by Audrey Faye
Ah. That explained a few things. The guy who ran this place had huge fists and a marshmallow heart. “Is Joey still in charge?”
Now I had the bartender’s full attention. “Yeah. You know Joey?”
Not anymore. And I definitely hadn’t come here to renew old acquaintances. “Tell him his nephew should be carrying trays.”
She chuckled wryly. “Thanks a lot.”
I rolled my eyes. A singer who couldn’t bus drinks was definitely an overprotected violet. “What do I owe you for the Coke?”
“Nothing. The non-alcoholic stuff is free.”
That was new. I dropped some money in her tip jar and got a quick nod of appreciation, even as she turned to take another order.
I looked around. The crowd was thoroughly restless now, which is a hard thing to come by in a jazz bar with the drinks flowing freely. The kid at the front still didn’t have a clue, but hopefully someone else did.
I spied the man I hadn’t come to see making his way forward through the tables. His nephew scowled, and then smooth as glass, an old guy with a sax walked into view, two young guns right behind him.
Him, I knew.
I found myself an empty stool and set down the Coke, knowing that the ghosts and the mystique were about to have their way with me.
Martin raised his sax under the single, hazy spotlight, everything behind him shadows and trappings. These young guns knew enough to relish playing backup to greatness. The bar was utterly silent, every trace of restlessness evaporated into the dusky haze. The man we all watched smiled and nodded to the audience. And then he started to play.
The first notes washed over me, smooth as silk and dangerous as a sharp blade. And brought rain to earth so parched I was surprised it could still drink.
I settled in and hung on for the ride. I still didn’t know why I’d come—but I knew I’d be staying a while. I had a ghost to listen to.
13
I’d lost the battle for the van keys. Which, given the bloodshot state of my eyes, probably wasn’t a surprise. I’d had a lovely hotel room complete with pristine white sheets, down duvet, and thick curtains that had blocked out all of the city lights and most of the sound. I’d even managed to make my way back there before dawn, Martin’s notes still gilding and stabbing my soul.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to figure out how to use the curtains to swaddle my muse.
After four hours of fighting song lines and not sleeping, I’d dragged my ragged, cranky self out of bed. My mood, wretched after several hours of driving on really bad coffee, had not been improved by arriving back at the accountant-overridden motel to find Carly and Rosie still fast asleep.
My muse could damn well shack up with them next time.
Rosie, bedhead still firmly in place, glanced over at me from the driver’s seat. “You’re full of lollipops and polliwogs this morning.”
My over-caffeinated brain stuttered. “What the heck’s a polliwog?”
She shrugged cheerfully. “No idea. Just making conversation.”
Sharing a bed with Carly had clearly scrambled her neurons. “I know a woman with really sharp knives.”
The woman in question tossed a kale chip at my head. “Fight your own battles.”
That was exactly what I didn’t want to do this morning. Last night was still processing, and not in any way that was making me happy to be awake. Whatever dots had connected in the murky depths and sent me off to chase painful memories, their greater meaning still hadn’t bothered to reveal itself.
The only part of this day I understood was why this morning’s tour stop was necessary. And so we were touring, even if some of us had both feet dipped in grumpy.
I looked over at our driver again. This stop wasn’t fair, and I knew it. Rosie had asked for a sunshiny tour of hope. “This isn’t going to be like yesterday.”
She eyed me carefully. “And why is that?”
Because Jonah Hezpatch was one of our failures. Or rather, his wife was. We kept getting rid of Jonah, and Kristin kept changing her mind and taking him back. “This assignment isn’t done yet.”
Carly snorted from the back seat—she’d worked out where we were headed a solid hour ago. “It might not be done for the next decade.”
My partner had very little patience for Kristin Hezpatch. I had a better idea of what it was to yearn for the man you once fell in love with, even when all evidence suggested he was long dead. And I knew what it was to be crossing the wrong side of forty and still struggling to find your life.
Rosie pulled over where I indicated and parked behind a sporty green car that had been washed and waxed to the point of embarrassing. She looked around the suburban neighborhood briefly, searching for the point of this particular stop.
I checked out the cars on the block, not spotting Jonah’s black SUV. “Looks like we could intercept him on the way home. Have a little chat, since we just happen to be in the neighborhood.”
My partner shrugged. “He’ll just blow us off again.”
He would. This cat-and-mouse game of ours amused him, mostly. He was as scared of Carly’s knives as any sane guy, but he also knew he held the one thing that trumped all the sharp edges in the world—Kristin would do anything he wanted.
A door slammed shut behind us. I turned, recognizing the short, stocky woman with wild hair making her way around her rusty Toyota. I also recognized the look on her face. Damn. “Hey, Delia. He hasn’t taken off for good, huh?”
“I wish.”
I looked at the tough nut who wrangled six kids and almost as many cats, and still managed to keep a sharp eye on her sister. “Anything we can do?”
Delia just shook her head.
I sighed. Lost cause—she knew it, we knew it. Kristin had caved for the most recent time less than three weeks ago. There was no point getting involved for another six months or so while Jonah and his wife danced their way through yet another sick honeymoon of sorts.
It would go sour eventually, and when it did, Delia would call us and plead her sister’s case one more time, and we would aim a very frustrated kick or two at the van, make our way back, and run Jonah out of town. Again. Holding out hope that maybe one day, Kristin would finally choose not to dance. I nodded at Delia. “Let us know if she changes her mind.”
She pulled a couple bags of stuff out of her trunk. “I will.”
I could see the childish drawings sticking out the top of one of the bags. Care package for an aunt traveling the road of the lost. Signposts in red and green crayon, if Kristin ever chose to look.
I watched the back of Delia as she bustled up to a door where she was never welcome and generally shoved her way in anyhow. And then I looked over at Rosie, knowing she was smart enough to have picked up on all the things that hadn’t been said.
She almost smiled, eyes sad. “Sometimes you just outlast them, huh?”
Yeah. Something like that. Somewhere on the map of assassin success was a pin that said Kristin kicks Jonah to the curb. Turking wanted us to abandon all those pins, all the real people who needed us to keep standing for them until they found their legs, all the successes that hadn’t happened yet.
We weren’t done yet. There was still work to do.
-o0o-
I climbed back into the van, suddenly exhausted. Tour over. We’d shown Rosie the hope and some of the hard underbelly of why we did this, and reminded ourselves of more reasons to find a way to kick Turking’s balls into his throat.
I leaned my head back against the seat, knowing what an old guy with a sax would tell me. You can’t make music if you don’t blow. All I had to do was stop feeling like a limp noodle and get started.
Carly climbed in beside me, looking a little less drained than yesterday. Apparently, one of us had found some of our backbone. She reached for her seatbelt, and then froze as her phone rang.
Rosie turned around, face pinched.
Even I recognized that ringtone now. Turking, back up at bat. I felt the spurting hat
e in my gut. The man was trampling my life and pouring toxic waste on people I loved, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Carly stared at her phone for a few seconds and then pulled out her laptop. “He sent us a link again. To a photo album, I think.”
Rosie had already swung out her door and opened the one beside Carly, peering over my partner’s shoulder. I slid closer, not at all sure I wanted to see.
It was one of those sites where people post albums of grandkids and cute dogs. I waited as the spinning wheels on Carly’s screen did their thing and she muttered curses at weak hot spots under her breath.
The photo album’s title was the first thing that came up. A Few Things I Have Been Collecting. Something cold and slithery wrapped around my spine.
Carly clicked and made the images fill her screen, one at a time.
Mrs. Beauchamp, holding up a rainbow scarf and smiling sweetly at something only she could see.
Allie, leading a scraggly line of kids up the steps into the school.
Benji, tottering dangerously as he looked up at his sister with adoring eyes.
And a dozen more, each one the face of someone that we had, in our own gray and murky way, sworn to serve and protect.
“He can’t possibly have taken all of these.” Rosie sounded gut-punched.
“He didn’t.” Carly’s voice was clipped ice. “The one of Benji is from Alicia’s Facebook page.”
He’d probably never left the comfort of his computer. It didn’t matter. That he knew about Benji at all was horrifying enough. I tried to get a grip on my terror. Turking leveling up was the stuff of nightmares.
Carly’s face was white. “He’s gotten smart. He’s changing the game.”
He’d been plenty scary when he was predictable. “He’s taking aim at all the people we love.”
My partner’s fingers reached out for Rosie’s.
“It’s not me you need to worry about,” said the sexy gypsy quietly.
It was. Because if Turking ever figured out the lay of the land, he’d know that it was those connected fingers where my partner was truly most vulnerable.
Carly banged the laptop lid shut with a violence that nearly shattered it. And then, breath hitching, turned and buried her face in Rosie’s chest. “Sorry. I’m really sorry.”
Rosie gently collected Carly into her arms. “I’m not.”
14
We’d relocated to a suite at a tiny inn, complete with cozy fire and two very private bedrooms.
Lelo had made the booking, no questions asked, after a terse call from Rosie. I’d talked the nice young woman at the reception desk into delivering three yummy plates of lasagna, which were currently congealing on a small table behind us. Carly had followed us numbly and crawled into Rosie’s arms again at the first available opportunity.
One assassin, trampled by guilt and helplessness.
I stared into the fire, looking desperately for a way not to join her.
Rosie’s fingers gently combed Carly’s hair, but her face was fierce and worried. She looked over at me, eyes stark. “How can he be finding this much?”
The answer to that was eating holes in my gut. “The same way he’s finding all the crap on Carly. Tug on a string, and it’s all connected.” He’d found the strings of our web—the one we’d been dumb enough to leave hanging out in the wind.
The voice from the head in Rosie’s lap was barely a harsh whisper. “We weren’t careful enough.”
The acid in my belly churned. My partner had believed that for five long years—and this time, it might actually be true.
How many people had we put in harm’s way?
“Bullshit.” Rosie’s tone dared the universe or any puny assassins to disagree with her. “Have you guys paid no attention for the last two days? This isn’t about how careful you are—it’s about how good you are.”
I stared at her. Carly’s head flopped back down onto the sexy gypsy’s knees, but her eyes were paying attention.
“Maybe some assassins can be invisible. You guys can’t. You can’t possibly make a difference in this many lives without leaving footprints.”
The dissonance in my brain was deafening. “We have to be.” It was why we traveled constantly, kept a low profile, used fifteen kinds of technology to cover our tracks.
I looked at my partner.
She swallowed hard and voiced what we both knew. “We screwed up the day we started making friends.”
I was glad she couldn’t see Rosie’s face as that landed. One long, gouging moment of pain—and then love stepped out in front of hurt. Love, and two hundred pounds of pissed-off conviction. “Friends aren’t the problem here, and I won’t let you guys tell that lie anymore.” She glared down at Carly, who was readying a protest. “You started losing your stealth the day you started helping people, and you damn well know it.”
My partner sat up, eyes on fire. “I kept us hidden enough.”
“No,” said Rosie quietly. “You didn’t.” She reached out and enfolded two furious fists in her strong, competent hands. “How much of that stuff he dug up is from before you ever showed up in Lennotsville?”
Plenty of it. I wrapped my arms around my ribs, desperate to evade the truth.
“It sucks big, massive rocks that Turking’s the one pushing on this, because he’s scum who doesn’t deserve to breathe without choking on his own shit ever again.” Rosie’s eyes were two penetrating, inescapable lasers, and they were sweeping to include me now. “But he didn’t create this. The two of you did. And you created it because what you do is good and important and it leaves tracks.”
She took a deep breath. “You can only keep stuff like this under wraps for so long.”
Words said with a universe of conviction—and of tenderness.
One gentle, hard-as-nails warrior, holding space for all our cracking hearts.
-o0o-
I couldn’t stop looking at Turking’s photo album. And neither, I suspected, could Carly. Her phone hadn’t left her hand for the last hour.
Fear, growing tentacles in the wee hours of the night.
Rosie sat off on her own, leaning back against a spindly chair in front of the fire, picking at cold lasagna and watching the two of us with unconcealed concern.
She had good reason. Her very valid and entirely honorable realization had punched us in the gut at least as hard as anything Turking had ever thrown.
I looked over at the woman trying to collect our pieces as we broke. And saw her eyes change.
“Shit.” She jumped up, lasagna plate clattering to the floor at her feet. “I can’t believe we missed it.”
I could feel her buzzing energy even through all my layers of flannel and despair.
She crossed over to me first, squatting down so I could see her eyes up close and personal. “Put your fear down for a minute. We’re so damn scared of the picture he’s drawing that we’re not looking at the damn dots.”
All I could see was the most evil man I knew, aimed at the people I loved most. And my burgeoning terror at the number of dots he hadn’t found yet. All the innocents we would be helpless to protect.
I looked at Rosie, beseeching. “What am I missing?”
“He’s changed the game,” she said quietly. “And that’s how we take him down.”
She could see our way out—I could hear it in her voice. For the first time in a week, one of us was seeing the world without a thick haze of terror layered over everything.
Carly was still hugging her knees, staring at Benji’s face on her phone screen.
Rosie grabbed it from her hands and hurled it against the wall.
My partner looked up and snarled. “What the hell?”
The sexy gypsy leaned down and put herself nose to nose with a really pissed-off assassin. “It’s time to take this bastard down.”
There were no words in Carly’s reply.
Rosie snarled back, avenging warrior goddess on the rampage. “He fucked up, C.�
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My partner’s eyes bulged. She grabbed the shoulders of the fearsome woman getting in her face. “Make. Sense.” The words shot out like bullets—and bounced off whatever armor protects superhero florists.
“He’s stalking sixteen-year-olds and little old ladies. Dozens of them. I have a whole bunch of friends who won’t think that’s cool at all.”
No way, no how. “We’re not putting any more people into this ooze.” Even street-hard bikers. “He’s lethal, Rosie. He’s a rattlesnake.”
“But that’s just it.” Rosie’s pacing gobbled up the tiny rug in two steps. “A snake can only bite one person at a time—and he can’t even do that if a whole bunch of people are stepping on his tail.”
Several things in my head exploded. Painfully. “What?”
She grinned, and in that moment, I wouldn’t have bet against her in any fight on earth. “He just made a huge mistake. He added too many targets. He can’t watch them all, especially if we keep him busy by adding a whole bunch of people who want to step on his demon-weasel tail.”
There were way too many animals in this particular conversation. “You want to recruit a bunch of bikers to play footsie with a rattlesnake?”
“Bikers.” She looked at Carly. “And hackers.”
People who played with rattlesnakes for fun. I hated every nanometer of this idea—and I could see its wisdom. It was like music. One note is meaningless. It is together that they matter.
Carly’s eyes had snapped out of the land of bleak. “Truckers. Jane knows a whole bunch of them. They love her.”
All those freaking conversations she’d made me have every damn day in every damn diner all across the country.
“We need people protecting Turking’s targets too.”
My disloyal brain knew who those people would be. Those who ran the forums that gave women in distress a safe place to land. People like Allie and Shelley and Danno, who were ready to land a punch or two of their own.
An army, if we wanted one.
Rosie’s cheeks were flushed with victory on the rampage. “He’s only looking at some of your connections. The ones he sees as weak. As victims.”