Her mother sat on the sunken sofa. “Willy?”
“No, Mom. It’s Piper.” She didn’t enjoy being mistaken for her mother’s latest boyfriend and supplier. “Listen. I’ve got to tell you something.”
Piper knelt in front of the woman. She sat on the edge of the ripped sofa, trying to light the cigarette in her mouth. It bobbed between quivering lips as unsteady as the hand.
“Here, let me,” Piper said and took the plastic lighter and struck it with her right thumb, cupping the side of her mother’s cigarette with her free hand.
Her skin smelled acrid. That trash was oozing out of her pores.
“Get me a beer.”
“In a minute, Mom. Listen. I need you to know something. Are you listening?”
She searched the woman’s face, trying to get a good look into her eyes.
Their gazes finally met, and Piper was relieved to see they were clear. As she opened her mouth, the screen door slammed.
Damn.
“NayNay, where you at?”
The fridge door opened and closed, bottles rattling. Piper knew she should tell her mother now, but it might start shit—a violent episode that could last for hours—and she promised King she’d be back in forty minutes.
Willy Turner stepped into the living room. He was a squat man. A solid square of muscle about six inches taller than Piper. He liked to puff out his chest and rub his stomach as if he’d eaten a big meal. His sneer made Piper’s insides turn.
“You got my stuff,” her mother said, hopeful. The tremble in her hand ceased.
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. What you gonna give me for it?”
Piper detested everything about this man. His gut, his leer, his weak chin and glassy eyes. The hair on the back of his fat knuckles. Worse than his gross, unkempt appearance was the way he treated her mother. It sickened her to see them in the same room together. At least her mother had not married him, like the last two, albeit briefly. Her father had been the second marriage and the longest. She wasn’t sure what that said about their relationship. But one thing was for certain. To her mother, these men meant it was time to get high. Anything that Piper said to her now would go in one ear and out the other.
She squeezed her mom’s knee and stood. “I’ll see you later, Mom.”
Willy moved to block Piper’s path. “Where you running off to, lesbo?”
“Work.”
“You work a lot, but I don’t see you paying any of these goddamn bills,” Willy said, still in her way.
“Come on, give it to me,” her mom said, standing from the couch.
Willy took a step toward her. Piper considered standing her ground. She’d traded blows with worse. But her mind seemed fixated on the words she’d failed to say before he arrived and the fact that King was still waiting. And she didn’t want to disappoint the one reliable man in her life.
Piper stepped back.
Grinning as if he’d won some battle, Willy shoulder checked her as he entered the room. “Yeah, I got your shit. But you’ve got to pay for it.”
He stopped in front of her mother. With a sneer, he began to undo the top of his pants, eyes locked on Piper.
Her mother sat back down on the couch. Her eyes roving back and forth between the heroin in Willy’s right hand and the zipper he worked to undo.
Piper darted through the doorway and out the front door without looking back.
Forget the clothes. She’d try another time.
10
Lou stood at the edge of the water and regarded the night. The Alaskan lake shimmered in the moonlight. A pack of coyotes yipped nearby. If they smelled her, they pressed on, enamored with the chase. She envied them.
She lifted a rock from the shore and tossed it into the water. A resonant plunk silenced the frogs and crickets for a few heartbeats, until they bravely rejoined the nightly chorus.
Inhaling deep, she took in the scent of cool pine and icy air. Every pant from her mouth was white smoke rising.
She had a decision to make. She could go to King and give him the update on Sikes.
Or she could find that man from the country club. His face burned in her mind’s eye.
She stepped out of the moonlight into the shade of an enormous pine. She caught the strong scent of its sap before the darkness softened around her. The solid earth beneath her gave way. The roar of a living night disappeared.
She would check on the waitress first, then the man.
Walls erected themselves on all sides.
A floral scent, almost overpowering, welcomed her. Lou found herself in the center of a living room. Sparse furnishings looking like a recreation of a Pier One catalogue. The plug-in emitting a false saccharin scent doubled as a night light.
The orange tabby on the counter hissed. Its ears pressed flat against its head.
The waitress still slept on the bohemian couch where Lou’d returned her. Lou glanced at the woman dressed in her clothes and wondered if she should take them back. If she woke, it would be her only evidence that she’d been abducted. Was there anything that could be tested, that could reveal Lou’s identity?
Why do you care? You never used to worry about that sort of thing.
“That’s not true,” she whispered, her eyes still fixed on the slumped, unconscious girl. She had been worried about Aunt Lucy, about anyone hurting her to get to Lou.
It was one thing to have her parents murdered by the mafia and to live with that loss. Another to know she was the cause of it.
And to know you cause it for others…
But she didn’t have to worry anymore. She had no one left to lose.
Is that true? Lucy asked.
Lou saw a shadow in the corner of her eye and turned. The second cat settled onto the window ledge, watching her with its unwavering gaze.
“I’m leaving,” she told them.
When she emerged from the shadows, she was in the narrow alley between two brick buildings. She recognized the city’s bar district. Most metropolitan areas had one or three.
Lou moved into the light, looking for the man.
But he wasn’t in any queues to get into the bars. He wasn’t loitering on the street, smoking with his friends. He wasn’t even leaning against a wall texting his girl.
A sound just out of reach caused her to turn.
The tip of a knife buried itself into the brick building behind her. It’s where her throat had been a moment before Lou sidestepped. She wrenched the blade free, but another man appeared. A thick chain clattered against the concrete. He lifted the chain overhead and swung.
She ducked.
It slapped the opposite brick wall and ricocheted back, clipping the man’s jaw. He howled.
Lou stepped under his arm and caught the elbow. She pulled it down as her knee shot up, connecting with the forearm. Her elbow slammed into the back of his upper arm at the same time.
The familiar snap of bone breaking pulled a scream from the man’s throat. His knife clattered to the alley below, skittering into the dark.
The chain slammed into the back of her legs. She pitched forward, hands and knees connecting with concrete.
She rolled and seized the chain when it came down again, pulling the man forward.
The other with his broken elbow was still whimpering, crawling toward the knife he’d lost. Lou kicked it out of range and grabbed the back of the other man’s shirt.
He had no problem begging. “I’m just the messenger, man. Please.”
“For who?” she asked. Noting that shadows at the end of the alleyway were shifting.
“Dmitri Petrov wants to talk to you.”
“I’m not interested,” she said.
Laughter erupted from the darkness. Lou stilled, adjusting her grip on the knife.
“Do you know who Dmitri Petrov is?” A man stepped into the light. His orange hair was pulled into a long pony behind his head, his matching goatee trembling as he laughed. “You can’t say no to him, honey. So come on. Let’s
go.”
She saw the five men in front clearly. But not the ones further into the darkness. She guessed perhaps another five. Maybe six stood back there.
“I don’t work for anyone,” she said.
They mistook this statement for some form of pleading. Emboldened, they stepped closer into the light. Twelve. One of the them was the thick-browed tattletale from the country club.
She pressed herself into the shadowed nook of the wall and slipped.
The alley faded and reformed around her as she materialized behind the men. For a moment, she only regarded them, considering her options.
Pull his gun, her mind whispered. There in the waistband of a man’s pants rested a .357.
Use it. It’s not your gun.
You’re only protecting yourself.
It’s not protection if I can leave, she argued.
You’re not a coward. You don’t run away.
The man began to turn and she pulled the gun, flicking off the safety. Her hand warmed to the familiarity of it. Something sparked inside her. It wasn’t her full fury. But it would get the job done.
She grabbed two of the men and pulled them from the alley to the lake in a single, swift movement. Two bullets and they collapsed to their knees. She was gone before they hit the earth.
When she reappeared, the gun went off.
A bullet ripped through the top of her leg, where the meat connects with the buttocks. She staggered, repositioned herself through the darkness and took three more men.
Her arms burned with the effort, but now a radiating pulse ran up her left side.
When she appeared the third time, the numbers had reduced from seven remaining men to only three.
“What’s wrong?” she asked into the darkness. She was pleased to find her voice steady despite the throb in her leg. “Did I scare away your friends?”
“We aren’t supposed to kill you,” he said.
Her stomach turned, curdling like sour milk.
Not for protection. For fun. You’re no better than them.
She slipped up beside the man closest to her and buried the knife into the corner of his throat, where it met the collarbone.
He cried out, and the man with the orange goatee trained his gun on Lou. He squeezed off two shots. But Lou pivoted her captive’s body so he took both shots in the chest. He slumped dead in her arms.
He fired again, seeming to forget his boss’s request. Lou shifted enough to take a bullet in the upper arm. He emptied the clip, and Lou slit his throat.
You have to send a strong message, her father said. Men like Dmitri don’t back down.
And you’re a monster anyway. No need to pretend otherwise.
The last man slid down the brick wall as Lou cut open his shirt to reveal his bare chest.
She dipped the knife beneath flesh and began carving N-O-T…
* * *
Dmitri Petrov sat in a chair by the fire, composing a response to the Archbishop whom he employed. He was looking to the ceiling, trying to remember the English word for срочность, but it wouldn’t come.
Lou stepped from a dark corner into the firelit room to the sight of forty armed men in full tactical gear. With her body thrumming, she was in no mood for another fight. Darkness pressed on the edge of her vision, and a worrisome tremor had overtaken her shot leg, as well as the arms that had thrown around hundreds of pounds for the better part of twenty minutes.
But she stepped into the light, so that the man rising from the high back chair could see her clearly. Blood and all.
She dumped the body at his feet. It tumbled, sprawling open ungracefully.
The carved Not Interested in the man’s chest danced in the firelight. A dark scrawl in the luminous flames.
She leveled Petrov with her glare, saw his mouth, hanging open as he beheld her, eyes sweeping from head to toe.
He said something in Russian that she didn’t understand. But the men began lowering their guns.
He stepped forward, his hands lifting, for what purpose she didn’t know. To embrace her? To offer her a seat? To beckon her forward? Perhaps he wanted to slit her throat.
She didn’t care.
Before he could reach her, she was gone.
11
Konstantine heard a thump in his upstairs closet. He’d just sat down, a caffè latte steaming on his desk. He closed his laptop and took the gun lying beside it. He crossed his living room to the stairs. Cautiously, he ascended, gun up and at the ready.
When he reached the loft, he could smell the blood. Cold radiated toward him.
She stood in his bedroom, motionless.
Her hair was soaked through, sticking to her skin, making her flesh look all the more pale.
She turned toward him, her eyes glazed.
“Shit.” He lowered the gun.
“Can you stitch a bullet hole?” she asked, her teeth chattering.
“You’re going into shock.” He placed his hands on her upper arms and found her skin nearly frozen.
“I was worried I’d pass out before I could dig it out. Can you do it?”
She sat on the edge of his bed, smearing his sheets. She must have understood his expression. “I’ll remind you that you trashed my bed. Not so long ago.”
Her voice was too weak. It sent his heart careening.
“You need to hurry,” she whispered, lying back on his bed. Her wet hair fanning on the covers. “Start here.”
She pointed at her left hip. She spread apart the fabric to show him not only a delicious curve of her hip, but also the oozing wound.
“You told me I—how did you put it—sucked at stitches?” he said, hoping that his light tone would mask his fear.
“Yeah, well, you’ve got some hideous scars,” she said, her voice dreamy.
“May I?” he asked, touching the button of her pants.
She made a sound that could be mistaken for consent.
“Can I give you anything for the pain?”
She didn’t answer.
“Louie?” He leaned over and found her breath low, and deep.
He had only a moment to think about the curve of her lips. The dark lashes spread over pale cheeks before cold, fearful reality pressed in on him.
His hand was slick with her blood. This was no time to steal kisses like some bold school boy. He undid the zipper of her pants and lifted her hips enough to pull them down her toned legs. He grabbed a handful of the corded muscle and turned her, inspecting the damage to her hip. Her skin was so cold. Too cold. As if there was no blood left in her.
If this was where she wanted him to start, this is where he would start. Though rivets of blood oozed from the hole in her upper arm.
“You’re right. This is only fair,” he said. Thinking of the night Nico pumped him full of gunmetal, slashed him with a knife not once, but twice. It had been Lou who had picked his nearly-dead body off the church floor, stitched him up and put him in her own bed for safekeeping.
It looked like this was his chance to repay that debt.
He pulled a kit from under his bed. He’d assembled it after seeing hers in all its thoroughness. But whereas hers was metal, like an old-fashioned medic tin, his was plastic. It resembled a portable toolbox, not a medical accessory.
He popped the lid open and found the suture packs and gauze. He worked an old towel under her hip—not to save the sheets, as that was undoubtedly a lost cause—but to save the mattress as best he could.
With the towel beneath her, her long legs bare, he bent over to do the work.
And unlike Konstantine, who’d woken howling every time she’d inserted the prongs of her tweezers into a bullet hole, she slept through it all.
He worried that was a bad sign. But her lips were not blue. Color still filled her face and her pulse was slow and steady. Once the wound was clean, a neat black stitch sealing the hole, he slathered on the antiseptic ointment and taped a clean piece of gauze over it.
He wiped her legs down, removing
the drying blood and searched for other wounds.
He caught himself lingering—cupping her calf with his hand, fingers trailing her inner thigh.
He took a deep breath for focus.
Then he looked to the gunshot wound in her arm. It seemed like the bullet itself had not stayed. He stitched this hole tight like the other, patched it, and then moved north.
Konstantine watched her sleep. Saw her chest rise and fall in its steady rhythm. He reached up and pulled the elastic band out of her hair, letting the soaked strands hang free.
What would she think, if she saw me here now? he thought. Hovering like this.
He had his suspicions. No doubt she believed he desired her for her body. As a means to slake his lust. That was what women like her, like his mother, had to be on guard against all of their lives. But Lou herself had even more to protect. Her dark gift. Its limitless potential. Weaker men would use her power, yearned to wield her like a shield and sword.
Refusing to surrender to such a man would be met only with violence.
How could he make it clear to her—how could he prove that what he felt when she was near him, could never be compared to their hunger?
How could he prove that he truly believed that they were designed for one another? No one would understand her better. Nor did he believe anyone else knew his own dark heart. They were good people who could do the bad things that must be done. They could stand before each other as the monsters they were and hide nothing.
It was so much more than that. They could protect each other—from themselves.
He began to laugh. “What a romantic you are, Konstantine.”
He raked a hand down his face and sank onto the bed beside her.
These musings were useless. Worse than useless. Ridiculous. This woman did not need him and perhaps she did not even want him. Though he had seen the look in her eyes more than once—and that damned kiss.
Or maybe she did need him. It was clear some war waged within her. She wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating. And he’d seen the surveillance tape from last week. She’d let her target run off into the night without firing a single shot.
“What worries you, my love?” he whispered. He longed for the day she would tell him, when he was the one she wanted to speak to.
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