging linebacker. But everyone knew better. Xavier Archer made sure of that.
“Hello, Daddy,” my sister said when he finally looked up.
“Hello, Olivia darling.” A smile flashed as he set down his pen, then disappeared as he glanced at me. “Joanna.”
“Xavier,” I replied. He stared at me with his muddy eyes. I focused on his brow.
Clearing his throat, he leaned back in his chair. “You girls are probably wondering why I summoned you today.”
“Not at all.”
“First, Olivia,” he said, ignoring me. “I heard about your attempt to garner a position at Valhalla. How many times have I told you? I don’t want any daughter of mine working. What would people think?”
“What do they think now?” I muttered. They both pretended not to hear.
“I expect you to grow up, get married, have kids, get divorced, and live happily ever after.” He drummed his index fingers together. They looked like two sausages fighting. “Understand?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Olivia said softly.
“What if she wants a job?” He looked at me and blinked, as if wondering why I was there. “What if she wants a job?” I repeated, louder.
“You mean like taking people’s pictures for free?” Xavier had never hidden his derision for what he considered my “wasteful” hobby. He scoffed. “I don’t think so.”
I couldn’t help myself—the defenses that automatically sprung up when I was around Xavier surrounded my sister as well. “I’m just saying maybe it’s not enough to expect her to be mere decoration for you or some future husband to wear upon his arm.”
Olivia put a hand on my arm. “Jo—”
“Olivia has a job. She’s my daughter.”
Yeah, and the benefits are lousy. I held my tongue, though, because Olivia was looking pained beside me.
“Now. If that’s all cleared up?” Which meant, in his mind, it was, but I made a mental note to speak with Olivia about it later. “I heard there was a ruckus at Valhalla last night, Joanna. Care to explain?”
A ruckus? Is that what he called being attacked by a madman wielding a serrated poker? I smiled tightly. “Sure. I’ll explain. I saved a few dozen of your precious high rollers from being hacked to pieces by a homicidal maniac. A good thing too. It would have been hell on the carpet.”
“Don’t be facetious.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
We glared at one another over the polished glasstop desk, each daring the other to say another word. We’d been this route before, and more than once. Xavier thought my sarcasm and sharp tongue were unbecoming, and that I should be more like Olivia; demure when his associates’ eyes lingered too long on her figure, sweet when an insult about her intelligence was flung over her head. Quiet even if she disagreed with anything he said.
I thought these expectations were asinine at the very least, bordering on deranged, so naturally I saved a great deal of my pent-up sarcasm for him.
Olivia gently cleared her throat beside me, causing me to break my stare.
“I understand the police had to be called in?” Of course that would be his greatest concern. Image, I though
t, must be maintained at all times.
“The police were already there. They’d been tracking the guy for months.” I didn’t mention my reunion with Ben.
“Because he’s killed before?”
“And he cheats at craps.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously at that. “Perhaps you should be more selective about whom you date in the future.”
Yeah, I’d kinda figured that one out for myself.
“You had something to tell us, Xavier?” I said, loving the way his teeth ground together when I used his first name.
“I do. Something of grave importance.” He looked at us expectantly, almost pleasantly. Odd, I thought, if speaking of something truly grave. “It affects you, Joanna, more than Olivia.”
Also odd that he would concern himself with me at all.
“I am not your real father.”
My breath left me in a rush. “Thank God.”
Olivia squeaked next to me.
“Excuse me?”
I cleared my throat. “I said, how odd.”
“Yes, I know it must come as a shock. I only recently found out myself.” He waved, indicating an open envelope on the corner of his desk. I picked it up, studied the type on the front, noted the lack of a return address or, indeed, any identifying mark, then removed the single sheet of paper enclosed within. Sure as shit, it said I wasn’t his daughter. It wasn’t signed.
“Got more proof than this?” I asked, waving the paper in his direction.
“I think there’s proof enough.” And he wasn’t talking about the letter, which meant he wanted it to be true.
I leaned back and let the note fall to the floor.
“But, Daddy—”
“Don’t worry, Olivia, dear. I had tests done this week. You and I share the same blood.”
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