by Rhys Ford
Copyright
Published by
Dreamspinner Press
5032 Capital Circle SW
Ste 2, PMB# 279
Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886
USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Sinner’s Gin
Copyright © 2012 by Rhys Ford
Cover Art by Reece Notley
[email protected]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Ste 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA.
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
ISBN: 978-1-62380-248-6
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
December 2012
eBook edition available
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62380-249-3
Dedication
Sinner’s Gin is dedicated to Reetoditee Mazumdar, Bianca Janian, Tiffany Tran, and Lisa Horan (listed in order of appearance into my life). You four have kept my head on straight and looked at me funny when I went off the rails. This one’s for you.
Acknowledgments
OKAY, the Five—or rather four of the Five—Penn, Lea, Tamm, and Jenn. Because damn it, you are going to be in every single book I write because I carry you with me always. Also in my heart, Ree and Ren, my two beloved baby sisters.
On the business side, Elizabeth North. Dude, you keep me in Korean music and my cat in insulin. Also kudos to the Dreamspinner Press staff who have to put up with me: Lynn, Julianne, Ginnifer, Anne, Mara, Julili, and everyone else who pitches in to make me look good, thank you. Couldn’t get here from there without you.
I also need to give a shout-out to everyone who has bought my books. Thank you. Hell, thank you doesn’t even cover it. You all rock.
Lastly, I have to extend so much gratitude to the men and women who kept me sane when I was growing up and a little bit beyond. In no particular order and probably forgetting a shitload of names they are: Steve Tyler, Mr. Joe Perry, and the rest of the boys in Aerosmith, Janis Joplin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, AC/DC, The Police, Tool, Metallica, Flotsam and Jetsam, Jake and Elwood Blues, Etta James, and whoever else helped stopper up my brain leaks. Thanks for the sanity, even when it was only in my imagination.
Prologue
MIKI ST. JOHN was riding high.
Half drunk from whiskey and the other half pure adrenaline, he stuck himself out of the limo’s moonroof and screamed into the pouring rain. Shouts came from below, mostly curses, and strong hands yanked him down, grabbing the heavy gold trophy from his cold, wet fingers. Nearly deafened from the rush of wind he’d stood in, Miki grinned up at his best friend, Damien, reaching for the bottle of Jack they’d opened to celebrate.
After ten years of dragging their equipment and tired bodies from venue to venue, tonight’s celebration made it all worthwhile. They’d stood on stage, humbled and numb following their band’s name being read off by a legendary loose-lipped singer, and were handed four old-style record players cast in gold to hold until they got off stage. Miki couldn’t remember what he said—if he said anything at all—mostly nodding when reporters asked him if he was excited or proud of the band he’d formed with a guy he met behind a bar one day. How could he tell the blank-faced journalists that his heart probably wouldn’t start beating again until he got home to San Francisco, or that the three men standing around and behind him were the family he needed to be proud of him?
So he nodded and stumbled out past the hordes of people and flashing lights, letting himself be guided to the limo by Damien to be whisked off to an after-party being thrown by someone he didn’t know.
Two blocks away from the theater, Johnny pulled out a trophy he’d nicked from one of the backstage tables and tossed it into Dave’s lap. The drummer yelped, then harangued and scolded the bassist as he hefted the stolen statue, turning it over in his hands before passing it to Damien.
“This.” Damien held up the award, saluting it with the bottle of Jack Daniels he’d taken from the limo’s wet bar. “This is our payoff for every shitty night—”
“And our stuff getting ripped off,” Johnny howled, wiggling over the long bench seat to reach one of the beers from the limo’s mini-cooler. The New York Italian popped off the cap and flipped it over his knuckles. “And every goddamned gig with only three people!”
“God, those were shitty times,” Dave murmured, quiet as always, but the gleam in his eyes was a proud one. He took the bottle from Damien, tilted it back for a swig, and swallowed as he handed it to their singer. With his soft Southern accent, he drawled, “To our Miki… for kicking ass and taking names.”
“To our Miki,” Damien whispered in agreement. He pressed the trophy into Miki’s hands and took the bottle of JD back from Dave.
They were as different as cheese and chalk. Damien—with his cocksure, blue-eyed all-American swagger—was a sharp contrast to Miki’s street-bred Asian mongrel, and if not for a chance meeting one foggy day when Miki stepped out to grab a hit off a clove cigarette between shifts, they’d never have crossed paths. But when the guitarist overheard the growling, sultry voice belting out blues rock as he cut through a back alley of Chinatown, he knew he’d found his singer, even if he had to coax a very reluctant Miki off of a fire escape to come down to talk to him. Damien became the closest thing to a brother Miki ever knew, and as the guitarist leaned over to hug him tightly, Miki clenched Damien close to him, refusing to let go.
“You wrote the songs with me,” he whispered into his best friend’s ear. “Those are my words, but it’s your music too.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t slither across the stage in black leather pants and ink to sell it,” Damien teased, pushing Miki away with a semi-gentle shove. “You’re the reason our name’s on that thing. You’re why Sinner’s Gin’s name was read off tonight. Take a bow, kid. It’s all on you, dude.”
The moonroof seemed to be the only place wide enough to take a bow, and, his head spinning from the sheer joy of the night, Miki took it. The Los Angeles rain was cold. Not as frigid as the storms up north, but cold enough to make him shiver. The buildings around them were tall and lit up, and to his right, a wall of colorful LEDs hawked a soft drink for a few seconds before undulating over to a clothing store advertisement. He screamed a thank-you to the universe, barely able to get the words out before he was pulled back down, heady and soaking wet from the downpour.
Johnny and Dave fought over the roof’s switch, flipping it back and forth with stuttering jerks, and Damien pulled Miki close, cradling his friend against him as he took a mouthful of whiskey.
“You did good, kid,” Damien whispered, barely audible over the rough banter from their other two band members. “From here on out, we’re going to have a wild ride.”
Miki turned to tell Damien their name wasn’t on the trophy because Johnny had taken one of the props, and if they were lucky, they’d be sent theirs without anyone finding out they stole the other one to begin with, but the words never left his mouth. He blinked, and suddenly Damien was gone.
Then everything went black.
NP News—Tragedy struck the music world late last night when three members of the rock band Sinner’s Gin were killed nearly immediately fo
llowing their win at the Grammys. Initial accident reports detail a collision between their limousine and a semi truck carrying supplies for a nearby construction site. Lost in the crash were founding member and lead guitarist Damien Mitchell, drummer Dave Nichols, and bassist Johnny González, along with the driver of the limousine, Jordan Wheeler. All were pronounced dead on the scene.
The sole survivor of the early morning crash is reported to be the band’s singer, Mieko “Miki” St. John, who was life-flighted to a local hospital, with life-threatening injuries. A spokesman for the group’s record label reports Mr. St. John is in a coma and listed as being in critical condition.
Witnesses state the truck failed to yield to a red light, thus colliding with the band’s vehicle and an additional car. Other than the occupants of the limousine, no other injuries were reported.
While rain may have been a factor in the crash, a police spokesman issued a report stating the driver of the semi has been arrested for driving under the influence and will be charged with multiple counts of vehicular manslaughter.
Chapter 1
Took a blind man to tell me I was something to see.
Took a man crossing his heart to tell me where to begin.
And the kiss in the rain you last gave to me,
Was the holy water I needed to erase all my sin.
—Blind Man Crossing
THE fucking dog was back again.
Kane Morgan eyed the scruffy blond terrier suspiciously. It sat at the edge of the cement pad, right under where the rolling door to the converted docking bay would land if it were closed. He’d already lost a chamois to the mutt, and God knew what else when his back was turned. The thing was a thief and a menace.
And irritatingly enough, the dog always seemed to be laughing at him.
“Leave my stuff alone, mutt,” Kane growled and pointed warningly at the smiling terrier. “Just cause I rent this place doesn’t mean I’m one of those tree-hugging hippie artists who’ll let your shit slide. I’m a cop. I’ve got a gun. Keep stealing my shit and I’ll shoot you.”
He’d chosen to rent the work space from an art gallery and co-op mostly because it was close to his apartment. The space’s quiet was soothing despite the added bonus of a thieving neighborhood terrier. The majority of the brick building’s space had been turned into a long showroom on the main floor and art studios on the second level, while its three docking bays, sunk halfway down from the first floor, had been framed out and drywalled to use as studios. Kane had taken the end dock space, liking how the industrial, square windows overlooked the San Francisco Bay below.
He didn’t know at the time it came with a furry blond pirate.
With the windows open, a faint hint of the shore reached him as he worked. The perfume of the exotic woods he worked with mingled pleasantly with the permeated metal scent of the ex-ironwork’s girders, and the converted docking bay was big enough to hold his larger lathe, something he’d been itching to use since he got it out of storage. After fitting a seasoned, slab of a red-brown burl, Kane locked the wood into place, easing the scissor clamps in until the teeth lightly bit into the slab to keep it from flying free of the lathe as it spun.
Despite the cold lingering in the late morning air, Kane left the docking bay door open as he worked the wood. Kane could almost see the graceful lines of a bowl under the burl’s mass, with the shape of the lip framed in the burl’s rough bark. Setting his foot onto the lathe’s pedal, he could lean into the grain’s curve, his shoulders and arms straining to keep his carving tool firm against the hard wood. The whine of the motor lulled him as he worked, the tip of his blade finding the form he wanted to bring out of the amboyna burl.
That’s when he noticed the dog with its nose buried deep in the shelves where he kept his exotics.
“Fucking son of a bitch,” Kane spat out as the terrier dashed out of the workshop with a large chunk of koa clamped in its jaws. Stopping only long enough to roll down the bay door, Kane dashed after it.
The warehouse next door was built by the same architect as the gallery, a mirrored version of the co-op’s. A small alley, barely large enough for two men to walk shoulder-to-shoulder, separated the buildings’ back walls and, unlike the co-op, the other warehouse had been transformed into a home. The warehouse’s long alley wall retained its solid brick lower level, and the frosted glass square panels on the second level had been left in place, effectively preventing anyone from looking into the home from the gallery’s broad glass windows. Only two of the four docking bays seemed to remain, with thick blackened steel doors instead of the bright white the gallery chose. The warehouse’s old front glass panels were gone, replaced with long art-nouveau-style windows, but Kane couldn’t see past the thick curtains that swaddled the glass from the inside.
“Damn it,” Kane swore as he spotted the dog slipping under a bay door left open only a foot, enough for a blond terrier to squeeze through. He’d almost caught up with the mutt, but it was gone, and a tug on the metal rolling door only rattled it loudly. He squatted and tried to look through the opening but saw nothing, only darkness.
“Padlocked! Okay, let’s find out who owns this mutt.”
He paced down the front sidewalk and stared at the thick wooden door with its elaborate curlicue ironwork. There didn’t seem to be a doorbell, or at least not one Kane could see. Frowning, Kane was about to turn around and head back to the studio, but the koa’d been a bitch to get.
“And it’s not my damned problem that dog’s not on a leash,” he muttered angrily. “Fuck it. Time for whoever owns it to reap what they sow.”
FIRST, the pounding woke Miki up. It echoed through the converted warehouse until it seemed like the bricks picked up the beat and bounced it back on top of him. Mumbling in disgust, he turned over on the bed, pulling the soft sheets over his naked body. His bones ached in the cold San Francisco morning, and from the throb pulsating through his right leg, Miki knew in his gut that fog rolled in thick over the water, and there would be hell to pay in pain if he crawled out of his warm cocoon.
A wet tongue wormed into Miki’s ear, and he recoiled, spitting softly in disgust. The ripeness of the waterfront’s salty stink tickled his nose, and he reached out to shove the dog off the bed. The canine was too quick. Dodging the Miki’s wildly flung arm, the dog returned to lave the grumbling man’s face. In counterpoint to the slurping, the pounding continued, growing louder, although Miki hadn’t thought it was possible.
“Fuck, is it Thursday? Is that the grocery guy?” He sat up suddenly and instantly regretted it when the throb turned into quick, stabbing pains. Gritting his teeth, he reached for the bottle of ibuprofen he’d dropped to the floor the night before and dry-swallowed four of the burnt orange tablets. Bleary-eyed, he tried holding off the dog’s enthusiastic greeting and rolled out of the bed he’d set up on the warehouse’s lower floor.
The two-storied, narrow brick building had been refurbished while he was out on the road, and he’d slunk back to a home he’d never lived in, hoping to lick his wounds and maybe drink himself to death before anyone noticed he was gone.
So far, he’d only been successful in that no one noticed he’d dropped out of sight. He was still working on the drinking to death part.
Setting up a king-sized bed in a doorless guest room cordoned off from the warehouse’s open first floor had initially been for convenience as he healed from his injuries, but it’d been a long time since he gave a damn about the rest of the place. All of the furniture he picked out with the designer languished on the partial second floor, and the studio he’d had built into the farthest two docking bays sat as untouched as the cars in the bays next to it. He couldn’t remember the last time he climbed the sweeping metal staircase to go upstairs or walked along the ironwork upper deck that faced the Bay. There’d been talk before of creating a space on the roof for parties.
Before.
He’d wanted to hold barbeques and drink beer on that rooftop. It would have made life fee
l… real. Like he was finally real. Now the roof just held runoff from rain and fallen leaves from the oak and maple trees nearby.
The terrier mix chewed something out of his light blond hair and grinned a mouthful of teeth at him as Miki hunted for something to tug over his nakedness. The polished wooden floor was cold under Miki’s feet, and he cursed when the pounding began again.
“Fucking cut it out! I’m trying to find some clothes!” he shouted over the repeated hammering. A pair of gray cotton drawstring pants peeked out of the pile of laundry he’d done and dumped on the floor. He pulled them on and left them untied, letting the waistband slither down to hug his narrow hips.
Scraping his unruly hair out of his eyes, Miki stood up and immediately sat back down when his nerves screamed and twisted in pain. His mouth filled with blood and he swallowed it, tentatively poking at the shreds of his cheek where he bit through the soft flesh.
“Yeah, laugh it up, furball,” Miki growled at the dog. “Find me some socks, Dude.”
The terrier went back to chewing on his rump, and Miki grabbed the wooden cane lying next to the bed. The floor’s chill moved up from the bottom of his feet into his ankles, and he cursed to himself when his nipples pricked from the cold. The sharp, bitter pain in his leg grabbed him by the balls with each step he took, and after a few feet, the walk to the front door began to seem like a trek across Death Valley.
After shuffling from the guest room into the main area, he used as much of the back of his battered couch as he could to support him while he limped to the front door. The knocking renewed itself just as Miki reached the heavy wooden door. He undid the dead bolts, pulled it open, and stared at the very large, very angry man on his doorstep.
The man had been about to set off on another pounding spree but pulled himself up when the door swung open.