There he was, at the two-top. He swallowed down a glass of beer, then gestured for his partner to get up. They headed toward the entrance. Thank god.
Okay. Okay. He was gone. Okay. Breathe.
She felt hot all through her body. Her belly fluttered, her heartbeat skittered, her breath came in inconsistent gusts. If she hadn’t just experienced that horrifying scene, she’d think she was horny. Shocking how the body’s responses to fear and allure were so similar.
Because she was absolutely not fucking turned on by Tony Whathisname, who’d taken all sorts of liberties while he’d threatened her. Getting felt up by a killer was not her bag at all. Absolutely not.
Okay, first thing: she had to talk to Nicole. And then, after closing, everybody else. But Nicole right the fuck now.
After she brushed her teeth and cleaned out her wastebasket.
~oOo~
Nicole wasn’t on the floor, so she tried the kitchen. As soon as she pushed through the door, the staff back here broke into applause. But she was not in the mood, so she ignored that and scanned the room for Nicole. She wasn’t back here, either.
“Where’s Nicole?” she asked, raising her voice above the accolades for her forced performance. Fucking Carly—who knew precisely why Billy had no desire to perform anymore.
In response, she got a lot of shrugs and empty looks, so she turned around. Maybe she’d missed her out front.
“You sounded great, boss!” Eden called as she arranged an order of tapas on a tray. “You should do that more often!”
No, she should not. Billy didn’t bother to answer. She wanted Nicole, and now.
When another pass through the club didn’t turn her up, Billy went to the restrooms. There was a line at the ladies’—that was just impossible to prevent at this stage of a weekend night—but she went around and in.
Nicole was at the mirror, smoothing her hair and checking her makeup. Billy checked around the room, but didn’t see overt signs, on Nicole or anywhere else, of people doing anything but using the bathroom as it was intended. That didn’t mean they weren’t snorting whole snowstorms when she wasn’t around, but without going through here with some CSI-bullshit testing wipes, everything looked clean.
Nicole smiled at Billy’s reflection. “Hey, boss. You have a great voice. I had no idea!”
A few of the other women at the mirror offered polite praise. Billy put a vaguely polite smile on but kept her attention trained on Nicole. “You and I need to talk. Right now. My office.”
“Okay. I’m just getting off break. Did I do something?”
“Not here. Let’s go. Now.”
While they headed toward the door to Billy’s private space, she flagged Edgar, one of the other servers on staff, and let him know he needed to cover for Nicole. Nicole frowned at that, but followed Billy through the loud space without challenge.
Once they were in her office, Billy indicated the chair Tony had made himself comfortable in not long ago. The thought of him slouching there, like the king of the world, made her ill. The thought of him leaning on her, touching her, trying to make her feel small and powerless, made her shake with anger.
She’d stabbed him with her grandfather’s Tiffany letter opener. She was equal parts proud and horrified. Mostly horrified—there was no way he’d let her get away with that.
It was still on the floor, Tony’s blood now dried to a thin crust on the point. With her shoe, Billy nudged it under the credenza behind her desk; she’d deal with it later, when she was alone and wouldn’t need to explain anything.
“What’d I do, Billy?”
Billy sat behind her desk and faced Nicole. A quick consideration her employee’s expression gave her the sense that Nicole knew what was going on here. Guilt and nerves fluttered unsteadily across her brow.
“Are you dealing, Nicole? Here at the club?”
“No!” She hesitated, then added, “Not at the club. I swear.”
Billy didn’t believe her, but let it pass. “But in the Cove. You’re dealing in the Cove.”
“I ...” She didn’t make a sentence from there, just let the single syllable die out.
“Shit, Nicole. Are you really that stupid? I told you what the rules are. I told you why. And you did it anyway.”
“It’s just—I need the money, I had a contact who said he could supply here. He said he had cover from the Paganos so it was safe.”
“Well, he’s a liar or an idiot. It’s most definitely not safe.”
“What happened?”
The direct approach was best. Billy wasn’t trying to catch Nicole up; she simply wanted the problem handled. “A couple Pagano men were here tonight. Looking for you. By name—so it looks like your great, safe supplier ratted you out. They know you’re dealing in the Cove, and they wanted to ‘talk’ to you.”
“Jesus. That guy you brought up here earlier?”
“Yes.”
All the blood dropped from Nicole’s face, like a stopper had come out. “Oh my god. Are they coming back for me? Jesus, Billy! I have to get out of here!”
“I handled it.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him I would stop you from dealing here, and if it happens again, he could take it out on me. He agreed.”
“You ... you did that for me?”
“I did. I wasn’t about to hand you over to him for whatever he had planned. We’ve all heard the rumors of what Pagano men do when they’re crossed.”
“Thank you! God, thank you! You rock, Billy!”
Billy ignored her effusive relief and got to the critical part of this talk. “Now, what you did was break a rule of my house, and you did it knowing how bad the consequences could be if you got found out—for me and for you. So this is your last shift at West Egg, Nicole, and it’s already over.”
Her teary, grinning demeanor locked up, and she goggled at Billy. “You’re firing me?”
“I am. And banning you from the club. I don’t want you anywhere on the premises ever again. That’s how I protect myself, my people, and my place. I cut out the rot.” She pulled a pad of forms from a drawer and began filling out the top one—a termination contract.
“But—I need this job.”
“Apparently, you have another one.”
“Billy, that’s not—I won’t do it again.”
“And I can’t take that chance. You put everybody here at risk, and you knew it. So you’re gone.” Finished with the form, she picked up her phone and called Derek.
“Hey, boss,” he said. She could tell by the noise on his side of the call that he was on the floor.
“I need security in my office to escort Nicole off the premises.”
Only a hint of a pause while he took that in, then, “On my way.” Derek knew when to question and when to shut up and do.
“You can’t just fire me. I have rights.”
Leaning back in her chair, Billy contemplated her first bad hiring decision. “First, you’ve been working for two months. You’re still probationary by any legal standard of employment, and can be fired at will. Second”—she leaned in again, turned the form to face Nicole and laid the pen on it—"you’re being fired for selling controlled substances on the premises, which is, by the way, a felony, so it’s termination for cause, sweetie.”
Nicole crossed her arms like a petulant preschooler. “It’s not fair.”
“Sign this, or I bring cops into the mix. Or maybe I’ll just tell Tony he can have you.”
Those petulant arms sagged to Nicole’s lap. “You wouldn’t.”
Billy kept her eyes steady and waited. Nicole finally slumped forward and signed, just as a knock on the door announced Derek’s arrival.
“Come in!”
Derek opened the door and stood in the doorway, filling it full. “She ready?”
“She is. Take her back to get her shit from her locker, then watch her go until she’s off the lot.”
He turned to Nicole and stepped clear of the door. �
��Let’s go.”
Nicole sat there, staring at Billy, her mouth open like she wanted to say something. Billy sat and waited. Inside, she was sick and thoroughly disgusted with this entire night, but she kept her cool. If there was anything the Bradfords of the Mayflower Bradfords had taught her it was how to repress her emotions. If Nicole decided to make a scene, well, that was why Derek was here.
Finally, just as Billy was ready to nod at Derek and have Nicole bodily removed, the former employee stood up and flounced her ponytail over her shoulder.
“Fine. I thought you were cool.”
“And I thought you weren’t a stupid twat. Guess we were both wrong.”
~oOo~
What’ve you got for me, baby? You got anything I want?
Billy started awake in the dark, her heart pounding, her body throbbing, sweat slicking her skin. She could still feel Tony’s dream fingers on her chest, his dream breath and mouth against her neck.
And—oh no way. No, no no.
She’d come. That was what had woken her. The nightmare of remembering that awful encounter in her office hadn’t frightened her awake—she’d fucking come to it. She could still feel it tapering off. Great. Next she’d be sending love letters to some serial killer on death row. Sick bitch.
Throwing herself back on the mattress in self-loathing, she stared up at her ceiling—and got another start when she wasn’t looking at her ceiling. Where—?
Oh, right.
She’d spent the night in the van, camping on the edge of the beach parking lot, because it freaked her out that Tony knew where she lived. Once she was alone in that huge building, standing in the middle of her warehouse of an apartment, she felt like the next victim in a straight-to-streaming slasher movie.
Which, apparently, got her subconscious hot.
At first, she’d tried to gut it out—it was almost three in the morning before the club was buttoned up and she was alone, and she’d figured she could survive the few remaining hours to sunlight—but all the weird stresses and lurking dangers of the night clumped together in the shadows of that big space, where the corners defied the reach of any kind of lighting.
She’d wanted only to nap a little before she hit the surf in the morning anyway, so she’d grabbed her gear, climbed into the van and rumbled the half-mile to the beach lot. Sleep had seemed to elude her, but obviously she’d gone deep enough to dream. The rush of the surf against the shore was among her favorite sounds in the world, and it must have lulled her eventually down.
She’d actually felt safer alone in her van on a dark parking lot than she had in her own apartment. That was fucked up.
And now she’d had a wet dream about the Pagano enforcer who’d gotten all the way in her space and threatened her, so maybe she should get her mother’s therapist’s number.
And what would a therapist say? Clearly, you have a suppressed rape fetish? No. That was not at all Billy’s kink, suppressed or otherwise. So, then, why had she dreamt so vividly about a man who’d been all the way in her personal space, threatening her? What, besides menace, had she felt coming from Tony, which had him featuring in some powerfully erotic subconscious mental imagery?
It was after she’d stabbed him. That lift in his eyebrows, that half-formed grin when he’d asked if she meant to fill her divot. She’d stabbed him, but he hadn’t retaliated. Instead, after a first burst of shock, he’d gentled. She’d surprised him, and for a moment or two, he’d shown her a different version of himself. One that made the coldhearted killer seem like a shell. She’d brought his guard down.
That glimpse of someone warmer—friendly, even, with a laid-back humor, and a sexy, genuine smile—had clearly caught her mind’s eye. He was more than Nick Pagano’s goon. What was it mobsters called their muscle? Goombahs? Tony had shown her last night, just for a moment, that there was more to him than that.
Or she was romanticizing the absolute fuck out of a profoundly dangerous man.
He was dangerous. Violent. He’d actively threatened her. That was what she had to keep foremost in mind. She couldn’t fixate on charming half-grins or sparkling blue eyes.
There was no chance in hell Billy was going to attempt to close her eyes again, so she lay where she was and tried to turn her brain off. When that didn’t work, she grabbed her phone and opened her voice mails.
There were two recent messages she’d saved: one from her mom, left around eight last night, telling Billy she was going to San Francisco for the 4th of July next weekend. There was a new guy, apparently; her mother never traveled without a man.
The second message had been left about two-fifteen in the morning, while they’d been closing out the club for the night. She’d watched that one come in and had sent it straight to voice mail.
Carly. Ten minutes after The Ladyslippers had left the club. Churning with the other drama of the night, Billy had laid into Carly like a Mack truck after the house lights went up, and Carly had come right back at her just as strong.
They’d both screamed and said a lot of bullshit that they’d meant, but hadn’t meant to say. All the shit that built up between friends, the stuff you kept to yourself because you cared too much about the friend to say it? That all got said last night.
Really, there wasn’t all that much between Carly and Billy that hadn’t already been said. Carly was an enthusiastic fighter, who believed in ‘cleaning out the gutters’ when they got too full. She’d helped Billy shake her Bradfordian tendency to bottle everything up early on, simply by pushing her buttons until she popped. Over the years of their relationship, in all its forms, they had thrown down with each other dozens of times and always worked it out.
But last night, Carly had dug down, gotten to the shit buried deep. When she’d scooped that out and hurled it at Billy, Billy had thrown the band out right then and announced that the friendship was dead.
She selected that message and played it.
“Billy, I crossed a line. I know I did. You were pissed, and I was pissed, and we did the thing we do, but I shouldn’t have gone there. I know how tender you are about it, and it was shitty of me to poke there. So mea culpa. I love you, baby. I just hate you hidin’ your light, you know? I—”
Billy closed out of the message; she knew exactly what was coming next. Even apologizing, Carly could not leave it alone. There was always a but. Not this time. Fuck that.
Setting her phone aside, Billy stared at the van’s ceiling and waited for dawn.
When the morning was bright enough that she could see her hand, Billy shoved a curtain back and peered out the window of her Vanagon to check the surf.
The sky was getting light, but it was still early enough that the beach was mainly empty. A couple runners, one with a dog, and three—no, four—people in wetsuits. All guys, by the look she had from here.
The public beach here in Quiet Cove didn’t start filling up until about ten, and didn’t hit max capacity until almost noon. It was a summer place, and summer people partied late, especially on weekends, so they didn’t generally leap out of bed with the sun.
There were quite a few dedicated surfers, mostly locals, however, who exploited the slackers’ sleepiness and hangovers. Sometimes dawn patrol got a little crowded. Particularly on weekends, and particularly when the surf was good. The surf looked great right now, but it wasn’t too crowded yet, so Billy pulled the curtain closed again and scrambled off the sleeping pad to get into her suit and grab her board.
A plus for sleeping in the parking lot—she could jump out the door and land in sand.
Billy had considered Quiet Cove a kind of home most of her life. The Bradfords had had a small compound here for generations, with what they considered a ‘modest’ main house (only six bedrooms and five baths!) and three cottages scattered over the property. With her mother’s flexible work schedule of not having one, they’d spent full summers in one of those cottages, from the weekend after the staff ‘opened them up’ until the weekend after Labor Day.
&nbs
p; She’d loved every minute of it. The whole family got along better on the beach. All those stuffed shirts unbuttoned. There was tennis, golf, sailing, and swimming, and long walks after dinner. Board games and books on rainy days. The booze flowed, and meals were good, normal food. People laughed and teased each other without the bitter aftertaste of nasty intent. The Bradfords managed to enjoy themselves in the Cove. They were even sort of likeable.
Her mother being her usual Allie self, a free spirit wherever she floated, had parented in the summer with an even more neglectful benignity. By the time Billy was in fifth grade, she was left to wander and explore and do what she wanted, so long as her butt was at the breakfast table in the morning and the dinner table at night.
She’d roamed all over town, become a fixture at the arcade on the boardwalk, made friends with some local kids, got taught to surf by a good-natured high school boy who’d let her practice flirting on him when she was twelve. She’d thought he actually liked her back then, but in retrospect, he was just a nice guy.
When the sun got low, she’d hurry back to the compound, sunbaked and happy, and spend the evening with her family. And enjoy it.
That had all been erased in a hurricane the winter of her senior year in high school, and they’d sold the property rather than rebuild. She and her mother continued summering here, renting a cabin at one of the resorts, until Billy was twenty, but they did it alone. It was still good, but quieter, and different.
The family eventually bought a new compound on Martha’s Vineyard, but Billy had only been there once. The vibe there was all wrong.
Quiet Cove was where she was meant to be.
And here she was. It was her home. No one, not even a Pagano Brothers enforcer, was going to ruin it for her.
She leashed her board to her ankle and headed into the surf.
~oOo~
The waves were pumping, and she had several nice rides in a row, then wiped out badly when some asshole jake crossed too close and forced her to bail just as her wave was starting to break. She took the full force of the break and got knocked around underwater for a while. When she finally made it to the surface and let the tide carry her and her board in, the guy was out of the water and hustling his ass up the beach, still leashed to his board. He knew what he’d done, and he was bolting before she could get in his face.
Accidental Evils Page 7