by JA Huss
I pick her up, place her on the table behind me, and say, “We need to get rid of these boots.”
She laughs, lazily. Says nothing. Just watches me as I untie the first one and then begin unlacing them.
“These fuckers are a huge commitment.”
I look over my shoulder at Logan and find him staring at us with a frown. “What?” I ask.
He shakes his head but says nothing. Just grabs at his dick, which is hard again, I can’t help but notice, and repositions it so it’s not so obvious.
“Don’t worry,” I say, still looking up at him. “We’ll do it again. Won’t we, Yvette?”
Her eyes are still half mast. Still drowsy. She was drinking earlier. It’s very apparent now.
“Logan, get us all a drink, will ya? It’s on the house.”
He just lets out a long breath of air, like he’s got something on his mind. Which, I assume, is the fact that we were supposed to kill this girl, dump her body over a ravine, and be back on our way.
And none of that is happening tonight.
We’re stuck here. There is no point in killing her when we can’t even leave. That’s just bad execution. No pun intended.
“Relax,” I say. “We’re still good.”
He nods, then walks off behind the bar and starts pouring another round of Jack, this time for everyone.
I finish unlacing the first boot and push Yvette back a little so she has to prop herself up with both hands flat on the table behind her. Then I tug off the boot, which, even unlaced, takes some effort. “Jesus,” I joke with her. “Who were you expecting today that you had to dress up in these flashy boots? And don't get me started on that top. Your whole outfit is like a costume.”
She frowns, which makes her nose wrinkle a little.
“What?” I laugh. Because she’s a very cute girl. Not like one of those sophisticated high-society women or anything. Not the model type, either. Just… damn cute. And this costume makes her look like… I dunno. Like she was dressing for a sexy Renaissance fair or something.
“It is kind of a costume, I guess,” she finally says, once I’m unlacing her second boot.
“Yeah? What part were you playing?”
“Sad girl with nothing to live for. But she wants to look sexy when she dies.” And then she laughs.
But I don’t. I just stop what I’m doing and look at her for a second. “What?” I say.
Logan appears with the drinks, distracting her away from my question. She takes one, he sets the other down on the table next to me, and then retreats back to the bar to get his.
By the time I look back at Yvette, her grin is gone. She downs her drink in one gulp, then calls out to Logan, “Hell, just bring the bottle.”
But her comment—wants to look sexy when she dies—what the fuck was that? Does she know who we are? Why we’re here?
The lights flicker. Three or four times, but don’t go out.
“Shit,” Yvette says. Then she sighs. “This day, man. I fucking hate this day.” All her words run together and some of her vowels are missing.
I don’t know how things just went from sexy-great weird to dark-bizarre weird, but they did.
“The power will go out,” she tries to explain. “They flicker like that during a storm. Then… poof!” She laughs.
“Hmm,” I say.
“Another?” Logan asks, already tipping the bottle of Jack to her glass.
“Fuck yeah,” she slurs. She downs that in one gulp too.
“So the power,” Logan says, refilling her glass again, picking up on our conversation. “You got a generator or a wood stove or something?”
Leave it to him to be practical.
“I do have a generator. But it’s in the building out back.” She looks over her shoulder to what I can only assume is where the back door is hiding behind hallways and walls, then says, with some difficulty, “But I’ve never run it. I don’t even know how to turn it on. I have a wood stove upstairs too. We can just use that.”
The lights flicker again.
“Fuck that,” Logan says. “If we’re gonna be stuck here for the night, we’re gonna do it in style. AJ can start the generator. He’s handy like that. Right, Aje?”
Aje. Damn. He hasn’t called me that in years. Not since we first met. Before all this life-of-crime bullshit changed us into these two guys we are now.
I grin at him just as I start tugging on Yvette’s second boot.
Why was I so insistent on getting her boots off again?
Oh, yeah. Sex. Her tits are still popping out over the underwire of her bra, her shirt ripped open, her pants halfway down her thighs.
The whole thing is something out of a bad Seventies porn flick.
I stand up, pull Yvette to her feet—which she does reluctantly—twirl her around so she’s in my lap, and say, “Take her pants off, Logan. I want her naked.”
He grabs her pants at the ankles and pulls. Would’ve been a smooth move if he got them off in one swoop, but he doesn’t. They’re skinny jeans. So he chuckles a little and then goes about working them over her ankles, finishing big as he tosses her pants over his shoulder.
We just stare at her.
She’s oblivious. Too busy pouring herself another drink, because somehow she has downed that last one too.
“Anyone else think this has gotten weird?” I ask.
Logan huffs some air.
Yvette says, “Who cares?” and tips the glass back to down it in one go.
But I grab it from her hand before she gets more than a sip. “How about we take it easy on the Jack, huh?”
She looks at Logan to see if he agrees. “Whatever,” he says, noncommittal.
“OK, geniuses,” Yvette says. “How am I supposed to show AJ the generator if I have no pants on?”
I look at Logan and shrug. “Lights aren’t out yet.”
He grins back. “How about we take a break and get something in Yvette’s stomach first?”
“Kitchen’s closed,” she slurs. “I’m not opening it up. It’s closed for good.”
“Huh?” I ask. “Are you… going out of business or something?”
“You could say that.”
Logan looks at her and frowns. Then he says, “Let’s go upstairs, shall we?”
I take her hand and pull her to her feet, but she wobbles. So Logan positions himself on one side of her, and I get on the other, and together lead her over to the doorway she points to.
“Up there,” she says.
It takes more effort than I figured to get her up the steps. And once inside the apartment, she doesn’t even flip the lights on, just stumbles forward into the darkness and collapses onto a couch, sighing. “I figured this day would be boring and uneventful until midnight. But I was wrong.”
“What the hell is she talking about? I ask.
“No clue,” Logan says, finding a light switch. The room illuminates with a soft glow from a single lamp in the far corner. “But listen. Yvette,” he says, redirecting his words to her. “You relax here on the couch while Aje and I have a little private chat.”
She mumbles something I don’t catch and turns her back to us.
What a wreck this chick is. Tits hanging out of her bra, no pants on, and her underwear is riding up her ass crack.
Which I sorta like, so I’m not complaining.
“Come here,” Logan says, directing me to the hallway that leads to the bedroom.
I follow him to the end of the hall and say, “What’s up?”
“Well… this isn’t exactly going as planned.”
“No shit.”
“So we’re in agreement?”
“About what?”
“Fucking her until the snow stops.”
I smile. Because he left something out. “You mean fucking each other until the snow stops? Because she’s wasted.”
Logan stares at me for a long second. “Do you think—”
But before he can finish the lights flicker three times… a
nd go out.
Chapter Six - LOGAN
“Shit,” AJ and I both say at the same time.
It is dark as fuck up here without lights. Especially in the hallway. But there’s just enough light from the glow of snow through a window for us to make our way back to the living room without much issue.
“Yvette,” I say, walking over to the couch. “Do you have flashlights?”
“Of course she has flashlights,” AJ says. “Mountain people with generators have all kinds of cool end-of-the-world shit like that.”
He turns towards the kitchen, feeling around the countertops until he finds drawers to search.
Yvette is asleep. She doesn’t even move.
If the roads were clear and we weren’t stuck here, now would be the perfect time to just stuff a pillow over her face and get the job done.
But it would be very stupid for us to kill her and then be stuck here with her decaying body. Risky as well.
People must care about her up here. From what I can gather she’s been running this bar for a couple years. Long enough for people to know her. Long enough for her to make friends. So there’s also a chance that some nosey, well-intentioned, trigger-happy local will drive a tractor, or a snowcat—or a fucking sleigh pulled by moose, for all I know—over here to make sure she’s OK.
Yvette Nightingale isn’t her real name.
Her real name is Glori Dell’Ariccia.
Yes. Related. She’s Damon’s runaway wife.
Which he wouldn’t care so much about except she took something very valuable with her when she left and he wants it back.
The problem is… she no longer has that something. Since we started watching her two weeks ago there has been no evidence that she even knows where that something is.
This is why Damon’s done with her and wants her dead.
“Found some,” AJ calls from the kitchen. He comes back into the living room shining a powerful beam of light and says, “Catch.”
Fucking flashlight almost hits me in the head, but I snatch it out of the air just in time.
He shines his light in my face and says, “Just keepin’ you on your toes.”
“Fuck you,” I mutter, turning the flashlight on, then say, “Go find that generator. I’m not in the mood to be stuck here all night in the freezing-ass cold with no heat.”
AJ pans the beam of light around the room and stops on the fireplace, which is really a massive stone hearth with a wood stove sitting inside a wide stone alcove with a pipe reaching up through the chimney. “There’s that,” he says, panning the light over to a stack of wood and thin branches. “Have at it. I’m guessing this generator is gonna take a while to get started. That’s if she even has fuel to run it.”
This was not how I was planning on spending my Sunday evening. I was hoping to be back in Durango before midnight and on the jet back to the city by daybreak tomorrow. And it’s already too cold up here. There’s no way I’m gonna huddle to stay warm and wait for a goddamned rescue.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll start a fire. But you need to get that generator started.”
“I’ll do my best,” AJ says, walking over to the still-open door and disappearing through it. His boots clomp on the stairs and then a few seconds later I hear a door slam.
I go over to the wood, and start stacking kindling inside the stove. There’s a little wire basket off to the side filled with long kitchen matches and bits of wood shavings. Not the kind of shavings you buy for rodent pets, but the kind you whittle off a stick with a knife.
Fucking rustic. I hate everything about it.
But it’s a good thing it’s here because making a fire is extremely simple. And a few minutes later I’m stacking logs and heat is pouring out in waves.
I crouch in front of the stove for a few minutes, letting it warm me up, then stand up, flash my light around the room, and take it in.
It’s a cozy place, that’s for sure. Small. Just one big open room with a kitchen on the far end and a makeshift dining area. But the ceilings have impressive wood beams. Not simple beams either, but trusses. Specifically, hammer beam trusses.
I’m impressed with myself for knowing this, but Damon built a house several years back and used this design. And this one isn’t even angular—like his was—but arched.
Custom, I decide.
And then I remember that they fought over this exact design element in the new house just before she took off.
Looks like she got her way after all.
The floors are wide-planked pine and look old and worn. There’s a large sheepskin rug that covers almost the entire living area and once I take a closer look, I decide the couch is very pale yellow velvet.
Oh, man. If Damon saw this he’d lose his mind. This whole time she’s been gone he’s made a big deal about how she left with no money. How she was broke, living in some hovel. How she was probably starving. Probably waitressing to make ends meet because she had no skills or education. Hell, she never even finished high school.
He wasn’t that far off. She’s a bartender, not a waitress. And she owns this place, so not starving. But she is most definitely not living in a hovel and she is decidedly not broke.
The kitchen is modern and looks brand new. Dark soapstone countertops, rustic pine cabinets that climb too far up the wall to be practical, large stainless-steel farm sink, and matching appliances.
Oh, he’d be livid if he saw this.
Maybe I should burn the place down when I leave? So he never has to see it?
I turn back to the living area and look at her. Glori. Yvette. Whatever she’s called.
“Yvette?” I say.
No response. Not even a mumble or a slight change in position. She’s out.
So I wander back down the hallway to the bedroom. There’s only one and it’s massive. Almost as big as the entire living area.
In it is an equally massive canopy bed. I pan my flashlight over the top to get a better look because—fuck me—that shit has to be custom too. This is not the cheap white-frame canopy of a little girl’s bedroom. It’s got the same matching wood as the trusses in the living room. And the ceiling treatment continues in here, but they’re not trusses, just long, thick beams that span the width of the room.
There’s fabric hanging from the bed frame. And I can’t help myself, I reach out and touch it. Because it’s the same soft, pale yellow velvet as the couch. And there’s another room-sized sheepskin rug underfoot.
Jesus. This whole place is custom.
Oh, yeah. Damon cannot see this.
This apartment is not just cozy and quaint. It’s fucking luxurious.
Where did she get this kind of money? I mean, OK. I could maybe see her scraping enough cash together to buy the bar. It’s not quite a dive, but on the outside it looks like any other hundred-year-old rectangle building you see on the side of a secluded mountain highway.
So maybe—I dunno—she stole the money somehow? Maybe from Damon and he didn’t know it? I could come to terms with that.
But none of it makes much sense.
We’ve watched the bar long enough to know she does a good business on the weekends. But it opens late and closes early Monday through Wednesday because the place is mostly dead. There’s no way four days of ski tourists a week can fund these kind of improvements. And how does she make money in the summer when the lifts are closed? There just cannot be that many people traveling along the highway through Wolf Creek Pass to fund this type of lifestyle.
“You have secrets,” I say out loud. “And I want to know what they are.”
Not that I’d ever tell Damon. And not because I want to spare his feelings and make him feel good. I give no fucks about Damon. He’s a means to an end just like every other person I’ve ever met in my life.
I just like to know shit.
So I walk over to the bedside table—rustic pine, just like the floors—and pull open the top drawer. And what do I immediately find but a whole slew of sex toys?
Yvette, you are a kinky little miracle.
No wonder Damon was pissed when you took off.
I didn’t know Yvette before she left. I knew of her, but I was just one face among many back then. Just a guy who did stupid tasks like collect money and beat the shit out of people who didn’t pay.
I still beat the shit out of people sometimes, but AJ mostly does that now. I still collect money too, but at the organizational level, not the street level. AJ runs those guys too. I clean the money now.
But Aje and I have been with Damon since we were all kids. Back when Damon’s father ran shit. Yvette—Glori—was Damon’s girl once he started moving up in the org. She was still in high school and I always wondered what he saw in her. So fucking young, ya know?
She was pretty enough, for sure. I saw pictures of her. Damon kept one in his office of the two of them and I can recall many times sitting in the chair in front of his desk, listening to him berate some no-good worker about whatever bullshit he was pissed off about, and staring at their picture as I came up with a plan on how to kill said no-good worker in front of Damon so there’d be minimal mess afterward.
It was typically choking. Sometimes with my bare hands, other times with a garrote wire, but usually bare hands.
I even went to their wedding. AJ didn’t. None of the street killers were invited. It was classy like that and classy isn’t a word I’d ever use to describe AJ.
I didn’t mingle at the wedding because I was working, so I never actually got introduced to Yvette-slash-Glori. I was busy with security.
So I guess that’s why he sent AJ and me. We worked together in the past. We did our jobs. And I suppose this job was just too personal to trust some other team to take care of it.
Which I understand and that’s why I said yes. Besides, once I knew I’d be offing AJ as well, I wanted to spend a little goodbye time with him.