“I don’t care what you do up there,” he added, wondering if this was about a girl. “It would be your space like any other apartment. You pay for it, it’s yours. No questions asked. I trust you.”
Her face tightened and she looked ready to cry.
Then she was crying, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Hey.” He got around his desk and met her in the middle of the office space. He wrapped his arm awkwardly around her shoulder. “Hey, now. I don’t care if you don’t want the apartment, all right?”
“It’s not the apartment,” she said. “That was so nice of you. Everything I’ve found in the Quarter is like $2000 at least. I guess because it’s in the safest part of the city.”
King wasn’t sure the French Quarter was the safest. It was the most heavily policed, certainly.
“And the apartment is nice. It’s perfect. It’s got everything I need. A kitchen, a bathroom and a big closet.”
“It doesn’t have a washer and dryer,” he offered.
“It does,” she said. “You’ve got to open the little closet behind the door.” She cried harder and King found himself floating farther and farther from the shore of comprehension. If the apartment was perfect…why was she crying?
“What’s going on?” he asked. He knew nothing about Piper’s personal life, except for the friends and girls he’d seen her hanging around the Quarter with. Was there a recent break up?
Or was something more going on? He was sure there was.
Not only because he saw her trekking the streets all hours of the day and night, but also because no 23-year-old would willingly work fifty hours a week if she didn’t have to. She’d mentioned once that she lived with her mother—that she had a house off Canal.
Did she have a fight with her mom? Was she being thrown out for being gay? He’d heard something like forty percent of homeless kids were gay.
Piper didn’t answer his inquiry, so he let it go. He wasn’t going to make her open up if she didn’t want to.
“If you need something from me—money. Time off. A drink—”
Piper laughed, wiping at the corner of her eyes.
“Let me know what you need, okay?”
She stepped out of his embrace, nodding, and wiping at her eyes. “You know, I think Dani is looking for a place.”
“Who?”
“The girl Mel hired. If you want to get someone in there now—”
“I’m in no hurry. The apartment’s yours if you want it. And if you move into another place, that’s okay, too.” King settled back into his chair and reclined. “I won’t be mad. Do what you need to do.”
She nodded, sinking back into her chair, looking at her laptop without seeing it. Her face red and eyes shimmering.
King wasn’t used to this version of Piper.
He was used to the happy-go-lucky version whose excessive cheerfulness and playful nature, he now worried was a carefully constructed façade.
“I’m serious,” he said, before picking up his coffee again. “If you need something, please tell me.”
“I will,” she said with a forced smile, eyes watering.
King wished he could believe her.
15
King locked the door to the shop just after five that evening. The sun was setting, filling the storefront windows on the opposite side of the street with its amber fire. He double checked, making sure the landline, which Piper had a good laugh over—calling it archaic, a relic, and last wonder of the ancient world, in turn—routed all after-hours inquiries to his cell phone.
A group of black men with brass instruments slung over their shoulders had to step around him as he struggled to get the old-fashioned lock to work. Then the deadbolt turned twice, and King sighed with relief.
He fell into step behind an Asian man holding two paper sacks of groceries, his neck wrapped in a thick navy scarf.
King first saw his stalker as he stepped from Royal Street into Jackson Square. He’d deliberately walked in the opposite direction of his apartment to see if his shadow would follow.
Purposefully relaxing his shoulders, he began to whistle a tune. The only one he could think of was Time is On My Side. It would do.
He saw the men with their instruments again. Now they were met with four more musicians as they arranged themselves for the imminent concert.
King smiled, standing in the square. He kept his eyes on the men and gave every impression that he was an interested onlooker ready to enjoy the music. The air was thick with the scent of Cajun spice, and King glanced at the gumbo shop, his mouth watering.
Dinner would have to wait.
He had to continue the show, giving his shadow time to catch up to him, enter the square and find him standing there.
King saw him hesitate at the intersection and then continue forward, melting into a throng of tourists filing out of the gumbo shop on the corner.
King listened to a song, tapping his foot before starting off in the direction of Café du Monde. He pretended to look into the shops as if he’d never seen these sugar skulls, statues of Papa Legba, rows and rows of plastic beads and every form of souvenir ever imagined—from magnets to shot glasses, to plaster figurines of ghosts.
But when he got to the café, he kept walking. He didn’t want to run the chance that Suze might say hello and mark herself as a friend. He didn’t know enough about his admirer to know what they might do to one of his friends. What kind of questions they might ask.
Instead, King thought of Lou. The efficient way she’d handled a tail back in June. Brasso had sent two men to follow them, and she’d skirted them easily.
Lou sure would be helpful now in getting a good look at the man five or six feet behind me. If Lou would come—
A hand shot out of the alley he was passing and yanked him into the dark.
He opened his mouth to cry out, but the world shifted.
It compressed horribly around him. The pressure removing all air from the world.
Then he was standing in his living room, Lou’s fist releasing its hold on the lapel of his coat.
There was his red leather sofa. There was his enormous armoire with a TV nestled inside. His coffee table still looked like some Titanic flotsam, a floating door bolted onto legs.
“Christ,” he said, bending at the waist to suck air.
“You called?” she asked.
“Did I?” he said, hoping the room would stop spinning. “My mistake.”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
He couldn’t answer her. For several breaths he could only watch her black combat boots scuff along his wooden floors. He saw the smear of dirt across the toe of her boot and wondered where she’d come from. Her hair was wet like she’d just showered, and he caught the strong scent of soap.
“I was being followed,” he said, squeezing his kneecaps in his palms. It seemed to help with the dizziness. “I wanted to get a good look at them.”
“Like Brasso’s scouts,” she said, catching on.
“Yeah, like that. You have to take me back.” He sucked a deep breath, already regretting what he was saying. He hated the way she traveled and knew it was because he was clearly not designed for it. “Come on, before he gets too far away.”
“You want me to drop you in the alley?”
“Yeah.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“Watch me. I’ll walk around for a bit, pick up some groceries or something, and just see who is tracking me.”
He was about to ask for a moment, for one more chance to take a deep breath, but she was already hooking her arm through his.
The world compressed. The darkness flattened him on all sides. He couldn’t expand his lungs, couldn’t draw breath. He couldn’t turn his head or get a sense of up or down or if he was any place at all.
But fortunately, the world opened up again. He took a step back and bumped into the side of the building. His knuckles scraped cold brick.
He opened his mout
h to reiterate his instructions, but the words caught in his throat.
She was gone. He stood alone in the dim light of the alley.
“Well then,” he said to no one, and stepped out onto the street. “Let’s try that again.”
* * *
Most of the buildings in the French Quarter were low-slung. Prowling the roof and terraces wasn’t a bad option for tracking someone below. And while it helped that twilight was slowly covering the district, unfurling its nightly satin, artificial light was springing up to replace the missing day.
Lou found herself in a brick corner. A vent beside her face spewed warm air, scented with spun sugar. No doubt there was a chocolatier below, or perhaps someone who specialized in pralines. She crouched and crept to the edge of the roof, her chin pressed to the cold, concrete ledge.
A brass band trumpeted out a tune that Lou recognized, a remix of some current pop song she couldn’t place. Laughter rose up from the swell below. A girl, particularly squealish, cackled like a lunatic, falling into the arms of her patient friend. They only laughed harder when the stacks of beads around their necks tangled and they had to gingerly separate them strand by strand.
She saw King cross the square, heading back toward the office. He paused adjacent to Café du Monde and pretended to watch a street artist paint a landscape. He threw a $20 into the man’s hat and motioned for one of the 5x7 prints propped against the wrought iron fence behind him.
That’s when Lou spotted the man who trailed him. He was short, maybe 5’7 or 5’8. He was on the stocky side, the bulk of him bulging under a gray coat. Half of his face was hidden by a black woolen scarf, frayed at the edges. But his eyes followed King. Even as he paused to inspect a rack of magnets, his eyes remained locked on the ex-DEA agent.
It wasn’t subtle at all and smacked of amateurism. Could Petrov’s men truly be so terrible? Maybe she had taken out his best two nights before.
As King moved along, a new painting tucked under this arm, so did the tail.
She left her position on the roof’s edge and pressed herself into the nook of the building again. The shadows softened, opening to let her pass.
She slid through, her boots finding concrete. She hovered on the stoop, in the shadow of the dark doorway, and watched King slide by. Four heartbeats later, his tail stepped into view. Her boots scraped the step as she reached out to seize the man.
His eyes doubled, then tripled in size, revealing the wide whites, startled into dilation. She pulled him into the corner. For a moment, their bodies were flush against each other, and Lou felt the gun tucked into the pocket of his oversized coat press into her ribs.
She slid her hand into the pocket as she pulled him through the dark.
When the world reformed around her, it was the Alaskan nighttime. The muddy banks under her feet sank with her sudden weight. She wondered if it had suffered a hard rain in her absence. The banks were uncommonly soft.
The man slipped out of her grip. His shoes were too fancy. Polished urban loafers with slick bottoms. In this natural landscape, it offered him no traction.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” The words flew from his mouth, pouring like water from an overturned cup. “Oh my god. What the—what the—”
His arms went out wide to steady himself and after some comical flapping, or perhaps his settling weight helped to secure him in the mud, he steadied himself.
“Oh my god. Did you do this?” He looked to the lake, to the surrounding forest, to the high swollen moon. He turned on Lou. “Did you do this?”
She pointed the gun at the ground. The movement drew his eye and he began patting his own pockets.
“And you have my gun. Oh my god. This isn’t happening.”
She’d seen this level of hysteria before, the blatant disbelief and borderline shock that came from having one’s feet firmly planted in one place one moment and finding oneself somewhere else the next. It was this bewilderment that often gave her the advantage.
But she didn’t want to kill this man. Not yet.
“Where are we?” he asked. “Where the fuck are we?”
“Why were you following that man?” She didn’t want to give him King’s name in case he didn’t know it.
His mouth fell open as he took her in from head to toe. “What man? I didn’t see any man.”
She raised the gun.
“Oh, okay. That guy. I liked his jacket. I wanted to ask him where he bought it.”
Lou fired a shot at the ground between the man’s feet. Mud splattered up into his face.
“Oh my fucking god is that blood? Am I bleeding? Did you shoot me?”
“Did Petrov send you?” she asked.
“Who?” His scrunched up features. “Who the hell is Petrol?”
“Petrov.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
She raised the gun and pointed it at the space between his two eyebrows.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey. I don’t know what I said, but I’m sorry.” He held his hands up in classic surrender, palms bright in the moonlight. “Okay, you asked why I was following King.”
So he did know Robert’s name.
“I was told you hung out with him. I sent her to get your story.”
“Who is ‘her’?”
“Dani—Daniella Allendale. She works for me.”
“And who are you?”
“Clyde Baker. Editor-in-Chief at the Louisiana Herald. But I swear to god, I don’t know anything about Peter, petrol, whoever you’re talking about. I was looking for you. You’re my story.”
“You’re a journalist,” she said.
“Yeah, but listen. It was Dani who was snooping around. She requested an age progression photo of you as a kid. She didn’t even tell me. I did not approve that. But everything crosses my desk, so when it came through—”
“Why would a journalist be looking for me?” Even as she said it, a few theories surfaced, but none close to the one Baker explained.
“I don’t think there’s a journalist in this country who doesn’t want to speak to you. You’re Louie Thorne. The Louie Thorne. When that story broke about your father being a hero, every news outlet in the world wanted to interview you—as you probably know. But nobody could find you.”
“You found me.” She lowered the gun, her mind racing.
Clyde mistook this as interest. “I was thinking we could start with what it had been like growing up after your dad died, believing he’d betrayed his crew. Where you were when you learned he was innocent and what it felt like knowing he was a hero. We can even go back to the night your parents were killed. You can take us through what happened, what it had been like losing your father and your mother, what you remember if anything—”
Lou remembered everything.
That white flash of gunfire in her mother’s bedroom.
She remembered how the crickets filling the hot June night with their song had fallen silent a second before the back gate was kicked open and Angelo Martinelli stormed into the yard. She remembered how cold the water had been when her back slapped the surface of the pool—when her father had lifted her and thrown her into the water, knowing it would save her.
Her father didn’t sacrifice his life so she could be the center of some media circus.
Lou lifted the gun.
“Oh, god. Uh, Ms. Thorne. Listen. I wanted your story for the front page, but I don’t want to die over it, okay? If it’s between your exclusive and dying of heart failure in thirty years, I choose the heart failure, all right?”
I think he’s telling the truth, her father said.
“I mean if you wanted to give us the story, we’d pay you whatever you want. All you have to agree to is the interview.”
Lou was faced with the unfathomable reality that she had brought a man here, to her secret dumping ground. And not only a man, but a man who knew her name, knew her history, and who she worked with.
Even if she gave him a story, blew her privacy out of the water, s
he would have to answer the question of how they got here.
She saw the curiosity in his eyes. The way they kept flicking from her to the lake, to the pine forest.
The gun wavered in her hands.
“Please, please,” he said, hands on the top of his head, as if this extra layer of bone would protect him from a shot. “I don’t know how the fuck we got here, and I don’t need to know. Just take me back, okay? I’ll pull my girl out of there. You’ll never hear from us again. I swear to god, we’ll disappear. I swear to fucking god.”
She considered taking him to Konstantine. Considered dropping this man on his doorstep. If you want to protect my identity, protect it now.
But that felt like cheating. That felt like asking someone else to do her dirty work.
No. If she cared about her anonymity, if she wanted the freedom to travel this world unseen, this was her business. This was her responsibility.
She raised the gun again.
And there was King to think of. Piper and Melandra. No one would escape unscathed if her story dropped.
“Please!” Spittle flew from his lips, white flecks bright with moonlight even as the shadows hid all but his frightened eyes. “Please!”
She pulled the trigger.
16
Piper found the extra roll of register tape in a brown box on the top shelf. Carefully fitting the lid back into place, she jumped down to Dani’s applause.
“My hero,” Dani said, batting her eyelashes dramatically.
Piper snorted. “Let me show you how to put it in.”
“Please do,” Dani said, her tone going deep and sultry.
Piper’s face heated. This sort of ruthless flirting had been continuous over the last few days. Whenever Dani and Piper crossed paths and Mel was out of earshot, Dani laid it on thick.
Piper was certain this girl was no cop, no matter what sort of vibes Henry was getting from her. And vibes aside, they were in agreement about one thing: Dani was very beautiful. It wasn’t only an assortment of symmetrical features, or her olive skin and dark eyes.
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