Lariat

by Marata Eros

  “Their deaths.”

  He gives me the profile of his face. “Yeah.”

  Noose’s smoke rings are unseen but present. The smell of his smoldering cig comforts me, and I resent quitting for the second time in a handful of days.

  “That is the scene that replays in my head when I can’t sleep. You being in their line of fire. Because mark my words, Dreyfus, those kids would have grown up to be used. All I could think of was that my brother hadn’t died defending me for nothing.”

  His free hand reaches out, clutches my cut, and drags me against him. He palms my skull and shakes my head with his calloused grip. “You dumb fuck. I love ya.”

  It’s a miracle.

  Noose never says how he feels. Before Rose, if shit got raw, he used his fists. Now he uses words.

  I’m getting there, but I’m not there yet.

  I let his phrase hang. I can’t say how I feel. I’ve got all I can cope with knowing what Angel went through and knowing that Noose doesn’t blame me for my hesitation. He doesn’t blame me for my instincts getting in the way of duty.

  If only for a nanosecond.

  That pause was almost too long, and losing Noose’s life would have been like a thousand deaths to me.

  I won’t let indecision hold me back next time.

  And that time is now.

  I have a life that has become precious to me. I can’t take back Angel’s past.

  But I can add a dose of justice. Lariat style.

  Knots and all.

  *

  “We all clear on this?”

  Wring and Snare nod.

  “Our guy on the inside—prison guard.” Noose smirks. “All the free jail pussy he can eat.” Noose turns to me “Sorry, man, no dis against Mini.”

  “None taken. My cousin wasn’t there long enough to negotiate her body.”

  Snare winces, shooting a long-suffering look in Noose’s direction. “You have zero tact, Noose.”

  He runs a hand through his hair, a cig jammed between his lips. “Yup. Sorry. I know I’m an asshole.”

  Silence.

  “Fuck. Tough crowd.” He grunts when we’re still quiet. “Anyways, we’ll have answers about who did Mini and why at the end of the night. But tonight is about justice.”

  Snare shrugs in the near dark. “Probably don’t need all four of us to kill one fucking perv.”

  Noose nods at Snare. “Remember getting Rose, and how that mess went sideways in a heartbeat?”

  Snare’s face goes still, all expression wiped. “Yeah.”

  “Well, better safe than sorry.”

  “I’m in,” Snare says. “I wasn’t bailing.” He looks at each one of us in turn. “I just don’t think you badass SEALs need my untrained ass.”

  Wring claps him on the shoulder. “Love the company, Snare.”

  Noose narrows his eyes. “We want this cocksucker. Don’t know what he’s been doing since he got out ten years ago.”

  Makes me steaming pissed that he was only in prison for less than five years for raping and beating a defenseless girl.

  My girl.

  “Those fucks don’t rehabilitate, by the way,” Snare says.

  He oughta know. His dad was a class A perv.

  “Where does this chode live?” Wring asks. He flips his blade out, closes it, flips it out.

  He’s wearing knots. Wring favors small knots and lots of them. Abrasion is superior. Killing is slower with that type of rope.

  I love his choices.

  “Renton.” Noose’s answer is curt.

  “Let’s ride.”

  “Car this time,” Wring says.

  “Of course. Just using the phrase.” Snare grins, his teeth a white slash of menace in the insulated gloom outside the club, scar effectively hidden in the gloom.

  We walk over to the hot rod that Noose owns. It has strategic cancer, but the engine is mint, purring like a well-loved cat.

  We pile in and head to the border of Kent and Renton—the slums. They’re small-time but home to a lot of offenders.

  Arnold Jenkins is no different, and he’s right in the center of that particular nest of snakes.

  We have his address, and now it’s time to take care of business. It has been a long time coming.

  I get a lot of satisfaction from delayed gratification.

  Chapter 19

  Angel

  Trudie’s car is a stick.

  Dad had promised to teach me how to drive a manual transmission. Instead, here I am, twenty-seven years old with only a ten-second lesson from Trudie under my belt. I’m spending more time killing the engine at every stoplight than actually driving.

  Finally, I manage to get to Jugtner, Cognate, and Anderson. It’s a few minutes before seven, and I’ll be lucky to talk with everyone I need to. I’m banking on the riot of the day causing people to stay late.

  I ran out of the office in an emotional whirlwind, the luxury of which I had no business succumbing to. Now, harsh reality has reared its head, and I have to make my actions right.

  Palming the straight bar across the dark, reflective glass of the door to the firm, I’m momentarily blinded by a streetlamp light refracting into my eyes as it switches on.

  I blink rapidly in an effort to expel the dots bursting in front of my vision as I walk through the door. As chaotic as the office was this morning, it’s now as quiet as a tomb when I step into the chilled interior.

  Maryanne glances up, sees it’s me, and has rounded the desk before I can greet her.

  She grabs my hands and tightens her grip painfully. “Angel, are you okay?” Then, before I can answer, she adds, “you left so suddenly, we couldn’t figure out what was happening. And you’re not answering your cell.” Her lower lip trembles, and I realize I freaked everyone out.

  Way to go, Angel.

  “I’m sorry.” I try unsuccessfully to extract my hands, but I give up and continue. “I dropped the phone when I was assaulted.”

  Maryanne lets go of my hands and drags a finger down the wound Tommy gave me.

  The phone sitting on her desk purrs its ring in the background, and I stall out. Just on the verge of spilling everything, my lips are agape with the mess of my life.

  “Hold on.” Maryanne races back to the desk and flips a switch. “I’ll turn it over to the service. We’re at seven o’clock, anyway.”

  I nod and slowly sink into the couch. The day’s events are catching up to me.

  Maryanne tucks her sensible gray skirt underneath her knees and sits beside me. A brass tack from the pillow design on the leather couch wedges in my butt cheek, and I shift my weight. My rib twinges at the movement.

  “First, I’m so sorry about Mini Dreyfus.” Maryanne’s pale-green eyes search my face, probably finding more than I want her to find. She shakes her head as if wanting to say more, and the sleek pewter bob haircut slithers around her softening jawline.

  “Thanks.”

  Those strikingly pale eyes move over my wounds. “What happened to your face, Angel?”

  I gulp. How much can I say? I don’t want to endanger her, but I don’t want to come across as a battered woman covering for a man. In my case, that would be impossible to manage, given my background. “I was mugged at Garcia’s.”

  Maryanne’s hand flies to her chest like a lost bird, her manicured short nails shining slightly under the warm white of the LED overheads. “What?” Her gasp is a hiss between her teeth. “Did you call the police?” Her eyebrows draw together, making a perfect number eleven between her eyes.

  “No, not yet. And that’s why I don’t have my cell phone.”

  She clasps my hands again. “This is all really bad timing, Angela.”

  My heart sinks as I hear the other metaphorical shoe fall with a great, resounding thud.

  Her lips flatten into a grim line. “I think the partners are…”

  I shake my head in disbelief, my eyes burning. “I know that there will be retribution for what Lar—Shane Dreyfus did to Br
ad.”

  Maryanne’s eyes widen, then she looks away.

  It can’t be good that she’s avoiding my gaze.

  “What?” My tone is urgent.

  “I am the worst type of woman who ever lived. But you’re my favorite. You’re the daughter I never had. So honest, so hardworking, so hard on herself.”

  Her direct stare meets mine.

  “You’re scaring me, Maryanne.”

  She nods quickly. “I’m scared too.”

  Maryanne’s sea-colored eyes pierce through me, and she takes a deep, shuddering inhalation. “The partners are going to let you go, Angel.”

  I slump back in the seat, dazed. I thought there was a slim possibility they would fire me due to the publicity surrounding Mini’s death and the resulting connection to Lariat. The sequence of events appears sordid on the surface. But I thought since I had been with them for three years without a black mark anywhere, a little bit of explanation would remedy any wrongdoing. They would see my machinations for what they were—trying to right a wrong. That has always been my motivation.

  In a way, I realize this is my fault. I was the epitome of unprofessional. I sought Lariat out on the advice of my not-so-innocent client outside of work hours.

  The appearance of impropriety is there if anyone is looking closely, no matter how innocent my motives are. The mob was apparently watching my every footstep.

  And though the partners can’t possibly know that I had sex with Lariat, he might have illuminated our interaction by the sheer alpha male attitude he threw around at my place of work.

  He punched Brad and acted all tender when I was a shaking mess.

  Maybe he’s not acting, my mind whispers.

  I look down at my clenched hands. From the outside looking in, he seemed genuinely disturbed by my distress. Lariat doesn’t appear to keep anything in—unlike me.

  So he storms in the office, sees Brad looming, and assumes the worst.

  Then he kicks Brad’s ass in full view of the entire office. And I somehow think Lariat’s message wasn’t broadcast to everyone loud and clear?

  That message is simple: Angel is doing the relative of a client.

  My actions—and Lariat’s—cast doubt. That doubt is directed at me as a professional and as a human being capable of the quality the firm wants to represent them.

  After a couple of, albeit shallow, inhales I ask, “Is there any chance?”

  Maryanne’s eyes tighten, and I know. “It’s not my place to say.”

  I smile weakly. “But you already have,” I say softly.

  She nods. “I have, dammit.” Her liquid eyes find me and trace the healing bruise on my face. “I’m sorry. From what I heard, they’re giving you the minimum severance package, and you’re out. They want to bury this mess. Deep.”

  The partners have never liked the pro bono part of the firm. If I hadn’t been Gregory Monroe’s daughter, I might have never gotten the opportunity to do my calling. But my role did serve them in a way. It made the firm appear philanthropic.

  “What are you saying, Maryanne?” a swelling, deep baritone asks from across the room.

  We simultaneously startle at the verbal intrusion.

  I stand suddenly, realize I’m still entangled with Maryanne, and stumble.

  Brad’s smile is a slash across his handsome face; his square jaw is clenched. “I hope I didn’t just hear what I think I heard?”

  Maryanne dumps her gaze to the floor, tense like a rabbit caught in a snare. “No, Mr. Goren.”

  “Good.” Brad turns his model-like face to mine.

  I don’t contain my gasp of shock fast enough.

  “Like what your boyfriend did to my face?”

  My eyes skate over the distended lump on the side of his jaw, which he just revealed by turning to face me head-on. It’s a miracle Lariat didn’t break his jaw. I think he meant not to, which is somehow scarier.

  Please don’t press charges, I have time to think.

  “The only reason I don’t go after his biker’s ass is because his cousin was dispatched while under your care, and other particulars that will become apparent momentarily.”

  Guilt spears me, the evisceration of my psyche complete.

  “I—”

  Brad quells my potential rebuttal with a palm. “I know you didn’t pull the trigger or whatever event took place there at felon central.”

  I frown. Brad is acting strangely, even in the light of most recent events.

  “And you are dating him, aren’t you, Angel?”

  I whip my head back and forth, denying a dating relationship with Lariat based on general principle.

  “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” Brad states quietly.

  My heart starts to race, and a slow trickle of sweat rolls between my breasts.

  “Maryanne,” I say with slow precision. Every instinct of survival I have is lighting up like an evil Christmas tree.

  “What?” she asks as though awoken from a fog.

  But it’s far too late. It’s too late for regret, too late for understanding that all my nos to Brad were about something I sensed—but didn’t have a concrete name for.

  Brad raises a gun and points the muzzle at Maryanne.

  “No!” I scream, throwing my arm forward so hard, I lock my elbow.

  A soft shout of sound strikes me with quilted horror.

  Skull fragments explode beside me, hitting me like small razors of bone, and I instinctively shut my eyes tight. I lift my hands to protect my face as hot blood smacks my throat and the lower part of my jaw. The pungent metallic aroma makes me involuntarily open my mouth so I don’t breathe it in through my nose.

  Maryanne’s body falls at my feet with a thud.

  I startle awake as though from a nightmare.

  Brad’s grin is evil. “Now that was satisfying.”

  My mouth opens and closes like a fish deprived of water.

  “Cat got your tongue, slut?”

  I’m not a slut, and rage-fueled adrenaline sings through me—even though Maryanne’s body cools at my feet and my future is a dim hole somewhere. I don’t let yet another death overwhelm me—even hers.

  “I’m no slut.” Shock numbs my insides, and I fight rattling apart.

  He teases the gun, outfitted with a silencer, a notch higher, directing it at my face. “Stop defending your honor. We’ve had someone watching you since day one. We know your goings—and we certainly know your comings.” He enunciates that last word with a derisive sneer.

  Tingling heat singes my fingertips, and my bowels hiccup, begging for release. I am literally scared shitless. But I don’t know how anything fits, and my lawyer’s mind struggles to align the pieces.

  “Where’s the rest of the staff?” I’m proud of how level I make my voice.

  “It’s late.” He looks at the body at my feet, and I force my rising gorge down. “Maryanne”—he sighs—“the nosy bitch wanted to hang around, hoping you’d flock back so she could tell you the juicy news.”

  “My firing?” I ask, panic pressing in from all sides.

  But panic never gets anyone anywhere. The emotion didn’t help me when I was too young to fight, too fragile.

  “Yes.” He swings the muzzle as if it’s a hand, and I resist the urge to flatten my body on the ground, eyes locked on the muzzle. “That’s not important now.”

  “What’s important?” Keep him talking, Angel.

  “You. You’re more important than you know.”

  Whatever. He’s clearly insane. “Let me go, Brad.”

  Brad shakes his head. “Tried to play nice with you, but that didn’t work. You’d spread your legs for whoever stopped long enough and had a dick. But my dick?” He makes a low noise of fury, and my body chills. “My dick wasn’t good enough for our Angel.”

  I swallow. Stepping back, I trip over Maryanne’s leg. My palm smacks the wall, and I hold myself up, carefully stepping backward without looking at her corpse.

  I make a stab
at reason with a madman. “It wasn’t about your penis, Brad. It was about dating someone from the firm.”

  Did he say “we kept an eye on you”? I pluck the pronoun out of thin air, slotting it into my terrorized brain for later contemplation.

  “I don’t want to date you, Angel.” His grin is feral. “I want to fuck you.”

  I hear a whimper and realize it’s coming from me. “I’m not going to allow that.”

  “Here’s the thing, Angel—where you’re going, there’s not going to be options about partners. Everyone’s going to be a partner.”

  Okay. I make unsteady progress toward the door, deciding he can shoot me in the back.

  “There’s no escaping, Angel.” His voice follows me. “Ricci is through playing cat and mouse. He’s cashing all his chips in.”

  What chips? I don’t stop my forward momentum.

  “Daddy dearest fucked the wrong hole, and you’re still paying the price. Actually, your pain is the bitch’s pain.”

  “What bitch?” I ask, numbingly confused and turning to face him before I escape.

  “Didn’t you go to law school?”

  I nod stupidly and want to kick myself.

  Get out!

  “What bitch?” I repeat with exaggerated slowness. It’s not feigned. I really am in a miserable spot between acute shock and terror, and understanding anything has become a challenge—especially with a gun trained on me.

  We’re discussing riddles with Maryanne’s cooling corpse between us; it’s not a normal circumstance.

  “Your mama.” Brad taps the top of his head with the extended muzzle of the silencer, and my palms dampen at the sight.

  But this has only one solution and I frown. “My mother’s dead.”

  Brad shakes his head. “Nah, your real mom. The one who slept with Daddy and got knocked up.” His grin is wide and genuine. “You’ll have time to meet her soon. She’ll love meeting you.”

  Liar. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Brad.”

  The door behind me, which was just out of reach, slams open, and the mob guys from the cemetery stroll in.

  I recognize Talker as he takes in the dead secretary then at Brad. “Sloppy.”

  Brad gives an aw shucks grin.

  “Kill yourself,” he says through bared teeth.