by Kris Calvert
“Tree, stay with Polly.”
“What?” She turned in my arms and bristled. “You’re not coming down with me?”
“Sir,” he began. “I think it’s best for you to join Miss Polly until we can secure the area. Right now, it’s dark out there and we don’t know if someone is watching on the street, waiting to send a second wave of fire or not.”
“Second wave?” Polly’s face blanched and she re-racked the slide on her Glock.
With a slow blink, I bit my lip and stared a fucking hole through Tree. “There isn’t going to be a second wave, cher. I’m sure of it. Now stay down here with Tree until the area is clear.”
“Sir.”
“Tree?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I think you’ve said quite enough.”
Pressing my lips to Polly’s temple, I shooed her down the steps and gave her a wink, shutting the door behind them.
I barged back into the front room. Hawk had killed most of the lights. “What the hell was that?”
“That sir, was a fucking ambush. How well do you know the pizza place you called? Would they know your voice?”
I paced the room like a caged animal. “I didn’t call the damn pizza place. Dinah called. But they sure as hell know I’m here.” I stopped. “Why didn’t he just shoot me when he saw me?”
“He didn’t have the weapon with him when he first came to the door, sir.” Snacks, the older of the security detail spoke up. “He brought the first set of pizzas to you without the gun. When he went back to the truck, the little shit pulled a MAC Eleven. He was ready to spray you up…sir.”
I looked to Hawk. “Did he fire first?”
Hawk looked back to Snacks.
“His finger was on the trigger, sir. Your front door was open and he was about to walk in. I did what I needed to do.”
“But did he fire?” I asked again.
“Yes, sir,” Snacks replied. “He fired at me first when I came out of the shadow.”
It was only then I noticed the blood on the sleeve of his dark fatigue shirt. Snacks had been shot. “Holy shit. You’ve been hit.”
“Just a graze. I’ll tend to it in a bit,” he replied.
I shook my head. “This isn’t Kuwait, Snacks. It’s New Orleans. Go to the kitchen and have Dinah or Liz at least give you a towel.”
Hawk listened in his earpiece, then spoke into his shoulder. “Roger.”
I began to pace the room again. “Now what?”
“It looks like he came alone.”
“As much as I don’t want to, we have to call New Orleans Police. I need to make some other calls, too.”
Hawk crossed his arms over his chest, resting the AR-15 on his body. “What do you want to tell the police, sir?”
“We tell them exactly what happened. Dinah called in an order for pizza delivery. When she opened the door to pay him he came back and pulled a gun. Snacks shot him. He’s here as private security. Or…” I paused, thinking it all through—not as I’d been taught by the Bureau, but by my grandfather. “We pull his truck around to the back, go through it and see what we can find. Dispose of the body and the truck and eat some pizza. Because whoever wanted me dead isn’t gonna come looking for their hit man.”
Taco Six, who got his name I’d learned earlier, by winning six taco eating contests, opened one of the pizza boxes with the barrel of his gun, giving us all a good long whiff of the pie. I stared into the eyes of the team waiting for me to make a decision. Taking the sat phone from Hawk’s belt, I dialed a number.
“Who is this?”
“Tristan, it’s Z. Get over here.”
I hung up and tossed the phone back to Hawk. “Let’s eat.”
Hawk had one of the boys drive the truck to the garage. We waited until the door closed completely before attempting to dismantle the vehicle to look for clues.
Tristan arrived and the boys ushered him through the back gate. In a vintage black Vette this time, he made less of a racket entering Jackson House. I’d sent a photo of the plates to Tristan. The truck was stolen. When Hawk searched the body of the hit man, he’d come up empty. No wallet. No ID. And everything that was found in the truck could be traced back to its owner. I was certain if we got the body to the morgue and fingerprinted, he’d come back as a low level, expendable hitman from the Balivinos’ crew. They knew they could afford to lose him if he couldn’t pull off the kill and they could pin a murder on him if he were to get pinched.
“I hope we have fingerprints,” Tristan murmured. “Cause dental records aren’t happening.”
I looked at the body on the black tarp in the floor of the garage. Snacks had hit him twice in the motherboard. There wasn’t much left of his head.
“I’ve done what I can,” Tristan said. “Unless you want to come out of hiding.”
I shook my head. “Not today.” Pacing, I stopped and looked back to him. “Call Marchant.”
“Z—”
“Tristan. Do it.”
“The other has been taken care of,” Tristan said, flashing a glance toward Hawk.
I nodded and looked to Hawk. “We’re adding another person to the premises tomorrow night, but you’ll never know he’s even here.”
Hawk nodded. “Anything I need to know?”
“A doctor and a nurse. They’ll need to be cleared through the back. Tristan here will give you all the details.”
Tristan gave me a sneering side eye. “You give a shit-ton of orders for a fucking dead man.”
I walked from the garage and spoke without looking back. “Damn straight. Around here what I say, goes—dead or alive.”
“Hey,” Tristan called out. “Where’re you goin’?”
“To talk to the real boss—my wife.”
17
POLLY
Lying flat on a cold leather sofa, I stared at the ceiling in the safe room listening to Tree clean one of his guns. The barrel of another stared me in the face at eye level. My gun was in my hand, ready to shoot the head off of any intruder who might find their way into the dark room. Next to Tree’s gun was a pizza box. Liz had sent it down for him. The others were eating upstairs. It only made me realize how disconnected they all were from what happened tonight. A fake delivery man tried to kill Leo and one of their men shot the would be assassin in the head. And yet they still wanted to eat the pizza the dead man delivered.
“Are you sure you don’t want a piece?”
He’d asked me the same question three separate times. I didn’t know how many ways to say the word no. Still, it proved to me that I was correct when I told Leo the men wanted to be left alone to eat pizza, tell sexist jokes and clean their guns. I was at least right about two of the three.
“How old is this room?”
“Old,” I replied.
“Was it built with the original house?”
Dragging myself to a sitting position, I felt my long hair drift along one of the original chenille pillows, causing a storm of static electricity. I was exhausted, but my hair was alive with energy. “It was sort of here. According to Leo, it was part of an old root cellar the kitchen used to keep things cool. But it wasn’t this big. And it wasn’t hidden under the grand staircase. All of that happened when Kostas bought the place.”
“Built by Ephraim Jackson, right?”
I nodded. “How’d you know that?”
“My dad’s an amateur historian about New Orleans. He had me study a lot of it growing up—whether I wanted to or not. New Orleans has a ton of stories,” Tree said with a drawl that reminded me of Leo’s. He looked around the safe room. “It’s rich in history.”
“I’m pretty sure this house is too—and this room.”
“You mean the bootlegging?”
I held back my smile. “Yes.”
“The Temperance Movement was never anything I studied up on much. I never understood what the big deal was, but I guess there were people who felt the need to guide the moral compass of the country.”
; “Wherever there’s a law prohibiting something people want, I can show you people who’ve made a ton of money filling that demand,” I replied.
Tree stood, taking his loaded gun with him. “It’s pretty amazing what Kostas Xanthus did in this community. He helped to build some of the best schools, donated tons of money to parks and hospitals. He was a good person—a good guy.”
“He seemed to live an interesting life,” I said, thinking of Paulie, the Polar bear skin rug on the Andromeda.
“What do you mean?”
I couldn’t tell the story of Kostas and the hookers, so I improvised. “He traveled so much and was really well read. His library in the master suite is filled with first editions,” I said, glancing back at the library in the safe room.
“Cher? Tree!” Leo’s voice called from above. “Why don’t you come on up. We need to talk.”
“Yes sir. We’ll be right there.”
Tree quickly put his gun back together, gathered his trash and waited for me.
“What?” I asked.
“You coming?”
“I’ll be up in a second,” I said, thumbing over my shoulder in the direction of the bedroom. “I’m going to use the bathroom.”
Tree hesitated. “I should wait for you.”
I dropped my shoulders and stared at him. “Are you seriously going to stand outside the door and listen?”
I watched his face blush and knew I’d shoo him away with my comment.
“I see your point. I’ll be right outside the door at the top. Please excuse me, ma’am—I mean, Miss Polly.” He stuttered, tripped over his big feet and made his way to the stairs.
I stood, giving him a small wave, and walked toward the bedroom. When I heard the door shut at the top of the steps, I immediately holstered my gun and hit the lights in the back of the safe room to get a better view of the library that covered the back walls. Starting at one end, I scanned the titles. They weren’t in alphabetical order, which made my heart race a bit. But then again, they didn’t seem to be in any sort of order at all. It was as if they were jumbled, or grouped together by size or color. Tracing my finger across each and every spine, I looked for books on art. Moving from left to right, there were only four of the hundreds on the wall that had anything to do with art at all. And none had a Dewey Decimal number on the spine.
I pulled each one, tucking them under my arms as I went along, making a small stack on a table. I hadn’t spent much time in the back of the safe room. It was a dark place with extra chairs and odd items like ashtrays, cigar cutters and stacks of poker chips—some even looked to be made of ivory.
I knew Leo would start to get suspicious if I didn’t find my way back, so I stacked the books together and hurried up the stairs, shoving them into a bureau drawer across from the grand staircase. As I shut the drawer without a sound, I locked it, dropping the tasseled key into my pocket for safe keeping.
“Cher?”
Showing my face, I was the last person to reach the front parlor. Leo was holding court from his desk. “I’m here,” I replied, raising my hand in attendance.
“Look,” Leo began. “I know tonight wasn’t what we bargained for, but thanks to Snacks’ quick action it went down way better than it might have.”
I looked over to Snacks, his arm wrapped in a kitchen towel soaked in blood. “Oh my goodness, you’re bleeding.”
He nodded and gave me a wink, flashing me an okay sign. These men were tough and it made me think about her. I locked eyes with Bea Winter and forced a smile. I felt bad for all of them. I knew they were being paid to protect us, but at the same time, no one deserved to be put in harm’s way. It made me feel uneasy. If something should happen to one of them while they were protecting us, I wouldn’t feel like they’d lost their life doing their job. I’d feel like they’d lost their life because of me. I wasn’t prepared to live with that kind of guilt.
“Tomorrow is Oscar’s funeral,” Leo said. “I’ll be attending in the background, as will Bea, as Polly. Tristan will be there too.”
A pit formed in my stomach and twisted into a knot. He was going to the funeral without me. He was going to Oscar’s funeral with her. It was like a punch in the gut. Still, I hid my resentment.
“While we’re gone, the construction company that’s been working in the master suite will transport Oscar from the make-shift hospital back to Jackson House. Hawk, you and the others will run security on the premises, Maestro and Taco Six will accompany Oscar and the construction van from the Ninth Ward back here. Tristan?”
He stepped forward, but didn’t say a word.
“Did you contact Officer Marchant? I need to have a little chat with him.”
Tristan nodded, but remained quiet.
“We’re making this as simple as possible. Everyone know what they’re supposed to do?”
This time, they all nodded in affirmation. My job was to do nothing. Absolutely nothing. And as I stood there doing the same, I glanced at Bea again for only a moment. This time she nodded at me and smiled. It wasn’t a genuine smile, but more the kind you get from a bank teller or hair salon receptionist. She smiled because it was her job.
Tristan pulled away from the crowd. I watched Bea follow him with her eyes. He was an incredibly handsome man. His bad boy looks and brooding personality made him seem like something taboo—the kind of man every woman needed to experience at least once. With the sexy weathered look of an adventurer about him, his stoic demeanor came off as aloof or detached. But of all the agents in the room—security or otherwise—he was the most observant. Since he’d come into Jackson House, he hadn’t said two words to anyone but Leo, and yet I could tell he knew who everyone was—including Isabella Winter.
The crowd broke and as I watched the men scatter I found Leo and Bea standing together in front of me. “Cher,” he began, his face awash with the gravity of the night. “Bea is going to need something to wear tomorrow.”
He didn’t say, take her upstairs but that’s exactly what he meant.
I swallowed my pride and the lump in my throat. “To the ah—funeral.” I stumbled through my words, trying to get a read on Leo.
“Excuse us, Bea,” he said pulling me aside. I stared into his dark eyes and watched them soften. “I know you’re upset.”
I didn’t lie. “I am. I should be by your side. If she’s going in my place, then Tree should go in yours. Or don’t you trust me?”
He looked to the ceiling searching for words. “Of course I trust you. I trust you more than any of these people, cher. You know that. It’s just after tonight…”
“What?”
“I don’t trust the Balivinos. Who knows what they’re planning? I’d never forgive myself—hell I wouldn’t survive it if something happened to you.”
“Don’t you think I feel the same way about you?” I asked, exasperated. “Do you realize how much I worry about you out there?”
“I do, cher. I do. And if this was Mitch or Ron’s funeral, I wouldn’t try to keep you no matter how dangerous. Please don’t try to keep me from this.”
I swallowed hard. “You have to promise—”
“Anything.”
“Don’t get shot,” I said. Leo gave me a tiny smile. “And keep your hands to yourself.”
“Toi et moi, cher. Me and you.”
I walked away from Leo and gestured to Bea. “Come with me.”
I watched Leo as I left the room. He was all business. Even though he’d said the words, it didn’t feel right. I took the stairs slowly, silently. I wanted to do my part—I wanted to be the me to his you. At the moment I was struggling.
“Come in,” I said, opening the door to the master suite. “I don’t know what size you wear. Hopefully my clothes aren’t too big for you.”
“I’m sure whatever you have will be fine. I’m not picky. Just choose something you would wear.”
I stared at the bulging muscles in her biceps before looking her in the face. We were the same height, and our hair was
the same color and length, but Bea was sturdier than I was. For a lack of better terms, she was fucking buff. The kind of woman I envied at the gym.
“I’m a size four or a two—depending on the clothes.”
“Honestly,” she said, her blue eyes staring me down as she adjusted the huge gun at her side. “I can make whatever you give me work.”
I bet you can. “Do you have a thigh holster?” I asked, lifting my dress to show her mine. “If you’re wearing a dress and heels, it’s the best place to conceal.”
She popped her brow. “Impressive.”
Turning, I walked past the main fireplace and into the construction zone that was the beginning of the new closet. All of the clothes had been sealed in garment bags to protect them from the dust the construction crew had kicked up. Bea leaned into the door frame and I began the task of searching on my side of the closet for something in black.
“I’m sure I have a simple black dress or suit in here somewhere,” I said.
“Is that what you would wear to Mr. Wilson’s funeral?” she asked. “Something simple?”
I stopped my milling about in the bags and turned to face her. “Whatever you might think of me, Ms. Winter, I’m not pretentious. I was a nanny when I fell in love with Leo. All of this?” I said looking around the closet. “This is him. Not me.”
She nodded and I went back to looking—but not as hard as before. Her insinuation pissed me off and now I didn’t care what I found for her in black. Whatever I came to first, that was what she was getting.
“It’s just—aren’t you Thomas and Elizabeth Hyde’s daughter, their only child?”
The sound of my dead parents’ names hit me like a punch to the gut. My heart thrummed loudly in my ears as I felt all the blood rush to my face. My hands flinched, but I didn’t stop sorting through the garment bag. And then I found it. Like a needle in a haystack—a black Marc Jacobs sheath dress with simple gold embroidery at the neck and waist—size two. Slipping the hanger from the bag, I held it in the air and faced her. “Here it is.”
She tilted her head, clearly indifferent to my choice. “Okay.”