Butler Eden -Shadows and Lies

Shadows and Lies Copyright © 2015 Eden Butler Smashword Edition 2015 All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the Author. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Author Publisher. Edited by Sharon B. Browning Copy Edited by Karen Chapman Cover Design by Alleskelle Cover Image by Big Stock Photo Formatting by Fictional Formats This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of any word-marks and references mentioned in this work of fiction.

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ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN

TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN NINETEEN TWENTY INTERLUDE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR ALSO BY EDEN BUTLER

Dear Reader— The Shadow Series, beginning with this book, Shadows and Lies, is a break from the type of fiction you normally read from me. It is, primarily, a mystery. That being the case, please understand that the romance elements, while still there, (as well as the abundance of smooching scenes) is not the focus of the story. Ryan and Alex get up to mischief, but it is not solely the sort that happens flat on their backs. Be forewarned. Trust me. I know what I’m doing. Sorta. ~ Eden

For Sharon, who makes all the words pretty and for Sabrina Dixon Rome who lost her battle but who will never, ever lose our hearts. I miss you, friend.

Sometimes things fall into the shadows because they want to be hidden. Sometimes shadows are home to things you didn’t know even existed—or wish you didn’t know. In my four years as a Navy SEAL and five as a cop, it was my job to walk straight into those shadows and either live and let live, or ferret out the corruption that threatens to fester there. During my time on the beat, working for what I thought was justice, something became clear to me. Damn crystal: liars make up the biggest mass in those shadows because

untruths come easy, because, after a while, those lies become so convincing that even the asshole telling it begins to believe it’s true. As a cop I’d seen all types of lowlifes, but the liars were the ones that really got under my skin. The little hip-twisting number a hundred yards ahead of me looked like the liar type. The ballroom was all outfitted with red, white and blue streamers, fine linen table cloths and crystal glasses of the New Orleans Marriott right on Canal Street and I headed into it following those hips. I had a gut feel about this woman, something that niggled at me when I saw the swish of her hips. She walked with a little slump in her shoulders, like she didn’t care that more than half of New Orleans society—those interested in Congressman Montgomery’s 2016 presidential bid, were all looking down their noses at everyone that wasn’t them. Folks like me, just doing a job. Folks like her, playing waitress. But that swish was worked in a tight, black pencil skirt with a busted zipper and there were too many scuff marks on her second hand designer shoes. She didn’t belong among the polished, posture-straight wait staff. “Sam, sneaky shit at one o’clock. Check your skirt, man. I’m on her tail.” There was a buzz from my best friend’s radio and then his quick “On it” response before I weaved around the lobby crowd

beginning to line up for the Congressman’s fundraising speech. My team was in position and Montgomery was well protected by his own security firm and mine. The man looked like a print ad for GQ —tanned, blemish-free skin and just a peppering of grey at the temples of his dark hair; tailored, black suit with subtle gray pinstripes, a red triangle handkerchief starched and folded, peeking out from his jacket pocket. And the obligatory American flag lapel pin, of course. He wore a smile you only see from politicians and televangelists—teeth too white, too straight, too damn perfect. He looked expensive, unlike the skirt who stopped in the center of the room, her empty tray in front of her chest, hugging it with one hand as the Congressman began with his “thank yous” and “you’re too kinds”. Skirt made her move to her target, moving right next to him and I grunted under my breath realizing who he was. The guy who hired us, Michael Davidson, Montgomery’s aide, and so I hustled behind them, just as the woman slithered her red painted fingers toward the man’s pocket. SEAL training had taught me stealth and though I had lost my touch as of late, a few tag-and-bag assignments with the new security firm I’d started with my friends had sorted out most of my recent lapse in subtlety and sharpened up my lax skill for listening when my gut told me something was off. The woman was smooth, I’d give her that. Davidson was too

immersed in his phone, his thumbs working across the screen or idly nodding to one well-wisher or another, to realize the small woman next to him was going for his wallet. That wouldn’t be good—the guy that hired us having his shit ganked by a grifter working the event. Her curse was barely audible as I slipped my fingers around her arm and nodded to Davidson. Something flashed in his eyes, surprise, maybe irritation and he moved his gaze from whatever held his attention over my shoulder then right back at me. “Everything okay, Ryan?” Davidson asked, slowly glancing back at his phone as I moved the woman behind me. “Yes sir, everyone is in place.” Sammy came in front of us, smoother than I could ever really manage and offered Davidson a nod. “Mr. Davidson, we’d like you closer to the stage, if you don’t mind.” We didn’t have to say anything, didn’t communicate a word. I’d known Sammy Auciello for going on twelve years. A quick glance at my grip on the woman’s arm and he knew I wanted Davidson distracted. “Very well.” The aide sighed, shuffling his phone in his pocket when Sammy ushered him to the other side of the ball room. “I didn’t do shit, asshole.” The skirt jerked, voice loud enough to draw the attention of several of the suits and designer-dudswearing women around us. “Let me go.”

There was a warning in her voice that made me smile. She had fire, but then you’d have to if you thought lifting a few wallets from some rich snobs would be easy, especially with security in every corner of the room. I glanced around, ignoring the woman as she continued to complain, and spotted Sammy’s brother Frank and the five-man team he was directing. Congressman Montgomery had received threats in the past, that was a career hazard in his business, I supposed. We weren’t letting anyone sketchy get past us, not when this was our first real high-dollar gig. “Hey, asshole, I said to let me…” “Miss,” I said, voice low but firm, pulling her through the crowd, “it might be a good idea to button your lip.” Eyes alert and shifting, I took in the waning crowd as we slipped from the ballroom. “I swear to God if you don’t let me go, I’m gonna scream.” “Do that and you’ll land in the backseat of an NOPD cruiser, lady.” I didn’t bother to look at her, keeping my attention on the folks more interested in their drinks than the Congressman’s speech, some congregated around long red couches and the dark mahogany bar at the back of the lobby. The buzz of conversation was loud, made louder by the line of reporters trying to argue with my security team about their credentials. But I still was aware of her tight arm muscle contracting, heard the low grumbles she made

since I had mentioned the cops. Funny how criminals quieted when you mentioned the police. Especially in this city. “Listen,” she started, easing the tension in her voice, shifting her head away from me as though she wanted to make sure no one heard her. “I swear I was just trying to slip that cute guy my number. What’s the harm in that?” If I didn’t have my game face on, I might have cracked a smile. As it was, that defense got added among the hundreds in my “Stupid Excuses Lowlifes Make” list. I’d officially heard them all. She didn’t seem to like my ignoring her and took to struggling again as I looked straight ahead, moving my chin at one of our men, Nox, a big son of a bitch from New York that Frank had hired just a month before. “Live wire?” he asked me, not bothering to conceal his smile when I shook my head and ushered the woman into the security office we were using for the event. When I had her inside, Nox scratched his chin, tilted his head at the curses the woman was making. “You want me to call it in?” His gaze slipped to mine, questioning, but I waved him off. “Nah, I can handle her.” Behind me the woman slumped into a hardback chair next to the desk, scuffling it against the light marble tiles with swirls of dark circles that swooped around the center of the floor. “Go tell Sammy I got this one handled. It was getting

stuffy in there anyway. I’ll be back in a minute.” The plan was to settle the woman up, lock her inside the room after I took a small breather, not needing the hassle of a lowlife pick pocketing. Nox would keep watch over her. But something about her niggling little laugh, the one she kept low under her breath had me turning around. I should’ve just walked out the damn door. “Holy. Fuck,” I said, my mouth falling open as I recognized her. “Shit,” she muttered like she’d been caught yet again. She was taller than I remembered, and thinner, but the last time I’d seen her, I’d been drunk on bourbon and frustration. I couldn’t do more than stare at her, my gut burning with anger as she covered her mouth and started laughing. “This is not funny.” “No,” she said, falling against the chair. “Oh my God, it’s so not funny.” But she didn’t stop laughing. “This is just not my damn day.” “You got that shit right.” I pulled out my cell, clicked on the phone icon, then the key pad before she shot up from the chair to grab my wrist. There was something in her touch, a small spark of heat, her fingers against my skin that had me pausing, but I pushed it back, too pissed, too irritated for much thought. One flick of my eyes from her fingers, to her face and any remaining humor she had died. “You’re gonna want to not touch me. I have handcuffs.”

“Please.” There was real fear in her large, dark eyes. Her lower lids curled under the twitch of her cheeks and if I wasn’t wrong, there was a small plea in her voice. “I can’t go back in.” She was pretty; even as I angry as I was, I couldn’t deny that. She had to be Hispanic, maybe Native American with hair so dark it reminded me of crow feathers. Her cheekbones were high, sharp, and her lips were full, arched deep at the top. She gave off a rockabilly vibe, maybe the hint of punk. Even in that little mock waitress outfit, I noted the thick cat eye on her eyelids, the bright red lipstick and the lift of a pompadour that slicked back into a round bun at the base of her neck. I knew firsthand that she could use that pretty face to her advantage, remembering back when I first caught her sauntering around my house in Tennessee like she owned it. Pretty or not, this chick was going down. Finally. “Well that’s where you belong.” One blink, and the fear left her face. I could almost see her defenses rising and her fingers tightened around my wrist. “For trying to lift some rich asshole’s wallet?” “That and for breaking into my damn house.” I tried moving her hand from my wrist, but she tugged on it, as though trying to make me understand that her petty theft could be excused. “That was months ago. Besides, the New Orleans cops can’t do shit to me for a B&E in Tennessee.”

“No, but they’ll get a head’s up from me about the BOLO I had my buddies on the force to put out on your ass.” “What?” Finally she dropped my hand, looking pathetic with small traces of fear coming back onto her face. “You think I’d let you take my property and get away with it?” The look she gave me was focused and I didn’t get it. She tried to read something in my features that I wouldn’t give away. Then, the little shit smirked. “I think you’re just mad because I sucker punched you.” “That,” I started, stepping back, my temper rising quick, “is not what happened.” I cleared my throat, annoyed that this woman was making me forget that I was supposed to be a professional. I nodded toward the door. “Hands up, feet spread apart.” “What?” When she didn’t move, I tapped her back, urging her forward, anticipating that she’d fight me, shocked when she only lowered her shoulders and stood facing the door. “You carrying any weapons?” “You aren’t seriously going to frisk me,” she said, moving her hands up as I nudged her feet apart. “You’re not on duty, hell this isn’t even your city.” “I’m on the job and we do this.” When she glared at me over her shoulder, I exhaled, tried not to sound like too much of a prick

then nodded again. I was getting tired of the eye roll. “No gun? Weapons of any kind?” “Just my charming personality.” The smug grin returned, exaggerated by her shrug, but I didn’t smile back or do more than wait for her to face the door again. “So nothing then.” This wasn’t exactly my favorite thing to do. Most of the time suspects are armed and like to keep their weapons hidden—in the most disgusting places you can imagine. But this woman was wearing a tight skirt and starched Oxford knock-off, unbuttoned so that I caught a quick glance at bronzed skin and deep cleavage. Not too many places to hide a weapon. This was not a woman I wanted to touch—I wasn’t into cops and robbers, not like that. But a job is a job and I took a breath, filled my lungs and tried to get the pat down over as quickly as I could. I should have waited for Sammy or one of the other men so she couldn’t say that I’d gotten too handsy, but there was a camera in the corner of the ceiling recording everything I did and I used the back of my hands so my fingers wouldn’t come near certain areas of her person. Still, it was hard to ignore that her body was strong —muscular arms that were defined rather than bulky; when I moved my hands over them, up to her triceps, across her shoulders, I caught a whiff of her perfume. It made me a little light headed. She

had no weapons, no knife or gun, nothing concealed under her waistband or strapped to her thigh, but when I tapped across her chest, I felt a card, plastic, square. “Empty whatever that is from your bra.” I’d find out this brat’s name and commit the details to memory. She took her time, shaking her head while I waited for her to step back from the door. Another excuse was coming, I saw it in the look she gave me, as though she was preparing a defense and I nudged her, tried taking her arm again to put her back in the chair and secure her in cuffs. She batted my hand away, glaring at me. “Watch it, pig.” The attitude seemed like habit, so did the stupid scowling frown and I thought this woman had no clue what a mess she’d stumbled into. I wasn’t some beat cop worried about offending a beautiful woman. She wasn’t the first suspect to cross my path with the same attitude, the same skill at looking scared and pathetic. That shit wasn’t going to work on me. Not again. “Yeah, I bet the cops will just love your smart ass mouth.” “They know me. I’ll be out in an hour.” “I’m sure you will.” She was full of shit. There’d been fear in her eyes when I started to call the police. A nudge of my head toward the chair and she sat, still glaring, but curled her arms

around her stomach as though she’d caught a chill and a lot of that attitude dimmed as I sat down behind the desk and picked up my phone. “You’re still calling them?” I wasn’t, not just then, but she didn’t need to know that. “What’s the problem? You said you were old buddies.” She didn’t deserve my attention, which was focused on the background check app on my phone and the contents from her bra—a can of mace, her driver’s license and one brass key all lay on the desk. The I.D. was worn around the edges, frayed at the corners and I quickly typed in her name and license number into the app. Alex, the license read, shot her gaze to the door when it opened and her eyes widened, moving from Sammy’s size twelve feet, up his trunk legs and all over the black suit he wore. I was used to it. That pretty boy always had women panting after him. “You straight, man?” he asked me, stepping inside with Nox right behind him, then he stopped to smile at Alex like she wasn’t a thief, chuckling at the glare she gave him. “Did I interrupt something?” “Just me doing my job.” “In the wrong city, asshole,” Alex said, bringing Sammy’s attention back to her. She’d taken to tapping her heel against the floor again, birthing a small headache at the base of my skull. “You

have zero jurisdiction here and I didn’t take anything.” “I might not be a cop anymore,” I told her, sitting back in my chair with my arms crossed, “but I know what I saw. You were two seconds from lifting Davidson’s wallet.” In my peripheral, Sammy’s head volleyed back and forth between me and the suspect. God only knew what fiction that jackass was creating in his one-track mind. “You’re not a cop anymore?” She relaxed, slid her hands against the armrest. “Simmons cut you loose?” That name out of her mouth was like a slap. Had he sent her? Was this shit another way for my former sergeant to mess with me? The chair flew back against the wall as I stood up abruptly, hands balled into fists at my side. Before I could blink Sammy was next to me. “What the fuck do you know about him?” I asked, ignoring how loud my voice came out. Alex’s gaze went to my face and her eyebrows shot up when the clench in my fists got tighter. She looked toward Sammy, maybe hoping he’d enlighten her to my attitude, but then she pursed her lips before saying “I know enough.” “Listen,” Sammy interrupted with a pat to my shoulder before he stood between me at the desk and the woman still sitting in the chair. “We have to call it in. If Ryan says he saw you trying to rob somebody, then he’s gonna make a call.” My best friend hesitated

for a second, looking again between the two of us before he nodded for Nox to open the door. “And I’d advise not talking about shit you are clueless about,” he said to her, leaving us alone. I stared after Sammy as the door shut, fidgeting with my cell as the app continued to search, not really eager to look at Alex again, not wanting her to see the havoc her offhand comment had stirred up. Stephen Simmons, my former sergeant, was a liar and a dirty cop, neither of which I had known about when I’d joined the Cavanagh P.D. at twenty-three. Before that I’d only ever known him as the guy that my mom’s best friend Dot had married. But over the years, working under him, he’d become a father figure to me. At least until things got twisted. I’d put my mom’s house up for sale, listing all her antiques with a local dealer who’d posted the items online. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I’d gotten a letter from someone who sure seemed to be Dot—the same Dot who Simmons reported as having committed suicide just three days after my mother’s death. A little snooping, a little asking around and I realized Simmons had lied to me, lied to everybody. There were discipline records that got buried in Atlanta when he worked there. Seems he liked to rough up subjects. There was the evidence he allegedly tampered with in two cases during his first days in Cavanagh, but those accusations, too, went nowhere. Dot’s death, her file, seemed a

little too cut and dry. No real evidence of an actual death other than her empty car being found at the bottom of the river. When I tried getting his side of the story, Simmons blew up at me, suspended me, egged on my temper and I had quit right there on the spot. But Simmons was six hundred miles away in Tennessee. And yeah, okay, this Alex woman had been in Cavanagh long enough to rob my mom’s house, but that didn’t mean she had any reason for knowing him. My phone chirped, alerting me to the search results and I sat back down, calmer, bringing me breath into my lungs as I thumbed through the results. Alex Black, age twenty-four, had been a busy lady. Looking through the list of priors, I should have immediately called NOPD, should have had them cart her away and ease the damn thumping headache that had begun to stretch from the back of my head to my temples. But she’d mentioned Simmons—the one bastard who knew the truth about Dot, likely about what had really happened to my mother all those years ago. Was my mom’s murder simply a robbery gone wrong like the police report concluded, or had Simmons, who’d handled that case, lied about that too? I would have never thought that possible, but then why would Dot supposedly kill herself right after my mom’s murder and then resurface in a vague letter some twelve years later?

I’d had one lead on finding Dot that brought me to New Orleans: tracking down the jewelry box Alex had stolen from me five months ago. Dot had apparently become an antiques dealer in New Orleans, and I was sure the jewelry box had turned up in what I suspected was her antiques storefront. But following up on that lead had landed me in the damn ER with a bullet graze on my shoulder when some guy, Malcolm, who apparently was protecting Dot, handed me my ass. So here in this tiny Marriott security office, I had to find out what this small-time grifter knew about Simmons, even if I was being selfish and highly unprofessional. I needed answers, something I was pretty sure this woman wouldn’t give me unless I did a little bargaining. She watched me with a funny look on her face, like she wanted to say something but was scared I’d start yelling again. Finally, when I came to the end of page three of her record, I looked at Alex over my cell and shook my head. She immediately got all nervous and anxious again. “I wasn’t lying. About Simmons.” Eyes trained on the screen, I tried not to laugh or wonder too much about the “public indecency” charge from last summer. “Alex Black?” She scowled at me and it wasn’t the least bit threatening. “Fitting.” “You know what?” she said, coming out of her seat to stare

down at me. “You can kiss my ass, detective. I’m Seminole, just like my mom was. Panther clan, motherfucker.” I nodded, fighting a smile at the red flush on her face. The woman had a temper, no surprise there, but she kept her chin lifted, proud and confident, which I’d not seen from her until that moment. “Should I call dear ole mom and let her know her Panther clan kid is in trouble?” Another glance back to the app, my eyebrows rising at the impressive resume of arrests on her record, “Again?” “You got a direct line to hell?” she asked, pacing around the room. “That’s probably where she is.” “I…” “Yeah, feel like an asshole now, don’t you?” The smug smile returned and a bit of my shame over teasing her lessened. But when she spoke again, her voice was quiet. Not sad, exactly, more defeated. “She died when I was eight. Meth overdose.” My cell went dark as I laid it on the desk, leaning forward on my elbows. The words felt stuck on my tongue so I just watched the woman hold herself, walk in front of the desk like she was trying to think of the best escape plan. There was something she wasn’t admitting. That wasn’t surprising, sure, but her attitude, her defensive stance, went beyond her being caught trying to gank a wallet. It wasn’t just the prospect of a night in jail that had her restless. Getting dizzy watching her, I sighed, rubbing the back of

my neck. “Then maybe you get why I was so pissed at you taking my shit.” “What?” When I pointed to the chair she finally sat, though she kept her arms tight in a curl across her chest. “The only thing you stole was a jewelry box,” I told her, shrugging. “Antique with lots of weird drawers and hidden compartments?” Alex again narrowed her eyes as though she was riffling through the long list of shit she’d stolen to find the innocuous jewelry box. “Yeah,” she finally said, looking like a light had been switched on in her brain. “I remember that.” “Well that was my mom’s.” I picked up my phone, moved it between my hands on the desk’s surface. “She’s not here anymore either.” “I… I know.” My mouth went slack, and I couldn’t help the immediate straight set of my body as I shifted in my seat. “What?” “It’s a long damn story.” She wouldn’t look at me, focused instead on a frayed thread at the seam of her sleeve. “But I remember hearing about it. It’s how I know Simmons. Well, one of the ways I know him.” That made zero sense to me. “My mom’s case?” “Something like that.”

Who the hell was this woman? She wasn’t from Cavanagh, I’d damn sure have remembered seeing her and God knows she’d been breaking the law for a long time, long enough to have been known to the police. She’d have definitely been in my precinct. But how did she know Simmons, and how could she claim to know about my mother’s case? Something definitely wasn’t right here, and I knew I had to get to the bottom of it before this woman left the office. She could feel the tension, too. She fidgeted in her seat, stretching her neck, rubbing the skin on the back of her knuckles. There was a lot of nervous energy in that small body, a rush of excitement, or anxiety that prevented her from keeping still. “Listen, it was stupid of me to try to take that guy’s wallet. Sometimes I can’t help myself.” When I stared at her, eyebrow cocked, she lowered her shoulders. “It’s all I’ve ever known, okay? The life, the jobs, the easy marks, that’s all I know. Just like your mom’s jewelry box.” Alex must have caught the swift movement of irritation on my face because she lifted her hand like she wanted to stop any bitching I might do. “I know how you can get it back if you want it, but you gotta do something for me.” That quick bubble of laughter was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Why would I make a deal with a criminal?” I waved my phone at her. “A seasoned one at that.”

“Because I know shit about Simmons and I can tell, just from how you say his name that you do too. And I saw the look on your face when you mentioned that jewelry box. I can help you get it back, but I need help.” “What?” I asked once again leaning back in my chair. “You want me to let you go?” “Well, yeah.” Eyes moving over the desk, to her license, to the landline phone on the other side, Alex kept her gaze down, as though asking for anyone’s help was a struggle. She got out of that chair, pacing three times before she sat on the desk. “That and something… else.” My gut tightened as I waited for the bomb to drop. She was a frustrating woman, nothing but trouble. I’d known it the second I laid eyes on her. But past all the attitude and the filthy mouth, she looked worried, a little fearful, something that didn’t really match up with the person she seemed to want everyone to think she was. “What is it?” Alex moved her chin, pointing to the door before finally looking at me. “You and your men, you’re all big guys…” “You don’t say?” “And,” she said, speaking over me, “well, if you were still a cop there’s no way I’d be even talking to you. But since you’re not…”

The mumbling, the slow build up before she got out what she wanted to say, was all too much, too infuriating. “Shit, lady.” I slapped my hand against the desk, not meaning to make her jump when the sound came out loud and piercing. “You gonna hem and haw around this all damn night? Spit it out.” “Fine,” she said, leaning over the desk towards me and I caught another thick trace of her perfume. It smelled sweet. “I got someone following me.” “Probably a cop.” “It’s not a cop.” She got mad then, sitting back and slinging her foot back and forth so that her shoe hit the metal base of the desk. “I know it’s not a cop.” “How do you know?” “Cops don’t leave flowers.” Why the hell would this woman have a problem with getting flowers? Didn’t all women like them? Shit, I had no idea. “So someone’s sweet on you?” “The ones left on my front stoop were weird enough, but then I found more in the bedroom. And no one has a key to my place. No one. Not even the landlord. I sorta changed the locks the day I moved in and my, um, work associates aren’t the kind of people that you wanna mess with.” She shrugged, dismissing the shifty way

she’d handled her landlord. “He hasn’t bothered me once since I moved in. Besides, whoever this is, he broke in. Busted a window.” My chair squeaked as I shifted, a little more curious than I had the right to be, but hell, a pretty girl, even if she is a thief, and someone breaking into her place? That had the SEAL in me curious. Then again, I thought, watching the way Alex popped her knuckles, how she wouldn’t look away from me as I considered her, maybe this was some sort of karmic payback for the shit she’d done. “Okay so some creeper broke into your place to leave flowers.” “They also stole some of my, well,” she waved her hand, finally nixing her gawkfest at me to look over my head. “Under things, and I haven’t seen my cat in weeks.” That didn’t mean a damn thing. Cats in this city? Please. “How close do you live to the Square?” I asked her, resting my fingers against my temple, elbow on the desk. “Not far. Why?” She frowned at my shrug, at the way I silently told her she should know better than to worry about some damn cat. “You know how many rats hover around Café Du Monde? Cats all over the place. Yours is probably sniffing for a good meal.” “No. He wouldn’t… look it isn’t just that. The flowers, my missing thongs, my cat, that’s not the only thing. I… um… I recently

left the employment of Mr. Ironside.” My eyebrows went up then. Timber Ironside ran some of the strip clubs and after-hour joints around most of the French Quarter. He was also a small time drug king, siphoning meth and weed to bar owners who wanted to offer the tourists a little extra something to commemorate their time in the city. Ironside had been a thorn in the police’s side for a good five years now but he wasn’t going anywhere. The club owners loved him, or pretended to. If Alex had worked for him and then left when he didn’t want her to, it made sense that one of his boys could be tailing her on his orders. Ironside’s people were beyond loyal to him—which had me wondering why Alex wasn’t. “You think he’s got someone scaring you into going back?” She paused before she spoke and a small wrinkle dented between her eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility.” That gut feel burned now and part of me believed that Alex was sincere. I’d seen as much fear as I had evil in my line of work. Maybe more. Men who knew they were about to die. Those who understood that telling me or my partners at the precinct anything meant the moment they left the building, their lives would end. But the worst kind of fear, the sort that you never forget seeing, is the haunted look of loss; missing or dead children, crimes left untended

—they all caused that same fear that glinted in Alex’s eyes. But then another, more cynical thought came to me: that this woman had spent her life working the system, using those big, pouty lips and endless dark eyes to get what she wanted. I ended up listening to both instincts—the one that had me itching to protect her, to learn more about what she knew of Simmons, and the one that told me to keep her at a distance. I stayed neutral, shooting for nonchalance, even knowing that she’d likely not buy it. “And why am I supposed to worry about any of this?” She frowned and I felt like a dick for stating the obvious. “Because you want that jewelry box back. I know where it is. Ironside has it, hasn’t been able to pawn it because the stuff is hot. And I also happen to know Ironside runs an auction every year for the shit his boys can’t pawn. It’s all stolen goods—and the auction is invite only.” Alex stood up and stepped a few paces away from the desk, letting her hips sway smoothly before she folded her arms and leaned against the wall. I caught myself watching in appreciation despite knowing it was an obvious tactic, then jerked my attention back to what she was saying. “He likes to pretend. He loves kidding himself into thinking he’s more than just some street thug. I can get you into the auction. I have a friend who’s sending out the invites.”

My mother’s jewelry box was worth about ten grand. A pittance, I imagined, to the sort of trinkets that would be up for sale at this auction. But having money didn’t matter to me. Finding the jewelry box wasn’t about reacquiring assets. It was about retrieving my family’s memories. My mother had loved that jewelry box; it reminded her of her grandmother, and of the stories passed down through the generations, stories she had grown up with, I had grown up with. That jewelry box meant family, to a man who had no family left. “And why do I need you to help me get into this auction?” “Because cop or not,” she said, pushing off the wall, “you still look way too clean. Unless you go by a name they’ll recognize, or have a lot of money to throw around, they won’t let you anywhere near the auction.” “But you’re a different story?” She rolled her eyes… again, as if she thought I was simple. “Please. They love me.” “Sure,” I said, trying not to notice how her perfume moved around the room when the overhead vent clicked on. “They love you so much they’re trying to scare the hell out of you.” “That’s personal. This is business. Business trumps bullshit.” There was something behind her words, something Alex kept close to the chest. She’d said the word “personal” like it felt heavy on her tongue but quickly recovered, bringing back the stiff, proud

set of her chin. I knew the woman was a liar, I could feel it in my bones, but maybe she had her reasons for bending the truth. I intended to find out what those reasons were. “So if I let you go, you’ll get me into the auction and I find out who’s trying to creep on you?” “Yeah. That’s the plan.” My chair squeaked again, the screws rubbing against each other as I swiveled in it once, trying to watch Alex’s face, to see if there were any obvious tells that she was playing me. If there were, she was damn good at hiding them. “I don’t trust you,” I said, needing her to realize she was on notice, that I wasn’t a dumb jackass willing to believe her without question. “And you shouldn’t.” She didn’t smile when she said that. “I don’t trust any cop, former or otherwise.” Play it like that, lady. Before she could run out of the office, I grabbed my cell and snapped a picture of her. She didn’t like that, reached for my phone, but my reflexes were sharp again and I was able to slide back in the chair, laughing at Alex when she let out a colorful litany of foul curses. “What the hell?” She stopped trying to grab my phone when I stood up, towering over her before I slipped my cell into my jacket pocket and pulled out a business card which she begrudgingly took.

“Tomorrow morning at ten, you meet me at our office and I’ll tag along to this friend of your’s place. I wanna be there when you wrangle that invite. If you don’t show,” I tapped my chest, feeling the outline of my phone in the pocket, “I send this picture to my friends at the NOPD with a lead about your sticky fingers at this fundraiser.” She hadn’t expected that. Not from me. Maybe she thought our small connection to Simmons gave us a reason to stick together. But I don’t partner with criminals, no matter how pretty they are or how fucking miserable their lives have been. Alex’s face flushed a high, bright pink and I bit my lip trying not to laugh as I moved to hold the door open for her; a gentlemanly move that we both knew was all smart ass. “That’s freaking blackmail,” she said, words and attitude turning back to the same bite and level as when I first dragged her into the office. “Yeah well,” I stopped between the threshold of the open door, pushing a forced grin onto my lips, “I used to be a cop. I never said I was a nice guy.”

Thieves have means, especially seasoned thieves like me. Neil Ryan had his smart phone and that nosey Big Brother app. Me, I had Google and the skills that allowed me to hack into the Orleans Parish Tax Assessor’s office without bothering a soul. “Too fucking easy,” I said to myself, walking toward my apartment on Burgundy Street trying to beat the looming rain. It was well past ten, that time in the Quarter when the tourists are just heading out to party and the locals try to avoid them. The wind was

harsh, moving the smells of the river behind me, mixing with the musty draft of whatever that stench was that never leaves the city and I stepped a little quicker, cursing the pain in my toes from the too-tight Manolo Blahniks I had borrowed from my best friend for the evening. Misty’s feet were at least a half a size smaller than mine. A few more taps of my thumb on my phone and I had Ryan’s address in the Warehouse District. It was one of those pricier places with secured parking and the square footage that only people who don’t want to live in the Quarter can land. Other than his name, some mild information I gathered a few months back when I visited Cavanagh, I didn’t know much about Neil Ryan. Military records are simple enough to find, so was the business license with his and his friends’ names, but I needed to find some dirt on this guy. He had way too much on me. Five more blocks of my feet pinching in those shoes and I’d be in a hot bath, nursing a glass of Jack. The streets were oddly quiet; not much in the way of lost tourists or hustlers looking to score some free cash, but then it was go time and they would be on Bourbon, maybe hanging out around the Square looking for easy marks. That had been my plan that afternoon when I’d caught wind of the fundraiser happening at the Marriott. A few drunk politicians boozing up their constituent’s donations as Misty’s girls gyrated

around them half naked at my best friend’s club, and I’d found out everything I needed to know about the event. It should have been an easy score. A few wallets, maybe some high-end phones, and I could have spent the rest of the weekend in my place or around it looking for my damn cat. Then Ryan pinched me, that asshole. I was stupid, trying to lift that mark’s wallet; he was attached to the headliner, for chrissakes. I’d grown clumsy, careless in the months since I left Timber’s employment. Employment. Not a word I’d generally use for luring tourist into frequenting whatever club needed the action or the drops I’d make for him. The money had been great, hell, I gotten my apartment because Timber wanted me not to worry about being in a shitty place. But then he’d become a little too attached to me. I couldn’t have that. Besides, “delivery girl” was a waste of my skills. Wanda, the “foster mother” the state landed me with when I was twelve, made damn sure her kids knew everything about corrupting the system—working a grift so the idiot you were swindling thought they’d somehow lost a bet; hacking an ATM machine with a duplicate master key and the right malware when you needed a couple hundred bucks. Of course, Wanda’s favorite hustle was sweetheart jobs where she, and then me, once I’d grown into my tits, honed in on a lonely widower or lifelong bachelor and

made with the sweet eyes, gave them some sappy story about being sick, needing surgery, anything really that had them handing over the cash. New Orleans wasn’t the easiest city to work a hustle in, not unless you wanted to target the tourists, which would never land you more than five, maybe seven hundred in one weekend. But those sweetheart jobs could be hella lucrative. But then Wanda got greedy, got pinched big time. She crossed a line and I’d been forced to help send her away. In the distance I could see the gray brick of my building with the New Orleans Saints and Louisiana state flags flapping away from the poles attached to the balconies. Then, just like that, I became aware of something else. In the blink of an eye, the wind stopped and everything froze in time. I’d had this feeling before— my breath fogging in front of me, that weird sensation that someone was so close I could feel the warmth of their whispers against my neck and the distinct sense that someone was lurking nearby, watching each step I took. Be cool. Deflect, I told myself, pretending like I was engrossed in my phone, in the bright colors and snarky posts on Twitter or Facebook that flashed on my screen; I even kept my face leaned toward the display. But my eyes darted everywhere, to the couple passing me on the other side of the street, the homeless woman with threadbare, ratty cargo pants pushing a grocery cart

with a wobbling wheel, even to the guy blowing smoke from a cigarette into the night as he leaned against the light pole some hundred yards ahead. Still, none of these people paid attention to me. They weren’t the threat I was feeling, the one that had my skin crawling like it had been tickled by spiders. The homeless woman cursed when her cart toppled over and the all its ratty contents—worn blankets, empty Coke cans, yellowed newspapers, spilled out onto the damp sidewalk. I was going to walk right past her, knowing she’d ask me for a light, or for some cash, but then I heard her crying, all quiet, like she didn’t want anyone to know she was upset and that “sucker voice” as Wanda had always called it, started jabbering in my head. Don’t be a bitch. Go help her out. And then the one that always got me: You’re one bad day away from ending up just like her. “Shit,” I sighed, jogging over to the woman to help her pick up her crap. “Honey, thank you, thank you so much.” With me helping, she moved quicker, cupping her possessions like they were precious. “These damn sidewalks with all the cracks and holes always has me dropping my shit and I was trying to get to Unity before they closed.” My nod probably didn’t help and I knew there was nothing I

could say to make her feel better. The homeless shelter had closed at least a half an hour before. She was thin, too thin in the way someone sick usually got when they couldn’t keep anything down and her skin was marred with brown scabs and spots. She looked fifty or sixty, but more than likely was only in her thirties. Meth, I’d guess. It was a damn shame really, how that shit takes over. I had a glancing thought about giving her my last twenty—had even gone so far as to reach into my jacket pocket—but then I caught sight of her face again, and how she had chewed her fingernails down to nothing. “Here,” I told her, pulling out a pen and one of the freebie coupons I’d landed the week before when the vendors needed day workers. “Tomorrow morning you go see Susan in the Market. She runs Eastside Deli.” I scribbled a note on the back of the coupon with my signature. “She owes me a Po-boy and they’re good. You tell her Alex gave this to you and she’ll feed you.” When she reached for it, I didn’t let it go immediately, squinting at the woman so she’d listen to me. “Don’t sell it.” “Oh I won’t. Thank you, doll.” She gave me a toothless, crooked smile and pocketed the coupon, patting it over and over. “God bless you and thank you!” My good deed done for the month, I turned back toward my building, suddenly remembering the sensation of being watched.

Another glance behind me still showed the homeless woman pushing her cart away, no one else. Nothing that should have me on edge, but still, I couldn’t shake that feeling. When I’m nervous, I hum. My voice is shitty; I could carry a tune, just not very far. Yet for some reason, when my gut starts to twist and my hands shake, some stupid song pops into my head and comes right out through my mouth all on its own. Tonight’s selection was “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” God, how many times had Wanda sang that song when I was a kid? The guy up ahead stopped smoking when I came nearer and I realized that he was standing right in front of my building. The tootight shoes had my feet pulsing—I’d probably have bruises on my toes—but I refused to quicken my pace, kept my steps slow and relaxed. To my right was an alley, one that dead ended around an empty apartment building. To my left was St. Louis Street; that was the route I’d take if whoever was waiting for me thought about getting too close. Damn that. I wasn’t going to give him the chance. One step back and I lost all the cool I’d been mustering. Turning the corner, I suddenly took off, trying my damnedest to run in those ridiculous shoes. My instincts once again had been spot on: someone was chasing behind me.

“Alex. Wait!” Fuck you, jackass. I so will not! But God am I nosey. You kind of have to be in my line of work. Still, that curiosity always lands me in shit. There I was, alone in the dead of night, right in the heart of the Quarter with some heavy-footed asshole calling after me, and what did I do? I looked over my shoulder. Shouldn’t have done that. Doing that caused me a whole lotta headache. I knew him instantly—skin smooth like rich chocolate, tall like a basketball player, but thick like a lineman, Cosmo wheezed and huffed as he met me on the sidewalk when I stopped my half assed sprint. “Fuck, Alex…,” he rasped, leaning on his knees with his massive fingers, “what you run for?” I smacked him on the back of his down-turned head. “Why do you think? Hey asshole, don’t lurk at my place like you’re scoping it and think I’ll run up to you all chipper like.” “I… didn’t… think…” “Do you ever?” My heartbeat raced and the brick behind me scratched against my skin when I leaned against it, looking up at the black sky and the flickering stars, the soaring planes above, reminding myself that Cosmo was harmless. Well, he was harmless when it came to me. Still, I had to rein in my irritation and the remnants of anger and fear that continued to fog my head. “Shit, my

feet hurt.” The building helped my balance as I worked to get my swollen feet out of those damn shoes. Filthy sidewalk or not, I’d be home in two minutes and I was done wearing those things. “Hold this,” I told Cosmo handing him my left shoe as I struggled with the right one. He’d finally caught his breath and looked at the black stiletto in his hand like it was contagious. “What?” I said, grabbing it back from him. “You gonna go barefoot on the pavement? That’s nasty.” When I glared at him, silently cursing the giant for lecturing me, he shrugged. “I’m just saying.” “Thanks, Dad, I got it.” I didn’t wait for him to follow me. My apartment was ground level and only a few feet of brick and mortar stood between me and that hot bath I had plans for. “You got a specific reason for being here?” I asked Cosmo, walking toward my building. “I’ve had a shitty day and want to get some sleep.” “How many shitty days since you left, Alex?” Oh. So that’s what he was here to bug me about. Timber. Yet again. It had been almost three months and the guy still sent his lackeys to pester me. I had no intention of returning, not to run his drops or do his errands and certainly not to warm his bed. “Really? You show up at my place this late, scare the shit out of me to nag me into going back?” “Listen, he’s off his game.” Cosmo came to my side, resting

against the building next to my door as a cab passed in front of us. The big man kept his gaze forward watching the slow-moving car as it circled the street two more times. Finally, when the black and white hood disappeared down the Quarter, Cosmo glanced at me, reaching in his jacket pocket for another smoke. “I figure that the man doesn’t have his head on right.” He lit the cigarette and took in a deep drag. “He doesn’t know I’m here, if that’s what you’re thinking, but shit, Alex, we need him to get right again. People are starting to talk.” “That’s not my problem.” “Oh?” I hated when Cosmo looked at me like that—small smirk thinning his top lip and the cleft in his chin exaggerated. I knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing that ran through my head anytime one of his people came at me with the ‘Timber misses you’ sob story. Cosmo blew a ring of smoke and I pulled the cigarette from his fingers, leaning next to him as I filled my own lungs with all those delicious chemicals I knew would end me one day. “Y’all came up together, right?” I nodded, ignoring how he watched me, ignoring the niggling memories in my head of me and Timber as kids working tourists for pocket change. “And,” Cosmo said, taking back his smoke when I handed to him, “who covered your ass when Wanda went up for trial?” “It wasn’t…”

“Who made sure no one fucked with you when she sent her boys to scare you out of testifying?” Timber had done all of that. He cared what happened to me, as much as anyone in our life can bring themselves to care. But Timber Ironside never did anything without wanting something in return and, after years of him pursuing me, trying to convince me that we were a perfect fit, he got exactly what he wanted. “He did all that for me, Cosmo.” I waved off his offer for another drag and crossed my arms, stepping away from the building so I could see his face. “Timber had my back, even when we were kids, but he’s not a kid anymore and what he wants from me now is something I won’t give him again.” Cosmo looked like he wanted to keep arguing, but the day, Ryan hassling me, my poor damn aching feet, had me not caring about anything but being in my bed. I’d already forgotten about the bath. Fuck that. The Jack though, yeah that was still going to happen. “Before you keep it up, remember that Timber made a deal with me as payback for keeping me safe when all that shit went down. I paid my debt. I don’t owe him anymore.” “He doesn’t see it that way, Alex.” There was no amusement left on Cosmo’s face. That gentle man—the one I’d seen rescuing abandoned kittens from a drain, the same one I’d watched beating

the shit out of a dealer who’d tried raping a tourist when she was too high to pay him for a dime bag—looked at me then like he didn’t know me, like I was a threat that needed sorting. Above all else, Cosmo was loyal, and would do just about anything to keep Timber happy; even if it meant Timber wanted me sorted. “I guess I don’t see it that way either. You might want to rethink what you paid off. It would be a good idea to remember how much in the red you’re still in.” He look up into the sky, head shaking. “This is a rough city, Alex.” When he looked down at me, I saw the friendliness, the kindness completely vacant from his expression. “And you’re a little girl with no one watching your back.” My mom’s death left me as a ward of the state at eight. Until twelve, I had my seventeen year old sister who kept me safe. Then, she died and I had to figure how to watch my own back. I was no “little girl” and I sure wasn’t scared of Cosmo, but I’d be stupid if I wasn’t wary. No matter how long we’d known each other, if he was on some personal crusade to return me to Timber, I wouldn’t be able to convince him that my no meant hell no. Friend or not, my knife would make an appearance if he threatened me. It was the way our lives worked. Loyalty didn’t come easy and it was never fucking cheap. But once it was there, it was solid. Timber had Cosmo’s loyalty—I didn’t. “My red is my business, man.” My key pinched against my

palm as I squeezed my fist around it and walked to my door. I was faster, smaller, more agile than Cosmo, but I’d need to be if he decided to make me go back to Timber. When that small glint of anger left his face and the stone cold stare that tightened his features began to soften, I stepped on my front stoop, telling Cosmo with one glare he wasn’t welcome in side. “I always liked you, Cosmo. You’ve always had Timber’s back.” One step back down so he could see my face. I firmed up my mouth, holding my lips tight. “But if you ever threaten me again, I’ll fucking cut you and I won’t feel shitty about it either.” The big man’s eyebrows went up, wrinkling his forehead as though he hadn’t expected my anger. I didn’t care if he had. “You feel me?” “Yeah, Alex,” he said, rubbing his stubble as he squinted, like he was trying to see how serious I was, if my threat was something that he needed to worry about. Finally, the big man nodded, but only once. “I feel you.”

Cosmo stayed on the stoop a full minute after my deadbolt was locked. I didn’t care that he could still be lurking or that the looming

feeling that I was being watched had not eased even while I stood outside my building talking to the big man. Timber’s lackey and that weird juju vibe I’d felt would disappear the second I fixed my Jack. And that’s exactly where I headed as I walked through my apartment, stripping out of the suffocating leather jacket and that too-tight pencil skirt. Blinds and curtains covered the floor to ceiling windows and two dead bolts on both my front door and the back entrance that led into the courtyard kept me locked in tight. No one could see me unless I wanted them to. My skirt landed on my sofa and I popped open the first three buttons on my shirt before I made it to the liquor cabinet next to my small refrigerator. One sip took the edge off, a second one numbed the irritation Cosmo’s nagging had caused. By the third, my chest didn’t feel so tight and the knot in my stomach had loosened so that I barely noticed it anymore. Headlights slipped through the small opening in my kitchen curtains and I stood in front of it watching another cab, this one yellow, weave down the street. The sky had opened and the rain hadn’t begun with a trickle, but a deluge that had my hundred year old windows shaking from the wind and rumble of thunder. Hurricane season in Louisiana and the rain was as common in October as mosquitos on the river in August. Somewhere out in the weather and inky darkness my eight year old tabby, Minion, hid

among the tourists, likely pouncing on the rats that waited for scraps of forgotten food and powdered sugar in the Quarter. It had been over a week and I hadn’t seen him. But Minion being gone was just another loss. He’d been a stray once already. I’d taken care of him, got him his shots and collared him, but I knew better than to get myself attached, especially to a creature who, like me, had very few loyalties. The Jack burned my throat as I tapped off the glass and I forgot all about the cat and the shitty day as I moved into my tiny bathroom. Now that I was home, I had changed my mind again: the bath would do me good, as had the Jack, and I stripped down, throwing my bra and thong with the wrinkled white shirt into the hamper next to the filling claw foot tub. The room steamed as I moved out of the way to close the door and slipped into the hot water slowly, inching my body beneath the heat, wincing as the growing blisters on my feet hit the water. The antique cast iron tub, this place, was new to me, a luxury I’d never had when I was a kid or, hell even a year ago when Timber offered me a job. Before then, I had mostly crashed in dingy hotels, weekly-rented apartments with no locks on the door or no hot water heaters, smelling of stale cigarettes or worse. Sometimes Misty would let me camp out on her too small sofa when it wasn’t being used by a customer or one of Timber’s boys. Then Timber

hired me, set me up with this place, promising it was mine for as long as I wanted it; telling me he wouldn’t ask for anything in return. But he had. He’d kept at me, and when I decided I didn’t like belonging to anyone, I made Timber see reason—I let him know he could keep his job, the apartment and the fat bank rolls he tried using to get me to change my mind about quitting. I’d kept the apartment just by mentioning to the landlord that Timber was a friend and I was glad for it. It was homey, far too tiny for more than one person but, despite its ground-level position and the front steps just yards from the street, it was as safe a place as I’d ever been. The floors were original, old pine that had been restored, keeping the faint nail holes and ware from the decades underneath all the polyurethane. The apartment was really one large room with a bath and bedroom off to the right, hidden behind a small hallway. It wasn’t much, but it kept me away from Misty’s groping customers and out of the drafty apartments with no heat or barely any insulation between the walls—places like the ones I’d lived in my whole life. There were always homes, but that word was the most basic definition of what we’d dealt with under Wanda’s care. We had a roof. We had food and a toilet, but we had to work for everything we needed. In Wanda’s home if you wanted a toothbrush, you had to swindle a tourist for the cash to pay for it. If you wanted dinner,

you had to bring in your take for the day. It took some getting used to, especially as a twelve year old just coming from the home I’d shared with my sister Stevie. That had been in Atlanta, with the Timmons; an elderly couple who really just wanted to help. We had started to make a home there, Stevie landing an internship in some swanky law office and our neighbor, Isiah Ferguson, being the only really good friend either of us ever had. Then Stevie got killed, Isiah ran off, and Mr. Timmons died and, well, I got stuck with Wanda here in New Orleans by some means I never cared enough to figure out. Shit, I thought, wondering why all those useless memories had come crowding in all of the sudden. Thinking of my sister did me no good. Thinking of how it had been living in Atlanta, so close to normal, so close to being wanted would only invite depression which would keep me off my game. I hated how my eyes suddenly felt heavy, that a slight burn had crept into the corners of my eyelids. Sliding down against the curved edged of the tub, I let the heat of the hot water wash away the day, taking from me the shit that had stacked up, and allowed myself to wonder, just for a second, about Neil Ryan. It really was too bad that he still had that cop-vibe. Military types, cops, they tended to stay the same no matter their job title and, in my experience, they all looked down on folks like me. Of

course they did. We stood on opposite ends of the law. Still, hardass that he might be, Neil Ryan was too damn pretty. He had this square jaw, those high cheekbones and green eyes that reminded me of mint and the mojitos Misty always makes after she hits the farmer’s market. He was tall, but the good kind of tall, no more than maybe six foot, and had shoulders that seemed to go on and on. But there was something else about him. I could see something in his eyes, something I had tried unsuccessfully to ignore as he interrogated me—he was fighting something, looking for something that was out of his reach, and it was more than some old jewelry box lifted from his house. I’d seen the same look a hundred times on the dozens of kids who came through Wanda’s over the years. Loss. Struggle, hell who didn’t have the same shadows in their eyes? But Ryan? Not many people wore that shadow like a badge, like it didn’t take away from the throb of temptation that came off him like cologne. He was definitely doable. Well, he would have been if he wasn’t such a Boy Scout. The soap bubbled over my russet skin, sliding against my legs as I moved them out of the water and stretched. I could have stayed there forever, letting the heady scent of the lavender soap relax me nearly as much as the Jack, but something beyond the

door caught my attention, something that rekindled the fear I had repressed the moment I’d locked myself in tonight. It could have been Minion finally scratching to get inside, but the sound was too heavy, the scuttle of feet more man-like than feline. The stopper came out easily with the tug of my big toe and I eased out of the water, immediately going for the lid on the back of my toilet and the Baby Glock nine millimeter taped underneath it. No clothes in the bathroom, just a bunch of thick towels Misty had bought me when I’d moved into the apartment and I draped one around myself, water dripping into the heavy terrycloth as I held the cold metal of the gun lightly in my hand and listened for the noises to move outside my bathroom again. I waited. I listened, letting the seconds slide by, maybe two full minutes, but heard nothing save the sound of thunder and the intermittent patter of rain against the windows. Slipping open the bathroom door, the old hinges creaking had me frowning, then I slowly inched into the small hallway, checking around the living room to the kitchen. Nothing. Next, my bedroom. As soon as I saw the open window, the one that led to the fire escape, I knew that someone had paid me a visit. It might have been Cosmo, maybe disregarding my warning, reminding me that though I’d walked away from Timber, I hadn’t been forgotten. Maybe it had been Timber himself, sneaking into my

place because he wanted me to know that I was still his; that no matter how many times I refused to be claimed, he would always try. Maybe it was some faceless asshole that I’d swindled. Maybe it was a newbie just on the grift looking to learn from me, or a simple B&E. Whoever it was would feel my wrath if I found them. No one comes in my place uninvited. The bedroom was small and utterly empty of anyone but me. The open window allowed the whipping wind and rain to splatter onto my delicate pine floors and the curtains slapped like sails in a hurricane. Quickly closing the window, I dropped to the floor and tried to sop up the small puddle that had formed there with the towel I had been wearing. Beyond the fire escape there was nothing but the dark empty street. Anger replaced the worry and fear, spreading from my stomach to my chest—until I turned and saw my bed. Someone had left gifts for me before. Small tokens that I guessed they thought would somehow soften my heart. Last week, there had been bouquets of flowers waiting for me, all different colors and types, lying against my front door. There’d been more flowers on my bed, and my missing thongs had been replaced by expensive lingerie I’d never be caught dead wearing. But tonight’s gift stretched beyond any hints of romance. At least, sane people romance.

The red box was small, no bigger than an 8x10 picture frame with black, felt lining, nestled in a nest of rose petals that also covered the foot of my bed and were scattered onto the floor. Around the box, set up like some sick shrine were pictures of me, black and white, with Misty, walking around the Market, smoking at the end of a bar, one with my chin dotted with powdered sugar as Misty and I ate beignets. And scratched into every single one of them was the rough etching of the word MINE. Over and over MINE, MINE, MINE, like some sick handwritten frame on the flimsy paper. My stomach twisted, burned with fear as I looked inside the box, removing a small lithograph that lay within, using the corner of my duvet to touch it, as if that could shield me from the effect of the engraving. The colors of the print were vivid, warm hues of gold and red, with blues like the color of a clear pond, but that was where the warmth of the painting ended. The figures depicted were in conflict —a man and a woman, falling against a bed; her holding back her attacker as he brandished a knife over her in one hand and held a golden cup in the other. Her breasts were exposed and he wore only a cloth, draped lazily over his waist. It didn’t say love to me. There was no warm affection, no sentiments of passion or desire depicted in any of the brushstrokes.

This painting was about violence and possession, the fucked up ownership that Timber wanted me to submit to; the disgusting claim that a man makes over a woman without her permission, without caring about her wishes, her desires. It felt like a warning, one that had my body shaking, had me stepping back to find something to cover my naked body with. Could Timber have done this? It had to have been him, didn’t it? He was controlling and possessive—but would he go to these lengths to scare me? But then I saw what lay behind the lithograph, and I dropped it, forgotten, on the bed. Minion’s broken collar. There were rusty flakes along the seams that my heart knew was dried blood, and the tiny buckle had been twisted and broken. Fear and despair and heartbreak welled up in me, sudden and stabbing, fear I hadn’t felt since I had been told that my sister had been murdered. Time stopped as I tried to make sense of it all, feeling gutted and empty. Then the anger kicked in. “Motherfucker.” As I ran around my room, digging in my drawers and small closet for clothes, stuffing them all into my overnight bag, my mind raced with options, none of them good. I could try to find a hotel somewhere for the night, but that wouldn’t solve my problem for tomorrow. I could call Misty, but she was heavily under Timber’s

thumb and no matter how tight we were, I couldn’t completely trust that she wouldn’t tell him where I was hiding. I damn sure couldn’t call Timber, not when he could have been the one orchestrating all these freaky gifts. Slipping on my jeans and my waist length leather jacket, only one name came to mind. He was the man I’d swindled into letting me go tonight. He also wanted into Timber’s auction and, though I’d rather bite off my own tongue than ask that Boy Scout for a favor, I had nowhere left to go. Everyone was on Timber’s payroll or wanted to be. Neil Ryan wasn’t a nice guy but I knew he could damn well keep me safe.

There was too much space left on the smart screen. The program I used to navigate the meager links was from IBM and I had used it for years when I was a detective. It would chart and link the newspaper articles, the scanned photos I’d jacked from old case files, but the details were limited and the leads weak. I sat against my dining room table staring up at that bright screen, eyes moving to the picture of my mother’s dead body as she lay on the cold ground outside of our house. There was only a

trickle of blood from her head and she’d been thin and very pale. Blunt force trauma, the coroner had labeled her death. The dead kid they found in the river had been blamed for the murder, his DNA on my mom’s body. “Attempted robbery gone bad.” my sergeant had told me. “The kid must have felt shitty that the robbery turned into a homicide and drank himself in a stupor. Ending up drowned in the river.” I never bought it. Too neat. Too easy. Too clean. That kid couldn’t have gotten the jump on my mother, he wasn’t a practiced criminal. I shifted my gaze to the autopsy photo, to the barely legal kid with the sunken eyes and bird chest. He was too thin and my mother had always been agile and wiry. Ask any drunk asshole who’d tried hitting on her at her favorite pub, McKinney’s, back in the day. They’d tell you just how vicious Fiona Ryan’s right cross had been. Something about her case never had set well with me. That scrawny kid had her wallet in his jacket and his hair under her fingernails but, something in my gut had always told me the case was too cut and dry. He was guilty, but I wasn’t sure of what. My gaze flicked to the other images on the wall-sized screen. The dead teenager in Atlanta, a pretty girl with once-brown skin and jet black hair. It had been the only case Simmons had never closed and something had zipped in my ear when I’d dug it up. My former sergeant was the only connection, but I had no idea how to

link a dead teenager in Atlanta with the not kosher death of my mother in Cavanagh. There were other details on that board, mostly records I’d lifted with the aid of a few Benjamins and bottles of whiskey, all about Simmons and the reprimands and never-proven accusations on his record with the Atlanta P.D. “What are you hiding, old man?” I asked that grainy picture of Simmons tucked onto the corner of the board. Those cold eyes stared back at me, frozen with a glint of a con I hadn’t ever figured out. He never answered back, gave nothing away. Tired from the day and the going-nowhere investigation I’d been working for over a year, I set the board to sleep mode and closed the doors of the thin cabinet that surrounded it. I didn’t want anyone knowing I had started this board. Sammy would only try to jump in, offering suggestions, telling me he’d stick his neck out for me no matter what and I couldn’t let that shit happen. The poor bastards who shared a father obsessed with the Rat Pack, Sammy’s brothers, Dean and Frank—the other partners in our security company, NOLA Elite Security, would likely worry that this investigation into my mother’s murder might distract me from our current contracts and the business we were trying to build. I found myself staring at the two framed posters affixed to the cabinet doors—one of the Cavanagh, Tennessee cityscape with the wide, tall mountains ghosting behind the small, turn of the century

structures and the expanse of green fields outside the edges of town. The other was of New Orleans, Jackson’s Square at dawn, with the looming presence of the old president astride his horse, the shadow of light and dark obscuring his face against the mammoth outline of St. Louis Cathedral. Cavanagh and New Orleans, my two homes, my past and present, anchoring the mysteries I feared I’d never unravel. Shaking off my reverie, I hit the shower, trying to drown myself in the hot spray, loving how the water massaged the tension from my shoulders. For all its comfort, though, I still couldn’t linger. I’d never quite let go of that regimented shit, shower, shave mantra drilled into every service man since time immemorial and so I was lathered up, rinsed and in my boxers within ten minutes. I’d liked this place when Sammy showed it to me. It was yet another Auciello cousin—that family had dozens—that had brokered the deal for the apartment. It was away from the bustle of Quarter traffic, right in the Warehouse District, S. Peter Street, where the streets were impossibly narrow, but the townhouses and condos had plenty of square footage. This place had secured parking and was one of the only buildings in the district that had coveted wrought iron balconies, right on the parade route. I didn’t really care about watching the parades, but I did love the space and all the upgrades the contractors had used to make my home

convenient and sparsely comfortable as possible. There was a pool in the courtyard out back that I never used and the brick walls were clean, covered in a glaze that made them shine. I liked that almost as much as I liked the stained concrete floors and the dark wood kitchen cabinets. There were two bedrooms in this place, one for me to sleep in, and one for me to workout in and keep the boxes of shit from my mom’s house that I hadn’t quite figured out what to do with. A quick sweep of my living room to make sure the door was locked, then I flicked off the light above the kitchen sink before ducking into my room and falling into bed. The day, that damn fundraiser and the hell cat Alex, had worn me out. I rolled over, tucking in deep to the fluffy duvet Sammy’s mom had bought me when I told her I was sleeping on a wool blanket I’d gotten in basic, when suddenly my brain went off like a live wire. I hated that shit— being dog tired, whipped completely by the day, but then crashing in bed only to have your brain buzz with thoughts and ideas, memories, all the shit you can’t tune out or shut off when you should be sleeping. That night’s live wire thoughts were, first, on my mom, the image of her on that cold grass outside our house, eye unfocused, staring at nothing. Then, the image slipped away and landed right on Alex Black’s pretty doe eyes and pouty mouth. Those were

thoughts that had no business being in my head. Still, those lips, man. Had she been any other woman, maybe someone I’d hooked up with at a bar or a woman I met at the market, then I’d be all over her. Who wouldn’t be? Beautiful bronze skin, lips worth nibbling, and an ass that looked like an upside down apple. Perfect, tight. Shit. Just thinking about that had my dick on high alert. I rolled over, groaning against my pillow as I remembered the way she smelled, the little shock of fear in her eyes as we talked about the asshole bugging her. Still, she wasn’t a woman I’d ever touch. I don’t date lowlifes. I don’t fuck them and from what I’d seen of her record, that woman was the fucking face of the criminal element. Damn shame. Dick still throbbing, I thought about rubbing one out, I even rolled over onto my back and grabbed myself, pushing down my cotton boxers, but then I heard something outside my window, something that rang out against the slap of thunder and the dimming torrent of rain hitting against my balcony one room over. Sounded distinctly like someone mumbling “fuck this rain.” You had to be careful in the city. The balconies were coveted for a reason and after only a handful of months living here, I’d kicked out at least two homeless men and one runaway off my balcony. Normally they were just trying to stay dry and off the streets, organizing their game plan by taking a breather. Sometimes,

though, those unwanted guests had grander ideas. Ideas that could get you killed by home owners who didn’t need a good reason to shoot an intruder. Grunting, I got out of my bed, grabbing my Colt .45 from the holster laying on my bedside table just in case my visitor wasn’t homeless and had ideas about picking the locks on my French doors. The safety stayed on, but I held the butt of my gun tight, walking into the dark kitchen. There was the outline of feet—steel toed boots from the look of them, and the wet hem of dark denim just visible against the street light outside my French doors. Whoever it was, was huddled in the corner of the balcony, with rain spattering over their head as they hid under a thick leather jacket. The awning was small, wouldn’t offer much protection from the rain. Water wet my stomach when I leaned over my sink, staring outside the window to get a better look at the loiterer who stupidly lit a telltale cigarette and held the jacket over the smoke. They hunched over, scooting closer to the door and the trail of smoke followed, almost immediately disappearing in the rain and wind, moving it out toward the street below. “Dumbass,” I said to myself, resting my gun on the counter, not worried about anyone missing the wisdom not to smoke and

especially without the good sense to keep dry from the rain because of a damn cigarette. The small click of the lock on my French doors was quiet, so my little visitor didn’t flinch or seem to notice when I flipped it. I was ready to laugh at them, maybe give them a towel and a couple of bucks for a meal before I ushered them out of my place, but when I opened the door and that dumbass looked right at me, all my good will and humor died right on the spot. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked Alex, grabbing her by the arm to drag her into my apartment. Again that small spark rose up when my fingers met the bare skin on her arm, but her sputtering, annoyed, still holding the cigarette had me too pissed to let the sensation register. I jerked the cigarette out of her hand, flicking it over my balcony railing. “I wasn’t done with that.” Another grunt left my mouth, but I didn’t otherwise speak, slamming the door closed before I picked up my gun and slipped into the hall to fetch a towel from the linen closet. She took it without looking at me, nodding a half-hearted thanks just by lowering her chin before she covered her wet face in the towel. Her movements were slow, methodical, and I got the feeling that she liked the texture of the towel, maybe needed a moment to linger on it to come up with a feasible excuse as to why the hell she was on

my balcony in the pouring rain. “Well?” I said while she scrubbed her hair with the towel. I was surprised to see that it came down to her waist, something I hadn’t noticed earlier when I caught her trying to lift that wallet. The pompadour and slicked back bun she’d worn had given no indication she had such a thick, tempting mane of hair. Now it was wet, straight and stuck to her neck and down her back. “Well what?” Her voice was biting and harsh, but she smiled when she said that, making me think she was still trying to search for an excuse. “You didn’t get enough of my shit in Cavanagh? You track me down to see what else of mine you can jack?” “No, asshole,” she said, throwing the towel onto the bar in front of me. “I…” she stopped speaking, taking the leather jacket in her hand and draping it on the back of the chair in front of the island. Rain dripped from the arms and Alex took the damp towel and wiped the jacket clean, gaze fixed on that black leather. I thought she would be angry, maybe a little embarrassed at getting caught outside my apartment, but none of that showed on her face. Her skin, in fact, looked pale, a little washed-out, and I wondered what had spooked her enough that she’d come to me looking for help. If that’s why she was at my place at all. Finally, she looked up, gaze trailing over my naked chest. I leaned forward, elbows on

the island so she’d look me in the eyes. Then Alex blinked twice as though just realizing she’d been staring. “I got another gift.” I could feel the tight squint between my eyebrows when I frowned. “What was it?” “Here,” she said, offering me her phone. “They were in my apartment while I took a bath. No one was there before I went into the bathroom and there I was in my tub nice and comfy and I heard someone in my apartment.” “What did you do?” “Got my Baby Glock and investigated.” Alex shook her head, like my disapproval at her with a gun was the least of her worries. “Dude, we’re in Louisiana. I don’t need a license to own a gun.” I shot up an eyebrow, earning a sudden groan from her. “And I have never been convicted of a felony. Perfectly legal. Would you just look at the damn pictures?” I enlarged the blurry photo, squinting at the rose petals, and what looked like scratched up surveillance pictures of Alex, the small cat collar and the painting— something classical, something violent. The style reminded me of all the paintings and small antiques covered in similar pieces that Dot had in her antique shop in Cavanagh. I’d spent summers there, helping out my mother’s best friend clean and store boxes, usually after my mom threatened me. Alex was impatient, tapping her fingers against the island,

setting a rhythm I ignored as I flipped through the images. “This…” I looked up at her, tilting my head as she bit her thumbnail. “You okay?” “I think they killed my cat.” Alex always had her guard up. That much I’d read from her in the first five minutes of meeting her. It wasn’t a surprise, sort of came with the kind of life she’d lived, from what I could tell. She seemed like a hardass, the kind of chick who didn’t want anything from anyone except what she could gank and pawn. But even hardasses, sometimes, have hearts. If this guy had messed with her cat, maybe she thought she was in over her head. Maybe, despite the attitude, she knew she needed someone to watch her back. Her face had grown paler and she kept rubbing her hands against her arms, shaking from the cold and rain. “I’m sorry about your cat.” I didn’t do well with the comforting thing, wasn’t in my nature to go out of my way to make anyone feel better, but I did know what it was like to lose a pet. I’d never forgotten the puny boxer my mom had gotten me when I was ten. Hurt like hell when he got run over a few years later. “Listen,” I told her, probably letting the fierce way she tried not to cry get under my skin. Someone at a loss, especially if that someone was a beautiful woman on her own, had been a weakness I had succumbed to in

the past. Lancelot syndrome, my mom had called it. I couldn’t just walk away and act like I didn’t give a shit. “You hungry? Want something to eat?” “No. I eat plenty,” she said, a little too defensively. “I’m…” Alex looked at her feet, shuffled them against the footrest on my barstool, “cold though. It’s really damn cold in here.” Nodding once, I walked out of the kitchen, grabbed a hoodie, the smallest t-shirt I had and a pair of boxers, red and blue plaid, and offered them to Alex. She hesitated only for a moment, looking at the clothes in my hand and then back at my face like she expected me to put some sort of caveat on the offer. I didn’t want anything from her, not that night, so when I extended my arm, pushing the clothes at her, she took them, muttering a low “thanks” as she held them against her chest. “Bathroom’s down the hall, first door on the right. You can put your wet clothes in the dryer when you’re done.” She stood there shaking, her hair still dripping wet and her skin covered in chills, but Alex didn’t move. She seemed able to only watch me, stare at me like she was waiting for more. Like she waited for me to set my price. Not my style. A nod toward the hallway sent her out of the kitchen and I riffled through my fridge, not closing it until I heard her bustling around my bathroom. Feeling a little exposed, I slipped into my

room to put on a shirt myself. It wasn’t cold in my apartment; I checked the thermostat. But as I rustled up a couple of turkey sandwiches, then went back to look at those pictures again, I realized what Alex was feeling. It wasn’t just fear. It was the fear of being helpless, of being unable to stop what was hurtling towards you. I’d felt it myself, a dozen times, maybe a hundred. It was the same grip of dread I’d felt lying in the dust and blood in Fallujah when I was sure that burning in my chest would only worsen. It was the same frigid sensation that gripped me as I looked down at my mother lying in that coffin pale and lifeless. That cold grip of that fear holds you tight, like a deer in the headlights. It blinds you to any reason, divests you of any hope, and it sticks to your bones like a cancer, eating you up from the inside. “What’s this?” Alex’s voice was clearer, and I turned from the kitchen window to face her. “Thought you might be hungry.” “I told you I wasn’t…” “I was hungry so I made you a sandwich too.” I didn’t wait for her to copy me as I tucked into my snack. “Eat it, don’t, doesn’t bother me. Just keep quiet for a second.” “I didn’t come here for food or…” She buttoned her mouth when I grunted, cocked my eyebrow to keep her quiet. “Continue,” she said, waving her hand.

Her phone was older than my iPhone and the pictures were grainy. Thumbing through them while I took bites out of my sandwich, my eyes narrowed, taking in the details I glimpsed from the dark pictures. “Window open or broken?” “Open,” she said, her mouth full of turkey. “They left it open when they left, too.” That seemed odd, but then, this asshole wanted to be found out. He wanted her to know what he’d done. I moved her phone to the side, looking past it to stare at her. “Like they weren’t trying to hide that they’d been there.” “Exactly.” The spicy taste of honey mustard slipped against my tongue with another bite, but my eyes stayed on the phone, still squinting, still examining. The picture was too blurry, most camera phone pictures are, and I couldn’t shake the need to see things for myself. “I’d like to check things out for you.” “Why?” It was an honest question, but one I hadn’t expected. “You came to me, remember? What were your plans, anyway? Drown yourself in between smokes? Wait till I made to leave in the morning and tap on my French doors?” She shrugged, pushed her plate away and again crossed her arms over her chest. The hoodie I’d given her was thin and gray,

from some rugby tournament in Cavanagh that my squad lost and after fidgeting with the sleeves covering her fingers, Alex took it off and kept it in her lap. The t-shirt underneath was black, hung loose on her small frame and when Alex crossed her arms, I could make out the generous curve of her tits. I had to fight to keep my eyes on her face and, thank God, she didn’t seem to notice me staring at her chest. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I just… didn’t want to be there.” “Don’t you have friends?” I felt like a dick when she glared, realizing suddenly that she probably didn’t, understanding that my question made assumptions and made me sound like an ass. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to understand why the hell you’d show up on my balcony. We don’t know each other.” She struggled with something, sighing and looking out of the French doors as though she argued with herself, debating whatever it was that had her irritated. Finally, after Alex fiddled with the ends of her still damp hair, wrapping them around her finger, she exhaled, closing her eyes like she refused to see my reaction to whatever she was about to tell me. “My sister, when I was a kid, she always told me if I got into trouble to ask a cop for help.” Alex opened her eyes, forehead in a faint wrinkle as she waited for my reaction. There must have been something unbelievable, likely sarcastic on

my face, because Alex lost her guarded expression and flipped me off. “That was a long damn time ago and she was… well, we had been in pretty good foster homes up to then, always together, never really had too much bad happen. Yet.” “Didn’t stay that way?” Alex shook her head, all sullen, daring me not to pry. I knew better than to ask for details. “I’m not a cop. Not anymore.” “No, but you still have the vibe. That’s something that doesn’t stay behind when you hand in your badge. You’ll be a cop till the day you die, Ryan. Besides, I saw your partners when I was leaving the Marriott. You and your team, you’re all big hero types.” I laughed, loud and heavy and earned another eye roll. Oh, she had no idea how very unheroic me and my asshole friends were. Well, me and Sammy at least. Alex didn’t seem bothered by my laughter or how incredulous her assumption seemed. She waved her hand again, snorting out a laugh. “Even if you don’t live the hero shit, you look the part. I’ve been around enough of your kind to know the real pricks from the ones who believe it.” “Believe what?” “That they can save the day.” That kind of honesty always shuts me up, but Alex didn’t seem to like how her words made me smile. She cleared her throat, and her gaze was so intense that I

found myself avoiding her eyes by rolling crumbs from my sandwich between my fingers. “I don’t go around asking for help. I’ve done alright on my own for a long damn time. But whoever this is, they’re getting ballsy and I don’t like that shit. I don’t like anyone in my space.” What did she mean by being on her own? She didn’t mention the sister again and I guessed that meant she wasn’t around anymore. I let her keep talking. “I can take care of myself, like I said, but I’m not an idiot. When shit gets too big, sometimes you gotta ask for someone to watch your back. My friends, well, there’s only one real friend and she’s got her own shit to worry about. Everyone else needs motivation to do anything. I don’t have that kind of cash and to be honest, I don’t trust them.” “But you trust me?” She paused, eyes narrowing before she shook her head. “No, but I don’t need to. I need bodies and wits right now. Someone who will find this freak and handle him.” She shrugged. “You do this for me and I’ll get the jewelry box back on my own. You won’t have to bother with the auction.” That didn’t line up with what I wanted out of that auction. Alex might have ideas about me, she might even be right, but I still had a mission and the auction was a step in the right direction to getting that mission finished. But, I had to play it cool with her. Sitting up, I

folded my fingers together, making sure I kept my expression neutral. This woman was looking hard, had been all night, but I needed to stick to my own priorities “You don’t want me there?” “I don’t have an opinion on you being there, but why bother with the hassle?” I was walking a very thin line here. “Because I’m looking for someone.” I tried keeping my voice even, the tone light, but Alex was street smart and I knew she could read me. This was the type of woman who could easily call me on my shit. Not sure if I liked that, pretty sure I didn’t. “I have a feeling they might be there checking out who bids on the box.” “Okay, fine,” Alex said, standing from the stool to lean on the island. Again my eyes flicked down to her chest and this time she noticed, following my gaze to her tits, then back up again, but she didn’t call me on my ogling. “You help me out and I get you in. Listen, at the speech today, you let me go. You didn’t call the cops and now you’re gonna help get rid of whoever this asshole is whose fucking around with me. That puts me owing you, Ryan and I don’t like owing anyone. Ever. But I don’t see that I have a choice.” I had no idea what she planned or how she thought she could pay me back. Her clothes were worn but clean, her nails were painted and she had straight, nice teeth. Alex wasn’t povertystricken, she wasn’t homeless, at least not usually, and it seemed

like she did okay for herself. Still, I didn’t think she could hire NOLA Elite Security, and Frank would insist on payment if they got involved. “No freebees,” he’d told me and Sammy a few weeks back. “Kind of pointless for us to try to make money if you assholes go off and play bodyguard and then don’t get paid.” Then he’d looked at Sammy, shaking his head to stop his brother before he spoke. “And a free piece of ass does not keep the lights on, Sammy so don’t ask.” God knew what Frank would say about me catching Alex’s back, but before I could image what colorful, filthy names he’d call me, the woman pushed away from the island, coming to my side. Her steps were slow and she moved like a cat, though she didn’t smile, didn’t look at all like she wanted to be standing next to me; that frown was just too damn straight. I opened my mouth to ask her what she wanted, but then Alex exhaled, and the smallest hint of cigarettes and peppermint brushed across my face before she took the hem of the t-shirt and lifted it over her head. Alex was young, I knew that, but damn, she was a gorgeous woman. Twenty-four year old tits, full, round, fucking perfect stared right at me and I felt like a damn kid seeing his first Playboy. They were all I saw, nothing else existed in that moment but those glorious, generous tits. It took me a full minute to stop gawking, to squeeze my fists so tight that a couple of knuckles popped until I

got my head screwed on right and stood, stepping back from her and that all the tempting, brown skin. “What are you doing?” I asked her, but for the life of me couldn’t stop staring. “Paying you,” she said, coming closer to me, she wrapped her arms around her middle like she wanted to hide her belly. But she stood so close that I could feel the point of her nipples against my ribs. I was too shocked to move, too annoyed that my dick didn’t seem to care that this woman had come to me for help. “Wait. Hold on a second.” I stepped back again, digging my palms into my eyes. “I take cash, Alex.” “I don’t have any. Not enough for what you’d charge me.” “Look,” I started, pausing only when she followed me, sliding her fingers up my shoulder. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pulled her wrist away. “I said I wasn’t a nice guy.” The discarded t-shirt lay on the island and I slipped around her, jerking it up in my hand. “I never said I was a bastard. Put that on.” “Oh,” she said with a tilt moving her head and her eyebrows moving up as though something had just occurred to her. “You a bear or something?” “A what?” “You like boys?” I closed my eyes, working calm breaths in and out of my lungs. “No, I don’t. I like women. Only women.”

She looked down at her chest, frowning. “What the hell is wrong with you, then?” Another step and she jerked the shirt out of my hand. “My tits are fucking glorious!” “I see ‘em, dammit.” I felt like a jackass, cowering away from this tiny woman like a punk, like I’d never seen a pair of big tits before, but I just couldn’t do that shit. I wouldn’t touch her. When she stepped closer, waiting for me to answer, I held up my hand to stop her. Shouldn’t have done that. “You don’t think they’re amazing? They’re real. Feel.” She grabbed my hand, making me brush my palm against her nipple before I jerked away from her. My dick went fully hard, throbbed so painfully that I grunted despite myself. “Would you stop?” I said, my voice loud and barking. Alex just stared at me, as if she were weighing her options. But this time when I stepped back, she didn’t follow. Instead, she slipped on the shirt—slowly, with, I swear, some gratuitous bouncing—and watched me as I was finally able to avert my eyes. “Fucking Boy Scouts,” she mumbled, loud enough for me to hear just fine. My Big Brain had me slipping behind the island to keep her gaze off my dick, willing it to settle. Little Brain, though, wasn’t having any of that. It forced my gaze to her body when she

stretched to adjust the shirt, and just a sliver of that tight, flat stomach peeked out as she moved, my boxers rolled up at her tiny waist, and her round, plump ass jiggling with her motions. No clue why’d she hid that stomach. It was almost as perfect as those tits. The cool granite surface and the stainless steel of the dishwasher against my thin boxers helped my dick to settle down. Finally dressed, Alex’s eyes were still wary, maybe a little offended and I sighed, giving up any pretense about being polite. “Don’t look at me like that, okay? They’re perfect. Beautiful. Hot as fucking hell.” “But you don’t want to touch them. Not big enough? Too big? You just don’t like them?” Again she looked down at her chest as though she needed to figure out what about those perfect tits was flawed. “What I don’t like is being asked to help someone out and them thinking a fuck will even us up.” Hands scrubbing my face again, I breathed hard between my fingers. “Jesus.” I couldn’t take her stunned silence or the slight pout of her lips. I was losing my shit. This beautiful woman leap frogs into my world today and everything went downhill since. Why the hell did I care I might have offended her? Why in God’s name did she think it was at all normal to offer herself to me because she needed a favor? The plates made a clang when I put them in the sink, and a

frown pulled down my mouth when I spotted Alex’s barely touched sandwich. Maybe her body was just another asset she’d learned to use. Maybe it helped her get what she needed in the past. I had no clue what it was like being that young and that gorgeous while having to take care of yourself. Even with my mom dying when I was eighteen, I always had someone to watch over me—Dot, Sammy, hell, even Uncle Sam made sure I had food and a roof over my head. But kids like Alex had been kids in the system, they had to figure shit out on their own. I’d seen dozens just like Alex in Cavanagh growing up, even in the Middle East. “You have to do that a lot?” I asked her, leaning against the counter. I shouldn’t have cared. I shouldn’t have bothered asking. “No,” she said, pulling on the t-shirt hem. Then, as though she’d just realized something she kept to herself, Alex looked right at me, that uplifted chin and proud stature returning to her body. “You know what? It’s none of your business.” She was right. I was in her business and didn’t need to be. She’d asked me for a favor. She’d asked me to keep her safe and dammit, that’s what I planned to do. “Fair enough,” I said, lifting my hands in surrender. “Tell me about these gifts. I need to know everything, start from the beginning.” And she did, for at least a solid forty-five minutes Alex told me about the flowers, the lingerie, which she hadn’t mentioned that

afternoon at the Marriott, how the gifts always came at night and then, who she suspected was responsible. “So this Cosmo guy, he just shows up in front of your building the same night you get the freaky painting?” “Yeah.” Alex sat with her legs stretched on my sofa, taking up the whole space while she regaled to me all the sketchy characters she’d run into over the past few weeks. Most of them were her socalled friends. Misty, the woman who owned a place on Bourbon called Summerland’s. Miles, who worked the Square with some sort of dancing or gymnastics troupe. He’d asked Alex for change one afternoon and she’d noticed he hung around at Misty’s later that night. And then there was Cosmo, Ironside’s henchman. He was muscle, the guy the boss called when he needed someone straightened out. Wouldn’t be that much of a stretch, this guy slipping into Alex’s place to remind her of Ironside’s reach. “But you don’t think he had anything to do with this?” She had to see how convenient that was. She was a smart girl. “I don’t know.” Alex slipped her feet underneath her ass and leaned against the back of the sofa. Her shrug came easy, as though she hadn’t meant to make the comment at all. But I noticed the way her eyes moved off behind me, how they sort of lost focus. She was thinking of something she wouldn’t share with me, possibly trying to loop through all of her interactions with this Cosmo guy and see if

he was capable of something like this. Finally, Alex blinked and brought her attention back to me. “I mean, I’ve seen him get pissed, but he’s harmless. Unless Timber asks him to not be harmless.” There were bags under her eyes, but it didn’t take away from that pretty face. Not that I was looking. I wasn’t really, but I’d be dead or stupid not to be constantly aware of her beauty. A foulmouth and a con artist, but still beautiful. Hell, I kind of liked her filthy mouth. I could see someone like Ironside not being too happy to see the back of her. Not when she’d clearly settled in so nicely with his organization. Curiosity got the better of me and maybe it was the detective in me who wanted answers. Maybe I was just a nosy bastard wanting the details on what she’d been to Ironside. “When did you leave Ironside?” “You don’t have to say it like that,” she said, shaking her head like I was making assumptions, which, okay, yeah, I was. Alex sat up, tension working through her limbs as she set her feet on the floor in front of her. “I didn’t leave Timber. I just stopped working for him.” But that reaction told me more than her denial. There was something going on and I got the feeling it was something she wasn’t too proud of. Hell, I’d been there, but I didn’t need this woman in my house, asking for my help, catching a shitty attitude with me either. If I was going to help her, I needed intel.

“Hey, don’t get pissy with me, lady, you’re the one who came to me.” I told her, stretching back against my recliner. I swear, the eye rolls were getting annoying, but I didn’t call her on it. Finally, when Alex’s rebelling scowl relaxed, I moved my head, trying to replace my irritation with the professionalism I was supposed to have. “Okay,” I said, coming to lean my elbows on my knees. “You said yourself he keeps sending his people to convince you to go back to him. You telling me it’s just because you were Employee of the Month?” A small quirk moved Alex’s bottom lip and I relaxed a little knowing she thought my stupid comment was funny, but she held back the threatening smile. Alex fell against the sofa and ran her fingers through her now frizzing hair. “No. That’s not why he wants me back.” She rested her arm on her forehead but looked right at me. “Timber got me out of some trouble a while back. Something with my foster mother. I owed him.” Her eyes dipped once, but then she returned her focus to me, as though she defied me to judge whatever she might say. “I paid him back like I tried to pay you back, but Timber Ironside isn’t a damn Boy Scout.” I licked my lips, wanting to ask her a barrage of questions— things that had nothing to do with me, but decided to keep my mouth shut. Alex shook her head, like she knew what I was thinking. “It’s not like I make a habit of it. My skills, well, I’ve never

had to lay on my back to swindle a damn soul, but Timber has always wanted me. For years and years, since we were kids.” “You’ve known him since you were a kid?” “Yeah, we spent time together in the same foster home. That’s how he was able to help me when I got in a jam.” Those were details I wanted to know more about, but Alex was already moving on. “So, he finally had me owing him and I didn’t have anything then. He gave me protection when I really needed it. And he gave me a job, sorted out my apartment because he didn’t want me bouncing from by-the-hour places.” “But once wasn’t enough?” I couldn’t help asking. Alex got serious for a moment and that sarcastic bite in her words cooled. She frowned so hard that her mouth pinched tight and she curled her arms over her chest. “No,” she said, the sound of her voice was small. “He wanted more. He always wants more.” Guys like Ironside always did. To control, to dominate; they might call it love. They might call it protection, but when it came right down to it, it really was all about possession. Alex didn’t strike me as the type to let anyone own her. I liked that about her, but then I remembered the snarky little quips she made as I chased her out of my mother’s house with that damn jewelry box under her arm. She’d called me a drunk and a sloppy pig. I’d been too messed up to react; too stuck in my own frustration to dodge that

tight fist she swung at me. It was then that I realized Alex was a weapon. Maybe that’s why Ironside wanted her back. That beautiful face, that ridiculous body, those deadly hands, she was the spider luring moths toward her; never giving away what dangers she kept hidden in her web. “So,” she said, bringing my attention back to her. “You really think Timber could be responsible?” I nodded once, just watching her, examining the natural tint of her face, clear of make-up, free of all the polish and pretend she’d worn when I met her at the hotel. I knew she probably wondered what I was thinking, curious why I just stared at her, but I wanted to read her, see if I was being played. “Maybe. I’ll check things out tomorrow,” I said, standing from the chair to stretch out my shoulders. “Just be careful,” Alex said, looking worried. “Timber might be a street thug, but he has eyes everywhere. He’ll know you’re in my place.” I nodded, not all that worried about Ironside’s spies and disappeared into the hall with Alex calling my name, but returned before she could get really pissed at my dismissing her. “Here.” She caught the pillow and thick blanket when I tossed both to her. “The sofa isn’t a pull out, but it’s more comfortable than the floor.” “You…” she looked at the small sofa next to her, the plush

back and flat seat that was barely longer than her legs. “What?” “Nothing, I just thought this place had two bedrooms.” “So you did your research.” She answered with a frown, pursing her lips like I should know the answer to that question. “It is a two bedroom, but that second room is off limits. My gear is in there, my weights.” I stepped in front of her, giving her another eyebrow cock that I hoped made her understand I wasn’t fucking around. “There is nothing of value in that room, by the way, so don’t get any ideas.” “I don’t need to steal from you, Ryan. We have a deal.” Alex threw the blanket and pillow onto the sofa but kept her gaze focused on my face. “I don’t welch on deals.” The slip of her tongue along her bottom lip, the slow movement of that pink muscle was like a fucking melody, seductive, intoxicating and I had to remind myself that she needed help, not me fawning after her like a damn kid. Besides, I knew what she was doing. Alex liked to mess with heads. She’d been trying that shit all night, but I wasn’t the simple asshole she thought I was. Besides, I’d been known to fuck with a few heads in my time. “That’s good,” I said, taking a step, coming so close that my breath skimmed across her forehead and moved her bangs into her eyes. “Because I still have that picture of you.”

“You do?” She didn’t flinch, didn’t act as though me being so close affected her in the least. “Yeah and I’ll use it at any time if I think you’re playing me.” That spider was vicious, using those full lips to draw me in. She sucked on her bottom lip and the sound moved around the room. “Ryan, when I play you,” she held her breath, using the pause to lick her lips again likely because she caught onto how I couldn’t move my eyes from her mouth. “You’ll be begging for it.” “That right?” She nodded, coming closer, stepping into me. Her forehead was soft, the skin warm when I brushed the hair from her eyes and I repressed a grin, seeing the small shutter that worked across Alex’s shoulders at my finger touching her. “Well, darlin’, when you play me, make sure you’re playing hardball. I don’t do kid games and I fucking play dirty.” “Is that a promise?” she asked, tilting her chin up to me, and I pushed down the grunt that wanted to leave my throat. She really was beautiful, and she really did know it. “Think a lot of yourself, lady? A little flirt, a little peep show and that’ll get you in my bed?” The woman was smooth, so was the smile that crawled across her face. Those eyes challenged, teased. But that smile deepened, became a grin and I shouldn’t have trusted that she’d fight fair. “Yeah. I do,” she said and Alex cupped my very hard, standing-at-

attention dick. “So do you, apparently.” I withheld a little choke in the back of my throat and turned away from her, twisted my neck, trying to forget that her hands were soft, that she’d known exactly how to touch me. The little shit. I felt the pillow land on the back of my head and glared at her as she complained. “I thought you were a good guy. You’re seriously not going to let me sleep in your bed?” “Why the hell would you ever think I was a good guy?” I tossed the pillow back onto the sofa. “Besides, you don’t wanna see that shit.” “What don’t I wanna see?” “Me. Buck ass naked under my blankets.” “I don’t know, Ryan… I’m thinking I might.” Shit. That little brat got me, had me almost tripping as I walked away from her, but I ignored her chuckle, ignored the promise behind her words and crashed into bed trying damn hard not to think about how much I wanted her to keep that promise.

Timber Ironside wasn’t a big guy. I’d seen case files, had caught sight of the man working a small case about a missing tourist whose parents suspected had taken a job at a strip club on Bourbon. That side of Bourbon. That had been a few weeks back and I hadn’t been the one speaking to the owner of the club. That was Dean and Sammy’s conversation, but my slick friends had been recording the whole meeting and in the back, sitting at the owner’s desk, giving this balding club owner nods and head shakes, leading him into his

answers, Timber Ironside had controlled the entire interrogation. I got that people were scared of him. I got that the guy had a presence, but looking at him as I sat in the company’s unmarked Lincoln, I started to understand what had the lowlifes in the city panting after the man. Still, I could have taken him, easy. He was barely six foot, built, but not terribly large. Dark hair, brown skin and features that were oddly similar to Alex’s. Ironside wasn’t exactly a common name, and it was his birth name, according to the dirt Sammy and Dean had found on the missing tourist-turnedstripper case. Turns out, Ironside was half Sioux, half Italian. And, just like I suspected of Alex, he had no blood family left. He’d been one of Wanda Manieri’s kids. That was dirt I’d discovered when I left Alex in my apartment asleep on my sofa and headed into the office. Wanda had kids she’d reared on the state’s dime. Nine out of ten of them, the ones that actually made it to eighteen, had a record. Alex, of course, among them. Ironside too. She’d raised hustlers and crooks, swindlers and grifters. About a year ago, Manieri and her current crop of kids had graduated to the sex trade—finding young girls who’d been runaways quickly hooked on meth or heroine and sold to the highest bidder. But Alex had shut them down. It shouldn’t have surprised me. She’d told me about her mother. She’d hinted at the good life she and her sister had before leaving Atlanta. I got the feeling she’d

never forgotten that and from what I knew of her, my gut told me she wouldn’t have stood for girls, some younger than she had been when she was sent to Wanda, being passed off like property. Maybe that’s why Timber protected her—to get her indebted to him. Whatever it was, the things I’d learned this morning about Alex gave me a greater understanding of why she did what she had to— testified against her foster mother and let Ironside take his payment out on her body. The man himself was sitting in the middle of the courtyard of a rundown Italian bistro I’d never been to, drinking bourbon like a real damn gentlemen and laughing at the flunkies and asshats that hung on his every word. But he was a poser. Like Alex said, this guy wanted to be something he wasn’t. He wanted respect, that was easy enough to see and he wanted those who respected him not to think he was a common thug. But you can’t rid yourself of the stain of crime, not when it’s in your blood. Not when you never try to walk away from it. Ironside would be a common thug for the rest of his life, no matter how many Mercedes he owned, how many offthe-rack designer suits he wore. He’d never be more than a lowlife. That Lancelot badass in my head wanted me to walk through the courtyard, ignore the linebacker looking bodyguards that stood around Ironside’s table, and just pop the guy once in the nose. I wanted him to know that Alex wasn’t his, that he should leave her

be, but that would do nothing but put me on his radar. And hell, I was just watching her back. As far as I knew maybe she missed what he could offer. I’d gotten very little from her apartment and the gifts were just as twisted as I’d expected. The lithograph was fucked up, but not out of the realm of possibility. Greeks gave paintings like that for decades—some twisted representation of how a new husband was stealing a daughter from her family; she’d become his property like that was some good damn thing. Whoever left that painting for Alex meant it as some sort of romantic gesture. The freak. My camera captured Ironside with so many familiar faces that just by association I could slip what I’d recorded to the cops and have him brought in for questioning. The mayor’s little cousin probably wouldn’t have liked being photographed with him and I was pretty damn certain that Ironside’s small audience of dealers, drug manufactures and pimps wasn’t the sort of element he normally would be seen with. He was planning something, that much was obvious. There were too many different sorts congregating around him and the man looked like he was hosting some sort of meeting, some sort of group with intentions that weren’t exactly pure. I managed one more snap of the camera, right at Ironside’s face before I loaded the whole thing up in the case and started the car, but before I could put it in gear, Cosmo, the thick henchmen I

recognized from Alex’s description, leaned against my open window with a business card between his fat knuckles. “Mr. Ironside suggests that if you’d like a meeting with him about a certain mutual acquaintance, then you should schedule an appointment.” He dropped the card inside the car when I didn’t take it. “Business hours are from nine till three.” Maybe Cosmo thought his size was going to scare me. Maybe that’s why he leaned so close to me. But I’d been around guys like him for years. Size only mattered in a wrestling match where body mass determined who could pin who down and hold them until the three count. “Maybe,” I said, resting my elbow on the door to inch Cosmo out of my space, “Mr. Ironside or, I don’t know, people he sends to bully said acquaintance should be a little more subtle with the gifts they leave. Maybe then meetings wouldn’t be necessary.” I’d learned all I needed to know about reading expressions sitting across the interrogation table with liars and thieves for years. Some are great of withholding the truth. It’s part of the game. But some, like Cosmo, aren’t as skilled. The mention of any threat to Alex, it would seem, didn’t sit so well with the big man. The small wrinkles along his mouth deepened with his frown and he stood up, looking back at Ironside sitting at his table, holding his damn court of lowlifes, then Cosmo stared down at me, worried, maybe, or just

a little confused. “What gifts are you talking about?” “You don’t know, Cosmo?” “Man, how the hell do you know…” “I know all I need to know about you and the threats you made.” “Threats…” Cosmos leaned down again, this time gripping my door. “That what Alex told you? I threatened her? You shitting me?” I didn’t say anything, just stared at the giant, waiting for him to give me more, tell me everything I needed to know without asking a single question. But then a smile broke over his lips, smoothing out those deep mouth wrinkles. “Oh, buddy, you got no idea what Alex is like. She’s fucking good, the best.” He stood then, taking a step back. “Why you think my boss wants her back?” The easy shrug he gave me pissed me off so did that loud laughed he released as he walked away. “You’ll see though. I promise.” My phone grabbed my attention away from Cosmo’s obnoxious laughter and I thumbed through the alert and the email from Morton’s and the $125.00 receipt for steaks I apparently had delivered to my apartment. “Son of a bitch.” I slipped the car into gear, annoyed and wondering what else Alex had bought on my dime or what that little shit had done to my place, but before I pulled away from the curb, I caught Ironside’s

stare as he looked across the courtyard, right at me. There was a cool smile on his face and his expression was calm, maybe a little unsettled as he nodded once, eyes tight. There was a warning in his face, that hard, professed coldness that told me to watch my back.

The smell of steak waffed out from under my door as I approached. I knew the aroma well. Normally, Frank called Morton’s every month for our staff meetings. But this wasn’t our office and that damn sure didn’t sound like the smack talking and laughter of my team on the other side of the door. My Super and two neighbors hassled me before I’d reached the elevators, their complaints bouncing like the sound of a whip off the marble floors and slick, glazed lobby brick. “The music, Mr. Ryan, is obnoxiously loud,” the Super, Grady said, following me toward the elevator. “Yes. The music. All damn morning.” I didn’t know the woman’s name, but her place was across the hall from mine and she always seemed to be wandering outside of her door, conveniently when I was just getting in. I begged them off with mild apologies and even turned down 3C’s offer of a call to the landlord.

“Sorry,” I’d told them, waving them off as I jogged down the hallway. “The new maid, she’s a little eccentric.” “You should use my girl, Mr. Ryan. She’s very professional and keeps her earbuds in the whole time she cleans.” 3C was a snooty middle aged redhead with too much Botox tightening her forehead. “Thanks. I’ll… um, I’ll keep that in mind,” I threw over my shoulder as I reached my door. I’d expected to find the entire place swept of anything remotely valuable—my stereo, my surround sound, my X-Box, all of it I thought would be gone, but when I slammed through the door, everything was where I’d left it and the smell of half-eaten steak and still warm baked potatoes clung around the kitchen, but Alex wasn’t there. There were still signs of her presence—her leather jacket and boots were next to the stool and her bag, mostly dry, it looked, from last night’s soak on the balcony lay on my coffee table, but the woman herself was gone. The stereo went silent with a jab of my finger and my ears stopped ringing from the racket that sounded faintly like Cookie Monster shouting in time with the heavy licks of an angry bass line and squealing guitar. The island was cluttered with mess and I stuffed the steak and potato into the fridge, closing my eyes when I

spotted four boxes with the Morton’s logo before I walked into the dining room and stopped short, my temper flaring. There was Alex sitting on the dining room table staring up at my wall-sized touchscreen. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” It took everything I had not to drag her off that table and kick her ass out of my place. She barely registered my question, moving her head to the left to stare at me over her shoulder before she stood and continued to look over the links, the case files and details I didn’t want anyone to know about. “How long?” she asked, tilting her head at the photograph of my mother’s dead body. Alex didn’t seem scared, not even mildly irritated as I thundered up next to her, reaching for the off button at the bottom of the screen. “No,” she said, stopping me with her hand on my wrist. “This isn’t any of your business.” I jerked out of her touch, but she blocked me, standing right in front of the board. “The hell it isn’t.” “What?” “That girl, the teenager.” She pointed to the news clipping of the Atlanta teen, Stevie Rodriquez. The case I could never ignore but that had made zero connections for me. “Yeah, what about her?”

It wasn’t just curiosity that had Alex glaring at me the way she did. There was something more that had the woman stepping up to me like she thought she could take me, like she thought she needed to. “Why is that article on your board?” “It’s just a lead that didn’t go anywhere.” “That’s bullshit, Ryan.” It was the first time I’d seen Alex’s fear completely vanish, morph into something mean and scary and real. “Tell me what you know about her.” “Why?” “Do you know who killed her?” “No one knows.” I hated that my voice had lowered, I’d let one unhinged glare from Alex deflate my temper. “Why does this girl matter?’ “She mattered. She mattered a lot.” Alex turned back to the board and I swear I thought her eyes got watery, but once again she blinked to keep any emotion from her face. “Stevie.” She looked back at me and that anger had only doubled. “She was my sister.”

“I was twelve.” I’d decided to start out slow, calm, hoping that the memories, the ones I never told anyone, wouldn’t have me losing my shit. I couldn’t let that happen. Not in front of Ryan. He’d sweet talked me out of the dining room, with that weird frown on his face and those damn green eyes pleading that I walk away from his computer. He was funny about that thing. I understood. I didn’t like anyone in my business either. The coffee Ryan offered me was sweet, just the right amount of

cream and sugar, but I was drained, worn by the connection that somehow put us together, one I’d known about after I left Cavanagh some months back. Simmons, the dirty sergeant. He’d put hands on both my sister’s case and Ryan’s mom’s. I didn’t believe in coincidence, but I didn’t think there was some higher power at work here. It was just a small damn world. Ryan stared down at me as I sat on the floor right between his uncomfortable leather sofa and the driftwood coffee table in front of it. “When she died?” he asked, gripping his coffee cup between my fingers. I nodded, not quite yet able to let the weirdness or shock pass and Ryan seemed to get that I was still flustered with the way he nodded—cop demeanor that had me guessing his friendly tone was some sort of throwback to the good cop he must have been. “Her case, Alex… I’d come across it ten times as I shifted through cold cases and the files Simmons had touched while I tried fish out details about his life in Atlanta.” He sat back in his recliner, fingers rubbing against his forehead as he held his coffee cup on his knee. I guessed I wasn’t the only flustered dumbass in the room. “Simmons,” he said like he still couldn’t believe how far his old boss’s reach was. “Simmons,” I echoed him.

Ryan didn’t seem pissed anymore, of course he wouldn’t. Not with this reveal shaping before us. But I still caught the tension from him, like he had a thousand questions to ask me, none of which had a damn thing to do with me lifting his credit card number from his paid bills stack on his desk to buy steak. “What… I mean…” he rubbed his neck, looking frustrated, uncomfortable, as though asking for me to fill in the details was somehow rude, but I thought we were beyond privacy at this point. I had his dick in my hand last night and he’d seen my tits. Pity that’s where our friendliness had ended, but I thought him being delicate, acting too much like a cop was sort of pointless. Ryan exhaled, fingers against his eyelids before he finally got the question out. “How did it happen?” At least he was trying to be subtle. If I closed my eyes I could almost remember her face. My big sister. She got the good blood, our meth-loving mom always said. I was Seminole, just like mom. So was the guy who’d knocked her up with me. But Stevie’s father was a beautiful Puerto Rican from the island, barely spoke English and called my mother mi cielo. My heaven. She’d talked about that enough in the nearly six years of memory I had about her and then Stevie took up the story, reminding me of our mother so I wouldn’t forget her as we tried to sleep side by side in whatever foster home twin bed we’d lucked up

to land in together. Mom didn’t stay heavenly and Rodriquez was gone back to his island before my sister was born. But he’d left behind something beautiful—those narrow black eyes, the bottom lip, full, thicker than the top and skin so flawless that strangers would stop Stevie on the street just to compliment her complexion. She had a plan for us both. She’d almost made it, but then, that internship and whatever it was that had happened in that office had changed my sister; had her thinking her grand plan wasn’t all that grand. “You alright?” Ryan asked when I stayed still, was too silent. “Yeah. I’m just…” I waved my hand, trying to push back Stevie’s face and all the things that ran in my head. They were memories I tried to forget. Regrets that had started to reform when I took off for Tennessee hoping to stay out of Wanda’s trial. “Sorry,” I told him, clearing my throat and then I tried again, making my voice louder. “I knew you were connected.” “How?” he asked, slipping from the recliner to sit in front of me on the coffee table. “Ryan…” I had to wipe my eyes. The damn burn came back and it annoyed me, reminded me that I should keep this shit locked tight. I needed Ryan watching my back, but I didn’t need him fighting my battles. His mother, Stevie and Simmons, it wasn’t new

information, but seeing that newspaper clipping on his board reminded me what I’d tried to forget when I took a bus out of Cavanagh: a dirty cop connected my sister’s murder to Fiona Ryan’s and all that drama, all those lies would only weigh me down. But Ryan was looking for something, that much I knew the first time I saw him. I wasn’t interested in solving crimes, but I couldn’t keep what I knew to myself either. I wasn’t that cruel. He slid down next to me on the floor, his back against the coffee table as he waited for me to continue. One brief glance at his face and I recognized that desperation, that eager hope that another piece of the past’s puzzle would be offered up. “You’re not going to want to hear it.” “Try me.” I exhaled, rubbing my neck, ready for his immediate refusal to hear the truth. Cops usually had a one-track mind; they saw a lowlife and that lowlife was usually guilty until something concrete proved otherwise. Ryan wasn’t a cop, but I got the feeling he still thought like one. “Isiah Ferguson.” As I suspected, Ryan’s readyto-disagree denial rose up. I saw it in how straight he sat, how he held his fingers together over his knees. “What about him?” “He was our friend, Stevie and mine, back in Atlanta.” I wondered what Ryan thought as he stared at me, silent,

barely blinking. I knew he didn’t think much of me, why would he? He’d seen my record and that go-to hate of lowlifes that Ryan likely still saw in every crook he came across didn’t allow him to see beyond the broken laws and lame excuses. But when I mentioned that Isiah was our friend, Ryan’s confusion, the weird way he pushed his eyebrows together had me guessing that he was trying to decide if he wanted to kick me out of the front door or off the balcony. “You and your sister were friends with the guy who killed my mother?” His shoulders had gone stiff and Ryan worked his jaw, moving his teeth together like a lion nibbling on the leftovers of a carcass. There was no way in hell I’d answer him. Instead, I just nodded once, simple, brief but sure. “And you think that this punk is related to your sister’s death too?” I’d noticed something about Ryan. Well, about me and Ryan. We were both bullheaded as hell. I can’t deny that, don’t think he would either, but when you put two bullheaded, hot tempered people together, the attitude and insults get a little thick. I understood his anger. God, who wouldn’t? Isiah had been tagged for his mom’s murder. Of course Ryan would hate the guy, but he didn’t know the kid Isiah had been. He knew nothing but the bullshit he’d been fed by his dirty sergeant. It was hard for me to keep my voice low, to pull back the curses and insults I wanted to

fling at Ryan, but I did. “That punk, as you call him, was barely eighteen when your mom was killed.” “You mean when he murdered her.” I didn’t expect his voice to get so loud so quickly, but wouldn’t let Ryan think he’d shocked me. The guy was a little full of himself and incapable of realizing how intimating he could be. But, shit, I wasn’t going to let in on that, not in front of him. Still, if he was a good detective, Ryan would see the holes in the case; he’d know that nothing was clear cut. His knuckles had gone white, one popping as he squeezed his fist together and I dropped my gaze to his hand, ready to take off if he started swinging before I realized Ryan probably wasn’t the type to attack. Not a woman and definitely not one that had answers for him. “I get that it pisses you off. I get that you think I’m a fucking crook who can’t be trusted, especially not if I was friends with Isiah, but man, come on, open your eyes.” I didn’t flinch when Ryan grunted, when he shot off the floor and paced with his hands working through his hair. He gave a kick at his recliner, pushing it back and I shook my head, wondering if that hurt. It was his damn place. He could wreck it if he wanted. I ignored his temper, deciding this bastard needed to hear the truth. “Simmons is the cop that handled my sister’s case. Simmons is the cop that handled your mother’s and Simmons was the only

person aside from me and Isiah and his aunt who knew why Stevie was killed.” “What are you talking about?” He turned, hand on his hips, glaring at me. It wasn’t his business, none of it, but he needed to know that the secrets went deep. He needed full disclosure to understand how long back Simmons’ reach ran. “She was pregnant, Ryan. My sister, she was seventeen and she was pregnant.” Ryan only seemed able to stare at me, mouth open like he was trying to push his words out of his mouth and after a second he got over his shock and bit the inside of his cheek. “Isiah?” “No. Isiah didn’t want her. She didn’t want him, but someone got her pregnant.” I’d only discovered the truth when I paid a visit to Cavanagh. Ryan wouldn’t have known about the pregnancy. It had been left out of the coroner’s report. I flopped onto the sofa watching Ryan as he sat next to me, his attitude less sharp and his anger cooling. “Someone who wouldn’t be seen with her got her pregnant. Someone she’d never tell me about. I don’t know all the details, I was just a damn kid, but I do know that she and Isiah were tight. He knew something about the baby’s father. Stevie told him things she thought I was too young to hear and the second she was killed, Isiah disappeared. He took off to Cavanagh where his old aunt lived.”

“How do you know all this?” he asked, resting his arm behind me on the sofa. Fuck, he really didn’t know anything. I’m sure Ryan had done his digging but he hadn’t dug deep enough. I could teach him some things, but he’d never let me. The Boy Scout wouldn’t like my methods. I shook my head, trying to withhold my caustic laughter when he gawked at me like that—his eyes rounded and that eager tension tightening the muscles in his face. “Why do you think I came to Cavanagh in the first place?” “To get away from the trial.” Huh. He’d figured that out. I guess that bastard didn’t need my helping digging for the truth after all. I tried to remain cool, to not let Ryan see my shock, but he grinned, smug and superior, like he knew he’d shaken me. “So you found out about that?” “Of course I did, Alex. I needed to know everything about you and Ironside if I was going to watch your back. I did some intel. I know why he protected you.” I hated him knowing that. I hated that he hadn’t bothered to ask me, but okay, I hadn’t exactly been completely honest with him. Still, it bothered me that Ryan could so easily tap into my past with a push of a button. “Yeah, well, so did I. Once I hit eighteen, I started doing my own digging. I wanted to know about Stevie’s case. I wanted to know why Isiah ran and what he knew. But

Wanda had me so convinced it didn’t matter.” “What changed your mind?” I’d lived in a room that was little more than a closet that I shared with another girl in Wanda’s small Craftsman. We shared a worn mattress she’d gotten from Goodwill. My legs were longer than the mattress and I had to take my blanket with me every day when I went out trying to score some cash so I’d have something to cover up with at night. Nothing was permanent. Nothing was safe. At eighteen, we got our clothes handed back to us in a black garbage bag and an invitation to stick around and work for Wanda or jet and figure out life on own. I’d been tired of that closet and of Wanda’s greedy hand always stretched out for what she thought we owed her. There’d been no decision for me to make really. I could smell the remnants of steak in the room and heard the soft patter of rain outside on Ryan’s balcony and the night called; the night and my addiction. Ryan watched me as I left the sofa, digging in my bag for a smoke and shoving open the balcony door as I stepped under the small awning. He followed. “I was packing my shit,” I started, inhaling the smoke until I felt it burning my lungs. “I had to get the hell out of Wanda’s house.” I heard Ryan behind me as I watched the street. S. Peter’s was busy, lots of cars breaking and stopping, coasting to find a free parking

spot. There weren’t any. “I came across a letter Isiah’s aunt had sent me. I was almost thirteen when he died. I’d never really understood what had happened, but reading that letter reminded me of us as kids in Atlanta.” I flicked ashes over the railing, glancing once at Ryan as he leaned against the French doors. “All the bullshit things we wanted to do with ourselves once Stevie and I left the system. Isiah, he never laughed at us. He didn’t tell Stevie that law school was impossible for a girl with no money or family to help her. He didn’t tell me I was a stupid kid for wanting to do whatever the hell I wanted to do at twelve.” Ryan’s frown wasn’t hard and he didn’t bristle or thunder off when I talked about Isiah like he’d been a person, not a simple thug trying to gank Fiona Ryan’s stuff. Down the street a car wailed on its horn and I glanced at its headlights, watching it speed further and further down the street. “Isiah was a good person, Ryan. So was my sister. And they both ended up dead. I had to know why.” Ryan’s breath moved my hair from my shoulder when he sighed as though he forced himself to release his anger, some sturdy belief he’d held all these years that threatened everything he thought he knew. The heat from his body was close, so close in fact that I knew he’d stretched his arm above my head behind me without

glancing back to see him do it. “So you headed to my hometown when things got heavy here.” “That was later. I was older. When I first left Wanda’s I tracked down people, but then… well, life happens and last year I heard Isiah’s aunt was sick. She’d always sent Christmas cards, but I didn’t get one that year and I looked her up. Found out from her niece that she was dying. When the D.A. got on me about testifying, I booked it for Cavanagh. I didn’t know what else to do.” The rain stopped and I pushed off from under the awning, taking another drag of my cigarette as I rested against the railing, facing Ryan. “Mrs. Ferguson had sent me letters over the years, telling me she’d pray for me, how much she believed that Isiah was in God’s hands. She was the only person that knew me but didn’t know about me and I thought she had answers. Answers I needed.” “And what did she tell you?” “Nothing,” I said, flicking my thumb against the butt of my smoke. “Nothing about Stevie’s death anyway. She mentioned the baby, how sad it was that I lost both of them and she reminded me what Isiah had been like, that he was a good person.” I glanced at Ryan, closing my eyes against the small glare he tried to keep off his face. “Don’t look at me like that, you didn’t know him.” He stepped onto the balcony, came right in front of me as I let my cigarette burn out at my side. “Neither did you, Alex.” His

features were hard, but something in his eyes flickered. Maybe it was indecision, doubt, I had no damn idea, but Ryan’s reaction was instinctive, done without real thought and he moved back, swallowing so that I could see his Adam’s apple move. He was still convinced that it was Isiah that had killed his mother, but maybe that doubt meant he knew there was more to the story. “Mrs. Ferguson didn’t tell me anything except that she knew Isiah was haunted.” I threw my cigarette out over the railing and curled my arms around my middle. “She thought a demon was following him. She thought that something was hurting him, keeping him up at night. Whatever he knew hurt him. It cut him so deep that his aunt was convinced he could never intentionally hurt anyone else. She…she said it was the same thing she told you when you interviewed her.” He wasn’t surprised that I knew and held no real emotion on his face when I finished speaking. Ryan only moved his head, stepping back into the apartment with one glance over his shoulder as though he wanted me to follow him back inside. “You knew about that? Before you broke into my house?” He nodded to the sofa, a silent request, and I sat down. “It’s why I broke into your house. I got the impression you were looking for answers too. I only went to that open house to dig around a little, find out what you knew, but it was over by the time I

got there and I saw you crashed out on the couch.” A slip of my gaze to his face and I looked back down, almost sorry that I’d taken advantage of him. “I was already there, so I broke in.” “And decided to take my shit.” I shrugged, guessing he should have figured me out at least a little by now. “Ryan, that place was primed for a grab. All those antiques, all that money laying around and you snoring on your back drunk. I’m not saying it was right and I’m not exactly proud I took something that meant so much to you, but, well, shit, I needed the cash.” He grunted, something I’d noticed he did when he was trying to reign in his temper. “Besides, I thought you were covering Simmons’ ass. I had no idea you’d quit. Mrs. Ferguson assumed you were still a cop and so did I.” “And you didn’t stick around long enough to confirm that,” he said, stretching against the sofa to rest his feet onto the coffee table. “One of the only friends I’ve ever had was killed right in your precious hometown. In New Orleans, I knew what I was facing.” The fluffy sofa pillow was plush, feathered and I pulled it onto my lap, needing something to do with my hands as Ryan looked at me. God that man could say a lot with one fucking glare. “Besides, you came at me all loud and screaming. Scared the shit out of me. I decided I’d rather take my chances with Wanda and the NOLA cops.” I slunk down on the sofa, putting my feet next to Ryan’s on

the table, but only managed to rest the tip of my toes against its surface. “At least here I knew where I could go if I needed protection. With you in that sketchy ass town of yours the only thing I knew was that Simmons ran the department and that he, at the very least, knew something about my sister’s death.” I shrugged. “It’s likely he killed Isiah himself.” “You don’t know that.” The stiff cushions under us shifted when Ryan sat up and turned toward me, another annoying grunt vibrating his throat. “You can’t know that.” “No,” I said slowly. “I got no proof, Ryan, but I have a hunch and it’s been my experience that those hunches are rarely wrong.” When he continued to frown I rolled my eyes, feeling the annoyance bubble in my stomach. “Don’t tell me you think Simmons is innocent.” “I know he’s not, but I have no idea what he’s done, other than fuck up some evidence and try to get me stop asking about his dead wife.” I had no idea about the wife or why Ryan was interested in her. “What’s his wife got to do with this?” “Supposedly she killed herself by driving her car off a cliff. But they never found a body. I don’t think she’s dead.” Ryan nodded when my eyes grew wide, seeming to understand my surprise. But he played it off, waving his hand like the information was nothing to

get twisted around about. “I think she’s hiding from Simmons.” “Don’t blame her.” “I thought I found her a few months back, but it was a set up. I ended up on my ass when some guy I guess was watching her back thought Simmons had sent me to find her.” “He kick your ass?” I smiled when Ryan shook his head, not answering me. “That’s why you want the jewelry box, right? You think it will draw out Simmons’ wife?” He looked at me warily, resting his elbows on his knees. “Maybe. It’s the only thing I’ve got to go on. It’s why I wanted to follow you to your friend’s. I need in that auction.” The image of him sitting among Misty’s Summerland clientele was almost laughable. Neil Ryan, Mr. Boy Scout with his charcoal pants and button up gray shirt with a wrinkle over the line of his shoulder where his gun holster had been. It was ridiculous. Misty wouldn’t let him through the door. Still, I got that Ryan wanted to handle things. He was the sort to want to take lead and so I didn’t tell him no, though my gut screamed at me that I should. “I can respect that and I’ll let you tag along.” “Oh you will?” he said, like I should have known he wasn’t asking for permission. “Yeah.” I waved my hand over his body. “But you gotta change your clothes.”

Ryan looked down, pulling on his untucked button up before he glanced back at me as though he had no clue what fashion crime he’d committed. “What the hell’s wrong with my clothes?” “No way can you go into Misty’s looking like that. They’ll make you in a second.” “Make me for what?” “A cop, Ryan,” I said through a sigh as I left the sofa. He followed me down the hallway as I moved toward his bedroom, already in his closet before he caught up to me. “But I’m not a cop.” I dug through the stacks of shirts, all button ups, all dark. I glared at him just on sheer principle. This guy, I swear. My shit was all second hand, thrift store toss asides, but hell at least I had a style —today it was what I’d stuffed in my bag, glorious dark Levis, a Sex Pistols vintage tee and my prize possession, real leather combat boots that laced all the way up my calves. Ryan’s closet though, looked like something out of the cop/Boy Scout hand book. Bland, gray and boring. “Maybe not,” I told him, “But you damn sure look like one.”

Strip clubs weren’t my style. God knew I had my fill pulling Sammy’s drunk ass out of them over the years. Those were places for boys trying to scratch an itch they just couldn’t reach. Those were the places of fantasy—the illusion of lust and attention that can only be bought with a stack of bills and the promise of more coming. Alex, though, surprised me. I thought I knew who she was, what she did, but she still didn’t strike me as a woman cool with

Bourbon Street dancers gyrating in a window with their pussies and nipples hidden by a strip of mesh fabric. I didn’t think she’d associate with girls who did that either. But I still led her through the growing crowd of tourists, weaving around fanny-pack and Saintst-shirts-wearing visitors with eyes shifting and wide as they watched the wild and decadent sights of Bourbon. “You sure your friend won’t be dancing?” I asked Alex as we entered the center strip on Bourbon and the crowd grew heavier. She stopped at my side in the middle of the sidewalk, looking annoyed and unhappy as she frowned and the crowd split around us. “What the hell are you talking about?” Over Alex’s head I could see the dark brick of her friend’s club and I glanced at it, moving my head toward that large line and the posters of barely-dressed women dotting along the building entrance. “Your friend. Won’t she be too busy with her little routine to talk to us?” I looked at my phone, catching the time and could feel Alex’s stare bubbling right at me. “What?” I asked when she stayed quiet. “You think Misty is a dancer?” “You said it was her club.” “That’s right,” she said, telling me she thought I was an idiot with one head shake. “It’s her club. She doesn’t dance in it. She owns it.”

The irritation had left Alex, had relaxed her tight features and I got the feeling she was trying not to laugh at me. “What now?” I asked, letting my shoulders fall. “You’ve never been here?” “No. That a problem?” Then she laughed out right and I told myself she was just fucking with me, teasing me because I let her get away with it. “You’ve seen one titty bar, you’ve seen them all.” That’s when the laughter completely hushed and Alex stared, looking amazed, surprised that I was, apparently, such a dumbass. “God, you really are clueless.” “Am I?” I asked, feeling that sharp prickle of irritation that Alex had quickly learned to stir in me begin to rumble into a bite of tension in my gut. “It’s a strip place, Alex, just like any other.” “Yeah, Ryan, you’re right.” She seemed to like folding her arms, keeping herself closed off, especially when she was irked and just then, that’s what Alex did—folded her arms and stepped back, twice, maybe three times before that slow smile inched over her mouth. “Summerland’s is a titty bar just like New Orleans is a decent place to grab a beer.” She didn’t let me lead so I was forced to follow her as she nodded to the doorman and he waved us both inside. The lobby had dark cherry floors and a long desk just in front of two floor-toceiling wooden doors. I’d expected a typical strip club—cheap

pasties and frat boys tossing money onto a dirty stage with skinny, desperate woman clamoring after each bill. Summerland’s was nothing like that. Even at sunset, the place was crowded. But there was no throng of curious tourists waiting to get into a sticky, smoke-filled club filled by thong wearing dancers with dollar bills tucked into their G-strings. The classy gold and red sign over the entrance door spelled “Summerland’s Burlesque Review” and was lit up with ropes of glittering lights and swirling slopes of iridescent colors around each letter. It felt like something out of a 30’s speakeasy, a damn shrine to New Orleans of old, where the whole district had been called the red light, and Storyville brothels were stops important gentlemen and grubby dock workers alike made to blow their cash and their loads without fear of retribution. This place put even the classiest of those old clubs to damn shame. The hostess opened the door and as I followed Alex down a small stack of steps, I swore I thought I’d walked back into time. The whole place breathed fire from the lush, red draping and velvet fabric that covered the walls, to the soft black leather couches, semi circled around a walkway and large center stage. I followed behind Alex and instantly recognized the scent of sweet whiskey and the spicy fragrant of pipe smoke. The smartass must have liked my reaction and how I couldn’t

keep my gaze off all the stimulation pulsing in the room. Alex laughed at me as I watched two beautiful woman above us, dressed like corseted fairies—green and red, wings and all—as they looped from the ceiling, attached to some thin swing twined with creamy silk. “Some titty bar, right?” she asked me, pulling on my arm as my eyes refused to stop moving around the large room. “Yeah, definitely not a titty bar,” I told her, letting her move me past the round tables and crowds of laughing, relaxed people sitting behind them. I felt underdressed, too casual in my dark jeans and thin leather jacket that Alex said made me look less like a cop. The Summerland crowd was all ties and jackets, fine cocktail dresses and red, tempting lips, but I brushed off my discomfort, not giving one shit what any of these people thought of me. Besides, I was too caught up by the crowd, the women prancing around attached to feathered fans, wearing garters and corsets and fishnet stockings that glittered against their skin in the muted lights from above. I swept my gaze to those tables with candles and crystal covered in linen tablecloths and pushed up against a set of black semicircular couches with sloped arms, tapered chestnut legs, tufted back cushions. And in the center of the room, like a damn opulent showpiece to all that fancy elegance was a round wooden stage with spotlights beaming down around the dark wood floors and a

row of show lights cushioned in more of that velvet fabric. “Unreal, right?” Alex said, a small hint of amusement in her voice and what looked like the first real smile she’d ever let me see. “Unreal.” “Come on. Misty knows we’re here,” she said, pointing toward the large wooden framed black-lit window that looked down on the crowd. I couldn’t see a damn thing inside it, but suspected that two-way was how Alex’s friend kept tabs on her employees and the people who kept her in the cash she had to be pulling in with this place. The staircase was narrow, winding up and around onto a catwalk that moved us out of the strum of jazz music and bubbling laughter from below until we came to a tall hallway with a row of impressive wooden doors shooting into the dark. Alex tapped once on the center door and I watched her, completely thrown by the return of a genuine smile that she gave to the tall brunette who opened the door. “Well, thank fuck.” Misty grabbed Alex before I could stop her and had nearly shut the door in my face, but I kept my boot in front of the jamb and slipped inside the office. The brunette smothered Alex between her cleavage, gripping her so tight that I thought I might have to intervene when Alex coughed. “Sorry, darling,” Misty said, pulling Alex back to hold her at arm’s length,

eyes skimming around her face, down her body like a mother whose runaway had just returned from a bender. “You little shit,” she said when Alex shook her head, but the insult wasn’t real, was spoken with a laugh and I relaxed, knowing the woman was genuinely concerned about Alex. “God, would you stop playing mama hen, Misty.” Alex swatted at the older woman when she tried reaching for her again, then she glanced at me, moving her friend’s attention away from her. “This is Neil Ryan,” she told Misty, nodding at me and the club owner’s smile left her face. “Neil Ryan?” she said to Alex, but she didn’t stop watching me. “Everyone just calls me Ryan, Miss Summerland.” The woman snorted, finding something funny about her name from my lips. “That not what they call you?” “Oh, it is… people who aren’t my friends. But hell, honey, no one’s called me Miss in a long damn time.” With a small saunter, I immediately knew where Alex had learned the moves that nevertheless failed to get me naked. Misty could have easily succeeded. The woman didn’t walk, she shimmied and it was sexy as hell, if you’re into that sort of thing. But she probably had a good fifteen years on Alex, which made her even older than me and I wasn’t into all the ceremony she seemed to make about how she

looked—the red corset costume, the black silk lace and fringe that wrapped her supple curves and the flawless paint job accenting her bright blue eyes and heart-shaped lips. She was elegant, older, but still had a twinge of playfulness in her eyes that had me guessing she wasn’t even close to playing grown up. Alex was trouble, I’d figured that the second her right cross caught my chin back in Tennessee. Misty was trouble’s more experienced, less subtle sister. “Well,” Misty said, circling me like a market horse up for auction, “aren’t you just a fish right out of water.” “How’s that?” I asked, not liking like the purr I could almost hear from her raspy voice. “Big guy like you, following after our lil Alex here.” She stepped in front of me, fingers twitching as she crossed her arms. “Let’s see… broken nose, at least twice, and eyes that haven’t stopped moving since you walked into my club.” Misty moved her head, squinting as her gaze went up my body and over my face. “SEAL or Ranger and definitely a cop.” She smiled, laughing when my typical frustrated grunt worked its way out of my throat. “You can pick them,” she told Alex through a laugh. “I didn’t pick him, Misty.” She pulled on her friends arm when the woman’s grin at me turned into a leer. “Leave him alone and sit down.”

Misty waved off Alex’s attitude and moved to her long mahogany desk. “So, what’s the story?” she asked Alex, pretending to be focused on her friend while she shot a quick glance my way. I knew the deal—the woman was sizing me up, on alert because I’d followed Alex in here. I was a stranger and lowlifes, even ones with fancy clubs and pockets full of money, did not trust strangers. “The story,” Alex started, slipping into a cream wingback chair in front of Misty’s desk, “is that my little problem has gotten worse.” “Define worse.” Misty sat up straight, leaned across her desk so that the low dip of her neckline flashed smooth, round cleavage. But she wasn’t flirting, had stopped looking my way altogether and the tease was completely vacant from her features. There was real concern making her eyes wrinkle as she waited for Alex to elaborate. The younger woman had a shrug that could be both frustrating and a little cute. You know, if you were into that, which I wasn’t. Anyway, she gave Misty that non-committal shrug, dismissing the fucked up shit that had been left by that creeper in her apartment. But that was Alex’s business to either keep to herself or let her friend in on. It was weird, watching these two interact—both women who the streets had done dirty, woman who used their

bodies, their smarts and skills to get what they needed. I didn’t understand that need, but I could at least respect their strength and the low muttered discussion in front of me hit me with a lick of déjà vu. The way Misty and Alex bantered back and forth, how they teased, how they listened, it reminded me of my mother and her best friend Dot Simmons. Always giving and taking, always ready to listen, to fight, to help whenever there was a need. It occurred to me, just then, that women do that—they find a way to clutch friendship. They hold tight to it and defy anyone to rip it apart. I’d seen it with my mom and Dot, I was looking at it just then with these two street smart grifters. No matter how they lived their lives, friendship, maybe even if it was just a connection that formed some sort of bond, they’d found a family in one another. That shit wasn’t easy to do. “So Ryan agreed to help me out,” Alex told Misty and once again the woman glanced my way, but I could see that she was no longer interested in flirting with me or seeing what I hid under my jacket aside from my line of work. Maybe she didn’t see me as the enemy, but she was suspicious. “And what does Ryan get out of this little bargain?” “Misty…” The warning in Alex’s voice had my focus on her and the way she frowned at her friend like there was something she silently ordered Misty to keep to herself.

“Honey, they always want something.” It was a fact meant for Alex’s ears, but the club owner stared right at me when she said it. “Ain’t that right, Ryan?” Misty wasn’t wrong and I watched her staring at me, those cunning eyes sharp and curious, wondering what she expected me to say. I’d give her nothing but the truth. It wouldn’t hurt and I trusted that Misty was the sort of woman who’d appreciate it. “The auction. I need in.” Immediately she jerked her glance to Alex, a silent whip of worry that the younger woman had let some sacred secret free into the law-abiding world. “What the hell did you tell him?” “She offered me a chance to get back my property.” I stepped away from my lean on the wall, hands in my pockets all cool and calm, but Misty gripped the pen in her hand like she needed something to break in case I started in with the threats. “Calm down,” I told her, sitting in the chair next to Alex. “I’m not a cop.” The club owner moved her lips into a purse like she doubted me and I sighed, tired already of never being believed. “I was a cop about a year ago and things happened, shit went down and Miss Black here decided to steal from me.” I rested my elbows on my knees, not frowning, not smiling, just enough that the woman would believe I wasn’t upset. “We realized we have certain mutual

associates in common and Alex has agreed to help me get back my property. In exchange, I use my investigative—and SEAL training —” this bit of information had Misty smiling at her earlier accurate guess— “to find that over-enthusiastic admire of hers.” With the way the older woman watched me, I felt like a kid waiting for permission to take her daughter out unchaperoned. Those heart-shaped lips stayed closed, only moved when Misty nibbled on the inside of her bottom lip. She’d held herself tight, bare arms covered by her fingers as she took a moment before those lips went still and those blue eyes moved up to meet mine. “So you’re going to watch her ass if she gets you into the auction?” “That’s the plan.” “And how the hell are you going to swing that?” she asked Alex. “I’m not,” Alex said, grinning. “You are.” That chic air about Misty slipped and I saw the quick uptake of her apprehension, the incredulous way her mouth fell open and that shocked, unsuppressed laugh left her mouth. “The hell I am. Timber would never…” “Misty,” Alex stopped her friend with one shake of her head and, though it surprised the hell out of me, the woman listened. “You make Timber a lot of damn money. Buckets of it. And let’s be honest here, this place,” she waved her hand around the opulent

room, all the fine furnishings and decadent shades and colors that ornately fit with the theme and feel of the place, toward the large diamond on Misty’s middle finger, “is the only legit company he’s got his hands in. You hold the cards and you know you want me safe.” Alex had played the right hand. Money hungry club owner or not, Misty had held Alex with relief, as if she had been holding her breath for days waiting for her girl to show up. She cared about Alex that much I could tell and Alex knew it too. In fact, I’d bet she was depending on that to connive her friend to help her. But Summerland didn’t seem like a woman who reacted by knee jerk. She was a thinker, a ponderer who sat behind that desk looking between the two of us as she weighed and measured her decision behind all that thick dark hair. Then, ignoring me completely, she swiveled her chair to look directly at Alex. “Speaking of which, Timber wants…” “Later,” Alex said and with a tone that sharp, even I would have listened. “We’re talking about the auction. You’re the call girl.” “What?” I asked, having no idea what she meant. Alex moved her head toward me, but didn’t look at my face. Instead, she continued to stare at her friend, hurrying to explain the details to me like she really didn’t have time to bother with my

pesky question. “She sends out the calls, the texts to let everyone know the time and place. They’re all on call for the week it’s supposed to be held but no one knows anything until Timber gives the go ahead and Misty picks up her phone.” Misty’s chair stopped moving, went perfectly still as she turned it toward Alex, head working from the disbelief in her shake. “You trust him?” “I trust that he’s a Boy Scout,” Alex explained and I tried not to get offended. That was becoming her go-to description of me, but at this point I didn’t care what she thought of me as long as I ended up in that auction. “I trust that he has something he needs just like me. And, Misty, I trust him not to fuck me over.” Alex stood and Misty and I both watched her, the way she touched the back of the wingback, how her long limbs and loose, black hair seemed to flow. I frowned at being caught up in watching her, wondering where it had come from, wondering why I’d let something so stupid and simple as how Alex carried herself take my focus from convincing Misty that I needed an invite to Ironside’s auction. “I’m done watching my back,” Alex continued, leaning against the blacked out window that looked down onto the club floor. “I’m done trying to keep my nose clean because Wanda or Timber or whoever the hell it is gets their nuts off by scaring the shit out of

me.” “What are they doing?” Misty asked, voice worried, a little rigid before she left her chair and stood next to Alex. “It doesn’t matter. It’s freaky and I want it to stop.” Alex nodded at me. “I think Ryan can make it stop. I just need you to get us into the auction.” The club owner settled next to her friend, resting her hand on the back of her neck as she eyed me, expression held tight, uncertain. “This might be tricky,” she said to Alex. “Why?” Misty didn’t look at Alex, she kept her attention on her hands, moving her diamond ring around her finger. “He’s hoping this auction will change things.” “How?” Alex asked, but Misty ignored her. “You got cash?” she asked me. “I can manage it.” A small laugh that was doubtful and Misty lifted her eyebrow at me. “Can you manage ten?” I nodded and she lost a bit of her attitude, but then recovered almost immediately, nudging Alex’s arm. “You gotta take a meeting with him.” “What? No,” Alex said, walking away from Misty and toward the door. I guessed the woman had meant Ironside and I found myself instantly agreeing with Alex that talking to him, especially if

they were alone, wasn’t exactly smart. “He just wants to talk, Alex,” Misty said, taking hold of Alex’s arm to stop her before she made it to the door. “Please. Damn, sugar, I just want him to stop hassling me about where you’ve been.” I was going to interject, maybe tell Alex that talking to the guy likely responsible for all the weird gifts wouldn’t be smart, but I knew she didn’t need me telling her shit she already knew. But the way she didn’t retreat from her friend’s touch, how she hesitated like she might consider the meeting, told me what I needed to know about these two woman. Give and take, sure, but my gut told me Alex was the one giving the most. I’d only known Alex a few days. She’d slept on my sofa and irritated the piss out of me, but I had a feeling I could read her well enough by now. Especially when she glanced at me, eyes searching like she wanted my opinion but didn’t want to ask in front of her friend. I wouldn’t make her say a word. “We don’t know it’s him. Not for sure.” “It could be.” “It could be anyone.” She wanted to say more, I could tell. She made a small sound in her throat, probably another argument, but didn’t get to speak it

when the black phone on Misty’s desk rang and the woman moved to answer it. “I don’t like this,” Alex whispered as she stood next to me. “He’s going to try to get in my head.” “Please.” I knew what it was like to be wrapped up in worry and fear over something stupid you could avoid. It might have been a stupid gesture, but I grabbed her hand, squeezing it once. “Like I’d let you be alone with him.” “You gonna stop him?” Her voice was low and calm, but she looked like she wanted to laugh, like maybe I was just a little bit too full of myself. “I told you,” I said, meaning it when I smiled at her. “I got your back.” She held my stare, but her bottom lip fell just a bit, signaling how I had caught her off guard. I liked seeing that surprise on her face, but had no idea why I did. “Alex?” Misty said, holding the receiver to her chest. “It’s him. He’s in the lounge.” She swallowed, eyes darting between the two of us. “He wants you now.” One nod and Alex’s decision was made, but her confidence was back in place. She dropped all worry from her eyes and lifted her chin as she answered her friend. “Fine. That’s fine, Misty. Tell him he’s got ten minutes.” But before the woman could return to her

call, Alex stopped her. “And tell him I’ve got backup.”

Misty only called this spot a lounge because “Champagne Room” or “Timber’s Private Stage” sounded tacky. It was a small VIP area set apart from the bar and the main room with the Reviews where only Timber and very select guests were allowed private entertainment. My best friend didn’t like calling this place a strip club and, really, it wasn’t. But sometimes the performers were short on cash. Some of them weren’t as seasoned, needed practice before moving up to the main room stage and when they did, it was

Timber and his friends that became their first live audience. The performance depended solely on Timber’s discretion. Most nights he liked watching beautiful bodies sway and shudder to the low refrain of a haunting blues song. On others, he wanted to hear a songbird or watch some poor green girl do her best to look seductive without freeing herself from her corset and garters. Not many perfected the skill, but Timber still enjoyed their enthusiasm. I felt better with Ryan at my side, though I wondered what he expected. Did he think that just his presence would have my former boss easing up on me, holding back with whatever it was he wanted to say? I doubted that would ever happen. When Timber wanted something, he got it and he didn’t care who knew how he managed getting it. Ryan stopped me just a few feet from where Cosmo stood guard, blocking whoever sang with that deep growl on the mini stage beyond the lounge entrance. “You don’t have to talk to him.” It was the first time Ryan had let himself sound even slightly concerned. I’d seen his anger these past few days and that barely contained temper that mimicked mine, but he’d always kept his shit together. I hoped he still would. “I know I don’t.” He didn’t look at me, didn’t do more than pull on my elbow and step between me and Cosmo so the giant couldn’t hear what

we said. “If you’re doing this so Misty will score that invite…” “I’m doing this so he’ll leave her alone about me.” I looked around Ryan’s wide shoulder, right to Cosmo who pretended like he wasn’t listening to us. I knew better. That bastard always listened. “Look, Ryan, if Timber wanted to talk to me because he misses me, there wouldn’t be all this bullshit.” I moved my chin, pointing out the small crowd that had gathered around Cosmo and drifted into the lounge. Ryan followed my gaze, nodding at the suits who walked past us. “This,” I told him, “is for your benefit. He wants you to think he’s got juice. You see that, don’t you?” When Ryan smiled, I took his hand, worried that he didn’t get what I was telling him. “This is a pissing match. One Timber intends to win. Don’t think because he’s a thug he doesn’t have game. He knows how to play, trust me.” “Oh, no, I see that.” Again Ryan turned toward the door, but he didn’t looked worried. He looked, in fact, like he was ready to do a little playing of his own. I decided right then I fucking hated that look on his face. “Ryan…” “Come on,” he told me, leading me toward the lounge with his hand on my elbow. “Be cool and don’t worry, I’m not leaving that room without you.” That’s not what I was worried about.

We passed Cosmo and the bastard didn’t even bother looking at me, barely let his eyes slip to the side as we moved through the entrance. The cloistered crowd was thin, maybe four or five men deep and on the black and white checkered stage a young blonde with too much lipstick and an oversized gardenia fondled the microphone, trying to grab Timber’s attention as she sang. But her voice was too grainy, her tone just a half beat off and she moved with too much desperation, making her look and sound whiny, not seductive. I doubted she’d last long. “That’s him,” Ryan said, mumbling under his breath like he was surveying the perimeter, accessing threats, the biggest of which sat in the center of the room directly across from that stage. Like I didn’t know. Timber. He sat there like a king surrounded by the plush leather in the tufted fabric. It was his throne, his tiny kingdom, and despite any illusions the man had about who he really was, he did give off the air of confidence, like he mattered. It was something he always carried with him, like a limp that wouldn’t quite go away. Timber Ironside thought he was important and just by the sheer will of his walk, how he carried himself, so did others. It was both fascinating and scary as hell.

I didn’t pay attention to his guests or the long legged waitresses that served them drinks, wearing pinstriped baby blue corsets with matching garters and feathers in their up-dos. Timber had caught my eye with only the shift of his lids and that’s where my attention stayed. Those black, bottomless eyes commanded, told me to walk toward him and I nearly did, forgetting for a second that I had Ryan next to me and that Timber had no claim on me. Finally, when I wouldn’t budge, the man grinned, a slow, miniscule shake of his lips. “My Alex,” he crooned, keeping his gaze unblinking and his easy grip on his drink loose. “Fellas,” he said, dismissing his court with one word. He was strong, I’d always thought so, but strength didn’t mean honor, something Timber Ironside would never have. Hell, I wouldn’t either. We were raised in a life that dictated who lied and who kept secrets. We weren’t honest or forgiving and Timber had never forgotten that. He frequently reminded me that I shouldn’t either. But his presence, his ability to work fear like a concerto was what made him powerful. He wanted respect and when Timber didn’t get it, he took without asking. There was a small scar along his neck from a gang fight he survived at just fourteen. It made him look dangerous, it made him look tough and he always kept his collar loose to show off the brand signaling that he was a survivor. His suits were always

designer, but off the rack, nearly always had a stain of some sort because he could be a careless slob when he ate. The blue jacket he wore today complimented the dark hue of his skin and made the hard, glittering humor in his eyes sparkle. Timber wasn’t pretty, but that command, that attitude generally had most women wet before he’d even said hello to them. But I wasn’t most women. I’d seen the man at his lowest. I remembered how he’d fought dirty with the sketchiest of lowlifes when we were kids hustling out in the Quarter. Back then he had no game, just his own scrappy nature and a desire to beat anyone before they could touch him. Timber didn’t make me wet. He made me worried and I hated him for it. “You wanted to talk to me?” I tried to make my voice sound disinterested. I wanted out of that lounge and away from the club before he had a chance to lay whatever bullshit line on me to get me to come back. But he used that cool calm of his to push against any bravado I tried to muster. He always did that shit and sometimes it worked. He didn’t answer me, but he did move his gaze from that close inspection of my face, down my body, to Ryan at my side. And then, that damn grin stayed fixed on his mouth. “Ryan, right?” Timber’s eyebrows came up and his voice took on this unaffected curiosity I knew Ryan would never buy. But the Boy Scout didn’t

answer, took his time slipping his hands in his pockets before his head moved once. “Not talkative, are you?” Timber asked him. “When there’s something worth saying I am.” And so the pissing contest began. “What do you want with me, Timber?” I asked, trying to budge the tension I could feel brewing in the room. “Sit. Please,” he said, directing me to a seat on the bench next to him and Ryan to the chair across the table. I decided the free spot by Ryan suited me better and I caught the irritation that shook behind Timber’s eyes. “Stubborn as ever.” Beside me Ryan’s body was on alert. He kept his hand on his thigh and his back straight, holding his eyes steady on Timber and the men that stood behind us at the make shift bar. The pathetic songbird had been dismissed, but her band continued playing, sending the faint hint of a piano trickling through the lounge. The music did not relax me. “Cosmo tells me you got some shit going down.” Timber said that with that ever-present grin on his mouth, like he knew something I didn’t and could barely keep it to himself. “Did he?” I said, shaking my head when he offered me two fingers of bourbon. “Ryan?” he asked, but my backup waved off his offer. “Damn, Alex, this doesn’t have to be such a beat down.”

Sometimes, when he was honest, Timber was actually likable. There was an ease to him in the moments where he was himself, where he wasn’t putting on some sort of show for power. Just then, in that quick slip of his control, that’s who Timber had been, but he caught himself, focusing on the glass bottle and the clinking ice as he poured the bourbon. “You think?” I said, hoping he caught my attitude, that he’d understand I wasn’t interested in whatever he needed. His hand stayed on the neck of the bottle when I spoke and he jerked his gaze toward me before he slumped back with a sigh, taking his full glass to his mouth. Behind a sip came a small noise in his throat, the one that I thought sounded like some self-caution. “I didn’t ask you in here to convince you to come back.” “No, you just get everyone else to do that, right?” The muscle around Timber’s jaw shook once, but he held back his temper long enough to slam back his drink. “If my people talk to you, that’s on them.” “Misty didn’t talk to me about you out of the goodness of her heart.” The ice slid around the half empty glass as Timber moved it, slow, calculating as I saw the expression from him I knew well— one that announced the man was slowly choosing his argument. “Maybe she was worried, like me.”

“Or maybe she was tired of you nagging her.” That had him angry, pushing himself to the edge of the couch, not in a rush, but a slow slip that came off as pushed and impatient. “I don’t nag. I inquire.” “Cut the shit, Timber,” I said with more courage than I actually had. “Why am I here?” I saw in his eyes the calculation. He didn’t even consider Ryan, wasn’t threatened by my backup at all, but Timber was a pro at culling his emotions. He did that just then. He might have had an agenda, he might have been eager to kick Ryan out of the lounge, but he wouldn’t let a soul know it. “I really was worried,” he tried, resting back against the couch with his ankle resting on his knee. “But since you mentioned it, I have a job for you.” “I don’t work for you anymore.” “Call it a freelance gig.” He moved closer, ignoring Ryan when he slipped his arm around the back of my chair. “I don’t trust anyone else to do this.” I felt Ryan’s graze against my shoulder and I took it for the warning I knew it was. But I wanted to know Timber’s angle. I figured if I knew that angle, I’d know his plan and that asshole always had a plan. “What’s the job?” “Rico got swindled.” I snorted, not caring that Timber didn’t find me funny.

“Someone is always swindling Rico. What’s the big deal?” “This particular instance is different.” One nod and the waitress, this one new, short and decked out in a frilly green corset, bent over the table to refill Timber’s glass. “This guy,” he continued, dismissing the waitress, “came into my club and cheated in a poker game. From Rico.” Timber glanced at Ryan as an afterthought, like he was only being considerate in explaining who Rico was. “Rico is one of my oldest friends.” I frowned, knowing Timber meant “employee.” The man didn’t have friends. “I want you to get my money back.” “How am I supposed to do that?” Timber Ironside had three looks I knew well: lust, pride and expectation. I rarely saw pride from him, though he liked to pretend I was some sort of grifting ingénue, but in his eyes, no one was better at the game than he was. Lust stayed in his eyes whenever his glance fell my way; it had since we were kids and Timber had discovered my tits were emerging. Expectation he gave to every damn person he met. Most followed that expectation, most would jump through hoops to meet that expectation. I generally tried to avoid it. Just then there was a mixture of all three looks glinting behind Timber’s eyes. He wanted me. He wanted me because he thought I was dynamic. He expected me to want him back.

Yep. I was well and fucked. “You won’t be suspected. It’s a nice area, dress the part, do the maid bit or maybe the Catholic school girl thing. That one’s my favorite.” I flushed, knowing he was trying to get a rise out me, embarrass me with Ryan sitting right there. Openly lusting over me was some subtle claim he made sure Ryan heard. That costume, though, no damn way. I wasn’t eighteen anymore. My school girl days were long gone. When I didn’t join in his laughter, the bastard shrugged, like it didn’t matter, like I could handle this with no worries. But he still smirked, a secret behind those full lips he had no plans of sharing with me. “You’ll be in and out in ten minutes.” “No,” Ryan said, surprising us both. “Ryan, this ain’t your call.” “You want her to break into some guy’s house and steal back what he took from you, putting herself at risk to get pinched?” “Alex don’t get pinched.” Timber frowned when Ryan laughed and I spotted the drop in his cool. He didn’t like Ryan laughing at him. He didn’t like being the one being left out of the loop. “What?” My mouth felt tight, from the embarrassment, from the common way I’d let myself get busted and I knew the second Ryan leaned his elbows on his knees, how one side of his face twitched from his humor, that Timber wouldn’t find any of this funny. But Ryan didn’t

comment, that pissing match only got deeper and the former SEAL moved his gaze to me, working his forehead as if to say “tell him.” “Ryan pinched me three days ago at the Marriott,” I said not caring that Timber looked disappointed, worried when he squinted at me, watching my reaction and Ryan’s for longer than made me comfortable. My former… whatever he was, loosened a bit more of his cool, scrubbing his fingers through his hair like it relieved some of his frustration. “You’ve been off too long. You’re getting sloppy.” Another guzzle of his drink and he waved the glass at me. “This will level up your skill.” “You ever think she doesn’t want to be in the life anymore?” Ryan’s question surprised me—and pissed me off. It had come from nowhere and he made an assumption he didn’t have the right to make. He didn’t know me. He knew nothing about me really but still he assumed I wanted out. He assumed I could stay out. Timber’s laughter was obnoxious and he slipped his moist glass onto the table, leaning on his knees to copy Ryan’s stance. “Man, give me a break. You’ve know Alex all of three days and she’s already got you convinced she’s getting out? Please.” He sat back, looking too superior and relaxed, more of those secret things he kept to himself. He dangled them like a fucking dare. “I’ve known her twelve years. We go way, way back. This girl is a fucking ace.

No one grifts like Alex and that kind of talent isn’t something she can just let go of. It’s in her damn blood and there’s no getting rid of it.” He wasn’t wrong. I had no idea what my father was. But my mother was an addict and the grift, the art of the hustle was something she’d perfected every time she chased a hit. It was instinctive and ran in my blood like the history of who our people had been. Only Stevie had been able to make a positive spin out of it. Warrior spirit, Stevie had called it. It’d made her fight to be something better than our mother had been. It made her try and study and want for something more. But to me, that spirit wasn’t as noble. That spirit told me to survive any damn way I could and that’s what I did. That’s what I’d always done. That’s what I was good at. Timber knew that. That fucker was right and I hated that he’d called me out. I hated that Ryan must have seen something in me he thought was real, but was really just part of the con. It made me feel ashamed and I cursed that feeling, that had me sitting away from Ryan when I felt the heat from his hand on my shoulder. Now was no time to appear weak, no matter what. I took Timber’s offered drink. “What’s my take?” I tried not to notice how Ryan pulled his arm from the back of my chair or the low sound of his frustrated grunt as he moved in his

seat. “Straight pay, five large. You need the money, right?” I didn’t answer him, but Timber made his assumptions. “You wouldn’t be needing anything if you came back.” “She’s not interested.” Ryan sounded so sure, so convinced that I needed a rescue. But I really, really didn’t like him speaking for me even if he was doing it as part of this stupid Mine-Is-BiggerThan-Yours game these two jackasses were playing. “Cosmo?” One name and the big guy was at Timber’s side. I closed my eyes, knowing what he was planning. “Ryan, why don’t you let my associate here get you a drink while I have a word with Alex in private?” “I’m not leaving the room. Neither is she.” I didn’t miss the slip of his hand near his waist, neither did Timber. He knew Ryan was carrying, probably appreciated the fact. But Timber was prepared, always and he had bigger guns. They stood all around the room. “She’s protected,” he told Ryan and that deadly calm was back in place like a quiet threat you really didn’t want to hear. Ever. “You don’t need to worry.” “Funny how that protection didn’t extend to her place. You got that for her, right?” Timber frowned, his leg bouncing as he glared at Ryan. “I watch over her.”

“So you know about the…” “Ryan,” I interrupted, not wanting to give Timber any hints about what was happening. He knew too much already. Had too many details and I wasn’t convinced that he was innocent, but I wasn’t sure he was guilty, either. I hoped Ryan could see that, that he could read me well enough to realize I needed to handle this on my own. “Give us a second, okay? I’ll sit right here and you can do a shot or two at the bar. I’m cool.” When Ryan didn’t move, Cosmo stood at his side, moving his jacket back to push his hand in his pocket, giving Ryan a glimpse at his .9mm. “I insist,” Timber told him. There were too many strapped men in this room, too much tension working around with the slow whisper of blues in the background and the testosterone peppering the air. Dammit, I liked Ryan. He was a good person and I didn’t want to be responsible for him getting hurt. When he started to grab his piece, I held his wrist, squeezing it once. My gaze burned, I knew it begged and Ryan, thank God, quickly caught the warning, though I knew he wasn’t happy I’d given it. “Fine,” he said, behind a slow stand and even slower brush past Cosmo. I only relaxed when I saw him lean against the bar on the other side of the room. “Come here.” Timber’s voice was low, soft, but I heard the

demand. He wanted me at his side, called me to him like he thought I’d come. When I looked at him, his head was tilted and he glanced to the skin above my cleavage. I pulled my leather jacket tight, taking the show of flesh from him before I shook my head. “No.” “Please, baby, just for a second.” “Don’t call me that.” “Fine,” he said, slipping back against the leather sofa with his arm along to back. He looked smooth, hot like the bourbon buzzing in my stomach. “What’s this really about?” Timber looked at me for a second, trying to act like I hadn’t called him on his bullshit. “I want my cash. Cosmo’s handling something for me and you are the only other one I trust to do the job right. Although, damn, Alex, you let a rusty cop pinch you? At the fucking Marriott?” My eyes came down, squinting as I took the shame. Timber was right. That was an amateur move I should have never let happen. “I was off. It happens sometimes.” “You sure you can handle this?” That was the point, I thought. He wanted me to do this job for him and I knew I would, but if it went wrong? If I got pinched, what would be my punishment? There was always a penalty to pay when

you tussled with Timber and I wasn’t sure if I could walk away after I paid it. “If I can’t?” He looked over at Ryan who stood glaring at us, a half full shot glass gripped between his fingers. “Then I guess that would mean your boy doesn’t get the invite he wants.” When I frowned at Timber, he laughed. “Misty didn’t say anything. You know I listen.” “Last time,” I told him knowing he didn’t believe me. He sighed, and the sound was honest, a real oath of frustration that he didn’t try to hide. “You are the most pigheaded bitch I have ever met. You wouldn’t have to worry about shit if you’d just come back.” Timber left the couch, sliding next to me in the chair Ryan had emptied, mimicking the Boy Scout with his smaller arms resting behind me. “You know I’d treat you like a queen.” Timber was trying for sweet. It’s what he did with me. That sweet tone, the hunger behind each pet name, it was a primer for the change in attitude that would come. “You’d have everything you’d want.” “No,” I said, brushing his hand aside when he touched my cheek. “I wouldn’t be free. I wouldn’t have my own life. It would be yours and I’d never get away from you.” “Would that be so bad?” I didn’t answer and Timber looked at Ryan who took half a shot, moving his head in a shake that had me guessing he wasn’t merely disappointed that Ryan had pinched me. “You think this cop would make you happy?”

“It’s not like that,” I told him, a little too quickly. “He’s helping me, I’m helping him. It’s business.” He dropped his finger to my neck and I moved my head, not wanting his touch. “On your back business?” “Fuck you.” He ignored the venom in my voice and the slap of my hand against his fingers, laughing like my anger was funny. “Oh baby, anytime you want to, you just hit me up.” Then sweet Timber leveled up, flicking his finger so Ryan was blocked by his guards as they stood around us. I heard him argue with Cosmo, I heard the mild threats, but wasn’t worried. Timber wouldn’t do anything to me. Not here. Not with witnesses. Still, he took those few seconds to drop the façade of worrying about me, of wanting me there to find out about a job. There was hunger back in those black eyes and I was the meal he wanted to devour. “This tight, sweet body, fuck, what I wouldn’t do to get in it again.” “You don’t want in it, Timber.” I stopped him when he inclined his head, but didn’t flinch or strike as he gripped my arm. “You want to hurt it. You hurt everything you touch.” I moved his hand from my thigh and pushed back his skimming fingers. “I’m not gonna let you do that to me again. Once was enough.” “Yeah, tell yourself that. Tell yourself that you didn’t like it, that you didn’t look down at those marks I gave you and think about

what they meant, about how they got me inside you.” That expression ran back to lust, maybe a little bit of pride as Timber shook his head, amazed maybe, reveling in the memory of the last time I’d settled my ledger. “You tell yourself all the lies you want when that asshole is fucking you. Like how you could ever be happy with a damn cop, even one who walked away from that shit. Tell yourself how much going straight would make you happy, but remember, Alex, I know you.” I couldn’t move, couldn’t fight when Timber’s fingers tightened on my arm, when the bitter tang of his cheap cologne hit my nostrils. “I know the way you think. And even if you don’t want to admit it, I know what makes you ache. We’re the same. We’re both dirty, we’re both fucking filthy, and we always will be.” Timber held my gaze for a moment, the pant of his voice, that eerie slip of his desire hinted in his voice, in the hard grip of his nails biting into my skin before he stood, freeing me from the trance he’d tried working in me. I blinked, shaking my head and didn’t pay attention to him whispering in Cosmos’s ear or really notice when the giant slipped a note into my hand. “Tomorrow morning around eleven. The house will be empty.” And then, just like that, the lounge was empty, left only with the sound of the musicians packing their instruments and Ryan’s steps against the hardwood as he moved toward me.

It took a minute for me to understand that he was kneeling next to me, hunched at my side with his voice all worried and low. “You okay?” he asked, moving his head to watch my face. Fear. Pain. Reality. And dammit, a tremor of thrill. Timber served them all to me and I’d eaten them up like I always did. I’d forgotten to fight. I’d forgotten I wanted to. Finally, I cleared my throat, nodding to Ryan. “I’m good.” The mask came on, the one I tried to keep over me when I was weak, when I doubted myself. It was one that I’d almost let Ryan see past. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” I could tell he wanted to say something, there was a hint of hesitation in his face, in the way he didn’t immediately follow me when I stood, how he kept his gaze on my walk as we headed towards the exit, on the set of my shoulders as we made our way through the crowd, but I wouldn’t have him drilling me with questions. Not yet. Not here. “You think my place is safe?” He frowned. “Probably not.” I made to step away from him, but Ryan grabbed me, a light touch on my arm, different from the one I’d just felt there moments before. “Hey,” he said, stopping me before I brushed off his hold. “What did he say to you?” To our left, in the lobby, Timber and his court was heading out the door. They all followed him, hung on his words, laughed at his jokes and I frowned, wanting to hit him, wanting Ryan to punch him, but only

able to manage a weak glare when Timber caught my eye and gave me a snide wink. “Nothing worth repeating.” I walked through the lounge with Ryan, feeling stupid. The curtained back entrance was a tight squeeze as we moved down it, passing the bustling wait staff that slipped through the kitchen. I didn’t really see them and ignored Misty’s text ringing from my phone. She wanted to know what Timber had said. I didn’t need to look at the message to know that. Finally, I breathed, deeply sucking the air into my lungs as we left the club and came out the side entrance onto Bourbon. Ryan stayed silent, taking in my movements, watching as I fidgeted with my phone and pulled my jacket tight against my waist. “So you don’t think I can go back there?” I asked, wondering how I could avoid my place but really needing not to be interrogated by him. Besides, I wasn’t a freeloader. I was an opportunist, and being under his roof made me feel needier than I wanted. But Ryan frowned again, looking confused and I sighed, trying to clarify. “My place.” “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not yet.” He touched my back as we weaved through the crowd on the street, which was thicker and louder than it had been an hour before. Ryan walked on the outside of the street, keeping his eyes focused on the people

that moved around us. “I want Sammy to watch the place for another day at least. We can stop by there if you need anything.” “No.” Head bent down, fingers on my temples, I didn’t know what I wanted to say or how to explain myself. “I just…” “You’re off,” he told me, nodding to himself and I didn’t need him to look at me or take his curious eyes off the crowd to know he understood what I was thinking. “He spooked you.” “That’s what he does.” Ryan had no idea. He didn’t know our life and if he kept pressing, got further in, he wouldn’t like what he discovered about how we lived it. “It’s not your problem.” “Alex…” But I didn’t want comfort or reassurances. I didn’t need them. Ryan should have realized that by now. Instead, I cut him off, shooting for a joke I knew he wouldn’t find funny. “So one more night on your sofa? You sure about that? I can get a room somewhere.” We came to the block between Bourbon and Barracks Street, waiting for the slow traffic and crowd to move before we crossed the street. He watched me the whole time like he waited for a question he didn’t know the answer to. I didn’t respond, let him stare, ignored the small trickle of worry I saw pinching his eyes. “I got room,” he finally said when we move down the street. “Don’t waste your money.”

“If it’s a hassle…” I hated how whiny I sounded. I hated more that Ryan just looked at me like he was trying to work out what had set me off. “You’re not a hassle, Alex. I told you. I got your back.” I nodded, hoping Ryan would remember that when he saw me work. Hoping like hell I wouldn’t get pinched again, but hoping more than anything that Timber wasn’t right about me.

Alex was damn stubborn. It took effort, it took fineness, and finally a warning about the picture of her on my phone to get her to let me tag along. On a B&E. Shit, how the mighty had fallen. We sat in the back of a cab, avoiding the dark skies above us and the infrequent splatter of rain that had darkened the streets and forced walkers to huddle under their jackets and umbrellas on the sidewalks. “Drop us on Toulouse,” she told the driver and the heavyset

cabbie flicked his eyes to her in the rearview¸ then pulled them up at the sky. “This is bullshit.” Nothing I said would stop Alex. I hated the way she kept quiet, how she’d been on some sort of mission all morning that she wouldn’t share with me. That driven attitude bothered me. It wasn’t like she was pumping herself up to do anything good. She was keyed up, close to a take and it reminded me of Sammy on missions back in the day. Most of the time my best friend was a laugh, always cutting up or saying something stupid to cut the tension. But when we went into a mission, even now, on a job, his ass got serious. Alex carried that same focus in her body as she slipped the driver fifteen bucks and slid across the seat before he’d even come to a complete stop. “Alex,” I warned as she walked too fast ahead of me, but all she did was grunt at me, making me wonder if she was picking up some of my bad habits. But a moment later: “Look, Ryan, I don’t want to do this bullshit.” “So don’t.” The rain picked up and I pulled her under the awning of an abandoned building, the broken balcony railing above letting a steady stream of water fall behind us. “It’s simple,” I told her, not liking that her eyes were hard. “Just walk away. You don’t have to do shit for him.”

“I’m not doing anything for him, Ryan. It’s all part of my payback.” “To Ironside?” She shook her head, drawing her arms around her waist like she was protecting herself again. “What is it? You’ve been off since last night.” “It doesn’t matter. The job needs doing and he wants me on it.” She stepped away from the awning before I could stop her and kept walking, slinking around puddles and keeping to the sides of buildings. It was something I’d seen a dozen times sitting on stake outs, tailing suspects back home in Tennessee. But Alex had a grace that none of those lowlifes in Cavanagh could hope to copy. We turned a corner, me trailing behind her like a damn stalker and Alex pretending that she had no idea who I was. The second we came to the corner of Dauphine I wanted to laugh, maybe throw up, couldn’t decide which. The street was heavy with history, and old elegance that I’d seen just months before, first hand. I knew architecture—insomnia and DIY shows will do that to you—and when Alex inched closer toward the old Creole cottage, I closed my eyes wondering if there was some maniac magician moving people and scenarios around in my life like a sick cosmic puppet show. I’d been in that house before. Just once, just long enough to be led into believing I had gotten the information I was looking for—

and to get sucked off by the horny woman who lived there. Not long enough that the rich bitch doing the job would let her husband catch us. Every time I thought about it, my stomach cramped, although I have to admit, the blow job was mighty fine. A low, subtle whistle though my teeth had Alex turning around, stopping before she crossed the street. I hustled to meet her, pulling her behind a light pole catty-corner to cottage. “The pink one?” She nodded, peeking at the slip of paper she pulled out of her pocket. “That’s the address. Why?” “I know the layout.” I couldn’t believe I was admitting that or even considering helping Alex break into anyone’s home. Even rich bitches didn’t deserve their stuff messed with. “How?” For the first time since last night that tight cast of Alex’s features softened, her curiosity working past her focus as she looked up at me expecting an explanation I’d only half give. “Met the home owner a few months back.” I didn’t explain, or meet her questioning eyes. Alex could read me. At that moment, I didn’t trust what she’d find if she did. “You gonna spot me, Ryan?” I liked how she twisted her mouth, fighting a grin. The tone was teasing and it distracted me from what we were about to do. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” “Newsflash, Boy Scout, you’re not a cop anymore.”

“I still fucking think like one. And this is still breaking the law.” I leaned against the light pole feeling stupid. “Shit.” “Give me ten minutes.” She wasn’t teasing now, keeping her voice easy, like she needed to explain the details so I wouldn’t turn and run. “Cosmo said the house was empty. You don’t have to do anything but whistle if you see someone coming.” She nodded toward the sidewalk and I followed. “I’ve cased this street for years. Lawyers and rich business owners who are in the office by nine and home well after seven. Housekeepers and workers don’t generally stick around inside and I don’t see any maintenance or construction workers. It’s cool, okay Ryan?” But that sick feeling in my stomach didn’t make me think anything was remotely cool. I knew what lay inside that cottage. I knew it was deceptively sparse. One visit was all it took for the details to stick—original trim work, ten foot ceilings, polished, fine dark wood floors, marble so sparkling it reminded me of the wet river banks back home. And Harmony, the lying bitch who lived inside it. She’d stood in front of her veiny Carrera marble, went to her knees and told me she could fit me… all of me, inside that wide mouth of hers and I’d let her because I’d been stupid, desperate for the lead I thought she’d give me. Besides, a beautiful redhead with wide hips and a teasing mouth had me forgetting that I had a brain.

Big Brain got ignored that day and I added a count to my rank of sins I’d tallied up in my life. But damn, the blow job was mighty fine. I’d listened for the music in our bodies; the small hope that what I’d let that redhead do to me would settle some sort of need in me to connect, to reattach myself to the world. But there was no melody in Harmony sucking me off. There was only the fierce, desperate feel of her tongue, the ridges of her mouth dulling my common sense even as they pleasured my dick, making me forget that I hadn’t asked who she was, that I hadn’t cared enough to wonder if she’d belonged to someone else. Alex weaved between the cars parked along the street, slipping between them and into the alleyway that separated the pink cottage from the large home next to it. This wasn’t me, just standing there popping my knuckles, clueless how to stare across the street without looking like a thug or at least someone with no business waiting among those historical homes and the lives led behind each hundred year old door. I settled on stepping into the street, leaning against a black Mercedes with a flat tire, listening as Alex jumped the fence, the gate hinge rattling once, and then I could only make out the lazy sirens a dozen streets over and the horns and music that filled the French Quarter. It was Friday, just before lunch. I was away from

my home town, away from the purpose I thought my life should have, watching out for anyone that would disturb the thief I was protecting. Shit. My mind wandered back along the road I had traveled. Lies had twisted me, left me shuffling through the shadows left behind by a man I once thought was good. An envelope written in Dot’s handwriting had spurred all this confusion, had disturbed the tomb of my mother’s death and the kicked up the secrets that had been told in order to keep her buried. That should have been my focus— finding Dot, getting my questions answered, but then less than a week ago Alex Black stumbled back into my life and made that mission seem like a small piece in a much larger puzzle. How could someone do that so suddenly? Slip my focus, unhinge my world? Have me calling Sammy to make excuses to our partners since I didn’t want them around Alex? Shit. I shouldn’t have wanted Alex around them. When had that order changed in my mind? After four damn days? To my left, I caught the movement of Alex on the second story, behind the thin curtains and, despite how sick this whole situation made me feel, I was impressed with how quickly she moved, how she didn’t hesitate. That took skill. It took cunning and I had to remind myself that those were the actions of someone committing a crime. And I was aiding and abetting that crime. Shit. Was I a damn

lowlife now? “Son of a bitch.” I knew the voice before I saw the woman and tried keep surprise and repulsion from showing on my face. Harmony’s front gate was just fifty feet away and she stood near it, her arms weighed down with canvas grocery bags that had her teetering on her three inch wedges. I wondered if she was just surprised herself, or angry I was there. I wondered if she’d gotten over me threatening to tell her husband about us being together. But then, from the corner of my eye, I saw Alex peak behind the curtain, watching me push off from the Mercedes with my hands in my jacket pocket as I approached Harmony on the street. Distraction. That’s what she needed. That’s what I could do for the little crook inside. “Harmony,” I greeted her, forcing a smile I didn’t feel onto my mouth. “How you been?” “How have I been?” The snobbish attitude was genuine, French Quarter society I’d come across once too often since I moved here. She wasn’t the type to pretend. I’d guessed that about her the second she let me come in her mouth and then hurry me out of that cottage as her old man slipped his key in their front door. Harmony wasn’t a good person, that much I’d discovered when she set me up to tussle with Malcolm, supposedly her friend.

Reality: the asshole had tried taking me out for asking about Dot. The bags in her hands swung a little as she readjusted then, but she kept her smug attitude in place, despite the obvious struggle she had handling her groceries. “I’ve been wonderful, Ryan, but I’m surprised you are.” “Why?” I asked, trying like hell not to look back at that window. “Because you sent me into a fight with gun-waving, grizzly old bastard?” “I didn’t know that’s what Malcolm was going to do.” She looked almost genuine, but the smile she didn’t bother hiding diminished her sincerity. “That right?” Harmony smelled different. Expensive, too polished, not like she had months before and it was distracting as she stepped in front of me, twisting her head in that way that some women do to seem harmless. “Why would I do that?” I wasn’t buying the innocent act but I did wonder why she even was bothering to talk to me, why she just accepted that I was hanging out in front of her place chatting with her as if we liked each other. “You wanted to shut me up about the, thing between us.” “I wouldn’t have killed you over that, Ryan, really. You think I’m a criminal?” “Oh, Harmony, you don’t wanna know what I think about

you.” That insult took the flirty attitude from her, had her stepping back with mock insult I knew was feigned. “Then why the hell are you standing outside my house, Ryan?” She didn’t wait for an answer, or bother to slow down as she jerked her head away from me and stared up at that second story window. I held my breath, hoping that Alex had gotten what she needed and couldn’t blink or even move my eyes until Harmony went through her gate and into her house, wobbling with each step in those ridiculous shoes. She returned a minute later, hands free of her bags, but I caught the curiosity pinching her nose, and how she stood guard leaning against her open door. “You need something?” she called to me, arms crossed tight and her back straight when I laughed. “Sometimes,” I said, linking my fingers through the gate railing when I heard the rattle of the side hinge move as Alex jumped the fence again, “I like to retrace my steps.” Harmony shook her head, acting more insulted than she should have been. Shit, I was a lowly security man who’d lied a little and fucked her to get some intel. She was a bored rich housewife who liked to suck strange cock in her husband’s gourmet kitchen. “This,” I waved between the two of us, making sure my voice was humored, lit heavy with a laugh, “was probably the best reminder.” “What damn reminder?” She didn’t lean on the door anymore.

Her back had gone rigid like she was waiting for an insult she knew I had ready for her. “Shitty mistakes I’ll never make again.” “Fuck you, Ryan. You didn’t think it was a mistake when I had your dick in my mouth!” she spat, growling as I laughed before she slammed the door behind her. To my left Alex stared at me, a small leather satchel under her arm. “Visiting?” she asked and I didn’t know what that frown meant or why I cared if it meant anything at all. “No. Not really. You done?” She gave nothing away, nodded like she didn’t care what I’d done with Harmony or why I’d been a dick to her. But that was Alex; Miss Ambivalent, especially when it came to working that poker face to hide whatever she was thinking. We left the cottage, dodging the rain without a word, without so much as a glance at each other or a mention of what she’d just done. I’d helped a criminal steal from a cheater. I’d taunted a woman who had no problems stepping out on her husband. But all I could think of as we left the Quarter was what the thief had heard me tell Harmony and why the hell it bothered me so much that she had.

No one could refuse my mom’s home cooked chicken pot pie recipe. It was melt in your mouth good, slap yourself good and something she did when I was a kid that I always paid attention to. I hoped it would erase the bullshit fluster that Alex carried around her all weekend. “No thanks” and “I’m cool” were the two constant refrains I kept getting from her since we left the Quarter the night before and holed up in my apartment. The October rain had gone stupid with

great bouts of wind whipping and thunder clapping, rattling my old French doors and making it next to impossible to walk down flooded sidewalks. We’d spent Friday night watching old Twilight Zone episodes and Alex had fallen asleep on my sofa before I could let her take my spot in my bedroom. Watching her sleep had been nice and upsetting, all rolled in to one. It had made my dick restless. Not that I would have done anything, but that didn’t keep my imagination from straying into what it might be like if we did. Just fantasy, though. A gorgeous girl sleeping on your sofa will do that to a guy. Today, all day, had been a disaster. The rain came down in sheets, clashed with the wrought iron on my balcony and congested the narrow streets so activity was a pain and inside vegging was the option of the day. I’d worked out, and let Alex run on my treadmill while I showered, then tackled the laundry while she airdried her hair and chain smoked with her legs, arms and face outside of my balcony. The cigarette smell was clogging my damn sinuses and I’d taken to glaring at her anytime she lit up, but that only made the defiant little shit smoke more. I didn’t know what she’d done with the leather satchel she’d lifted from Harmony’s, but a half hour phone call while she huddled outside under my awning had left her even more sullen and withdrawn than she’d been since we’d walked away from the B&E.

Tonight I decided I was tired of the silent treatment. Cooking my mom’s chicken pot pie would either do the trick or prove that Alex just was crazy as hell. The chicken was browning in translucent onions by the time Alex came back into the living room smelling like a casino. She coughed once and I moved my eyes to her as the sound of phlegm lodged in her chest. “You need to see a doctor about that?” “No,” she said, more interested in what I was cooking than my lecture as she slipped onto the barstool in front of the island to watch me work. “That smells good.” “It is.” I stirred the meat around the pan, let the juices coat the chicken until it was nearly dry and had to withhold a chuckle when Alex frowned, looking worried I’d burn everything. Then, I poured in the cup of chicken stock and lowered the temperature. “I thought you’d messed it up.” She leaned toward the island stovetop and inhaled. “That smells even better.” “I told you.” The steam from the pan licked against the lid when I covered it. “It is.” The island was cluttered with ingredients—onions, carrots, peas, melted butter, seasoning and a pie pan covered with doughy thick crust. My mom had always done that from scratch, but I wasn’t her, no Martha Stewart prep work for me. I’d gone for the store bought shit. Still, Alex seemed interested in what I was doing,

and curious about the creation I was trying to tackle. “What is all of this?” she asked, fingering the edge of the raw dough. Food and her own curiosity made her drop her attitude at whatever had pissed her off since last night. “Fixin’s,” I told her, emptying a can of cream of chicken soup into the pan. Alex watched everything I did, how I moved the wooden spoon around the skillet, how the chopped vegetables slid into the creamy broth and chicken mixture. “For?” Her eyes were wide and I grinned at the way she nibbled on her bottom lip, like she wanted to lick the whole thing right then. “Chicken pot pie.” I didn’t expect that frown, or how the disappointment came across her features. “What?” She’d spent most of her life in New Orleans. The idea of Tennessee pot pie wouldn’t impress a native, I guess, but this shit was primo eats. It sort of irked me that she didn’t seem so impressed. “Pot pie? Like the shit you can buy out of the freezer section?” “Woman, you insult me. Hell no.” She watched me as I poured the filling into the pie crust, catching the overspill with the back of my spoon. She kept moving her head, squinting like she was taking silent notes and by the time I’d added the top crust over the pan, folding the edges together and pinching scallops into it to make it look nice, and had slipped the whole thing into the oven, Alex’s

confusion had doubled. “You’ve never had homemade chicken pot pie?” I asked, distracting myself from that frown with a dishrag sweeping up the scraps on the island. “I’ve never had anything but homemade peanut butter and jelly.” That was a punch to the gut, one that caught me off guard. She ran her fingertip against the countertop, tracing the patterns and streaks in the granite. I wanted to reach out to her, squeeze her shoulder, do something that would make us both feel less shitty, but I knew Alex didn’t want anything that smacked of pity. Still, in her whole life, no one had ever cooked for her? “Never? Not even Ramen or soup or hell, I don’t know, waffles?” Head shaking, Alex shrugged as though she could feel the heaviness of my eyes as I watched her. When she spoke, her voice was soft, as if she was dredging something up from memory that she wanted to describe precisely. “Ramen we had from the Dollar Store. Most of what we had came from the Dollar Store. Sure, we had bread and eggs, small shit like that and anytime Wanda got a new kid in the house her Food Stamps increased, but she generally sold the groceries or the credit she got for extra cash.” “What do you mean?” I wasn’t blind or stupid. You deal with

all types of criminals as a detective and you hear stories, see the unbelievable. But taking food out of the mouths of kids—the ones you promised to care for? Alex didn’t seem bothered or even surprised that I asked. “Sometimes her friends gave her cash and she’d give them her card, but you know, she’d charge them a tax.” Alex’s voice had gone monotone, like she just pushed the words out with no afterthought, no emotion about how fucked up her childhood had been. “Once she even put her card on Craigslist.” She lifted her shoulder, like this was no big deal, another job, another hustle. “So she never fed you?” “She fed us, but most of the time it was bread and eggs. Peanut butter was a treat. She never cooked anything.” “What the hell did she do with the money?” That smile wasn’t happy. It was a bitter, disgusted gesture. “Liquor, smokes, weed. She spent her weekends at the casino and she bought cars and clothes. She didn’t live with us, had a nice little condo in the Quarter. Her sons or their women stayed in the house with us.” “That’s just… no one checked? I thought the state was pretty strict on foster families.” Alex’s harsh laughter had me feeling like an idiot, but I sucked it up, let her laugh at me. “Wanda wasn’t exactly a legal foster

mother. She had a system with some connected asshole. He’d send her hopeless kids, arranged for her to get a check every month and she got labor and hustlers she could train to siphon in more money to her little organization. We did everything—ran the jobs on the tourists, worked scams on old men, hell, she’d pretend to be this destitute single mother and would get all these free Christmas presents from whatever Good Samaritan groups organized the toy drives during the holidays. She’d tell them she wanted her kids to have ‘one nice Christmas.’” “I take it that never happened.” “Hell no,” she said, picking at a flake of dough left behind on the island. “She made us take the toys back to Wal-Mart and get the cash. If we were lucky, we got pizza. Depended on how much cash we came back with.” That bitch deserved to be in jail. I’d read Alex’s file, I’d glanced at the article on her foster mother’s trial, but it wasn’t until that moment that I was genuinely glad the woman was off the streets. Shit, what a greedy bitch. I understood the system. There was a real need for it, but for every fifty decent families who struggled, who could only survive by leaning on the system, there was another asshole who milked it dry. How the hell had Alex come out of that without being more hostile, angrier than she already was? I was starting to see the shit that had landed all around

her; the motivation to escape made sense. People like me who were cared for, who were loved, had no damn idea how lucky we’d had it. “Don’t give me that look, Ryan.” I hadn’t noticed her staring at me until she spoke. Alex leaned on the island and nodded at the seat to her right, telling me to sit and I did, pulling my knee away from her leg when I brushed it. “I had a shitty life, yeah, but hell, you think mine’s the worst? It’s wasn’t.” I wanted to tell her I thought she was a badass. I wanted to tell her that I’d shovel so many damn homemade meals into her that her ass would spill over the round stool she sat on. But I got the feeling Alex didn’t need to hear that. She wasn’t looking for a rescue. She was doing it herself. “One thing I’ve learned, pretty quickly, is that there is always someone worse off than you. There is always some poor bastard begging for more, that has no food, no clothes. It’s… well, that’s why I testified against Wanda, eventually.” Alex’s attitude had thawed, and whatever I or Timber or her bullshit life had made her sullen left her as she recalled what she’d survived, that she’d survived. Damn, she hadn’t even tasted the pot pie. I must be good. Now she seemed eager to talk, to let me know her story without it sounding like a burden, and I wanted to hear it, to

understand how she had gotten to the point where she could so easily slip into a stranger’s house and take what wasn’t hers. My brain wasn’t wired that way, but I was starting to understand why hers was. “So Wanda got worse?” I asked and Alex snapped her gaze at me, blinking like she was surprised I had figured that out. “Way worse.” “Think I need liquor to hear this?” I took that grin for agreement and grabbed two Abbey Ales from my fridge. We were doing chicken and I wanted something that would break the spice in the pot pie with the figgy hint of fruit from the beer. Alex looked suspicious, like she wasn’t sure what was in that dark bottle, but she grabbed the neck when I offered her the beer. “So?” I said, sliding back onto the stool next to her. The smell of cooking pie filled the room and I laughed when Alex squinted toward the oven across the room, rubbing her lips together. “It’ll be at least another 15 or 20 minutes, then it will need to cool for a bit.” “Damn, that smell is making me hungry. I guess I can wait, though. Smells good…” she cut herself off with a sip then widened her eyes, looking inside the neck. “Shit, this is good.” Another swallow and she sighed through a grin. “You say that now but when you have that and the pot pie, you won’t notice the spice until it kicks your ass. I’d suggest

moderation.” “Gotcha.” She held the bottle between her slim fingers, rubbing the neck with her thumb and I thought she might be working up what she wanted to say or how to make the words organize into sense. I didn’t press, wanting to know more of what she’d done, of how it had all landed her into my mom’s home on a night when I’d been too drunk to worry about a break in, but not wanting to make her feel badgered into giving anything up. “She got greedy,” Alex finally said, not looking at me, seeming more concerned with the slide of moisture over the bottle. “Whoever the asshole was that sent kids her way had his hands in a lot of sketchy shit. Wanda wanted to take advantage of that. I guess she thought she could blackmail him, maybe fatten her pot by threatening to rat him out.” “Not smart,” I said, meeting Alex’s nod. “No, not at all.” She took a slow sip of beer, rubbing her bottom lip with it as a distraction and I cleared my throat, needed to look at something other than the glisten wetting her mouth. “Anyway, he played her. Hard. Told her he could get her to play middle man between these lowlife gangs dealing in trafficking and he’d cut her in with forty percent. All she had to do was shelter the girls for a couple of weeks. That stupid bitch actually bragged about the whole thing.

“But this guy, he’d worked with Wanda for years. He had so much shit on her. He knew how she bilked the system. He knew how she treated her kids. No one was loyal to her.” Alex stopped speaking and I caught the quick glint of something like anger, maybe fury working behind her eyes. “Putting those girls into her house, knowing what she’d have them doing, well, they’d talk if they got out, wouldn’t they? They’d say one asshole took them and put them into some crazy, greedy bitch’s house with no food, no clothes and barely any protection.” Another sip, this one deeper and Alex slumped a little in her seat. I could only watch her, leaning on my balled fist as she talked. “She tried to play it off during the trial. She wanted to pretend she’d rescued those girls, but two of them got out, and everything blew up in her face. I’m pretty sure her contact, whoever the hell he was, organized that whole escape.” “But she didn’t name him.” That was usually the first thing that got mentioned. Few lowlifes had any loyalty, especially if they were facing jail time. “No. After I testified against her, how’d she’d made us live as kids, what we had to do for her, well, her lawyers starting begging for pleas. This asshole who set her up is connected, that’s for damn sure. Had to be him that arranged it and in exchange, no one ever found out who he was.”

“And you got hassled?” Half of Alex’s bottle was gone and she started to answer, but then the timer on the oven sounded. I hadn’t realized so much time had passed; everything had gotten so relaxed and easy between us. Stretching as I stood, I took a swallow of my own beer before walking around the island to the oven. “Finish,” I told her, fitting oven mitts over my hands and pulling out the steaming hot pot pie. “I’d rather eat.” “Of course you would. This shit is good. But it’s going to need to sit a few minutes before we can eat it.” Alex fell in right beside me, pulling out plates and forks as I took out the pie and I liked it, us bustling around together in my kitchen. Hadn’t realized how much I’d missed this being with someone else, having them fill in the moments of loneliness just by being there. When the plates and flatware were on the island and I’d grabbed another couple of beers, we sat back and I picked up where we left off. “This information about Wanda, about you being hassled, could be useful. There are no coincidences. Besides,” I said, sliding a steaming helping of pot pie in front of her, “you can eat and talk. No table rules here, lady.” Alex did a small grinshrug thing when she agreed with anything. It was cute. I mean, it was nice, dammit, this woman has me

thinking shit was cute. Well, she did that just then, the grinshrug before she dug into the pie. “I got hassled before I testified,” she said, holding her fork in front of her mouth, and blowing on it to cool it down before trying it. I wasn’t paying attention to anything but her reaction when she took her first bite of my mom’s genius recipe. “You don’t talk, that’s rule number one out there,” she said around the slip of the fork into her mouth and then, she closed her eyes. “Holy fuck.” Shit-eating grin, right on my face. “Right?” “My God, this is like… this is better than sex.” I choked on a piece of chicken as it went down my throat and Alex noticed, smug smirk making her dimple dent hard on her cheek. “Well, I don’t know if I’d say that,” I told her, trying not to picture anything with sex or nakedness or general depravity. God knows I’d fucked up enough in past few months. I’d never quite forgiven myself for sleeping with Harmony before the kitchen suck off. Just thinking of it made me feel like a loser. Another shrug and Alex took a few more bites, forgetting that she was explaining to me what had happened with her foster mother. “So you didn’t want to talk?” “No,” she said, savoring her food, moaning over it as though it tasted like pure bliss. I moved my eyes down, focused on my plate so my imagination wouldn’t go too wild wondering what other

sounds Alex made when something was good for her. “But I remembered being in that house, living in a damn closet and sleeping on a mattress crawling with fleas and bedbugs and whatever else was in that place.” The scrape of her fork against her empty plate brought my eyes up again. She was done with her pie, not her explanation. “It was prison, a fucking prison. I might be a crook, Ryan, but I’m not heartless. I wouldn’t wish that shit on whoever killed Stevie and I hate that motherfucker.” She stopped, shaking her head. “Well, maybe on them, but not those girls. No way.” I shook my head, understanding why she’d testified, feeling a little proud of her that she’d done the right thing. Shit, I had no right to think that. I hardly knew Alex though we had spent nearly every day constantly around each other for a week. She was complicated and she was frustrating, but she was right. She wasn’t heartless, not from what I could see. “And you got hassled for your troubles.” She watched me close, seeming to understand that I had more questions, wanted more details, but Alex waited, patient, calm as I tapped off my beer and caught her gaze over the bottle. “So that’s when Timber covered you.” One slow nod, careful, evasive and Alex remained quiet, waiting, it seemed, for me to press her, to ask for details about that situation. I wouldn’t. Wasn’t my business and really didn’t have any

bearing on who might be after her. “He scared everyone off, mainly Wanda’s sons who were worried that their breadwinner going inside would fuck up the stream of cash.” Alex moved her fork between her fingers, tapping the edge on the island. “After Timber was done with them, well, I didn’t have anything to worry about. He set them straight and up until a few weeks back I haven’t had any problems with people bothering me aside from the occasional smack talk and saluting middle fingers.” She stood, taking her plate with her and hovered near the pie, looking eager when I moved my head, silently telling her to take more. “This is really the best thing I’ve ever tasted.” “I’m gonna call bullshit on that, lady.” “What? Why?” “You live in the good food capital of the world. My mom’s pie can’t compare.” “Yeah but I don’t get a lot of chances to go to the good places and I don’t beg for food.” Alex did that chin lift again, cocking one eyebrow up so I knew she wasn’t joking. “Never have. I earned it. Well, I earned it how we earn things.” “Hustling?” “Sweet talking.” I laughed, shaking my head at the small wink Alex gave me. “That’s what you call it?”

“Sure. I was never mean and I never went after anyone who looked like they couldn’t afford to have their wallets thinned.” “So tourists?” “Tourists and fat cats throwing money away.” She looked down at her plate, scooping up the chicken and crust like she didn’t want to know if she’d disappointed me. “What about you?” “Me? I’ve never hustled anybody in my life. Well, poker maybe, but that’s the game.” “Not once?” “Hell no.” I pointed to myself. “Boy Scout, remember?” I left the island, taking my plate to the sink and picked up two more beers before I sat back down. “Okay,” she said, setting down her fork. “So you’ve never lied to a woman to fuck her?” The bottle stilled in front of my mouth and I watched Alex, that slow smirk sliding up her mouth, like she’d told a dirty joke just to see my reaction. But I played it off, wouldn’t let this little smartass fluster me. “That’s not the same.” I took my sip and shrugged like I wasn’t thrown by her question. “It’s exactly the same. Food, Ryan isn’t about a meal. It’s the presentation, it’s the pay off. A juicy steak, or,” she waved her full fork, “something that melts in your mouth, is just like a nice piece of ass. If you want it enough, need it to fill you up, you’ll do just about

anything to get it. There isn’t a lot of difference between the two.” I leaned back against the island, taking a long pull on my beer, trying to figure out an argument that would shatter her theory but came up empty-handed. “Point taken, but you know, I can always rub one out to get full.” “No you can’t. That’s like grabbing a fifty cent stack of crackers from the vending machine. Stale, barely satisfying and you’re still hungry no matter how many you eat.” She was teasing now, letting the glint of flirtation rise up in her eyes. I fucking loved it. I knew I shouldn’t, but hell if I couldn’t help myself. “No, darlin’, not the way I do it.” She put down her fork, rubbing her stomach, fighting a smile that I thought she didn’t want me seeing. “So you’re telling me that you’ve been honest with everyone you’ve slept with. You were a damn SEAL and you never had a one night thing with some random chick?” She didn’t need to know the stupid shit I’d done on deployment. Hell, I didn’t remember every detail, and I’d certainly had my share of sugar—and spice—but I wasn’t some sick fucker who’d do anything to get his dick wet. I didn’t look at her, offered her a vague shrug which she pounced on. “You see? You’ve hustled to get what you needed.” Alex thumbed the napkin by her half empty plate, twisting the edge like she needed something to do with her hands. “The redhead,” she started, meeting my gaze when I

snapped my head up. “She was a hustle.” “She was a stupid mistake.” When Alex frowned, nodded once, I felt the air around the table change, move us into territory that was personal, a little raw and I wasn’t sure if I liked the sensation or if I thought the ice we skated on was just too damn thin. I liked Alex. She was a cool woman who’d been given a rotten lot in life. I was damn attracted to her, but that didn’t mean I’d have her on her back or against my brick wall anytime soon. But yeah, I often let my Little Brain think for me when emotion or situation got too overwhelming. Still, I had a case to handle with Alex. We had to keep this shit professional, but damn if it wasn’t hard with her asking those flirty questions, looking hungry and satisfied all at the same time. And then, there were those glorious tits. Hell, Alex had great lines all over. Her body was arched and curved in all the right places—hips that flared out, a waist that was small enough that I knew my hands would fit around it easily. And as she walked to the sink—sashayed to the sink—rinsing off our plates, damn if the Little Brain took over, had my eyes moving over her back, down to the swell of her plump ass. No. I wasn’t doing well with the professional bullshit. Little Brain had other ideas. “Don’t tell me you were pissed that I talked to her,” I said,

coming to stand behind her as she cleaned the dishes in the sink. I had no idea what I was doing, didn’t know why I was standing so close. But Alex’s hair picked up the swirl of light from the window above the sink, moving both shine and shadows over her head. She smelled like soap and something else, something I’d only ever picked up off her skin. I suddenly realized that she was making me hungrier than the pie had, which shocked the hell out of me. This attraction had come from nowhere. Or maybe it had existed all along, I wasn’t sure, but right then I wouldn’t have moved away from her for any damn thing. “I wasn’t pissed,” she said, slipping her head to the left to catch my eyes. “Why would I be pissed, Ryan?” I lifted my shoulders, silently asking her to tell me what she’d been thinking and that grinshrug of hers came out like a deliciously bad habit. “You were cruel to her.” She leaned forward to turn off the faucet and I moved my hand to the side of the sink, but Alex didn’t jump back or jerk away from me when she turned, no matter that I stood too close, that I was acting like an asshole desperate to touch her. In fact, this woman seemed to like the closeness, like she reveled in the small space between us, not letting the focus of my eyes or my accelerating breath do anything but fuel whatever thoughts had her looking at me the way she did. Eyes darkened, top teeth denting in her bottom lip and still Alex didn’t move, not to pull

me closer or to tell me to back away. Shit I was in trouble. “I’ve never seen you cruel before. Didn’t know you had it in you, Boy Scout.” “You know, lady,” there was a hum in my voice I didn’t recognize. Alex had put it there with just the low dip of her gaze, “you got all these ideas that you know me. You don’t.” “Ditto.” Her eyes moved with the shake of my head, following the slow nod, the moment becoming something tactile, obvious as the heating air between our bodies that dampened our skin. Two looks, two held breaths and something had shifted. Hell, who was I kidding? It had started, brewing, way back, the second I grabbed her arm, stopping her from taking that wallet. It simmered when she snuck onto my balcony asking for my help. Now it crackled—that attraction, the symmetry in the breath that mingled between her mouth and mine. “Alex?” It was only her name falling from my mouth that moved her gaze off my lips, a small glance that was all the answer she’d give me. “I’m not a fucking Boy Scout.” There are times when you can’t think. Those are the clustered moments when the energy, the zing of the moment you’re in breaks apart any awareness you have. There is no logic in the swell of

sensation or the liquid heat that drives one body closer to another. It’s the feel of warmth, the hope of touch that pulls you in no matter what your brain tries to make you understand about right and wrong, friend or foe. I wasn’t supposed to touch Alex Black. I wasn’t supposed to see her as anything but a mission. I was supposed to find her stalker and keep her safe. But I had always done what was expected. Seems she had to, as well. The difference was that my expectations fell on the side of justice. Hers ran along the tracks of corruption. Both meant we survived however we could. I didn’t think about the case or what had brought her to me in the first place, and what kept her coming back to me. I reached for her because I knew that’s what we both wanted. I touched her because she let me and once I had her against my chest, felt the smooth brush of her fingers on my neck, sensation shattered judgment. The last sound I heard before I kissed her was the strangle of laughter falling into a moan. Hers, not mine. Alex was a woman— beautiful, sensual, parts that went in and out just like they’re supposed to, but she did not kiss me like any other hesitant, docile woman I’d ever touched. She touched me like she was still hungry, like the meal we had

just shared had not filled her. Like nothing would. Alex felt like spun sugar—sweet, tangy and if you had too much, you’d walk away lightheaded. At that moment, I didn’t care. She came into my arms easy enough, her small body fusing to mine like her legs belonged around my waist, like her breasts should always be right against my ribs. Her tongue was strong, delicious and when I gripped her ass, falling back against the island with her wrapped around me, that strong muscle vibrated against my mouth, shaking in the groan, the wild growl of her voice. My head burned from the sensation of her mouth along my neck, how she moved her hips, ground them against my aching dick like she wanted to free it, and I didn’t stop her, couldn’t when she held my face, devoured every damn inch of my mouth, my tongue like she owned it. Like she always would. Who moved first? No clue. Maybe it was me, carrying her down the hallway, her fingers ripping my t-shirt over my head; maybe it was her, pushing, directing, telling me with her mouth and fingers and hurried grunts that she wanted me naked, needed it. All I knew was that my back hit my mattress and Alex straddled me, her long, beautiful hair like a fan brushing against my bare chest, into the ridges of my abs. “Fuck, Alex, you feel…” “I know how I feel,” she told me, breath hard, movements agitated as she sat over me. “No talking.”

I listened. I looked and touched and felt all the bluster of sensation that filled me like hard, eighty proof whiskey. Alex’s hair, the smell of her skin, the taste of her shoulder against my teeth, the struggle for control—it made me drunk and hard and all those things I had no business being. But will is a weak damn thing when a beautiful woman touches you, when she promises everything with a look. That’s what Alex gave me, a look that would shatter even the most resolute man. There was no controlling myself, not with her. Her body was smooth, lines and lithe limbs that reminded me of the wind, the way she moved, how she glided over me and I could not take that hungry damn need inside me that wanted more. She didn’t fight me when I rolled over, took her hip to press against her and cup those perfect breasts that had teased me a week ago. My hands were everywhere, fighting against her shirt, absently lowering her zipper, then returning to her breasts to lift her shirt to her collarbone so I could get her free from her bra and my mouth around that round, dark nipple. She tasted sweet, skin that I thought would burn my tongue, a texture I couldn’t get enough of. “Yes,” she moaned, hand on the back of my head, pushing me, wanting me latched deeper, sucking harder. Alex got lost in that moment with me, guard down, body open and I took advantage of the rare opportunity to see her so exposed,

so willing to give, loving her hand rubbing against my dick, her feet pressing against my back to connect our centers. But when I slipped her shirt right over her head and pushed my hands under her ass to kiss her stomach, those tight muscles contracted and I felt her limbs stiffen, her hands moving to cover her bellybutton and all those tight ab muscles. The movement only brought attention to the scars on her skin. Some were very old, jagged lines and scorched burns that had healed. Others were red, visibly new and looked like lashes she’d taken again and again. “Alex…” I started, coming to my knees. “It doesn’t matter, Ryan. Don’t…” she reached for her shirt, tugged it out of my hand when I tried to stop her. “Don’t look at them.” “They weren’t there… before.” I finally pulled my gaze away from her flat stomach, frowning when I saw the anger, that resurfacing rage reddening her skin. “Were they?” “You mean when I showed you my tits?” I hated that she’d gone rigid, that she’d put that guard back up so quickly I didn’t recognize the woman I’d just tasted. “Not like you’d notice. Most men grow blind and stupid when tits are thrown their way.” She hustled off the bed, blocking my hand when I reached for her. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I’m a big girl and I can lick my own wounds.”

God, she was rough around the edges—a tough exterior of hair and make-up and attitude that was only softened by the silk in her eyes and the exotic beauty that made her something to behold. That skin, even as scarred and wrecked as it was, took nothing away from her beauty. But who could have done that? Who would want to mark her? Claim her this way just because they could? All of sudden, it clicked into place. The man’s attitude, his smug face shot into my head and I came off the bed in a fury, stalking toward her like a beast. “He did this?” I waved to her now covered stomach. “Ironside?” Alex stopped fumbling with her zipper, her head jerking up, eyes low and mean at my question. “That’s not any of your business.” “The hell it’s not. I’m supposed to be…” “Protecting me?” I hated when she laughed like that. The sound was weak, forced, a haze of insult she used to torment. “God, Ryan, you really are a Boy Scout.” I squinted, tried to push back my temper, knowing Alex was covering, blocking me out with the attitude she wrapped around her like a cape. “Why’d he do this to you?” She turned on me, eyes blazing. “Because I let him.” I hadn’t heard her yell like that since she tried fighting her way out on my fist at the Marriott. “That’s what I do, Ryan. It’s who I am.”

“Bullshit. If that were true, you’d be covered in scars.” I grabbed her waist, ignoring the attempts she made to get away from me. “These are months old, but still not fully healed. I don’t know how the hell I missed them that first night. The others aren’t the same.” “No, dammit, they’re not.” She pushed on my chest, acting like she couldn’t have me touching her, like distance was now the only thing she needed from me. I fucking knew better. “None are the same. God, how many times do I have to tell you? I’ve lived a shitty assed life. I didn’t go to high school or the May Dance or get my first kiss in a fucking horse-drawn carriage tottering around the Quarter. This,” she said, lifting her shirt, “is me. It’s who I will always fucking be. You wouldn’t get that because you haven’t been where I’ve been.” I wished to Christ that were true. But it wasn’t. I may not have lived her life. I may have never been forced into poverty or left to figure out how to survive on my own, but I’d been in the trenches. I’d been in blood. I’d been wounded, scarred, in more than just body. “I’ve been to hell, too, Alex. It may not have been your hell, but it was still hell.” My voice was low, but I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t ashamed. It was a misery no one should ever have to recall. It was one I thought Alex couldn’t never understand. Seeing those scars,

seeing just how damn deep her wounds ran, I thought maybe I was wrong. Those big eyes, dark as midnight, cut right into me, looking hard, glancing at my shoulder, to the scar a bullet in Fallujah left on my skin, maybe realizing that there had never been a Boy Scout. There had only ever been the fighter. I hated seeing that from her— the understanding that I wasn’t safe, I wasn’t completely whole. Finally, she blinked, moving toward the door with those wide, big eyes taking in my reaction, my worry. “Yeah, I guess you have. But that’s the difference between you and me, Ryan. I still live there.” Alex left my room and I didn’t follow. I knew better than try to get her to tell me what had happened, exactly how those scars had ended up on her body. It would be a fight I wouldn’t win, her trying to tell me to stop shooting for a rescue; me telling her, more than anyone I’d ever met, she damn well needed one. But I let her be, listened for the squeak and slide of her legs against the leather sofa or the wafting smell of her smoking out on the balcony. Neither came and when my eyes became itchy and my brain would not shut off, I stepped into the living room, a little scared when she was not there, a little worried that she would never come back.

New Orleans is a city for the lost. Bastards and bitches and outcasts, down trodden losers. Kids who cannot navigate their adolescence with parents that have forgotten that they, too, had been that rebellious, that broken, back in the day. I’ve walked those streets a thousand times. I could do it in my sleep. I knew where to hide when the cops where getting too restless, what shops and vendors in the Market never really cared about waste or surplus. Which ones fed the homeless when their profit was good.

Some would even share their meals just to have someone else around to keep them company. This city rooted itself into my bones at twelve. It was just like my cheekbones, the damn stiffness in my board straight hair—part of me, a cluster of thought and memory that someone else put inside me, but that I had accepted as my own. Like Timber. Ryan hadn’t seen my scars, not until tonight. Not until I let my body, my stupid pussy, loosen hold of good sense. He was never supposed to see that. No one had. Except Timber, of course, but then that was the point. It’s why he’d marked me in the first place. “This body is mine, Alex.” It wasn’t something he’d said to get me wet. It wasn’t some great confession of control and dominance that I’d secretly wanted to hear. It was a dictum he imparted to me to let me know he was owed and he planned on being paid fully, in a currency of his own choosing. What I wanted meant nothing. He wanted to dominate me, control me, fucking use me, and just one time, I let him. I fucking said yes. It had lasted six hours. He fucked me and teased me and made me come and when I thought it would end, he’d tied me up and hurt me with matches and hot wax and then the sharpest point of his knife. I’d expected his initials in my skin the next morning. I

expected him to laugh at me, torment me again, do all the things some men do to women who give themselves up so completely. Timber had been worse. He fell for me. Harder than ever before. He’d sworn he would never stop wanting me and then, looking over the welts and burns and humiliating bruises he’d given like a gift, Timber Ironside told me I was beautiful. And to him, I was. The most beautiful thing he had ever had in his hands. But a deal was a deal and in our world, you paid it and it was done. No take backs, no short changes. It was the only reason he’d let me walk away. And then I had to live for weeks with the memories of my blood staining his fingers, smearing his mouth, his sweat against my raw skin, knowing that my body had been claimed and marked, branded. He would always be there and no one, not even beautiful, sometimes self-righteous Boy Scouts could ever dismiss where Timber had been or how much he’d always want to be there again. Me and this city, we both had been marked by hardship and loss. The city was stronger, rose above and endured. That wasn’t so easy for me. My body, right along with everything else about me, had been lost to New Orleans. Just like it was as I scrambled down S. Peter clutching the leather satchel that I had filched, running from Ryan, from the anger, the horror and, damn him, the pity on his

face. He’d seen my hell, what I’d try to keep from everyone. I couldn’t stand that look in his eyes. It was cold, too cold to be hurrying down the sidewalk like a coward without a jacket, running to Misty for a place to be safe. I had been stupid, careless, only thinking of slipping outside of Ryan’s place where no one could touch me, where not even Timber or whoever was responsible for my recent fear could fracture the small security I’d felt on that not-big-enough leather sofa. But I couldn’t face Ryan, I had to remember that he was not for me. Neil Ryan was a good man. I would never be a good woman. Royal Street was empty. No stragglers browsing in the antique shops, bookstores or boutiques along the quiet sidewalk, nothing but the cold slap of rainwater flooding the pavement—and that feeling, of needing to get away, the one that always came when I was scared. Always when I was alone. Someone was watching. It could have been Ryan, in some fairytale story, but I wasn’t lucky enough to live in one of those. In this world, men like him don’t chase after women. Not women like me anyway. There was a rumble of thunder above me and despite the loud spatter of rain that fell all around, that rustle of steps behind me grew heavier, giving up all pretense of stealth, stomping louder. My brain was telling me to run, to scream; the streetlight up ahead

meant safety away from the shadows of the alleyways and the shops closed up tight. But, thinking that, believing it, wasn’t enough; my heart told me it would never be enough. Fleetingly, I thought of Timber, not what he’d done to me, but of the job, his satchel, how walking around the Quarter at night, all alone with that much money was epically stupid. How if, when, I lost it, he would be mad and I would have to pay another debt. That one would hurt even more than the first. If my pursuer caught me, then what? The pain of an attack I could take, but there was no way I’d die to keep Timber’s money safe. There was no damn way. Fear is a funny thing. Something that always lives inside us no matter the situation or how weak we think we are. It waits, like a virus, to root deep, to be ignited and most of the time, it will spring forward, grow and thrive before we even consider tamping it down. Unless, of course, our very nature, that ancient instinct to survive, blossoms first. We all want to live. No one really wants to die. And it was then that I realized I was trying to tamp down my fear rather than setting it loose, to use it as a weapon. Why the hell would I do that? The low hum of “Love Is a Battlefield” echoed in my head because I was too damn scared to think of anything else, but then

that voice, my sister’s voice, the one I’d kept silent too damn long screamed louder than the lyrics. I’d silenced Stevie the second I knew Timber would burn me. I’d always tried to ignore it when shit got shitter. And now, walking in my fear, trembling from it, my strong-willed sister screaming inside my head sounded pissed. Livid. Turn around and fight. Fight, dammit! For once, I listened. The freak following me hadn’t expected me to stop and confront him. I knew that when he suddenly stopped, too, kept a wary distance that was still too close, too close. The shadows were too thick, so I couldn’t make out his face under the low mask he wore. But he was tall, taller than me, slim but broad and I smelled the hot spice of aftershave, something tangy that made my nose wrinkle and birthed a coming sneeze in my sinuses. “What the hell do you want?” I screamed loud enough that the creep stepped back. Fucker probably had expected me to beg. I didn’t do that. Not my style. Living the life, you pick up vibes about people. Generally, you can tell when someone’s playing you. You can tell when they’re out of their damn minds. This guy gave off a psycho vibe that had me squaring my shoulders, slipping my hand into my back pocket to get my fingers around my knife. But my movement caught his attention,

and suddenly he was like a lit fuse, tension focused and crackling towards my hand and the twist of my wrist as I tried pulling the knife free. The vibe he was giving off came clear to me: Norman Bates’ crazier, less adjusted cousin. “You, pretty Alex.” It didn’t register immediately that he knew my name. I didn’t think about how quickly he moved as I unhinged my knife, I simply reacted. The movement of light and dark, the sound of lunging breath, the flick of metal, the pounding of rain and buffeting of wind all clapped together, both suspending time and making it ignite until I felt the barrier of fabric and muscle as he moved into me, until the sting from his fist and the yank of his fingers in my hair tugged and burned and had me seeing stars. “You fucking asshole,” I screamed, charging back when he slapped me, swinging wildly with my knife, but then I crashed violently against the brick building behind me, my bag, my phone falling to the ground, thinking that there should only be one of him. That my damn mouth should not be bleeding. “Be good, Alex,” he said, wet mouth and high, soft voice against my ear. The scent of his aftershave. “Be a good girl.” But I wasn’t a good girl. Hell, I was the antithesis of a good girl. Good girls got fucked over. Good girls couldn’t save themselves. Good girls, like my sister, got dead.

“Fuck you.” The low hiss between his lips should have been a warning, it should have taken the piss and wind from my voice, but I was running on adrenaline and a precious ache to live through this. And then, he slapped me again, and again and I thought I would go down, but I didn’t. I fucking didn’t. “Come on you sick fuck, keep at it!” I screamed, stumbling when he lunged, slipping on the wet pavement. “Stupid little girl. Stupid, stupid.” But he wasn’t speaking to me. He was only moving his thoughts outward, making some sick mantra that fueled him and fed his movements. “I told you to stop moving.” He became winded then, shooting to me with his hand outreached, gripping toward my neck. “I told you not to tell!” I didn’t know who he thought I was, but whoever had fused in his brain, this bastard had not forgiven them for whatever it was that they had done. “Stop it, asshole,” I said, clawing at his hand as it came nearer, wincing when he rushed forward and knocked my head against the building. “I said stop!” My throat burned, pierced with the helpless wheeze of air and my strangled words and the increasing pinch of his fingers clamping down and when he squeezed, grip tight, tighter, I heard Stevie screaming inside my head again. She shouted over all the madness, the fear, the loss of air, screaming at me to fight back.

“No, motherfucker, not today,” I wheezed, clawing, scratching, gripping until the glint of metal caught against the dull moonlight and I wrapped my fingers around the handle of my knife and plunged it deep into his shoulder. I had never heard a sound like the one that left his mouth as my blade pierced his flesh. It was fury and rage and the high wail of madness all rushing through his hot breath, and he staggered back, wobbling, letting go of my throat. I shuffled to my feet, bracing myself against the brick, ready to hit him again if he got his bearings. “Alex!” I heard the fear in Ryan’s voice, but I didn’t dare look at him. My focus was on the freak who was staggering backwards away from me, not at the man running towards me. My attacker could not control his hands. The tremor in them made his fingers look electrocuted, and his eyelids in the holes of his mask fluttered and burned. I held that twisted, feral gaze, until the man behind it turned and ran, and still it burned in my brain, barely registering that Ryan’s shouts had quieted or that his drumming feet had silenced. “Alex, shit.” Finally his voice got through to me, and his gentle fingers on my face pulled my gaze from the retreating form of that crazy bastard, allowed my muscles to unclench from their rigid stance. “Hey,” he said, voice easy, but an undertone of worry hung onto each inflection. “God, are you okay? Why the hell did you…”

When I closed my eyes, Ryan quieted, rubbing his thumb underneath my bottom lip until the pain began to register and my mind finally released that numbing, protective hum that had blocked everything but the need to fight. Then all strength fled me, and I fell against Ryan’s chest.

Ever see one grown man yell at another one? For some women, it’s hot. For me, it just made my head ache worse. The tension in the office was thick, like the stifling heat that covers the hot pavement on Louisiana streets just after a summer rainstorm. I could taste the anger, the frustration in the room as Ryan paced in front of me, his body so rigid the tight cotton of his t-shirt pulled against his collar. But it was the other men in the room, specifically the tallest of four, Frank, that seemed ready to burst.

I only knew his name because Ryan kept saying it with a stream of curses. “Shit, Frank…” or “Fuck I don’t know, Frankie¸” and my favorite so far, “Frankie, I’m not a fucking kid.” Frank was broad, shoulders large and waist defined and trim, that much I could make out from the workout pants he wore that hung just below his hips. But he walked with a limp and the second Ryan had thundered into the office with me complaining that I was fine, this Frank guy had stopped mid-pull up, easing to the floor from the bar above the door. “Problem, Ryan?” he’d said, throwing a nod at the other two men using this small office as their own personal gym. The guy was cool, seemed at least a good five years older than Ryan, and even with the clear presence of anger shining in his dark eyes, kept his temper in check. I’d instantly understood that this was someone in charge. Ryan had mentioned the security business he owned with his friends—walking under the NOLA Elite Security sign above the door told me that’s where he’d taken me—but I’d expected more of the wide-neck variety I’d glimpsed at the Marriott when Ryan pinched me. Sammy, his best friend, might fill that role, but this Frank guy and the other one, Dean, did not. It was like watching a tennis match with Ryan agitated, pacing as he explained why he’d helped me out, and why he’d kept knowledge of that help from Frank. Frank’s calm was more like a

simmering anger as he worked his jaw and shook his head like Ryan’s explanations were pointless. I felt out of my comfort zone. These guys weren’t cops, but they damn sure acted like them. Frank berated Ryan like he was a suspect while Dean and Sammy sat on the desk across the room, sometimes glancing at me, analyzing when Ryan would drop a detail about my stalker or when Timber’s name got mentioned, but otherwise they ignored me. Sammy and Dean’s expressions had me shifting on the sofa, trying to act as though those narrowed eyes didn’t mean judgment, like I was some sort of street savvy siren determined to lead their friend from the path of righteousness. Please. If Ryan had stepped off that path, it was well before I showed up. Sammy muttered something to his brother Dean, his bright brown eyes avoiding my face and his long legs stretched out in front of him. It sounded distinctly like “Train wreck,” but those full lips of his and the quick grin coming out of those angular features made it hard not to roll my eyes at him. He might be a looker, a flirt, and an ass, but Sammy didn’t strike me as the type to be cruel. Like his brothers, Dean was a pretty boy, but there was an edge to his expressions, a fierce glare constantly hardening his dark eyes and of all of these men, it was Dean that struck me as the most dangerous. That glare shifted between me and Ryan and I shook my head, tired

of the scrutiny. Actually, I didn’t care what these assholes thought of me. The only thing taking any real weight in my head was how damn bad my lip throbbed and when Frank would stop lecturing Ryan. And who the hell had attacked me in that alleyway. “This,” Frank told Ryan, voice even, but firm, “is exactly what I’ve been bitching about, man.” “Frank…” The Boy Scout stopped pacing long enough to shoot a look my way before he exhaled, tilting his head at Frank. “No, don’t start giving me excuses.” Frank nodded to himself, like he was trying to work options, tactics in his head. Again I was hit with the idea that this guy was running the show. He hadn’t smiled at me once. Maybe a lowlife like me didn’t register to him as anything but a distraction. “I thought you were more professional than this,” Frank was saying to Ryan, sounding like a disappointed father, not a business partner. To his credit, Ryan didn’t appreciate it. “I am professional.” Ryan took a step, coming eye to eye with Frank. It wasn’t some sort of macho standoff, but the air crackled a little bit between them, like these two were setting boundaries. Frank didn’t strike me as the sort of guy that would back down easily, and I knew Ryan wouldn’t. “You assholes,” Frank changed tactics, nodding at Dean and

Sammy who were watching from the safety of the desk, “have kept me out of the loop for a solid week. I expect that from my brothers, but you, man…” He turned back to Ryan. “I had it under control.” “Yeah?” Frank said, his tone taunting. “So tell me how she ends up with a busted lip?” Frank finally managed to nod toward me, but he didn’t otherwise acknowledge me and when Ryan only glared at his partner like I’d suddenly become invisible, I decided I’d had enough of being spoken about like a helpless kitten. “She,” I said, coming to my feet a little wobbly and more than pissed that I was, “is sitting right here and can speak for herself. Her name is Alex.” Of course the first thing the Boy Scout did was grab my arm like I was a little old lady needing help crossing the street. I tried to jerk free of his grip, but that man was stubborn. And strong. “You need to rest.” “I need you to back off,” I told him, hoping he understood that I could speak for myself. To his credit, he did let go of me then, and I was at least glad for that. Maybe he did respect my need to handle this; at least when Frank limped forward, towering over me like some sort of gentle giant, Ryan folded his arms and let me look his partner square in the eyes. “Ryan did me a favor. More than one, and I plan on paying him back, but what happened tonight,

that’s on me. Not him. I took off when I shouldn’t have.” I’ve never been intimidated by men. Not unless there’s some threat of violence I know I’m not physically strong enough to handle. It should have been at least weird, though, with those four staring at me, checking me out, thinking God knows what about me and my attitude coming out of a busted mouth. But Frank only nodded and I caught what I thought was, if not respect, at least understanding from him when he turned away. Ryan hovered and I could smell the thick scent of his body wash and the rain dampness that clung to his shirt. He looked disheveled, rougher than normal, and it was oddly endearing. When he ran his thumb under my swollen lip, I didn’t even feel the bite of the split skin. I tried to remind myself that there was a major threat still hanging over me, that we were standing in the middle of Ryan’s office with his quasi-hostile partners staring at us like we were an irritation, but when Ryan stepped closer, hand still on my face, I would have kissed him. Right there, right then. Just something quick, something simple, that I knew would have completely eradicated the pain from my mouth, but then Sammy cleared his throat and Ryan jerked his fingers from my skin, completely crushing the moment. I pursed my lips and the bottom one began to bleed again. Ryan, now all business, moved my chin this way and that, wincing at

my bottom lip. “Shit. When will Evie be here?” he said over his shoulder, throwing a glare at Sammy. “You called her? I asked you to call her.” He was more anxious than he should have been over a split lip, but I didn’t tell him to calm down or explain who the hell Evie was. I doubted he would have listened to me anyway. “Shit, Ryan, yes,” Sammy told him, shaking his head. “I told you twice. She’s on her way. I still don’t understand why you just don’t take her to the ER.” “Because that asshole has been following her.” Ryan hustled me back to the sofa to sit while he answered his uninterested friends. “Fucking Ironside…” “You don’t know it was any of his boys,” I told him, taking his handkerchief out of his hand when he tried blotting my lip dry. The others had stopped paying attention to us. Ryan kneeled in front of me with his hands on either side of my thighs. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and he glanced once over his shoulder like he wanted to make sure no one could hear him. “Who else could hurt you like him?” “Ryan…” I almost softened with that look he gave me. Living like I did, being who I was, I’d seen men like Ryan a hundred times. Some of them I conned. Some were just nice guys who thought I needed rescuing from the life of crime I’d been forced into. And just then, Ryan gave me that same look—the one that told

me he’d save me, that he wanted to. But with him, it went beyond a rescue. He’d kissed me like he’d really meant it. He’d kissed me with his eyes closed and it was that touch, that blind feel of his lips on mine that had me wanting to retreat. Timber had spooked me. He’d made me feel ashamed, embarrassed in my own skin and sitting there with Ryan looking so worried, so eager, I wondered if he’d ever look at me the same. Would he see me and not those scars? “Listen, about that…” but Ryan wouldn’t let me finish. He grunted, lowering his head like he couldn’t take the sight of the marks on my face or the memory of what tattooed my stomach. “You shouldn’t have run.” “Does it matter what I shouldn’t have done at the moment?” I sat back against the sofa, holding the cloth to my mouth as Ryan watched me. There was something in his eyes, something about that small twitch under his bottom lid and how it moved with the irritation he was obviously feeling that kept me from being angry. The poor man was genuinely concerned. That didn’t happen often for me and I wasn’t sure what I thought about the sensation, but I think I liked it. “I stepped in it. I know I did.” With his shoulders lowering, Ryan sidled next to me, resting his arms on his knees as he looked at me. “I will fucking end him.” I couldn’t decide what that tone meant or why Ryan had

become so worried, so determined to make Timber answer. He’d gotten it in his head that my former boss was responsible for this attack, and deep down I knew that Ryan’s anger had far less to do with whoever the asshole was that busted my lip than with the man who had left the marks on my stomach. But then the look he gave me grew too intense, too fierce and so I dismissed his emotion, waving off his frown with a flick of my hand. “Put it back in your pants, mister.” My joke had an immediate affect and Ryan cracked a smile. “Don’t make me laugh. I’m fucking livid here.” “Hey, I’m the one with a busted lip.” Ryan only held that smile for a moment and then it shifted, deepened. He looked like he might say something, maybe even mention what had almost happened back at his place. What I fucking wanted to happen. I hadn’t really allowed myself to acknowledge it before, but, cop-like or not, Ryan was beautiful. Too beautiful. And he was a good man, nice even if he didn’t want to fess up to it and there he had been standing behind me at the sink, the heat from his body burning me, his breath so close and hot, and the smell of his skin crowding me… it had been too much, and not near enough. Sort of like now as Ryan nudged closer, his hand again going back to my face. I felt shy, which was way weird for me, but the

way Ryan looked at me, how soft his touch was made me feel, well, beautiful, and I wanted it in a way I never had before. “Ryan,” I said, but then faltered. I wasn’t sure what I wanted or why I’d spoken his name, but he seemed to get that, moving his gaze from my eyes and back to my mouth. The sound of the office door opening broke the moment, and a woman in blue scrubs blew in with the rain. Ryan’s lingering worry seemed to ease when he saw her. She nodded to Frank when he greeted her, but it was Ryan’s gaze she kept hold of as she walked inside. Did they realize their smiles were identical—knowing, familiar? These two had history. Clearly. “How’s the shoulder?” the woman asked Ryan, as a stray lock of dark brown hair escaped the messy bun affixed to the back of her head and fell across her forehead. She absentmindedly pushed it behind her ear as she smiled at him, and the tension that had been in the room a moment earlier relaxed. “It’s fine. I’m good, Evie. This,” he said, nodding toward me, “is my… this is Alex. She got attacked on the street and it’s not safe to bring her into the ER.” Evie—apparently that was her name—didn’t hesitate or ask any other questions, she just dropped her bag and pulled a black metal chair in front of me, looking me in the eye and smiling as she

sat. Damn, but she seemed genuinely concerned. “Hey, Alex. I’m Evie, and old friend of Ryan’s. You alright? You hurting anywhere specifically?” A petty, jealous part of me that wondered what shared history made Evie and Ryan smile at each other the way they had, urged me to instantly hate this woman. But it wasn’t my business, now, was it? Besides, Evie had eyes that were warm and a smile was gentle, unthreatening. She had donned the obligatory latex gloves and was moving my chin around, tenderly touching my scrapes and cuts like someone who knew what they were doing—and actually cared. It should have been easy to hate her, but hell, I couldn’t. “Just my mouth at the moment,” I told her, squinting against the floor lamp light when Evie pulled it toward my face. “Sorry, sweetie, the light is shit in here.” Ryan came over and touched me on my shoulder. “Alex, Evie will take care of you. So will Frank and Dean. But I’ve got something to handle.” That hard, determined frown had fallen back onto his features and I knew with a sinking sensation that he would be looking to settle some sort of asinine man-score with Timber. “You’re leaving?” I asked him, feeling my stomach twist. “I need to have a conversation.” “Ryan…”

“He won’t be alone, sweetheart,” Sammy said, standing next to Ryan. These two G.I. Joes were really clueless about Timber’s organization and how accusations were handled in that part of town. They couldn’t just go in, banging on his office door and expect to see him; it didn’t work like that. But Sammy shot me a wink, and then he and Ryan were digging into a large cabinet at the back of the office—shit, guns maybe? I couldn’t tell—and it hit me. They were just like the thugs they were about to visit, no better, maybe worse. Stubborn and determined. And dammit, that can be a deadly combination. I barely registered Evie cleaning my face. My focus was on Ryan and the quiet looks that went between him and Sammy, those unspoken decisions that needed to be made before heading out. That twist in my stomach only got worse. I couldn’t read his eyes because the shit wouldn’t look at me, but his whole bearing meant trouble. It meant that Ryan wasn’t thinking straight. The alcohol swab in Evie’s hand fell when I leaned forward, trying to get Ryan’s attention. “I need you to hold still, hon.” Even as she continued to work, I could feel Evie’s gaze focused on me, on the way I was watching Ryan. Could she tell I was silently willing him not to leave? “Evie?” Ryan said, stopping at her side while Sammy waited at the door. Jackass still wouldn’t look at me. “Don’t worry, Ryan,

she’ll be fine,” Evie said. She took one quick glance up at him, flashed him one reassuring smile, then turned back to her work, refusing to get involved. Smart woman. I was going to yell at him, right then. I was going to tell him he was being stupid. That I wasn’t some helpless woman who needed a man to go off and warn the big bully not to touch me, and more than likely he was simply going to make matters worse. But Ryan was stubborn, itching for answers and I knew telling him he was wrong would only force his hand, make him eager to prove he wasn’t. “I’ll be an hour,” he said to the room before he and Sammy walked through the door. A gust of wet, cold air blew in with the open door. The weather had turn frigid; now, on top of everything else, I started to worry about how cold Ryan would be out there, and that he’d be getting wet—again. All because of me. “You shouldn’t worry about him,” Evie said, pulling my attention back to her as she moved my chin down. “Yeah?” I asked, trying not to watch the door. A shadow fell over Evie’s shoulder as Frank moved closer. “He can take care of himself.” It was the first time Frank had spoken to me directly. He placed a cup of coffee on the table beside the sofa and nodded toward Evie before sitting down next to

me. “She okay?” “Fine. No stiches.” She sat back, pulling the thin latex gloves from her hands. “I’m gonna give you some samples of antibiotics to ward against infection, just in case. You’ll have some nasty bruises, but the cuts should heal cleanly. You were lucky.” “I was fast,” I offered, not sure why I felt the need to say that, but neither Frank nor Evie commented, and Dean, still behind the desk, was more interested in his phone than any bragging I might have done. I turned my attention back to the door through which Ryan and Sammy had left, and Evie must have noticed the concern on my face. Of course she did. She brushed my knee, cleared her throat. “He really can take care of himself. You shouldn’t worry so much.” I shook off her offer of a cup of coffee and slid back against the couch, crossing my legs as Evie cleared her mess and Frank stretched out his long arm along the back of the sofa. I just couldn’t keep quiet. “I don’t doubt that he can take care of himself, but he’s heading in the wrong direction.” Evie frowned, continuing to clean and I felt the cushion move when Frank shifted in his spot. “I just mean he’s barking up the wrong tree.” “Ryan’s smart, Miss Black.” Frank’s voice was deep and strong but I heard the professional glint in his tone. He was used to keeping people calm. “He’s covering the bases. If he thinks your

boss is involved…” “Timber isn’t my anything.” I realized the acid bite in my voice had them surprised. Frank remained cool, non-reactionary, but Evie wasn’t as good at guarding her expressions. “I just mean…” “Ironside knows something,” Dean said, over his phone, shocking me that he had any idea what we were discussing. “From what Ryan’s told us, there’s something brewing.” “He’s a gangster. Something is always brewing.” “True enough,” Frank said. I jiggled my foot back and forth nervously when Frank kept his gaze on my profile. Damn, the man did have an intimidating way about him. “If there’s something you know that you’d like to share…” “I’m not in the loop,” I snapped at him, aware at how closely he watched me. Across the room I even caught Dean’s shifting gaze as he pretended to focus on his phone. Only Evie remained without an agenda. She continued to watch as our little drama unfolded. “I’d hate for Ryan to go in there blind.” Franked fingered the back of the sofa, tapping out a slow rhythm right next to my shoulder. It was a slow, methodical beat that I couldn’t place that made me nervous, anxious. “Because if anything were to happen to Ryan…” “Frank, let it go,” Evie finally said, sitting back down in the metal chair in front of me. “The woman’s lip is busted and you’re

treating her like she did something wrong.” Evie pinched the bridge of her nose. “And you’re getting on my nerves.” Frank leaned his head back, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Yes, ma’am Dr. Cousin.” “You’re cousins?” I asked her. She shrugged, like being related to these men was an irritation she couldn’t avoid. “One thing to know about these degenerates?” she nodded at Frank and then back to Dean, “they’re loyal to a fault and generally only to each other.” She smiled at Frank when he lifted his head up to glare at her. “They aren’t an easy group to infiltrate.” At my side Frank grunted, like he couldn’t disagree with his cousin so instead he got up from the couch and went back to the bar above the door to resume his pull ups. His movements were slow, precise and I noticed how he bent his knees, one side higher than the other. Evie must have seen my stare, the way I focused on the lay of Frank’s pants because she slipped next to me, turning her back toward Frank. “IED took his leg.” I snapped my eyes from his leg, not wanting to be obvious and Evie laughed. “He doesn’t care if you look.” She sipped her coffee, hiding her smile behind the cup when my gaze peeked back at Frank’s leg. “So they’re suspicious of me, that’s what you’re saying?” I

asked her. “I’m saying it takes a little bit to get to know them.” Evie settled back against the cushions. “But they make it work.” She waved her hand. “The business, the jobs, but they always act like they’re still active, like they’re all waiting for orders.” She had warm highlights in her hair and her eyelids looked swollen, like she hadn’t slept well in a couple of days. “All that bickering and fussing, that’s just them being men. They think yelling and name calling will solve their issues.” “You’ve seen it first hand, I guess.” Evie snorted. “All my damn life with those three and, yeah, with Ryan too. He’s sort of the adopted fourth amigo.” “So you and Ryan are close too?” Evie stared at me, looking for something in my face. My guess was that she was trying to figure out if I was fishing, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t the type of woman who generally cared about competition. And I liked Evie. She was a nice person, exactly the kind of woman Ryan would be happy with. I guessed. “Ryan’s a friend, Alex. That’s all he’s ever been to me.” There was a small hint of something in her voice I couldn’t quite make out, something that told me Evie had no intention of giving me details and that was fine with me. I understood, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew there was something between them, no matter how much she swore

he was just another Auciello brother. I didn’t catch a cousinly vibe between them. Pushing her wasn’t my style and I didn’t want to come off as desperate or needy, but Evie had to know I wasn’t an idiot. “Seemed a little more than that to me. I mean, that’s not my business, but I caught something between you two.” She shrugged, dismissing anything that might make me worry, like whatever history she had with Ryan wasn’t anything to write home about. “Once upon a time he was a one night thing, but it will never be anything more than that. And it was a long time ago.” “It’s not my business,” I said, feeling immediately stupid for prying. “Oh, honey, it’s more your business than you know.” I didn’t appreciate her laugh, or how Evie did a piss poor job of concealing her amusement. “You don’t know me,” I told her, adjusting in my spot on the sofa while she continued to laugh at me. “I don’t have to,” she said, touching my arm like she wanted me to pay attention to her. “I know Ryan.”

“I told you, Ryan, Mr. Ironside is not in.” I hate that shit—be smooth, be cool, but lie through your teeth. It was something all lowlifes did and something that big bastard Cosmo was a pro at. Fucker lied without even the slightest flicker of his gaze or inflection in his voice giving him away. “And I told you, asshole, to find out where he is.” Size doesn’t matter. I wasn’t a big guy, not compared to some of the men I’d fought with in the SEALs, but I was quick, lithe and

could knock even the biggest bastard’s teeth out with a one-two punch. It was something my fingers itched to do as Cosmo stood in front of the closed office door inside Matty’s Gin Joint. The place was a dive bar with no real clientele and very little atmosphere, but there was a massive courtyard beyond the back of the building that Dean and Sammy had staked out while investigating that lost tourist. It was supposed to be non-descript and low key. Ironside had offices beyond that courtyard where he ran his boys, organized his groups and did whatever the hell it was he did that kept the wiretaps fired up by the NOPD. I knew the asshole was in. Sammy had spotted his Cadillac within five minutes of hopping out of the cab. Besides, it was the weekend. No way Ironside would be at home, tucked under his duvet at eleven o’clock. But Cosmo wasn’t budging. He stood like a wall of once-firm muscle and bulk, blocking us from the back exit with his hands clasped together like a real bodyguard and that damn blank expression giving nothing away. “I really think you might want to watch yourself.” That small warning had Sammy cackling like a madman. He slapped Cosmo’s shoulder and the bigger man rounded on him, looking ready to pounce before Sammy removed the humor from his voice. “Nah, he doesn’t. Go get your boss.”

When my best friend crossed his arms, making the holster on his shoulder bulge against his jacket, Cosmo rolled his eyes. “Please, asshole. You think you’re the first to roll in here carrying? This is New Orleans, motherfucker.” “Yeah,” Sammy, that pretty boy smile only widening. “I get that, but not everyone that comes in here has intel on your boss.” Sammy glanced at me, that arrogant smirk exaggerated. “And,” I said, coming to Cosmo’s other side, “not all of them have the number to the lead detective in Drug Enforcement. One call and you losers get raided.” Ironside ran the place sloppy. It was too easy, too obvious— from the bartender slipping dime bags to college kids pretending to drink draft, to the very drunk, definitely underage girl sitting on the lap of a guy in a cheap business suit that could have been her father. It was obvious, the whole thing and I’d have thought Ironside knew better, but he played this place off as just somewhere he infrequently visited. He’d put the obvious pinches in the front of the bar, stationing his guards like Cosmo by that courtyard door and away from whatever shit he had working out there. From Dean and Sammy’s brief investigation, it had been illegal gambling and a few dog fights, but what I heard through the door sounded like music, likely girls dancing without a license. Small fry stuff that allowed the wannabe gangster the opportunity to make some quick cash.

I didn’t care about any of it. I wanted to see the man and make myself heard. I wanted to look him in the eyes and make him understand that I knew he was cooking something and I knew that something concerned Alex. That wasn’t going to work. Not while I was around. I looked at the corner, at the drunk girl and the old man that kept feeding her drinks. The biggest obstacle wasn’t the petty shit going down in the bar meant to distract any cops who might happen along. It was the muscle guarding the door and his persistence that Ironside was M.I.A. Our threats of phone calls and intel didn’t mean shit to this asshole and he lifted his chin, like he could only watch us looking down his nose. But I got the feeling he might make a move. Cosmo squared his shoulders, moved his neck looking ready for a tussle before he ran his mouth. “Do what you gotta do, fucker.” And I was about to. I meant to. Sammy met my gaze and shook his head like he didn’t want to start shit in the middle of Uptown at some dive bar, but my best friend was always good for a scrape, especially with a lowlife getting in the way of an investigation. “Fine with me,” Sammy told Cosmo, but before either of them could move, the door the big man was guarding flew open and Ironside stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed as he watched his man balling his fingers into a fist.

It only took him a second to access the situation—me and Sammy surrounding Cosmo, the man himself looking like his fingers itched to grab his gun—but then Ironside shook his head and exhaled, like the effort for an argument just wasn’t worth his time. “That’s enough, Cosmo.” Then, finally, the giant stepped aside, letting his boss approach. “Mr. Ryan and…?” “Associate,” I told him, not wanting to give him anything on my partner or our business. Ironside lifted his hand, looking too damn amused by my tone. “Fine then. Mr. Ryan and associate, what can I help you with?” “You can have a conversation with me,” I told him, crossing my arms, refusing to move from my spot when Cosmo acted like he didn’t like my attitude. Ironside slipped his hand into his front pocket, eyes moving between his man and me and Sammy, like he waited for an objection, maybe some bullshit reason to beg me off, but he didn’t argue, didn’t give me an excuse about being too busy. That asshole knew why I was there and I guessed he’d wanted to hear about Alex. Maybe see what I knew about her attack or if I thought he was responsible. One nod behind him and Cosmo cleared the way, letting me follow behind Ironside as he went back toward the courtyard. I’d guessed right. There were girls, at least a dozen dancing on

makeshift stages staggered around the cobblestone courtyard. Some were on fountains, some draped over drunk businessmen and out-of-it tourists. Prostitution, maybe? Definitely an illegal strip club, but Ironside didn’t look ashamed in the least and didn’t seem to care that I met a few intense gazes. He kept walking through the courtyard ignoring the melee around us until the noise and music dimmed and a second smaller building came into view, opening to a long hallway. The building was old, smelled mildly of mildew and weed, but Ironside walked down that hallway like a damn king, head held straight, eyes forward. He was a royal and this damn pile of garbage—drugs, whores, second-rate buildings and structures—was his kingdom. Ironside hung a right and I followed behind, eyes on the thin door that he pushed open and the small desk just a few feet inside the room. This was not like Misty’s place at Summerland’s and it was clear by the sparse decorating and the worn furnishings that this was just another spot Ironside held court in. He caught my gaze, the way I took in the room and shook his head. “This isn’t my regular place. You want to talk, this is the best I could do under the circumstance.” I stood in front of that desk with my gun digging into my waist and Ironside on the other side scrutinizing me, my stance. I wouldn’t sit in that orange, plastic chair and didn’t want to spend more time

here than necessary, so I kept were I was, reminding myself that this asshole had put his hands on Alex. It was stupid to think about, dumber to react to, but I needed to keep my anger high. It was the only way I could say what I wanted and maybe catch Ironside off guard. I did well under pressure, even better when I was pissed. It helped that he looked like a douchebag in some supposed classy version of a track suit, but the tag was a knock off and the only thing worth a dime on him were his shoes. Asshole had spent at least five large on shoes he’d get tired of in a month, but his outfit was subpar, low class. It helped that he kept that constant smirk on his face, and his attitude was thick with derision. “Ryan, you come in my place storming and I think you got a problem,” he finally said when I remained silent. “Yeah. I do.” I got that this wasn’t a man easily intimidated. I understood the type, hell, I probably was the type, but this was the asshole that had burned Alex and my gut told me that beyond him being a lowlife, he was working on something that would get Alex back into the fold. He wanted her scared and I guessed he didn’t like that she’d come to me with that fear. Maybe he wanted to play hero to her. I didn’t care if he did. “Turns out Alex’s problem got bigger tonight.” That pulled the smirk from his face and Ironside slumped into the rickety chair

behind the desk pulling off a poor impression of someone trying not to worry. He moved his fingers through his hair, rubbed the back of his neck and it was the first time I hadn’t seen him in complete control. “She alive?” “You supposed to care?” I asked, crossing my arms to look down at him. Ironside had a hard face—not haggard or pock-marked, but stern with features too sharp and angular to be appealing. Those features only intensified as he watched me and I wondered if that was real worry I saw in his expression when he rubbed his fingers across his stubble. “So you came here to threaten me?” he asked, pulling a small bottle from the inside pocket of his jacket. He took a long sip, glaring at me when I didn’t answer. “Because you think I sent someone to attack Alex?” “I came here because it was on your request that she broke into that house.” I leaned down on to the back of the ugly orange chair trying not to slap the man when he frowned at me. “And it was your man who showed up the night her freaky fanboy left his last gift.” “Cosmo didn’t do shit,” he said, passing the bottle back to his lips. “But you know who did?”

Ironside shrugged, popped his neck like he didn’t want to think about who might be after her. Maybe the list was too long. “I know Alex made a lot of enemies when she sold out Wanda.” “Thought you handled that.” “Pay offs don’t always stick, Ryan.” He took a sip, nodded for me to sit. “You’re killing my neck, asshole. Just sit down.” He sounded weak just then, a little whiny and I slipped into the chair just to keep from hearing that shit again. “I can’t be everywhere.” “That’s not what I hear.” Ironside leaned on his desk, eyes already glassy. “You’re not from here. You got no idea how this city works or what needs to be done to run it.” “But you do?” “I have a better idea than you do.” I prepared for his Big Thug speech, knowing he probably had it rehearsed. It was the same bullshit most jackasses make to justify the shitty things they do and I had no intention of listening. “I don’t need to live here to know a bully when I see one. This city is thick with them. I’ve seen people like you in the desert, in the streets here. Pricks we had to protect. Pricks who didn’t give a shit about anyone—kids, women, the poor. They only care about the cash and clout they have and fucked anyone over who got in their way. You aren’t much different.”

“Are we still talking about Alex?” When I didn’t say anything, he leaned back. “I care more about Alex than you can understand. Since we were kids, I’ve watched her back.” “That what you call it?” Ironside’s eyes were still glassy, but he understood. I could see it in the way his top lip came up. He knew I’d seen what he’d done to her. “Scars and burns are watching her back?” The small bottle in his hand was nearly empty and it shattered against the metal table when he slammed it down. “That is none of your fucking business.” Cosmo appeared in the doorway, then moved away again when Ironside waved him off. “It became my business when she asked for my help.” I leaned forward, wanting that son of a bitch to challenge me. Needing him to, but a bully has no ground to stand on when confronted. He’s only a bully when he thinks he has the upper hand. I wasn’t giving him any. “I’m making it my business.” There was broken glass across the surface of the desk, shards that looked like glitter on the metal surface. Ironside looked down at them, then languidly reached out and ran his hand on top of the sharp mess. “You got no idea about us, Ryan. None.” He moved his fingertips in the glass not wincing, not doing anything when pieces stuck to his skin. “You think she’ll settle with you? You’re a fucking idiot.” Ironside ran his fingers together, dusting specks of

blood and glass off his fingers. “Alex ain’t some bitch you picked off the street, some little sweetie you need to protect from the big, bad world. She’s part of the world you pretend isn’t around you. She’s running a con and you don’t even see it.” He underestimated me if he thought that would get a rise out of me. He didn’t know that we had another connection. By death, yeah, sure, but it was a connection that lined us up, gave us something shared to fight against. I knew how important it was for me to find the truth about Isiah Ferguson and my mother’s death, and how important it was for Alex to get to the bottom of Stevie’s murder. Alex and I weren’t totally different. Her sister had been her only family, my mother was mine. She wanted answers too, just like I did. That was my ace in the hole. “That what you have to tell yourself?” “What is this really about, Ryan? The auction? What is it you want to bid on?” This bastard never saw the big picture. He was a doubter, and could only believe what was right in front of his smug, ugly face. He knew exactly what he wanted from Alex, but I couldn’t let him take that. Not again, not when I’d seen the shame in her eyes about how she’d been marked. Not when I’d felt those scars. “This is about you pulling her back in. This is about you not keeping your fucking

word.” Ironside rubbed his fingers together, collecting sticky smears of red on his fingertips. Maybe he thought I would be intimidated by his little blood show. Maybe he thought I’d be shocked that he liked pain. The guy had no idea what pain was. He’d never bled, not like I had. “So you’re telling me to stay away?” I stood up from the chair, ready to be out of this asshole’s circle and back to Alex and the investigation. Ironside was a waste. He might be a common thug. He might get off on inflicting pain, but I’d seen the way the news of the attack had leveled him. In his own sick way, that bastard cared about Alex. “I’m telling you that if you were a man, you’d walk away, let her go. I’m saying that someone is after her and you and the auction and hell, the shit I walked away from all connects, and it’s dangerous. I’m saying despite that you’re more worried about controlling her, that doing whatever the fuck you take as some sick pleasure is more important than her safety. I’m saying you’re a damn bully.” “I wouldn’t hurt her.” His fist came back down on that desk and this time he winced. “Not like you think. I don’t have to explain myself to you or anyone else. Neither does Alex.” I didn’t care, wasn’t interested any more, and turned away from that desk before the itch to pummel his face got too great. Ironside wasn’t having her followed, but he was watching her. I

didn’t fucking like that shit. “Ryan?” I turned, barely glancing at him. “You can’t keep her happy.” “Yeah well, I’m gonna try like hell to make sure you can’t either.”

I felt like some Psycho Billy version of Martha Stewart. Well, not quite, but damn close. Two weeks and I was still riding Ryan’s leather sofa. He’d offered me his bed, saying he’d surf for a little while on the brown leather, but I couldn’t ask him to do that. Not when it was my stupidity that had him trailing off to confront Timber. With zero point. So two weeks in and I was doing our damn laundry. Our laundry. Folding Ryan’s ratty rugby t-shirts didn’t qualify me for

some Good Housekeeping prize but it wasn’t in my nature to have things in such damn order. Stacked shirts? Never in my life and just staring down at those small wedges of fabric that were my thongs had me scowling. So I knocked them over, then, just because I could. I dug through my clothes, separated them from Ryan’s and stuffed all my crap in my bag because my bag was my space, dammit. The disorder didn’t make me feel any better but at least Ryan would stop getting ideas. “Fucking Boy Scout,” I said to the empty living room, pulling a cigarette from my pack to lean on the balcony from the open French door. I didn’t even want the damn thing, but Ryan was with his partners discussing a new assignment with some rich jackass client and I had already done three loads of laundry. Christ, I was bored. The cigarette was long, 100’s and I rolled it between my knuckles but didn’t light it. S. Peters below me held my interest more, so did thoughts about Ryan and his ideas and all the nice little things he’d done since my attack. Most women would love the attention. He’d cook and I’d clean. He’d stop by my place to grab anything I needed because my apartment was still “sketchy as hell” and he even walked around the building for me calling Minion’s name on the off chance that the damn cat had come back home.

He hadn’t and I got landed with Ryan doing all those nice things, decent things that no one had ever bothered with in the past. “You want me to get you the patch?” he’d asked a few days before when I’d complained that I was tired of the smell and expense of cigarettes and phlegmy cough I got every time I lit up. No one usually cared what I did, except maybe Timber, but he didn’t count. Ryan, though gave a shit and it was beginning to freak me out. We lived every day for two weeks in pretty much the same routine—him keeping in contact with Sammy and Dean as they staked out Timber’s men—who Dean was convinced were hiding something from their boss—while I looked online for antiques dealers, specifically those matching the description that Ryan had given me of his mother’s best friend, Dot Simmons. We also spent hours digging up newspaper articles about Simmons and any other cases from Atlanta or Cleveland, where he’d worked twenty-five years ago, that would draw out any new witnesses or anyone who shared history with Ryan’s old sergeant. We were biding our time. I knew that. He knew that, but Ryan’s little conversation with Timber had my former boss dragging his feet about the auction and the leads on Dot were drying up. Things were starting to get monotonous and when that happened, Ryan got those ideas of his.

I wasn’t opposed to all of them, but when I sat on the sofa watching movies at night and Ryan leaned back against the other side, smelling the way he did, looking the way he did, watching me the way he did, well, ideas became inclinations and for the past two nights those inclinations had almost gotten us into trouble. We should have not watched that movie. I don’t remember the name, but it was that Evens Stevens guy and a girl and they were mostly naked for the entire movie. When you’re sitting five inches from someone you’re attracted to, who you know is attracted to you and the sounds of fucking and the image of sweat and bodies all merges in the dark light of the living room… well. It leads to things and makes those ideas, those inclinations, that much more tempting. The night of the naked movie, we watched without really watching and the smell of his skin, how Ryan had relaxed enough that his legs were spread, his knee pressed against my back as I sat in front of him on the floor, had only heightened the sensation in the room. I’d brushed my hair back, wanting it off my shoulder and closed my eyes against the sensation of his thumb smoothing down the back of my neck. I didn’t ask him to stop. I didn’t ask why he was touching me. The thick air in the room, the texture of his rough thumb on my skin, rubbing, slowly smoothing down each bump in my spine kept me frozen in that spot, waiting, holding my breath for what would come

next. By the time the movie ended, Ryan had his palm rested on my shoulder and my nipples were pushed tight against my tank top. But the mood had not been right, not then and Ryan being Ryan asked if I wanted to take his bed to get some rest and the idea of sleeping there, my tits and ass against sheets I knew he slept naked on was just too overwhelming. “Nah,” I’d told him scooting up from the floor before he could stop me. “I’ll just catch a shower and go to sleep.” He’d left the room when I came back and all night, and the next, I lay on the sofa right were Ryan had sat, thinking about his hand on my neck, the warmth of his eager touch, wondering what it would be like to have him inside me. “Fuck,” I said to the balcony, throwing the unsmoked cigarette onto the street. This was a complication I didn’t need. Ryan and sex and me would be too damn complicated, too messy. But he was fucking with my head, making me think stupid things, impossible things like being normal and not jacking things that weren’t yours and folded laundry and damn Sunday lunch at his partners’ parents’ house. “God.” I shook the image of me and Ryan and his insane friends around a dining room table from my head and went back inside, inches from grabbing my full bag of clean laundry and just

taking off. But I wasn’t a welcher and I wasn’t stupid. Not only had I promised Ryan he would get into that auction, but someone out there wanted to hurt me and, sad and unbelievable as it may be, Ryan was the only one I trusted to watch my back. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the call button from the lobby sounded and I hurried to the speaker next to the door, frowning when I didn’t see anyone on the screen. The lobby was mostly quiet and the sound of heels on marble caught my attention, but I didn’t know who’d buzzed up wanting in and wasn’t sure if I should ask. My creeper had balls. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d tracked me down to Ryan’s place, but then the rough curse of “holy fuck” echoed from the speaker and Misty stepped in front of the camera and I smiled as she stepped up on her toes to look into the camera. “Is that you, sugar? I can’t see shit.” “It’s me. Come on up.” The elevator pinged once before the door opened, but I heard Misty’s loud cackle behind the closed doors. “That’s right, darlin’, you just come on over and give them this card.” When she emerged from the elevator, I spotted a very elderly old man with Misty’s business card in his hand and a furious looking woman pulling on his arm trying to get that card from him before the doors shut closed. “Are you fucking with someone’s happily ever after?” I asked her as she walked away from the elevator.

“Shit, honey, there ain’t no such thing.” I loved that crazy woman. Misty didn’t care for one second what anyone thought of her. She was all bravado and moxy and wore bright red lipstick and corsets whenever the hell she wanted to because, she’d always claimed, her lips were “delicious” and her cleavage was “a work of art.” Misty didn’t wait for an invitation and moved right past me into Ryan’s place with a black Prada bag swinging from her arm and those three inch, red-soled heels clicking against his concrete floors. “Well that cute lil SEAL is living large, ain’t he?” “I suppose,” I said, hurrying to the sofa to move Ryan’s stack of neatly folded clothes, ignoring Misty when she cocked her eyebrow at me. “What?” “You keeping his house?” “No. I’m just…” I flipped her off when she laughed, knowing my friend wasn’t being cruel, but behind that tight smile I could almost read her mind. Me in this apartment with Ryan, likely looked a little too cozy. “You want something to drink?” “No, doll, I don’t have time for that.” Misty left her purse on the sofa and walked around Ryan’s living room, gaze shooting to his sleek entertainment center and the rows of pictures along the shelves. “Nice and cozy, that’s for sure.” She sounded distracted,

as though whatever she said was an afterthought and I knew Misty was taking it all in, probably wondering how I fit in with Ryan’s ordered picture frames and comfortable furnishings. When she stopped in front of the balcony, I sat on the sofa, waiting for her to get whatever it was that had her leaving her club said and done. “Very, very nice,” Misty continued. “It is.” She finally turned to face me and the second that forced smile didn’t shift or move on her mouth, I knew she’d been sent with a message. Misty often played messenger when Timber wanted something delivered, especially to clients or associates who needed sweet talking. Not many could resist that sweet Uptown accent or the big, bright eyes. Even inching toward forty, or thirtycough-cough-five as she claimed, Misty was still regal, elegant and very convincing when she put her mind into the effort. I, however, didn’t buy the bullshit. “Say it, God, before your Botox runs out.” “You are so not funny,” she said walking away from the balcony to sit next to me on the sofa. “I don’t use Botox.” Misty slapped my leg when I snorted out a laugh. “I do have a message to deliver.” “I bet you do.” “When the hell are you getting a new phone? It’s been weeks.” “I don’t know. Is that the message? Timber wants me to get a

new phone?” “No, you little shit, I do. Here.” She opened that big Prada and pulled out an unopened iPhone, still sealed in the box. “It’s under my account, fucking Friends and Family, but don’t go on about it and don’t tell me you can’t accept it. If I need to talk to you, I don’t wanna have to drag my ass all the way down to the Warehouse District to talk to you.” Misty was stalling, that much I knew, but I also knew how stubborn she was, how much she cared and so I took the phone when she waved it at me. “Yes ma’am. Phone. Check.” I pulled my feet up, sitting on them when Misty started looking around the apartment again. “And the message?” She moved her gaze back to me and released a little sigh. “Timber doesn’t want Ryan at the auction.” “What?” “Don’t get upset. It’s not really that big of a deal.” She pulled out her cigarettes, but rolled her eyes when I pointed to the French door. “He says whatever Ryan wants he can get for him, but he doesn’t want to see him there.” “Why the hell would he get anything for Ryan?” “Oh, sugar, you know it’s not for Ryan.” She took a drag, blowing the smoke in the general direction of the door, looking for

all the world like she wanted to avoid my eyes. And then, I knew. Misty was crap at disguising her emotions, especially when it came to me. She’d taken care of me when I left Wanda’s. She’d let me clean her office or schedule her performers because she thought I was smart and had an eye for the especially talented ones. But Misty still was in Timber’s pocket and she still had to do things for him that weren’t strictly something a successful businesswoman should do. Like deliver awkward, bad news. “So it’s for me.” She nodded, and headed over to the French doors to flick her ash between the grates in the balcony floor. “And Timber is willing to give Ryan whatever he wanted at the auction so long as I keep him away? For a price.” Another nod, this one not quite as confident and I closed my eyes, pulling my palms into my sockets. “Son of a bitch.” “It’s just one more time, sugar.” She tossed her smoke over the balcony and hurried to my side on the sofa to wrap her arm around my shoulder. “Was it… I mean last time, was it so bad?” “Are you fucking kidding me?” I didn’t like the look on Misty’s face, how she frowned, how she pretended she didn’t know how cruel Timber could be. She was damn well aware, and it was moments like this one, with the closest thing to a friend that I’ve ever had telling me I should let my former boss burn and scar and fuck me one more time that

reminded me how different our lives really were, from every other person in the world. Ryan had no clue this is how we’d always lived. He didn’t understand, likely never would, that sometimes we did truly horrific things for a moment just to get to past a hurdle. The auction was the hurdle now. Specifically Ryan being there. “And if I say no?” I asked her, not squeezing her hand back when she touched my fingers. “I don’t know, sugar. Something’s going on. He’s working on something big and I think Ryan makes him skittish.” Misty titled her head, eyes sharp on my face as though she needed to see me make up my mind. “I get the feeling if Ryan shows up, it won’t end well.” I frowned at Misty, silently asking what she knew, but my friend waved me off with a small shake of her head. “Instinct, hon. That’s all.” “I can’t…” “Alex, it’s what he wants. It’s going to happen again anyway.” I know Misty was trying to make me see reason, the reason that made sense to her. This was our life. This is how we lived it and with her hand on my wrist and one pitying look, she told me not to fight the inevitable. “One night and Ryan gets his item.” “And then what?”

“Sweetie, I don’t know.” But I did. Timber thought if I said yes then Ryan would want to have nothing to do with me again. He thought he’d damage me so bad, that no one would. And he’d be there to pick up the pieces. “You think I should say yes?” Misty moved her lips together as though she had to fight to keep what she really wanted to say from passing her lips. Then, she rubbed the bridge of her nose, exhaling. “I think you don’t have a choice. I think if you don’t agree to this then Timber will hurt Ryan.” She moved closer, looping our fingers together. “You care about Ryan?” I didn’t answer, didn’t need to. Misty had known me since I was eighteen. She saw everything I tried to hide from the world and just then she saw something in my eyes that was answer enough for her. “Then maybe you should consider it, honey.” I wanted to tell her I couldn’t. I wanted to say that Ryan and his ideas already had me wanting to take off, to get clean outta Dodge, wherever that was, even without Timber and my stalker thrown into the mix. But Timber’s request changed things. Nobody else knew, but my brain had been in overdrive lately. Suddenly I saw an opportunity. His request changed everything, and damn, but I

wanted to tell Misty that. I wanted to explain to her how I wouldn’t have to decide, that maybe I had a way to keep Ryan safe and get him at that auction without Timber knowing or without me sacrificing another inch of my skin and my pride. But I didn’t tell Misty any of that, because right then there was a clank from the front door and Ryan strolled in. He had a puppy dog expression on his face that would have normally made me laugh and I half expected him to say something stupid like, “Honey, I’m home,” but then his gaze landed on Misty with her holding my hand and that eager grin on his face vanished. “Everything okay?” he asked, walking the rest of the way in. “Of course. Just a little friendly catch up.” Misty was cool, unflustered and once again plastered that tight smile across her lips. “I was just missing my little Alex and wanted to say hi.” I knew he didn’t buy it, but then Ryan was smooth and kept his curiosity to himself, letting me walk Misty to the door without so much as a nod back at her. She took my hand, looking over my shoulder as Ryan messed around in the kitchen. “Think about it, okay? I know you hate this, but sweetie, I don’t think Timber’s playing around anymore.” “Does he ever?” “I…” “It’s fine. I get what you’re saying. Mission accomplished,” I

told her, with what I hoped was a cheeky grin, and nodding her away from the door so I could close it. I almost rested my head against the dark wood, needing a second to figure my point of attack and how I was going to jump this hurdle. But Ryan cleared his throat and I turned, lifting my eyebrows at him. “What’s up?” “We might have a lead on a new job.” He was only making small talk, tapping his fingers against the back of his recliner. “Cool,” I said, trying to grab at ideas, wondering what I was supposed to do with my hands and when refolding his already squared up clothes came off as stupid and obvious, I started packing and unpacking my bag. Ryan watched me, quiet, focused as I bundled my bras onto the sofa. “So what was that about?” “Hmm?” “Alex.” He took my only good black bra from my hand and held my arms still so I’d look at him. “What’s going on?” “It’s not… It’s nothing.” “Uh huh.” That wasn’t Ryan being distracted. It was a tactic he utilized whenever he wanted to extract information. He’d done the same thing last week when Sammy tried bluffing him during their weekly poker game. One mention of some dancer in Belize and Sammy forgot all about the bluff and Ryan won the pot. The “uh huh” was a pause in the interrogation, but I tried to

play if off, working my clothes back into my bag as he wandered to the fridge to grab a beer. “Nothing,” he said over the pop of the cap coming off. “Umhmm.” He tossed the cap into the trash and we both listened as it ricocheted against the metal can. Then Ryan sauntered slowly into the living room, pulling on his beer as he sat on the sofa, all the while keeping his focus on me. “So Misty just missed you?” “Yeah,” I said, and now I was distracted. “I put your shirts over there.” I sounded like an idiot, babbling, trying to pretend he wasn’t looking at me as though he could read my thoughts. “You don’t have to do my laundry, Alex.” Another sip and the flippant tone of his voice had me looking down at him. “I know I don’t.” Ryan tried to hide his smirk behind that damn bottle, but I saw the dent on the side of his mouth. “In fact, I should just unfold them. I don’t do this sort of shit.” He nodded and took another sip. “I was just doing mine and did yours at the same time.” “That right?” God, I hated when he did that. And I knew exactly what he was trying to do. He wanted me all keyed up, all indignant about doing house chores and then he’d swoop in and get me talking about what I didn’t want to talk about. Bastard. Poor, silly Boy Scout.

“You know,” I said, enjoying the way Ryan’s eyebrows rose, how he didn’t resist me when I pulled his bottle from his hands. “You didn’t offer me one.” He licked his lips, dipping his chin as though he couldn’t see me clearly. “In the fridge, Alex. You’re welcome to as many as you’d like.” “I mean,” I started, resting my knee on the sofa right next to his thigh. “I did slave away on your grubby t-shirts.” He tried acting unaffected. He shot for the cool that Ryan almost always maintained, but I saw how his eyes moved, how that heavy gaze of his stayed on my leg, the hem of my shorts. He popped his knuckles as though he needed to keep from touching me. “That was some damn stinky laundry.” “I bet it was.” He reached for the beer, but I jerked it to my mouth and Ryan stilled, watched as I exaggerated my movements, took a deep gulp. He wasn’t the only one good at distraction and when I felt the muscles in his thighs tighten next to my leg, I smiled against the glass bottle, thinking I’d won. He wouldn’t ask about Misty. He wouldn’t tease me about laundry. But Neil Ryan was a SEAL and a damn good cop. He was also a lot bigger, a lot stronger than me and when I handed him back the bottle, he didn’t take it. He took me instead.

“Enough.” And Ryan shot up from the sofa, cupping me under my ass, pulling one of my legs up to his waist before he attacked my mouth. It had been coming for weeks, probably since the first time we met. I didn’t worry about not being the right woman for him or that he’d been a cop. Ryan’s body was wide and strong, his touch fierce, demanding and I craved it. He didn’t touch me in order to control me. He touched me because it’s what he wanted, what I wanted. “God you taste good,” he told me, keeping my head still with one hand and my ass uplifted with the other. “It’s the craft beer,” I shot back at him and he snorted, but then his mouth was back on mine, his tongue probing, and I loved the feel of the warm slickness, of his delicious mouth leading, controlling and working my pussy into a wet frenzy with just the touch of his lips and tongue. We were just kissing, tumbling against the sofa, limbs and fingers teasing, mouths eager, hungry, with me loving the way he felt against me, how he held me tight, how he placed his large hand at the center of my back as he continued to ravage my mouth. “Ryan,” I breathed against his neck, needing to taste his skin so he would know that he felt like nothing I’d ever had on my tongue, all cotton candy and beignets and warmth. I never wanted to stop

tasting him, never wanted him to stop touching me like he was then, all desperate and growling and pulsing against my clit as I rolled my hips against him. “Shit.” His voice was deeper then, coming out somewhere between a growl and a moan that only made me wetter and when Ryan fished his hands along my stomach, brushing aside the stretchy waistband of my shorts, I thought that sound only vibrated into something melodic. His hand slipped even lower. “Alex, I can feel how hot you are.” He grazed my clit and I shuddered, making a weak, lost sound that he caught in his mouth. “I make you wet, darlin’?” I could only nod, making stupid, pointless attempts to keep my arms steady and still Ryan continued torturing me with his large fingers and those words that were both filthy and delicious. “You wanna come on my fingers? You want to feel me here?” And then Ryan didn’t wait for my answer, slipping two fingers inside me while he pushed his free palm on my lower back, guiding, moving my hips and ass against his large fingers buried deep and before I understood what was happening or how quickly it had started, my pussy clenched and that swelling, sweet buzz against my clit vibrated and I came hard riding on Ryan’s fingers. “God… I… shit.” But he didn’t let me come up for air and took my mouth again, continuing his attack with his hands and tongue, guiding me on top

of him. I didn’t know what he wanted, if this was just Ryan wanting to play or if he had a plan. Honestly, I didn’t care about anything but how he felt, the strong, wide expanse of his well-defined chest, the aggressive, desperate grip of his fingers tugging into my hair, urging my tongue deeper into his mouth. “Can’t… think when I taste you,” he said, cupping my face like he was greedy, like my lips were a meal he’d never finish. “Fuck, I want you, baby. So damn bad.” I knew he did. Problem was, I wanted Ryan too. I hated myself for admitting that. I hated that I’d let this complete stranger, a cop no less, work his way into my brain. I knew it was my fault. I knew I’d been careless but it was too damn late. Ryan had been a hustle I hadn’t counted on losing. He’d been the one great score that I didn’t know I wanted. I’d forgotten that I wasn’t supposed to have this for myself, that a good man would make me feel like I could be a good woman. He touched me like it meant something, like I did, and as I rubbed against him, his hands all over me, the scent of his sweat and the taste of his skin teasing my tongue, I realized that I wanted too much. I wanted it all. I didn’t just want Ryan. Misty had been right. I cared. I fucking cared about him and I was a person who had never cared about anyone. Not since Stevie. He didn’t question me when I pulled away from him, or try to

stop me when I climbed off the sofa. Ryan was a watcher, someone who waited for the facts, when he was thinking rationally, before he interrogated. I pulled down my shirt, tried to brush straight my hair and Ryan just watched, curious, silent. “You… you can’t go to the auction.” It came out before I’d decided to speak and that margin of patience Ryan carried fractured. “What the hell are you talking about?” He sat up, stretching off the sofa to stand in front of me. “Why the hell are you talking about the damn auction now?” “Because, it’s important. Because…” that voice inside told me to be cool. It told me to be reasonable but I kept it silent for so long I wasn’t sure I’d be able to listen to it now unless I got it out quick. Ryan folded his arms and waited as I lifted my chin, working up the nerve to give it to him straight. “Misty says Timber is cutting the list and there won’t be any new guests welcomed.” The lie came quick, born out of nowhere. “Okay. So. We sneak in.” “No,” I told him, feeling anxious imagining Ryan among all of Timber’s men without any backup. If I couldn’t swing an invite for Ryan there was no way Sammy or Dean would get one. “I’ll have to figure something else out.” “Wait a second, Alex.” I didn’t pull away when he grabbed my

arm. “There’s something you’re not telling me. I need all the factors here.” “That’s all I know. I can score the box and bring it to you later, but you can’t be there.” “No fucking way.” He grunted when I slipped out of his touch. “Alex, how the fuck do we go from you coming on my fingers to you acting like you can’t stand me looking at you?” I shook my head, reaching for my bag on the floor, but Ryan got to it first. “Tell me what’s going on. Are you… you running scared again?” I pushed him in the chest, unable to stop the automatic instinct to shut him up. He was calling me a coward and I didn’t want him believing that I was. “Don’t do that. I’m not running.” I lifted up on my toes, stretching for my bag and Ryan tossed it to the floor. “Stop it and tell me what the hell is going on. Right fucking now.” “No, Ryan. I can’t. It’s not important and it isn’t your business.” “You’re my business, Alex.” “I… no, I’m not. I’m a client, remember? That’s what this is supposed to be. Just business.” I felt sick looking at the quick sting on his features. Ryan stepped back like I’d slapped him. “You fucking know better than that,” he said, voice loud,

angry. “This hasn’t been business for a long damn time.” “Well it should be.” “Why?” “Because that’s the way we live our lives. That’s who we are. I don’t want flowers and hearts and all that bullshit.” “Then what do you want?” “I want you to let me do my job.” I picked up my bag, ignoring that low, cursing voice in my head that told me I was being stupid. “I want you to let me pay you back the only way I know how.” “You can’t leave without me.” I opened the door, not threatened when Ryan stepped up behind me. If it came down to it, I could get away, he knew it as well as I did. “I survived a long time without your help, Ryan. I can do it again.” When I opened the door, he grabbed me, like I knew he would. I was prepared and spun quick, popping Ryan with a sucker punch that brought him to his knees. Then I was out the door and gone.

There are thirty-eight established cemeteries in New Orleans, not counting the post-storm markers of Xs along buildings and brick that line lost neighborhoods of Katrina deaths—a reminder of how The City that Care Forgot, got forgotten. It wasn’t surprising that Ironside picked the most touristy, the most well-known cemetery for his auction. St. Louis #1. Conti Parallel, number two, inching toward the Protestant side of the cemetery. That asshat really had no couth.

Funny thing about Ironside’s organization: it was the Walmart class variety and for the right amount of money, easy to infiltrate. Timber liked to pretend, like Alex had maintained, that he wasn’t a common street thug. His people were loyal, but they weren’t stupid. Throw enough cash at them and they’d do just about anything for you. Like, say, give you a head’s up when their boss decided the time and place for the auction. Worked for me and shit, that saved me about ten grand. Still, I kept to the shadows, not eager to wave a red flag about my presence. It wasn’t hard to do. The auction happened on a Sunday night, when the early November air was cold and wet and the moon was hazy. The tombs went on for miles—rows and rows of New Orleans families’ dead lined up in white brick, concrete, shell and stone. I’d walked around the cemetery, trying to remember which turn I’d taken, hoping the ghost stories weren’t true until I spotted the small congregation of thugs. They stood near the back and the atmosphere, however tacky, was offset by the low, soft jazz music Ironside thought was in good taste to play as his thugs, pimps and crime syndicate leaders sipped on drinks and ate two dollar hors d’oeuvres, served by inappropriately dressed waitresses—their nipples almost showing from their plunging necklines. No one saw me, which I’d hoped would stay the case for the

rest of the night until I could find Alex, and keep a watch over what she was planning. But Misty, that nosey woman, had to step away from the crowd, she had to pick my hiding spot just north of the mausoleum with the largest green space, the most row of concrete benches where the majority of the crowd kept themselves entertained. The woman had a blunt in her hand, had her lighter hovering right in front of it when our gazes caught. Hers widened. Mine narrowed and my nostrils flared before she grabbed my arm and pulled me deeper behind the aisle of tombs. “You are thick and stupid if you think Alex is doing this shit for any other reason than to keep you safe and here you come rolling in like the fatted calf. What were you thinking?” “Why are you hiding from a bunch of drug dealers to smoke that?” I nodded at the blunt still in her hand. “They’re drug dealers.” Misty glanced once at her hand and then threw the blunt on the ground. “Timber doesn’t like us to smoke in front of his clients but damn… Alex and now you and my nerves… you know what? Shut up. What are you doing here?” My mom was dead. I didn’t need another one taking her place and so I cocked my eyebrow at Misty, hoping she got with one look that I wasn’t interested in a lecture. “I was actually thinking I needed eyes on Alex when she does something stupid.” Misty

frowned, confirming what I already knew: Alex was going to try something that might get her messed up. “Was I wrong?” “Of course not. Come here,” Misty’d said, grabbing my arm to push me between two large urns, her gaze jerking over her shoulder as she watched behind her. “Stay back here. If Timber can’t see you then he won’t think she’s coming in to get your whatever the hell it is.” “I don’t like this shit,” I told her, taking her fingers off my arm. I wanted to do this my way, but when Misty glared at me, I realized that wasn’t going to be an option. “What you want doesn’t freaking matter, Ryan.” Then she picked up the blunt and shoved it into her red clutch purse before she shot over her shoulder, “Stay put!” Hell no. That was no good, so I stuck to the corners like a damn gate crasher. Ironside couldn’t see me. He was too busy kissing ass, showing off the little trinkets on display for the auction. The items were guarded by a row of thick-neck thugs playing body guard, all donning dark suits. They stood around the make-shift stage—what looked like crates and plywood covered with Dollar Store table cloths—on every other step and kept still and silent as the crowd drifted by the long tables. The items themselves were an array of illegal trinkets and banned merchandise that could be easily sold or traded—first

edition books that no one wanted, pearl handled revolvers, paintings, furniture, all the shit any antique dealer would want in their shops. And then there were the bigger ticket items; guns, drugs, the items went on and one. I didn’t care about any of them. If you’d asked me a few months back, then yeah, I’d have said I wanted my mom’s jewelry box. It was valuable, very old and was the last item of hers that I hadn’t gotten rid of. It also represented what I’d lost, my family, my normalcy, all the things that had made me the man I was. Alex had somehow gotten that box into the city, into this specific auction and it was the only thing that had kept me focused on our bargain until, of course, she was threatened. Until I realized the auction, that damn box, wasn’t nearly as valuable to me as Alex was. I could almost feel that throbbing still working in my nose after she’d clocked me. She’d taken off because that’s what Alex does. She’d let me feel her, fucking finally, and then whatever ridiculous bullshit cluttered up her thoughts had her backtracking, leaving me confused and so fucking hard I thought I’d pass out. I followed, of course I followed, but Alex was bred in this city. She knew the spots that hid her well. She knew how to stay hidden and I’d ended up back at my place worried, wondering and finally hitting up Misty’s cell to let her know that Alex had gone M.I.A.

“She’ll be okay,” the woman had told me. “We’ll watch her.” But I didn’t want Misty and her can-can dancers or punk pretend bodyguards looking over Alex. She was a wild fire, an unpredictable, constantly moving being that thought too little and moved too much. And some creeper was still after her. I’d done the only thing left to me. I’d become a damn stalker. Alex had been staying with Misty in that small place just above her club on Bourbon. When I was with Frank rewriting contracts and networking for new gigs, Sammy or Dean was trailing Alex. When I followed her, I felt better, but that hadn’t stopped me from wanting to throw her over my shoulder and keep her locked up back at my place. Shit, I’m not a damn caveman, but that woman made me want to take on the title. The only lights in the cemetery came from the funky candles on tall stands I’d seen Misty lighting, there were hundreds of them, leaning to the spooky, trying-too-hard vibe Ironside was hoping worked and I had to squint through the crowd to make out friend or foe, searching each drunk or drinking face for Alex. I knew I was taking a risk, pushing my limits, but there was no way in hell I’d let Alex work this auction without back up. I didn’t care that her former boss didn’t want me there. I didn’t give a shit that he might try something. I only knew that for a week I’d watched Alex walk around the Quarter looking over her shoulder, frowning like she

knew around each corner there could be a threat; that bastard would be waiting. I wanted to take that frown from her face. I wanted her to walk on those sidewalks in the city she loved without worry. Fuck me, I was strung up on this woman. My Big Brain kept telling me to walk away. Alex had lived her entire life in this city, doing one stupid thing or another to make it to the next day. She could handle herself. Little Brain only remembered how tight she felt against my fingers, how the smell and taste of her was addictive, overwhelming. That little fucker wanted more. Somewhere in the middle, I realized I couldn’t walk away, not because she needed a rescue or because I just wanted inside her. I was in deep because I cared, because Alex was the only woman I’d ever met who called me on my bullshit without making me feel like an asshole for it. She was the only one who understood what it was like to be lost and alone. No way was I walking away from her. The music got louder, a small quartet of horns playing off to the corner while Ironside shook hands with the lowlifes and suits who watched him with sharp eyes. He kept pointing to the large mausoleum in the center of the party and I moved around the tomb in front of me to get a better look. Somewhere, Alex cased the

items, watched the guards, likely keeping her focus on Ironside and the game he was playing. There were a few suits arguing in the corner right next to the more suspect items on the auction table and I glanced that way when one of Ironside’s men stopped the taller man from swinging at the other guy, but I could care less if it ended in bloodshed. Narrowing my eyes, it occurred to me for the hundredth time that Alex should have already showed, that maybe I should leave the shadows to find her, when she finally made an appearance. She had a beautiful back. It was the first thought I had when my gaze stopped surfing across the crowd, dismissing each face that wasn’t hers. It stopped at the sparkling, black flowers that twined up her back. The sheer material covered her spine, keyholed around her neck with intermittent black flowers swirling over that exposed, dark skin. The dress wasn’t formal, wasn’t casual, likely was one of Misty’s handoffs but the shimmer in the material and the way Alex wore it made her look like a diamond among a bushel of stones. Alex had taken her time in getting ready for this auction, put in an effort I hadn’t even imagined she possessed from day after day of seeing her in a t-shirt and jeans. She didn’t look like the hustler in a waitress uniform and those busted second-hand designer shoes that I’d first seen her in a month ago. She was stunning, pulling the attention of everyone she passed by. When she turned to

move deeper into the crowd, I forgot my own damn name. There were more flowers, glittering black, groups of them covering her chest, strategically placed over the swell of her breasts to conceal her nipples. But her ribs, and just the top of her flat, sculpted stomach was visible through the sheer fabric. It covered her scars, of course it did, and I debated running up to her, tossing my jacket over her so no one could see just how perfect she was. Hell, let them look. Alex had a lot to be proud of and walking around that auction, eyes scanning the crowd, ignoring every wink she caught, she looked like a damn queen. She always did shit to her face, with her make-up and hair that reminded me of some bad 50’s juvenile delinquent movie. That Alex had an edge, a little too much rock and roll in her attitude and she wore her clothes in the same way—well-worn leather jackets, tight, ripped rocker tees and dark skinny jeans that showed off those muscular legs. Even her crazy hair, which was usually teased and pinned to look like an Elvis groupie’s, still worked because she had the attitude to back up her look. But she’d always reminded me of a kid, some early twenties chick that wasn’t interested in looking or behaving like an adult. That hadn’t stopped me from kissing her, from wanting her, but as she moved through the cemetery, the same sensual edge in her steps now tempered, made more enticing by her confidence, I realized Alex was an adult no matter what she looked like. She was all

woman. A gorgeous, confident, sexy woman. When she turned her head slowly, and our gazes caught, I saw the instant crowd of worry in her dark eyes, then the irritation as she curled her top lip. Alex pressed her lips together, glanced over her shoulder to where Ironside had been standing and then made a beeline for me, forgetting her edge and stealth for a moment as she stumbled in her tall heels and then immediately righted herself. “Fucker,” she mumbled under her breath and I didn’t know if she meant me or the shoes she wore. “You talk to your priest with that mouth, little lady?” “Shut. Up.” I let her take my arm, leading me back further into the darkness and away from the crowd. There was a spark in her eyes, something wild and eager and I didn’t know if it was the anger she felt at my being at the auction, missing me or just being amped up over whatever con she was about to pull. “Ryan, you dumb son of a bitch, what are you doing here?” “Well, darlin’, I missed you too.” She ignored me, working her gaze around us to see if anyone had approached and then she stood too close to me and I caught the sweet scent of sweet pea flowers coming off her skin. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, wondering if she knew how beautiful she was, how much power she had in one damn look, one soft, subtle smile.

What was I thinking? Of course she knew. The little shit was giving me that look—eyes that fucking smoldered and a slight pout on her lips—because she wanted me gone. She was shooting for seduction, using her mouth, her body to convince me to leave. That wasn’t going to happen. “I know what you’re doing, lady.” That hard seductive glint in her eyes deepened and Alex leaned forward, pressing against me until my back hit the tomb behind me. Christ, I wanted her, but I wouldn’t be played, no matter how damn beautiful she was. When Alex ran her long, red nails against my chest, I pushed back that ache in my gut, the one that had me dying to kiss her. I took her face then, my palm against her cheek, thumb on her chin and Alex lost that deliberate lilt in her eyes, the one I knew she used when she needed something desperately. “It’s not going to work,” I said, shaking my head when she released a small moan. “Ryan…” My name came out like a purr from those full lips, but I kept repeating to myself that the seduction wasn’t going to work, not when we had a job to do. “Alex,” I said, putting an equal amount of whine and pout in my voice. When she leaned forward, eyebrow arched and her bottom lip between her teeth, I stopped her with my hands on her shoulders.

Just like that, the pretense was gone. “Don’t you wanna kiss me?” “Oh, darlin’,” I said, moving my hand from her cheek to the back of her neck, “I wanna do more than kiss you.” For a second the mask fell from her face. There was a glint of something real, something honest in the shift of her pupils, like she really wanted me too, like she was tired of playing games, but then Alex being Alex, she covered what she really wanted with the hard, irritated glare I’d come to recognize as a warning. “Fine,” she said, pushing on my chest. “If you want to get yourself killed, then go right ahead. I don’t care anymore.” She marched away from me, behind the tombs and toward the crowd again. “But you did?” I said, following behind her. “Care?” The question stopped her. “Is that really what you’re saying?” “No… I don’t…” Alex exhaled, then pointedly ignored me as she concentrated on the crowd circling around the auction items. “You don’t?” I said, standing behind her. Her hair looked severe, heavily fixed with product, but felt like silk when I touched the ends. She didn’t stop me. “You don’t care what I do, Alex?” She was shorter than me by almost half a foot, but she wore tall heels that made her shoulders come to my chest and so it was easy to lean down, to barely touch my lips to her exposed neck. “You don’t care if I get hurt?”

“Ryan…” My name slipping off her lips was all the aphrodisiac I needed. It sounded like music and I smiled against Alex’s skin when she pressed against me, the soft outline of her tight body fitting perfectly against my chest, my hips. And when she rocked back, ass against me, when her head fell back onto my shoulder, I thought I’d combust, my skin on fire from the sensation of her resting against me, giving me access to all that glorious skin. “Ryan… Ryan.” And then Alex stopped, head shooting up, she turned on her heel to push me against the tomb again. But the urgency in her movements didn’t come from arousal. She didn’t hurry to attack my mouth because she couldn’t control herself. “Cosmo,” she said, her lips barely grazing mine. She pulled me further away from the henchmen, back to a smaller tomb and kept in front of me, whispering against my mouth. “Just stay still.” “No. I don’t think I will.” And because she was so close, because I’d missed her, because I’d watched her for a week knowing I couldn’t touch her, knowing she’d run for some damn reason that made sense to her alone, I took Alex’s face between my hands and moved it up so I could see her eyes. I wanted her to see what I was doing—hiding us both from Timber’s bodyguard’s wandering gaze, but also taking her like I wanted, like she wanted because I was damn tired of pretending she wasn’t mine. “I’m not staying still anymore, Alex.”

A small gasp of realization and the light in her eyes transformed, warmed and I got the permission I needed and kissed Alex Black like I damn well wanted to. I didn’t care that we were behaving like kids, leaned up against a back wall at a school dance. I gave exactly zero shits that anyone could find us, that my left hand stayed on her lower back, pressing her against my dick, that my right nestled itself in her hair, working her head to follow me, so that I had control of her mouth, that strong, delicious tongue. Nothing mattered right then, except that Alex filled my senses with the spun sugar sensation, that she melted into my mouth like warm honey. She let me lead and for a moment, I thought I might have loved her, right then, among those damn lowlifes, the broken, decaying tombs and the stolen property, and my heart beat faster, my breath accelerated and I didn’t care about my mom’s jewelry box or Timber Ironside or the threat he was in Alex’s life. I only wanted that woman in my arms and the stretch of the minutes, the lengthening of the seconds so that I would always know what she felt like, so that I would never stop tasting her. It was a kiss that shifts the world. Axis turn, they sway and if you don’t hold on for dear life, you’re gonna fall hard. But it was too late and kissing Alex in that moment, I knew it plain as I knew my name, rank and serial number. My world shifted and it would never right itself again. And I

was pretty sure I didn’t want it to. We only came up for breath when I remembered we weren’t alone, that there was still a threat—dozens of them—all around us. “Alex,” I said, still holding her face, “we have to get a plan.” “I’m gonna lift the jewelry box.” “No. I can’t let you go in blind.” Her laugh didn’t surprise me, nothing should anymore. “Frank’s waiting for my text. He said there was someone here we needed to handle.” “Timber?” “No, not Ironside. I don’t…” then my cell chirped and I pulled it out, hearing Frank’s low whisper on the other end. “Wait, man, what?” “I said, I’m on the North side of the cemetery. I got eyes on the crowd. You need to see who I’m looking at, Ryan.” Alex held onto me as we zipped along the backside of the tombs, coming to a corner near the largest of three family crypts. “I did come here for a reason… Other side of the crowd, right next to the last table. Recognize our new target?” And I did, that son of a bitch. Malcolm. Even with that worldworn face, the deep scar along his left eye, the man cast a fine form in his suit. But the eyes, the same ones that penetrated, gawked were cold, steely. This was the bastard Harmony had set me up

with; the man who supposedly knew where my mom’s jewelry box ended up. But he was no antiques dealer, a fact I quickly learned a few months back when he dropped the act and went after me with his fists, then his gun, warning me to tell Simmons that Dot was dead. I didn’t know much about Malcolm and doubted everything I’d heard about him but three things: he was protecting Dot, he thought Simmons had sent me to New Orleans to find her and he was some sort of sketchy dark operative with a completely retracted military record. “He’s here for Dot?” I asked Frank, but my friend grunted, a flippant sound that was his only answer as I watched Malcolm move around the display tables. “I think he caught word that he’s our new gig,” Frank said, sounding like he was walking, the noise in the background coming close to what I heard in front of me. “What?” “Davidson says your friend Malcolm is trying to blackmail the Congressman. He’s hired us to make sure that doesn’t happen.” “Let’s take him…” I was ready to pounce before that asshole knew we’d spotted him, but then Alex brushed my arm and I closed my eyes, wondering how the hell I could so easily forget that she was the priority mission. I couldn’t leave her unprotected. “Shit, Alex, that creeper is still after you.”

“Ryan…” Frank started, through the speaker, like he thought I wasn’t thinking straight. “No way, man. I’m not leaving her open to anything.” Those soft fingers against my hand had me turning toward her. “I’ll be safe. Timber wants me, no one’s going to touch me here.” “No, it’s too risky.” “What about the box, Ryan?” “Alex, I don’t care about it anymore.” I thought maybe she’d grin, be pleased that her safety meant more to me than some old box that my mom had once treated as precious, but Alex dropped my hand and took a step back as though she hadn’t heard me right. “Of course you do.” Then her gaze slipped over my shoulder, and her eyes widened. Suddenly she started pushing on me. “You go be bait for Frank.” “Alex, no…” “Ryan,” she said, pushing me away from the tomb. I didn’t like this, the rush, the confusion and something in my gut told me to just grab her and get the hell home. But Alex was stubborn, and like the hustle was gearing up to a climax, she took over. “I’ve taken care of myself my whole life. I can manage for the next fifteen minutes. You and Frank distract Cosmo and the boys then trail that Malcolm guy. I’ll get the box and meet you a block down Canal in fifteen minutes.”

“No,” I told her, but she stopped me, shaking her head. “There’s no choice.” Alex grabbed me, her hands gripping my face down until she got her lips on mine and a slip of tongue prying my lips apart. She kissed me with fire. She kissed me like a welcome, like a final goodbye and it was so fierce, so hard that just for a second I could only hear the sound of my own heart thundering hard and the desperate groan that slipped from my throat. Too quickly and before I got my bearings, she pulled away, eyes severe, penetrating as she watched me. “Go be a hero and let me be a crook.” “Alex…” But she slipped away, weaving through the crowd before I could stop her. I felt like a punk, letting her go, wanting to follow. Frank finally approached, slipping up in the dark behind the tombs. He slapped my back, doing a piss poor job of keeping the laughter from his voice. “Come on, Romeo, let’s get you out of here.” Frank pulled me through the crowd, letting me walk on the outside of the crowd, avoiding any curious gazes and I caught Malcolm on the outskirts of the tables, eyes tight, searching. To my right, Alex weaved around the crowd, ignored the cat calls that followed her and she stopped once, meeting my gaze with that determined lift of her chin relaxing some of the anxiety I felt. She winked once, and it was a promise I knew she’d keep, one that had

me following my instructions and trying to ignore the buzz of dread I felt bubbling in my gut.

There is an art to taking something that isn’t yours. It requires finesse and skill. You have to be subtle. You have to be stealthy. You have to understand that the absence of any of these things and you run the risk of a pinch. Neil Ryan was the only person in about five years that had managed to pinch me. It had been an off day. Maybe my confidence was a little too high as I slipped behind the mausoleum and back into the area that Misty told me about, where Timber kept items off the main auction floor. Here he held

back pieces for his truly wealthy clients; items I could only guess at but no doubt needed an extra level of discretion. I was pretty sure that Timber had taken Ryan’s jewelry box and placed it among the not-for-the-public auction just to piss me off. The box wasn’t the most expensive item there, but, I guess that wasn’t the point. For Ryan this box reminded him of his mother. It reminded him of his mission. I got that. For Timber it was a means to have me again; the solitary object that I would obtain in exchange for my body belonging to him. That’s what he’d told me at least, just the night before when we discussed the auction inside of Misty’s office. “You can have it, if I can have you.” He hadn’t even pretended to look sorry for blackmailing me. I could have walked away. I could have told him to go straight to hell right then and there, but I was nothing if not a planner, and Timber Ironside, hell, even Ryan, had no idea why I’d really taken off two weeks before. Because I needed a plan. Or rather, because it was time to cash in my insurance policy. Wanda Manieri was a cold-hearted bitch. Always had been. I never knew what made her that way. I never cared enough to ask her, but the one good thing my foster mother had taught me over the years was the importance of planning ahead. I’d listened. Timber liked to brag and braggers, Wanda had always said,

“were the rats who locked their own cells.” It was that small bad habit that would do Timber in. It was one I counted on for years. Even as a kid, I understood that he wanted me. As soon as I started to develop and puberty crashed landed on my small body, he started in with loud threats to any man who looked at me longer than a blink. In his mind, I’d always been his and even back then, I knew that the only way he’d turn me loose was if I forced his hand. So I took Wanda’s lessons to heart and had started my insurance plan years back. Tonight, I’d cash it in. Ryan’s jewelry box sat on a large crate in the middle of the tables. There was a half a dozen of them and had been curtained off by three large, black tarps around the edge of the tables. I didn’t think the box had been put there by accident and so I wasn’t surprised that when I reached for it, Timber suddenly appeared behind me. I could smell the cologne he wore. It was a heavy, musky scent that made my eyes water. “Have you thought about it?” I tried not to smile, remembering that Timber had no clue what I’d planned or how long that planning had been going on. His voice was low, and he stepped closer to run his finger down my back, but I turned, stepping out of his reach. It was a shame he was such a prick. Maybe if he hadn’t been abandoned as a child, forced to make it on his own, Timber would

have made a decent man. He was powerful, charismatic, and he looked almost handsome in his black, last season Armani suit. The image of power monger would have been perfect, save for the gold hoop in his ear and plastic toothpick in his mouth. “Have you, Alex?” he said, pulling the toothpick from his corner of his mouth. This would be goodbye one way or another and there was a small, scared girl deep inside me that felt sad about that. Timber had looked out for her. He helped teach her how to survive. But those fleeting memories didn’t make up for what he’d become or what he’d done since then. “You really don’t think sometimes, Timber.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.” I walked around the crates, scanning the items, head shaking. He didn’t move, kept to the center of the area while I paced. “It’s kind of like that time when we were fourteen and Janie Donalds wanted you to come with her and Wanda to Biloxi.” I let my finger slide along a row of metal boxes, hoping the tension would build, that my ease, my teasing would relax Timber. “Wanda was running a sweetheart grift on some rich doctor with one foot in the grave and Janie went along. Wanted you there too.” “The hell are you talking about?” he said, twisting his neck to see me when I slipped out of the full light of the candles.

“You didn’t get her angle. You told her no, flat out and we spent the weekend in Metairie going bust trying to lift clothes from Macy’s.” Finally he remembered, but he seemed more worried than amused, likely wondering what I was getting at. “And what does that,” he pointed to the box still sitting in the middle of the room, “have to do with Janie?” “Not a thing. But she met some social worker on the beach, spilled everything about what Wanda was doing and ended up staying there with that detective and his wife.” “So?” “So, Janie got a family.” I stopped pacing and Timber stepped forward, moving his hands into his pockets. “We had to move, remember? Before the state found out where she was keeping us, but Janie got away from Wanda.” “And that’s a good thing?” He frowned like the idea was stupid. “I heard she went to school, one of those fancy schools up north. She’s a doctor now. Makes more money on research than either one of us will ever see.” “I don’t know.” I tried not to flinch when he came too close to me, when that deep, flirtatious voice sounded cocky. “I do pretty well. And after tonight, I expect to pull in a nice little score. Should

set me up pretty nice.” “Maybe.” Timber was big, taller than me, not with Ryan’s same shoulder width or bulk, but big enough that he could easily take me down. He almost had once, and I wasn’t eager for a repeat. Now he used his size, the reach of his arms to box me in against the crate and I had nowhere to go, not unless I wanted to knee him or give him a gut punch. Not yet. It wasn’t quite time for my payout. “There’s no maybe, Alex. These assholes will fork whatever I ask to get their hands on the shit I’ve got for them. Besides, this goes well enough and the Milano Syndicate will open doors for me.” He touched my face, too rough, too dominating and I had to force myself not to cringe. “Just like you, baby. You’ll give up that tight body so your boy gets his little box and stays bullet free.” I gripped his hand and the excitement immediately came to his features—the eager, anxious grin, the way he dipped his eyes to my mouth, how he kept licking his bottom lip. He almost seemed relieved, as if my touch was the permission he wanted, as if it could be taken as submission. But he didn’t anticipate how I folded my fingers, how my nails bit down hard into his bronze skin. Timber liked pain, all aspects of it, and he certainly could take it, but he’d rather give it, not receive it, so when my nails bit hard, breaking

skin, that happy expression on his face shifted to confusion. “No,” I told him, jerking his hand away from my face. “I won’t be doing that.” Timber winced, but didn’t step back or shy away from me when I pushed him. “So you don’t care if I take him out?” “You’re not going to do that either. Ryan gets his box, I walk away and no one gets hurt.” He laughed. “You think so?” At my nod, Timber narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing. “What game are you playing here, Alex?” But I didn’t have to answer him. That shrill chirp on his cell, the vibration of it in his pocket would speak for me. When he didn’t move and kept waiting for my answer, I tipped my chin, unable to keep the satisfied smile from my face. “You might wanna get that, Timber.” The wannabe kingpin fished the phone from his pocket and gripped it tight, thumb working over the screen as I reached behind me to grab Ryan’s box. I saw the instant Timber’s hope deflated. It was the in the backward steps he took and the quick way his eyes widened with every swipe of his fingers against the screen. I knew he’d be angry, but I hadn’t expected the shock and disappointment that passed over his face as his tight fisted control slipped. And then, the rage took over. His head shot up and he glared at me, holding his phone so tight I thought it might crack. “You

fucking cunt!” “Hey!” I said shouting to match his insult. “Watch your mouth, asshole.” Again that astonished flicker came into his eyes and if I didn’t know him better, I’d say that whatever Timber thought about me had been shattered in two short minutes. “You’re selling me out? You’re a fucking rat?” On the surface, that’s what it would look like. Hundreds of photos of Timber as a kid, as a young man, lifting wallets and even him prying open the poor box at the Cathedral. There was more, worse things, damning things, the dirtiest of crimes I knew he committed—Timber with underage strippers, him with his mouth around a crack pipe, but these were a trifle, nothing to the tapes and wire taps clearly labeled in the message I’d sent him. Evidence, all of it incriminating, nasty, the worst of what he’d done, but there was more: bank statements, offshore accounts, the blackmail he had on local big wigs and politicians. Cosmo had helped, begrudgingly, but when I slipped info to him about Timber and what he’d done to Miles Jackson ten years ago—Cosmo’s cousin—well, the big guy quickly switched sides. Miles supposedly left New Orleans in Timber’s care. Cosmo never knew why. I did. Cosmo hadn’t liked hearing how an Ironside threat against Miles’ mom and his baby sister made it possible for Timber to run the “Ironside syndicate”. It

pays to sit in a nail salon listening to gossip once in a while. “I haven’t told a soul, you jackass. That,” I said nodding toward his phone, “is insurance. You think I’m stupid? You think I haven’t planned and prepped myself for an escape route for fucking years? You think I didn’t learn a damn thing from Wanda?” He moved to grab my wrist, but I wasn’t scared of him anymore. There was nothing he could do to me that would be worse than what he had already done with his lighter and his blade. “What the hell did you think, Timber? You think I’d let you hurt me? Use my body up because you had money?” I could see in his expression that was exactly what he’d thought. “God, that’s just pathetic.” “Alex, this is some bullshit. This,” he waved his phone, “I will fucking end you over this.” “No, Timber, you won’t. You won’t do a damn thing because I have a contingency plan.” I adjusted the box in my arms, not caring that my voice traveled, that anyone passing by could hear me raging at him. “Those files, the pictures, the bank statements, the fucking wire taps, are just evidence. You play nice, you keep out of my hair and away from Ryan and no one will ever see them.” “And if I don’t?” I shrugged, not committing to anything. “Let’s just say there is a very eager club owner who’s tired of being your errand girl and I’m pretty sure she’s sick of paying you a protection fee. If you think

I’ve got shit on you, then it’s nothing to what Misty has. And don’t forget my… my” I couldn’t decide what to call Ryan. Just to twist the blade a little further, I decided on a label that I knew Timber would hate. “…my boyfriend has the NOPD on speed dial.” “Please. Half of them are in my pocket.” “True,” I said, shrugging, a little disappointed that Timber’s temper was cooling. “But that won’t be the case when I release the video of you throwing a bachelor party for one of their lead detectives and him getting a lap dance from a fifteen year old prostitute. I’m sure the police commissioner will be interested in that.” He stepped forward, looking like he was ready to hit me, but I shook my head and held my hand up, stopping him. “No! Timber, you think I went through all this shit and didn’t plan ahead? If I don’t show up online tonight in exactly thirty minutes, the scheduled message on my email will send out all those files automatically. And in case you have any ideas, I can’t remote access it and my laptop isn’t at my place or Ryan’s or Summerland. Might be a good idea to just let me walk away with this box and my boyfriend, bullet free.” For a moment, Timber seemed able to only clinch his jaw and circle the room with his hands on his head and that phone still squeezed between his fingers. Finally, he stopped, expression still incredulous as he stared at me. “You did all this to fuck me over?”

“I did this to get away from you, Timber. You and this damn life.” I hated his laugh, that bitter, insulted tone that was Timber telling me that he didn’t believe I could do it, that he thought I was stupid; laughing and smiling at me like I was a kid who still believed in the Easter Bunny. “This,” he said, waving his arm at the tables, to the illegal items and crates that held them, “is who you are, Alex. This is who you will always be.” “No. This is what I had to be,” I told him. “It’s not who I am. And the Milanos? Really? That’s what you been hustling? They’re Ermenegildo Zegna. You’re J. C. Penney knockoff. This will fall apart, like shit generally does and they’ll laugh at you if they aren’t already.” Clutching the jewelry box to my chest, I moved towards the exit, uncaring that Timber fell into step next to me. He was no longer a threat, and I could tell that we both knew it. But before I left, I turned back to him. “This,” I wiggled my fingers back at the room in a parody of his own outburst “is what I was forced into. I’m broke and sketchy and a crook. But I’m not damn hopeless. I’m not unworthy and no matter what you think, I’m not dirty. The streets, Timber, this life, it made us fighters, soldiers in a battle we didn’t sign up for. The difference between you and me is that I don’t want to fight in it anymore.” I took a breath, holding onto to

that box like a lifeline. “I don’t know who I am outside of the hustle, but I’m sure as hell going to find out.” He grabbed my arm, stopping me before I could turn away. “With that fucking pig?” “I like that pig,” I said, jerking out of his hold. “I like him a lot.” He made one last feeble attempt. “You don’t just leave the life, Alex. You don’t just leave me. I’m part of you, I’m in your skin.” I faced him, without anger, without fire, without bitterness. “No, Timber, you’re not. You are in my past.” I turned to go. He didn’t stop me. He didn’t call after me. For once, probably for the first time in my life, I felt free, happy. So of course as soon as I hit the back tombs that led out to the main auction, I heard the crack of gunfire erupting. The crowd scattered—men hustling their women out the back way, down the dark, creepy aisles of graves and mausoleums and down the grass and shell walkways, thugs covering their cowering bosses, waitresses screaming and running in their stilettos. I dodged them, trying to get back, all the time searching frantically for Ryan, and feeling panic rise in my gut when I didn’t see him. Ryan and Frank weren’t anywhere, not in the back nor among the crowd streaming out of the front gate entrance, and my heart felt like it was trying to escape through my throat. I could feel tears and

frustration building up, threatening to fall, but that only made me feel even weaker and helpless, adding to the chaos. Finally leaving the front gate with that damn box under my arm, I searched the sidewalk, ignored the people who ran in front of me as I tried to see Ryan, frustrated when he wasn’t there. But then I heard someone calling my name and I turned to see him running towards me. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a sense of relief in my entire life. There was real fear on his face, but it started to abate as soon as he had gathered me in his arms. “God, Alex… You were late. I thought…” “What was that gunshot?” I interrupted. Ryan shook his head like it was nothing and tucked me under his arm, hustling us away from the cemetery. “Some jackass didn’t like losing his lot, lost his temper and pulled his gun. It went off by accident. Fucking jackass.” Relief washed through me like a flood. So Timber hadn’t reneged on his word. “I was so worried that you… or Frank…” Ryan hugged me tighter under his arm, but kept us moving. “Nah, takes more than a cemetery full of lowlifes to stop us. We’re too damn stubborn to die,” he quipped, a smart aleck grin on his face, and I elbowed him in the side, but playfully. Finally, he looked down at the jewelry box that I still had cradled against my chest, but he ignored it and kept walking. “We,

a… didn’t find Malcolm but Frank took down Cosmo. I thought all hell was gonna break loose, but then, just like that,” Ryan snapped his fingers, “all Timber’s boys got called off. They just stopped fighting and backed away.” He paused to look down at me. “You know anything about that?” I shrugged, helpless to stop my smile when I thought about the lie I had told Timber. He’d be sweating the next thirty minutes wondering if I’d stopped the scheduled message. Idiot. Gmail doesn’t have scheduled messaging. “Maybe.” We came to the end of the street, a block from the cemetery and Ryan stopped next to the Lincoln NOLA Elite Security used for stakeouts. Fishing out his keys, Ryan fidgeted for a moment, then asked huskily, as if putting on a brave face, “So, should I drop you back at Misty’s?” I’d just walked away from the only life I’d known. I cut ties with Timber and there would never be any hope of me fusing them back together. Like it or not, Neil Ryan had me in his life. There was no sense in waiting for that life to start. I stepped closer, with only Ryan’s mother’s jewelry box between us, hoping he could read me, know that I was tired of running. “No, Ryan, I don’t wanna go to Misty’s.” He nodded once, grunting as he narrowed his eyes at me. “Your place still isn’t safe.”

“I know.” He stopped stalling and moved the box to my side, taking it in his hand so he could pull me close. I liked his fingers on my skin, him holding my face up to look at him. “Seems like my apartment is really the only option.” I shrugged, loving his reaction to my teasing, thinking I didn’t do it enough to him. “Maybe Frank or Sammy…” “Not in this lifetime, lady,” he said, bending down to take my lips in a kiss that was pure bliss. “Let’s go home.”

The jewelry box had been a gift to my great grandmother; her husband had said he’d spend their marriage filling it up with things she’d wear, and things she’d hide. It was an exquisite work of art, with bars and cranks connected in quadrants, Betjemann Patent mechanisms fixed together some hundred and forty-five years ago. There were secret compartments that could be opened by the small cranks and a lining of fine purple velvet nestled under the mahogany wood and brass clasps and locks.

I could fetch ten grand easy for that box, but I didn’t need the money. Besides, that box reminded me of something I’d once believed could never die—family, tradition, a cultural that was fixed inside my bones. Alex put the box on my coffee table and sat next to me on the sofa, leaning on my shoulder as we both looked it over. “It’s old, yeah?” “’Bout a hundred and fifty years or so.” The top was smooth as glass and there was an inlay of brass that curled around each corner. “When I was a kid, I’d spend hours trying to figure out how the mechanisms work.” I popped open the top and rubbed my finger along the hidden wheel on the side which caused the two bottom compartments to stretch open, the sound of the wheels beneath whining as they moved. “My mom kept the expensive stuff in here. Once, she caught me with a screw driver trying to pry this thing apart. Her face went purple.” I smiled remembering how loud she’d yelled at me. God, I missed that woman. I ignored the tears on my face as I opened another compartment, my attention on that fine velvet and not the woman at my side until she reached over to wipe my face dry. When I saw the moisture on her fingers, I exhaled, clearing my throat. I hadn’t expected the emotion or that the memories to overwhelm me like this.

“I’m sorry,” I told Alex, rubbing my damp face on my jacket sleeve. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.” She slipped in front of me, pulling up her dress to rest on her knees. “I used to cry every night like clockwork for two solid years.” I liked how Alex rested her arms on my thighs like they fit there, like she did now, and how she didn’t try to look away from me when she told me the truth. “When I first got to Wanda’s all I thought about was finding out what happened to Stevie and who the hell would want my sister dead. But I was a twelve year old kid. What the hell could I do?” That feeling wasn’t restricted to kids. I’d been eighteen when my mom was murdered, just as confused and clueless as to what to do with the rest of my life as Alex had been at twelve, stuck at her foster mother’s crap house. “It’s the most helpless feeling in the world,” I admitted, dipping my forehead against Alex’s when she nodded. This was not how I imagined the night going. I wanted to get her out of that dress. I wanted to feel Alex on top of me, against me. But that jewelry box and the question of how the hell she managed to get it away from Ironside had me pausing, contemplating, debating and then, finally, at the sight of it, opening it, remembering what that box meant to my mother, had me losing myself in the memories it evoked.

“Thank you for getting it back,” I told her, holding onto her fingers. “I owe you, Alex. I owe you big time.” I meant it. She kissed my forehead, and smiled. “You don’t owe me a thing, Ryan.” Her breath was warm, soothing against my skin. “Well,” she said and I recognized the tease in her voice, “there’s one thing you can do.” Alex was not as smooth as she thought she was. I was learning her tells, had watched her long enough to recognize the lift in her tone, that small grin she made that she was probably not aware of when she started to flirt. Sitting up then, I gave her my cocky bastard sneer, forcing disdain, irritation on my face when all I wanted just then was to laugh. “Yeah? What now?” She really was a beautiful woman. That was no big secret, but when she smiled and it was real, with all the happy and humor and delight that moved across her face, well, I didn’t think I’d seen anything more beautiful, or ever would. She gave me one of those smiles then, one that made her eyes lighten, had her cheeks flushed and warm. “Help me out of this dress.” Nodding, I licked my lips, wanting to be calm, not wanting Alex to see what a desperate, stupid man she made me, but then she moved her lips together, the same little nibble she did when she’s hungry and all thought about being cool and not making an ass

out of myself flew right out the window. “Whatever the hell you want, darlin’.” I didn’t let her prepare or tell me not to pick her up. I took Alex around the waist and didn’t stop kissing her, holding her tight against me until we were in my room. Then, I turned her and all that visible skin and those sporadic flowers called to me. My fingers were sloppy, too big to be slow or easy but I did the best I could, unhooking the clasp at her neck so the sheer fabric fell to her waist. “Alex, your skin is…” But I remembered what she’d said before. She knew what she was and didn’t need to hear it from me. Instead of praising her, I knelt down behind her and kissed her back. “I want to touch you here, darlin’,” I said, pushing away that fabric she held in front of her so nothing kept me from those fine muscles and beautiful arches. “And here.” My mouth on her spine, my tongue over each ridge, each bump had Alex shaking, arms covering her breasts. “Ryan…” it was all she seemed able to say and I didn’t let her stop me, wouldn’t let her tell me she didn’t want my mouth on her. I knew that wasn’t true. But when I stood again, my lips on her shoulder, my hands working down the zipper on her ass and the rest of her dress gave way to more tempting skin, more of those finely honed muscles and I touched her, just on the swell of that plump, delicious ass, Alex didn’t shake or shudder anymore. She

fell back against me, just like she had in that cemetery, only this time no one watched us, no one would interrupt. “Can I touch you here, lady?” I brought my hands around her waist, just under the curve of her full breasts, then brought my hands up to hold their weight, pausing until I got the moan I wanted from her before I rubbed my thumbs against her nipples. “Here is good?” “So good.” Alex’s breath quickened and she fell back against me further, completely relaxed, trusting, and the quick warmth of pleasure in my chest felt good, almost better than the pulse of need hardening my dick. Releasing one of her breasts, I was risking her trust, taking a chance that she’d rebrick that thick wall around her heart that seemed to have finally crumbled tonight. But if I wanted Alex—and by God I wanted ever last inch of her—then we needed to take this risk. We needed to kick the fat, ugly white elephant out of the room and never let it back in. Slowly, I inched my fingers across her ribs, still working one nipple in my hand, still getting that loud pant of delight from her the faster I worked my fingers, but my palm grazed across one scar, then another and Alex got quiet and I felt the tension in her shoulders start to tighten. “Ryan, no… I don’t…” “This is nothing,” I told her, holding her against me with my

finger stroking over one scar. “This means nothing.” “It’s ugly.” “Darlin’, there isn’t an ugly part of you. Not anywhere.” When she didn’t seem convinced and that tension only doubled, I kissed her neck, just behind her ear, but kept my thumb on that scar. “Want me to show you?” “I don’t want you to look at them.” I could kill that motherfucker a thousand times for putting that shame in her voice, for trying to take away the strong pride I’d come to love in her. “I’m gonna look at every part of you, darlin’.” I released her nipple and slipped my hand to her warm, wet pussy. “I’m gonna taste you here…” I slipped one finger inside her and smiled when a small gasp whistled past her mouth. “I’m gonna touch you here.” Her skin was like silk, all smooth and unblemished as I gripped her ass and rubbed that sweet swell on her left cheek. Still, my thumb worked on that scar, touching, grazing so she’d know that it was nothing, meant nothing between the two of us. “Ryan, fuck I want you.” “I know you do, lady.” Alex came to me easy when I turned her around and picked her up, walking her to my bed. “And I want you, Alex. All of you.” I laid her down, stripping off my jacket, my shirt and smiled when she knelt in front of me, eager, greedy hands unfastening my belt, lowering my zipper.

I liked her hands on me, her small fingers around my dick, the quiet little gasp she made when she pulled down my pants. “Ryan, oh God,” she said, helping me out of the rest of my clothes. Alex’s mouth went against my neck, her fingers still wrapped around and rubbing on my dick and I couldn’t take the feel of her, the warmth of her touch on me, not all at once, not so sudden. “Wait,” I told her, pushing her back, hand on her chin and a small wrinkle moved been her eyes when I grabbed her wrist. “Lay down.” Predictably, Alex covered her stomach but I was not going to settle for that. “I said I want all of you, lady. I meant all of you,” I told her, hoping my voice promised everything I wanted to do to her, and it must have, because and she listened, hesitantly inching backward until she was on my pillow, looking like a fucking goddess with her bronze skin and black hair on top of those blue sheets. But she still kept her hands over her stomach, her long fingernails just inches from that silk black thong she wore. I hovered above her, my arms braced to either side of her, my bare chest snaking against her beautiful, full breasts, our nipples touching, rubbing and still she kept her hands over her stomach. I thought she’d stop me when I kissed down her chest, when I inched my tongue over her nipples, across her ribs, nudging her arms from her stomach. But she didn’t curl away from me or complain when I pushed her hands away. Alex moved her fingers through my hair,

seeming to need something to do with herself as I returned my mouth to that flat stomach. There were three scars on each side of her navel. The marks were deep and had healed over the weeks, but they were never going to disappear. They were straight, made with something sharp, something piercing, and I had to close my eyes and suppress a shudder at the thought of what that motherfucker had done to her. But instead of reacting, or cursing, or asking questions I had no business asking, I kissed each one. “This,” I said against the first scar, “is gone now.” Above me, I heard Alex’s low moan, a sound that muffled between her wild pants and the cries she tried to pretend she wasn’t making. I continued kissing the others, using my tongue against the rough textured skin to show her I didn’t see any scars. I only saw Alex. My Alex. “These are all gone now.” And when her tears came loud and in the open, I looked at her and my heart twisted worse than the bullet in my shoulder back in Fallujah. I met her on my pillow, kissing her chin, her cheeks and wiping her face dry. “Last time, darlin’, okay?” “For what?” “That prick doesn’t get any more of your tears.” There was runny make up on her face, clotted under her eyes and a constant sniffle moving in her nose. She still looked like a

fucking goddess. “Last time. Promise me.” Alex grabbed my wrist, squeezing it once. “Yeah, okay, Ryan. I promise.” “Good.” I stole a peck and got to my knees, stilling my hands on her hips. “Okay, get ready.” “For what?” she said, sniffling when I pulled her hips off the mattress. “I’m about to make you scream.” The Alex I knew broke through all those tears just then and a slow, sexy smile curled across her mouth. That grin made me heart beat double time. “Let’s see what you got, Boy Scout.” I ignored the cheap shot, loving that I could make her laugh, and loving how the laughter died quickly, replaced by moans and grunts and screams; and that the screams weren’t of fear, but of passion, of climax, of release. They weren’t only hers. Alex touched me like she meant it and I felt every deep rake of her nails, the soft, hot heat of her pussy wrapped around me, the damp breath of her voice urging me on when I took her harder and harder. We fit like a lyric and rhyme. We fit like song and dance and I knew, when I was buried deep inside her, when I thought my dick would explode—and when it did—when I thought I couldn’t possibly want another taste, another touch, another deep thrust of her hips as she rode me, that no one would ever fit me better than

Alex Black. “Move your hips, darlin’, yes… yeah, just like that,” I told her, somewhere around three hours later, my body exhausted, but Little Brain being greedy, eager for more of this young, taut body. Alex moved on top of me, her inner muscles gripping me so tight I had to fist the sheet at my side to keep from coming right on the spot. “God, Ryan, fuck you’re so damn big,” she said, arching back so that her perfect tits were right in front of my mouth and her back almost made a semi-circle. “Ah, I could fuck you all night, baby.” And I laughed, because she’d never called me that, bringing her focus away from the pending orgasm. “What?” I sat up, making her shudder when I surged deeper and kissed her between those two flawless breasts. “You have been fucking me all night.” I helped her along, guiding her hips, watching her features—that soft, bright blush on her cheeks and the wide roll of her eyes as she closed them. “And you’ve never called me baby before.” “I will only call you that if you keep… keep…” And I took over, moving her small body up and down, eliciting the loudest moan and the wettest orgasm yet from her. Alex soared around me, like the fucking wind, light and indulgent and so damn open that I thought my chest would split apart just from the sight of

her. Her skin shimmered with sweat, that tangle of thick hair slapping against my face as I continued to take her, as I held her close, fingers digging into her ass, wanting her closer, wanting to bury myself completely inside her as I came. We fell back together against my pillow, still tangled together, weak pants mixing like some sort of chant and I felt her heartbeat against my chest and rubbed my fingers against her back as we tried to come down. “My limbs are like damn spaghetti noodles right now.” Her voice was muffled against my neck and she didn’t move or pull away from me when I only grunted, contended, in response. But then Alex sat up and my softening dick paid attention to the feel of those tight muscle and the slick sensation of it still nestled inside her. “We should never stop doing that, Ryan. Ever.” “Sounds like a plan, but you gotta let me rest. I’m an old man.” “You’re only six years older than me.” “True, but darlin’ there’s a big damn difference between twenty-four and thirty.” I rested my hands on her hips, hoping my weak smile would ease any fear she might have about my ability to perform. “The spirit is always willing.” “But the flesh is weak?” “The flesh is fine, just not twenty-four year old fine.” She nodded, seeming to think of something as she watched me.

Then, out of absolutely nowhere, she frowned. “You’re not gonna wanna make me get married and shoot out a bunch of little Ryans, are you?” “What?” I couldn’t help laughing, the idea had never crossed my mind. “Don’t laugh, asshole. I’m serious. You Boy Scout types like that kind of stuff. It’s how you’re all wired. Wife, kids, white picket fence.” I scrubbed my face, trying not to laugh. “I hadn’t really thought about it.” “Never?” “Not really.” I smoothed the small wrinkle between her eyes and Alex stopped frowning. “What about you? Shit, I can’t believe we’re even talking about this.” I had a semi and this beautiful crazy woman was doing her level best to make me lose even that. “I don’t do picket fences, Ryan. I don’t…” She tried pulling away from me, but I settled my grip on her hips to let her feel me hardening inside her. That cut off her list of Don’ts before they started and Alex melted against me, looping her around my neck. “You don’t fight fair.” “That wasn’t a fight. That was you looking for an excuse to run, right?” The bottom lid of her left eye twitched and I exhaled, shaking

my head at whatever war was battling in that crazy head of hers. “So, you just want…” she asked. “I want this. Just you and me. I’m not thinking about a week from now or a year or when I’m an old damn man.” I held her face, wanting her to stop looking around me. “I want you, Alex. All the other shit is lagniappe.” “Why?” she asked, as if she genuinely had no idea why I wanted to be with her. “Because, you little brat, I love you.” I waited for her to get scared. I waited for her to make another stupid excuse or try to sucker punch me again and I even released her face, giving her an out if she needed it, but Alex didn’t move. In fact, the only thing she did was work a slow grin across her face. “You… you do?” I leaned back, sighing over the inevitable truth. “Yeah, darlin’, I really do.” “Well, how do you know?” “How do you not?” Alex shrugged, absently rubbing her fingernails against the sparse hair on my chest. “I’ve only ever loved Stevie. Maybe Isiah a long time ago.” I nodded, not wanting to push her into something she wasn’t sure of, but then her eyes widened and the grin turned into a full blown smile.

“What?” “I just realized something.” I tilted my head, waiting for her to finish then laughed when she bit her lip. “I didn’t want Timber to hurt you and I hated seeing you with that trampy redhead and, well, Evie…” “She’s just a friend.” “I know that now, but then, tonight, when I heard that gunshot and I couldn’t find you, shit, Ryan I haven’t been that scared since I found out about Stevie. I thought… well, I thought maybe I was having a heart attack.” “Because you thought I got shot?” She nodded and I pulled her against my chest, not caring about my hard-on. “Well I’m glad you didn’t have a heart attack.” “I’m glad you didn’t get shot.” My back aching, I turned to my side, resting her against me. I instantly missed the feel of being inside her. Alex watched me as I left the bed and threw out the condom, but stopped me before I left the room. “Hey, Ryan?” I lifted my chin, smiling at her. “I… I don’t know if I can say it.” I climbed back into bed, too eager to be next to her for anything else. I kissed her. “I don’t need to hear it, darlin’.” We settled down, the room quiet against and the smell of sex and fading perfume permeated around the room. Alex curled against me, her lithe limbs resting perfectly against my thigh and hip.

And just as I began to doze and her breath evened out, Alex cleared her throat. “I can’t say it.” She took a breath, as though making a decision. “But I damn sure mean it.” And I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

“Sorry, Frankie, not this time.” The big man stared at me hard, but I could only make out the sharp steel in his hazel eyes glaring at me under the brim of the black newsboy cap he wore. He didn’t believe me. Good. That’s exactly what I wanted. “Bullshit,” he said, holding a domino between his fingers like it was a weapon he intended on using. “No way you got anything.” I loved when people doubted me. How many times had I used

the doe-eye act to work a big hustle when a tourist or, hell, even a seasoned player thought their hand was set or that the rack of dominoes edged the points higher in their direction? Frankie had the same doubting grin on his face, like I was just a gullible kid he’d easily make a few bills off of. Silly, Marine. I slid my last domino with three small white dots against his two and Frankie dropped the piece in his hand. “Son of a bitch!” “And that’s me with the bones, Frankie.” He kept staring at the line of dominos on the table and I can almost see him counting each dot, then referring back to our score count on the notebook at his right. “What? You think I cheated.” When he only shrugged in answer, still focused on recounting the scribbles in the paper, I flung a domino at him and pinged the asshat on the neck. “Watch it, woman,” he said, rubbing the red mark. “My God, you such a sore loser.” I tried to contain my laughter when Frankie started shoveling dominos back into the box, grumbling curses under his breath. Let him sulk. It’d serve him right. The jackass had gotten a broken rib from his tussle with Cosmo at the auction and when their client called in for a job, invalid Frankie had been landed with me. Something I wasn’t all that happy about, until the man started smack talking about babysitting Ryan’s “new

piece.” With that, it had escalated into a challenge. He slammed the box closed and I snorted out a laugh, spotting the forming black bruise under his left eye. For a calm, cool Marine, and the real boss of their security business, Frankie had a short fuse. I left the man alone with his wounded pride, taking my beer to the front window of the office to look out onto the slow moving traffic. It was nearing the end of November and the city had already been decorated with wreaths around each light pole and covering the palms that lined Canal Street. I’d gone with Ryan earlier in the day to check for Minion at my place and grab more clothes and spotted the bright red bows on the lamps that guarded Jackson’s statue. I’d never cared much about Christmas or doing more than making sure I had a dry, warm place to crash every year. But this time, the holiday would be different. I wouldn’t be alone. I let myself smile over the thought, for the first time in my life not analyzing what that would mean a year from now or why someone like Ryan wanted me at all. “Biloxi is only a couple of hours away,” I heard Frank say as he walked up behind me. “They’ll be fine.” I wasn’t trying to convince the man of anything. He knew his brothers. He knew Ryan. He didn’t need me feeding him bullshit positivity about the gig they were working. But

the target, that had me worried. “Ryan said this Malcolm guy is hardcore.” In my peripheral, I saw Frank nod, his eyes narrowed as he looked out the window watching a cab nearly run into the back of a white BMW. “He took Ryan down easy last time.” I didn’t need to hear that shit and I didn’t appreciate the tone Frank used, like he was purposefully trying to worry me. The beer was half empty after I finished guzzling and I knew Frank watched me. I could feel his gaze, and glanced at the frown like the more I drank, the more uneasy he became. “Listen…” he started, but I didn’t want to hear any excuses from him. “You got a TV in this place? Some movies or something?” That wounded male pride seemed to recover and the biting tone and constant glare on the man’s face eased as I moved back to the sofa, tapping my fingers on the glass. Frank limped away from the window, hands in his black slacks. “I’m an asshole.” I waved my hand, like he wasn’t giving me brand new information and Frank exhaled, slipping on the coffee table in front of me with his arms on his thighs. “I hate that they think I’m not ready for field work.” “Are you?” I didn’t mean it to sound like accusation, and I caught the brief snarl on Frank’s face, realizing that he thought that’s exactly what my question was.

“I’m ready. I’ve been ready.” He rubbed the back of his neck like the muscles there were stiff. “I got sloppy the other night and let that big goon get one good shot in and then this…” he pointed to the bruise Ryan had given him just a few hours before, “well, I deserved that shit.” “I won’t disagree with you.” Frank stared at me, nodding, eyes in a squint like he was trying to read me, see how far he could push before I got worked up. That wasn’t a good idea. I was restless being there without Ryan. We’d spent a solid week locked up in his place, doing things to each other that were very, very immoral, possibly illegal and only had come up for air when Sammy called that morning to tell Ryan their client, Davidson, whoever the hell that was, had learned about a blackmail attempt against some Congressman. Ryan wasn’t going to take the gig, thinking that he needed to stay in the city to watch me, but them Sammy reminded him the target was Malcolm and Davidson had eyes on where he was staying. With a woman matching Dot’s description. “The guy who tried taking you out when you asked about Dot?” I’d asked him. And just the look on Ryan’s face told me all I needed to know. He had to find this guy. There was no way I’d ask him to stay behind. He hadn’t answered and I didn’t need him to. That look—

frustrated frown that made him look older than his thirty years— was all the confirmation I’d needed. “Well, then. Go. I’ll be alright here on my own.” And then Ryan took me to bed, stripped me of his large rugby tee and began to remind me why I hadn’t wanted to leave his apartment all week. “Look,” Frank said, taking me from my thoughts, “I was pissed that I had to stay behind. I was pissed that asshole took a cheap shot at the cemetery and I was pissed…” “That I kicked your ass three times at dominos?” I smiled when Frank flipped me off, but then he laughed, shaking his head and some of his annoyance left him. He looked a lot younger when he laughed. “I shouldn’t have said that about you. I got no idea what you and Ryan are…” “No, you don’t,” I said, voice a little sharp so he’d know not to ask for details. Frank nodded, as if to say “fair enough” and then smiled at me. It was a nice smile, on a nice face. None of Ryan’s friends were unattractive, none of course could hold a candle to Ryan, but they all had this pretty boy, rough neck vibe working for them. Frank, though, there was something in those hazel eyes, something that made me feel sorry for him. I knew he’d been injured while he was deployed, but Ryan had never shared the details and it wasn’t

my business or my place to ask. Still, I’d seen the same looks in a dozen faces, most kids lost and alone on the streets, runaways or old homeless men—all had seen things they shouldn’t have, all were tortured by whatever horror they’d witnessed. Frank had that same look. He was attractive, he looked strong and fit, but those eyes were haunted. “You know, I’ve known Ryan a long time.” Frank’s voice followed me as I went to the kitchenette and grabbed a beer, nodded toward him and he moved his chin, confirming that he wanted one too. I popped both caps off and handed him one before I sat back down. “Is this the part where you tell me about all the cheap sluts he’s dated?” He laughed, clinking his bottle to mine before he drank. “No. Not Ryan’s style.” Frank shrugged, grinning about something I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know about before he continued. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, Ryan isn’t a prude, and let’s just say that girls love a man in uniform. He had his share. But as far as I know he’s only dated a couple of girls, all local from back in Cavanagh and only one of them for more than six months.” “Oh and what did Miss More Than Six Months have going for her?” “Her parents were friends with Ryan’s mom.” Frank shook his head and I caught the small frown he tried to hide behind his bottle.

“He was going through that ‘what would my mom think of this’ bullshit at the time. He was doing all the things he thought would make her happy, including dating that boring as dishwater Melody O’Keefe. God.” Frank took another sip of his beer, this one longer and I lifted my eyebrows up, wondering what he was thinking about, curious if I really wanted to know. “So you weren’t a fan?” “I only met her once when Ryan came in a couple of years ago with her for Mardi Gras.” Frank rearranged his cap and I caught a small glimpse of thick, curly dark hair before he pulled the cap back down over his forehead. “She was a big prude and complained about everything—there were too many people on the streets, the Hurricanes were too strong, the kicker of all, she called my mom old fashion for not letting her and Ryan share a room at my folks’ place.” “Wow. And Ryan didn’t do anything?” Frank looked at me like I was crazy, eyebrows shooting up. “Of course he did. No one insults my mom, not even in front of Ryan.” Again, Frank shrugged. “He put her on a plane and told her he didn’t wanna see her anymore and then that night we took him to…” Frank hurried for another sip as though he didn’t want Ryan in trouble. As though anything he could tell me about the man would shock me of all people.

“You don’t have to hide shit, Frankie. I’ve lived like a lowlife since I was a kid. I’m sure Ryan fucking some random girl to get over his prudish girlfriend is nothing compared to the shit I’ve done.” When I thought he might apologize I took his half empty beer and brought it to the sink. “You want another one?” “No. But I’m hungry. You eat pizza?” “I’ll call Angeli’s.”

“That was you? Are you shitting me?” “Girl Scout’s honor.” I decided I liked Frank Auciello. He was a nice man, a little jaded, maybe with a few hard edges, but he’d kept me in stitches while we waited for the pizza. “You were not a Girl Scout.” I liked his laugh, I liked how it was deep and rich and warm all at the same time and I wondered, for at least the fourth time that night, why someone hadn’t snagged him up. “Nah, I can’t back that shit up, but yeah, that was me on the float with the whole offensive line after the Super Bowl win.” “I remember that shit. God, I think Sammy has pictures of you flashing the crowd.” His laughter got louder and I knew it was the

blush I felt on my cheeks that had him cackling like a fool. We’d drunk too many beers and I’d learn some of the juiciest details about my Boy Scout that I was sure would require Frank getting his ass kicked when Ryan came back home. “Don’t tell Ryan that,” I asked Frank, smiling as I imagined his reaction. He’d barely been okay with Frank staying with me and he was the good brother, according to Ryan. “Never,” Frank said, smiling a little too wide and leaning on the table. “Man, how much did we drink?” “Almost a case between us.” I looked to the door willing the delivery guy to show up. He was late. “Ryan would be pissed if he knew we didn’t stay in fighting shape.” When I looked back at Frank, the smile had left his face. “Yeah, well, I can handle myself.” I had no idea what I’d said to make him defensive. Maybe he didn’t need reminders that he wasn’t whole, but I’d honestly not meant that at all. “I’m gonna get some water.” I joined him in the kitchen. “I piss you off?” “Nope.” When I just cocked my eyebrow at him the man sighed, leaning his hip against the counter. “Shit, that look right there is why you have Ryan panting after you.” “I have a look?” “Sweetheart, you have them all.” He scrubbed his face. “I’m

buzzed as hell and shouldn’t be.” He looked down at me a little too long, gaze stuck on my mouth, but then stepped back, shaking his head. “Don’t worry. I don’t do that.” “What?” I asked, stifling my laugh. Frank was a big, badass Marine and he acted like me looking at him was like detonating a bomb. He was way more buzzed than me. “Hit on my boy’s woman.” “Is that what I am?” “Be glad you are. Ryan’s a good man. He’ll treat you right. You’ll be good for him.” “You think so?” I said, laughing. “With my record?” Frank slid against the counter in the kitchenette, curling his arms over his chest and I caught the tattoo snaking out behind his rolled up sleeve. “He knows how to read people. It’s one of his gifts and if he wants you, then no damn record or past bullshit makes a difference anymore.” He shrugged, a flippant apology for giving me unwarranted advice. “Just, you know, be straight up with him, honest, and you’ll make it.” I wasn’t sure what had brought on Frank’s nervousness. He held a lot of tension in his shoulders and those shoulders were pretty damn wide. But for a guy that had seen combat, who had a lot of ghosts haunting him, he acted as though I was the scariest thing he’d been around. Then it hit me: the beer, the mild flirting, me being

friendly and him being buzzed—one guess that Frank hadn’t been with anybody in a long time. But no, that didn’t seem right. Not with that mug. Me being the nosy bitch I was, I tilted my head sliding a little closer to him. “What about you Frank?” “Me?” I nodded, not paying attention to how he stood up straighter when I placed my beer next to him on the counter. “No Straight Up Honest women on the horizon for you?” When he frowned, staring down at me like I was crazy, I brushed my face, wondering if I had something on it. “What?” “You’re serious, aren’t you?” The poor guy had real surprise on his face—eyebrows up and his pretty hazel eyes wide. “Why the hell wouldn’t I be?” Frank taped his prosthetic leg against the cabinet, making a clinging sound. “Not many women lining up to ride the one-legged pony.” He didn’t sound bitter, just plain defeated and I wondered what had happened to him that warranted that attitude. It wasn’t typical for alphas to be self-deprecating, but hell, what did I know about it? I didn’t know too many disabled Vets personally. Maybe this was a phase like adjusting to civilian life. Maybe it took a while to get back to who you were before combat. “Wow. You really believe that, don’t you?” Frank stood stone still when I faced him, getting right in his space. Then, when I took

his face in my hands, the big man flopped down on the stool next to the counter like my single touch had crippled him. I had no intention of seducing him, only one guy did it for me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t show Frank what a catch he was. “These eyes are amazing,” I said, moving his chin up. “Haunted. You’ve seen shit most people don’t have nightmares about and you still smile, still laugh. Women love that shit.” He frowned, tried batting my hands away, but I held firm, hoping he knew with my smile and the softness I forced in my voice that I wasn’t messing with him. I touched his shoulders, wide and broad, let my fingers dance over each dip and ridge. “This body isn’t perfect, it might be battered and bruised, but this is a man’s body; one that you sacrificed to protect each and every one of us.” Frank had no real emotion on his face. He stared blankly at me, like he’d never seen anything like me in his life and Frank was a man that had seen a lot of shit. Ignoring that stunned silence, I took his hand, ran my fingers over the calluses. “Every woman wants a man that can protect her. One that would do anything to keep her safe. Frank, my friend, that’s you.” I took his face in my hands again, hoping he could see what I did in him. “What woman wouldn’t want you, sugar?” The vibration of his groan pushed against my lips when I kissed

his cheek and when I pulled away from him, saw that Frank seemed able to only blink at me, I offered him a smile and squeezed his shoulder, hoping I hadn’t completely stunned him. Finally, he exhaled like he’d been holding his breath the whole time I spoke. “Okay, I officially hate Neil Ryan and changed my mind. I totally want to steal his woman.” There was a knock on the door and I looked toward it, went for the cash Frank had laid out on the table before he grabbed my hand to stop me. I looked back at him. “Alex Black, you… you…” “You’re welcome,” I told him, understanding that there was a thank you lost somewhere in his smile. “Now, let me get that pizza. I’m starving.” The delivery guy barely glanced at me when I let him over the threshold and I fumbled with the money, two tens that were old and crumpled. Just then, a gust of wind came through the door and I fisted the cash, waving the delivery guy inside as I fought with the strong wind to close the door. As the door clicked shut I heard Frank coming in the room behind me, and then him calling out, followed by a sharp, staticky buzz and a sharp thunking sound. Turning sharply, I was just in time to see Frank’s stiff body collapse into a still lump onto the floor. The delivery guy stood over him, a small, black Taser in his hand. “What the hell are you doing?” I shouted, ready to pounce,

but the fucker turned quick, slamming another cartridge home before he aimed the Taser at me. “Good girl,” he told me before that electric buzz sounded again and I saw his face, those same cold gray eyes, the distinguished, sharp angles of his jaw. “You son of a…” and then the world went dark.

Malcolm Winters was a slick son of a bitch. That had been my first thought when we went through his back door a full hour before we’d planned and still hadn’t managed to catch that asshole. His place—a small cottage just across the highway from the Gulf— hadn’t been wiped, but the man had vanished. There’d still been a warm mug of coffee on his small kitchen table and a half smoked cigarette smoldering in an ashtray. But the man was gone. For the third time Alex’s cell went straight to voicemail and I

frowned at the instant click of her recorded message, trying to decide if I was being paranoid that she wasn’t answering. Frank hadn’t wanted to stay behind and had been a bastard about the whole idea of watching over Alex, but I trusted him. He’d take care of her. Still, something in my gut told me that the mission, the convenient location of the mark and how easily Davidson handed it over, just felt too easy. I tried her number again, rolling my eyes when her recorded refrain of “I’m not answering, assholes” picked up. “Sammy, you get Frank?” I asked my best friend. He wasn’t listening, laughed at something Dean was saying. “Hey, dickwad!” I shouted, not caring that Sammy and Dean jerked their attention to me like I’d lost my damn mind. “You hear from Frank?” “Oh, shit, no. I didn’t check in.” I wanted to pop him upside the head. That was protocol as soon as we left a mission. You call home base and give Frank a report, but Sammy hadn’t really taken this business seriously and Dean was more concerned about his stomach and me, well, I’d been trying to reach my girl. God, we were a pathetic security team. Nox was the only one who paid attention to protocol and we had him driving the damn van. That clench of worry in my gut burned hard, fell like a stone when Sammy frowned at his phone, getting no answer from his brother on the other line. It was that look, the one that told me my

best friend wasn’t joking, was genuinely worried that sharpened the pain in my stomach and had it working its way up my chest. One look to me and then Sammy shouted over the seat to Nox. “Hey man, did Frank check in for a report before we went inside?” “No. Last I heard from him was just before we hit Biloxi.” Nox shifted his gaze to the center console and the clock blinking green numbers. “I thought you guys had talked to him or I wouldn’t have left the beach.” He turned around, glaring at all three of us. “You didn’t get the go ahead to leave the target’s place?” I closed my eyes, knowing the second Nox’s face went hard and the muscles around his mouth twitched that we’d been set up. Somebody, somewhere had done this shit to get us out of the city. To get to Alex. But Davidson? No, it wasn’t him. He had no connections to me or Alex and except for the almost pick pocketing at the Marriott he’d never laid eyes on her. “Nox, put your foot down, I don’t care what you have to do. Get us back in the city yesterday.” Sammy and Dean both scrambled with their phones, each barking orders to the small team we’d left back in New Orleans. They’d been working a private party on the North Shore and it should have ended more than an hour before. “I don’t care if you just got off. I’m telling you to get back on the clock,” Sammy screamed into his phone. He wouldn’t look at

me and I got why. We’d fucked up. Epically. And now Alex and Frank were in trouble. As a last ditch effort I called the office, hoping like a kid that Frank would pick up, that someone would, but line just kept ringing and with each whirl of that tone, my heart beat faster and that burn in my gut felt like it might suffocate me. Shit.

Frank looked ready to kill the kid dressing his wound. That was no surprise, neither was the team who congregated around the office when we finally made it back. I didn’t stop to update anyone on the mission or let the two large rough necks standing at Frank’s side stop me when they saw me charging forward. I needed to know what happened, everything, in detail and he was going to tell me whether he was hurt or not. “Where is she?” I asked Frank, glaring once at his men when they frowned at me like they wanted me to back off him. These assholes were my employees too. “I’m trying to have a conversation. You wanna keep your job, step aside,” I told them. Both were Frank’s guys, men he’d served with who he’d talked

into working on our teams. That was still a sticking point with our business; most of the teams were segregated into the hires Sammy, Frank, Dean and I did individually. There were a lot of men working for us, but we weren’t all a team yet. Just one more kink we had to work out if we wanted the business to thrive. “Well?” I asked Frank. I had to cross my arms to stop myself from jerking his collar. He took too long to look up at me. “Ryan, man, I’m sorry.” He pushed away the kid trying to dress his wound. “Leave it for now.” Then Frank exhaled, like he was readying himself for some sort of punishment before he stood to face me. “We drank too much beer. My awareness was off and Alex, shit…” He rubbed the back of his neck and I wasn’t sure what to make of the way his cheeks flushed. Finally, Frank looked at me, right in the eyes. “She’s… we decided to order a pizza. It was the delivery guy, when she went to get the door to let him in… he just came at us.” “You let her answer the door.” It wasn’t a question, but Frank nodded anyway and a small ache started to form in my jaw when I clenched it. I turned, and my eyes focused on the old landline sitting on the desk, a relic that still had its uses. I picked it up and hurled it across the room, tearing its cord out of the wall and splitting the damn phone in two. Frank just squinted as he looked at the broken thing

on the floor, then back at me. “He got in before I could even think. Fucker tased me and I went down.” “You passed out from a Taser?” Sammy asked his brother, stopping next to me as he approached. “I must have landed on the corner of table or something.” Frank rubbed the back of his head and when he lowered his hand, his fingers were tinted pink. “This is why we aren’t letting you do field work,” Dean said, coming up behind Sammy. Of all of us Dean was the most recent from the service. He’d seen action last and I tried not to think about the butt-hurt look on Frank’s face or how that hurt quickly transformed to fury as he glared at his brother. “You’re sloppy. Shit, you’re worse than Ryan was when he first came back to the city.” Frank’s jaw worked, but he didn’t respond. Frank didn’t need to explain. He was frustrated, worn out and so mad at himself, that he simply turned away from us and flopped back on the sofa with his hands covering his face. Sammy and Dean got called back by the team, talking about the cameras outside of the office and the ones that covered the street but I stayed put, watching Frank as he sat in front of me stewing. It wouldn’t do to let loose on him. It wouldn’t do to let my

head fill with too many possibilities. The fear inside choked me. If I let it rise, it would suffocate me. I could release it, scramble around the office screaming at everyone who glanced at me. I could have bashed Frank’s face in for being sloppy, for not protecting Alex. But really, what the fuck good would that do? I needed to think, to plan, to remember that it was my skill that would get her back to me. Any other thought overtaking that one and I could lose Alex. That shit would not happen. “You get a look at him?” I asked, taking the spot to Frank’s left on the sofa. The second I asked the question, he jerked his hands away from his face, glaring. “You will not believe this shit.” “So it is him?” Frank let his mouth hang open, but then righted himself, like he knew I’d put the pieces together quickly. “How’d you know?” “Malcolm got a head’s up. He had to have been the one to give that prick a tip off.” That burn in my gut had not settled, had only intensified and I felt like my leg was going to bounce off my body, the way I moved it, the pent-up anxiety that worked through me. I closed my eyes, praying that Alex was okay. I knew she could handle herself, but I’d seen the sick shit that fucker had left in her apartment. God knew what he was capable of.

“Because he wanted Alex.” “Yeah, apparently,” I told Frank, coming off the sofa because I couldn’t keep still. “I have no idea why or how he even knows her, but clearly, yeah. He wants her.” “She’s a hard woman not to want, Ryan.” I wondered where that had come from. Something must have happened recently to have Frank actually acknowledge Alex, let alone notice her like that. But now was not the time to dwell on Frank’s budding appreciation of my girl. “I know that.” I leaned beside him, rubbing the back of my neck. “You know where he stays?” “Yeah. It’s in the file. I’ll get it. That asshole isn’t a criminal. He’s a psycho. He won’t have his bases covered, but I think we should send a few teams in. One to his place out in Mandeville and another to his office. He also owns a warehouse out in Gretna. We’ll send some men out there too.” “Good. Get that file and I’ll let Sammy and Dean know.” I turn on my heel, ready to bust through the door, but Frank stopped me, calling after me before I could leave. “I am so sorry, man. I got sloppy.” Dean was right, but Frank didn’t deserve my anger. Not really. The shit he’d been through? The struggle he’d had just to get to some sense of normalcy was something that took strength. He

should be allowed mistakes, probably more than any of us. I’d come to New Orleans all piss and vinegar, looking for my mother’s best friend, thinking that flashing her picture around would open a few doors. I’d been sloppy too and I’d nearly gotten taken out because of it. “I’ve been there, man. I understand.” I slapped Frank’s chest, hoping my smile, that easy glint in my eyes told him we were cool. “Just get ready for some work. Once we get Alex back and have this asshole handled, I’m taking this shit out on your sloppy ass.”

There was a crackle in the music. It was something old, something with the gravel of history and that deep haunting tone that only timeworn music gives off. It was the song that woke me. Someone’s husband had been murdered, I guessed from the lyrics, but his body had never been found. Just the head, caught in the spokes of a wheel. I didn’t recognize the song at first, but the singer had to be Leadbelly, an old blues man from the forties that Wanda only played when she was broke and wanted sympathy from her kids.

The song repeated, a loop that I couldn’t ignore. When the chorus came again, I knew the song: “In the Pines,” a tune that haunted, had given me nightmares as a kid, hiding under a flat pillow with a thin, threadbare blanket pulled up to my chin. But, now, lying on a bed with my ankles and wrists tied by blue nylon rope, there was no pillow or blanket to hide me. I blinked against the light shining in my face. My stalker, that bastard who’d harassed and invaded my life for months, moved the lamp toward my face and kept it there. “Good girl.” I hated the soft cooing in his voice, like the endearment meant something to him, like I meant something to him. And when the creep sat next to me on the mattress, arm immediately stretching over my waist so he could hold himself close to me, I turned my head, not wanting to see his face or the way I blanched, not yet ready to give anything away. I needed to think, plan, figure a way out of this shithole I’d landed in. “Such a pretty girl,” he said and I jerked as his cold fingers reached up to move my chin so I would be forced to look at him. “Same eyes, same pretty mouth.” As who? I had no idea. I hadn’t seen this asshole since I was a kid and he’d come to tell me I’d be moved to New Orleans. And yet… and yet… had I possibly seen him somewhere else? There was the faintest echo of familiarity. But then, nothing. “The nose, it’s not like hers, is it?”

“I… I don’t know who you mean.” My voice was dry, and it felt like I’d been chewing on sandpaper. But as I cleared my throat, trying to bring some moisture into my mouth, the freak sitting next to me became unreasonably irritated, leaning over me with his eyes tight and his teeth gritted. “Forgot her, did you? That sweet, pretty girl? Forgot how hard she worked for you? What she did to protect you? Forgot all about her?” He couldn’t possibly mean… no. How would he know her? But it could only be my sister. No one but Stevie had protected me. Not even Mrs. Timmons with her Eggo waffles in the morning and store bought brownies after dinner would have protected me. That old woman had been sweet, but the bottom line was that Stevie and I helped her pay her bills. That’s why we were welcomed into her home. He came closer and the grip of his cold fingers tightened, but I would not cry out or wince. He wouldn’t get that from me. No matter what he did to me, I wouldn’t let him see that I was scared or hurting or in a rage. “Stevie, the sweet,” he said, closing his eyes as he spoke my sister’s name. He looked disheveled, tired and there was a fading scratch on his cheek and along his chin that I hadn’t seen the night he attacked me. He caught me staring and frowned. “That cat was a menace.” And under his breath I heard

him mutter, “And too damn quick,” and a small sense of relief crested in my heart at the idea that Minion had escaped him. God, I hoped I would too. The asshole tightened his hold on my face, smiling. “Sweet Stevie. Too sweet. Too weak and I told her. I told her so many times, not to tell.” “What… what did she tell?” My stomach turned and I could taste the thick hint of bile working up the back of my throat. I knew what he’d say. Just that scared, lost look in this bastard’s eyes told me what he’d done to my sister. “She took those pictures.” He laid next to me, fingers still on my face, eyes going wide like he was lost somewhere in memory. “She had them all and then she told and we had to make her stop telling.” He couldn’t see my face and I closed my eyes, trying to reign in my fury, trying not to pull on those ropes so tightly that I’d shake the bed. This asshole wasn’t big, but he was bigger than me and as he adjusted, laid closer, the weight of his body sank onto my chest and I had to take short breaths to keep air in my lungs. “I did this to her… after… to… to… make sure all the air went out.” Stevie didn’t speak to me then, not like she had the night he’d chased me. I couldn’t hear her telling me what to do. Behind my closed lids, I could only see the picture that this asshole painted. He spoke of her death like it was beautiful, like his fingers around her neck went

there with love, not contempt. “Stevie with those flushed cheeks, that sweet, sweet skin.” He climbed fully on top of me, both of us prone, leg to leg, chest to chest, and my heart raced, the fear mobilizing when he wrapped his fingers around my neck. “And when I squeezed, tighter and pressed her down,” he leaned all his weight on my chest, “all that color on her skin went white. Pale.” “You… you killed my sister,” I choked out. The words were forced, laced with an accusation that had him loosening his hold on my neck and leaning off my body. He didn’t seem to like that word or the simple description I’d used for what he’d done to Stevie. The man frowned, and the sharp features of his angular face softened as he stared down at me. “She kept talking. We couldn’t have that.” “And if… if I don’t talk?” I held his gaze, hoping that the shine of my tears would not distract him, would make me seem excited, not scared. “Will you still kill me?” He stared at me for a long time, inclined on my body, his finger rubbing lazily against my collarbone, just above my heart. I guessed he wanted to feel my heartbeat, maybe he was marking the differences from my hard racing beat to Stevie’s and how it must have slowed before stopping completely. Whatever he was thinking, he kept to himself and as he watched me, gaze flicking over my cheeks to stop on my lips, I said small, desperate prayers,

hoping God would give me an opening, some small advantage that I could manipulate to get away from this bastard. “She would never let me taste her.” I couldn’t help the groan, that sharp hint of vomit that roiled in my stomach. God, this asshole must have driven Stevie crazy. Following her around, asking her out and what else? Had he tried to force himself on her? Had she fought back? Is that really why she died? “No?” I said trying like hell not to pull away from him when he slid up my body. He smelled like rubbing alcohol, a sterile stench that made my eyes water, but I forced that same sweet smile on my face, the one Wanda had taught me to use whenever one of the Sweethearts got a little too handsy. “I finally took one. That night when I laid on top of her and felt the air wheeze out of her lungs.” I could feel him shift, moving his hips so that the outline of his hard dick jarred against my thigh. “She tasted like candy. Peppermints.” He frowned, lowered his eyes. “What do you taste like?” I had to do something quick. I had to make some move to unhinge him, catch him off guard. Otherwise I’d end up like my big sister with this twisted fuck sticking his tongue in my mouth as he choked the life out of me. “I… I don’t know. Nothing good, I’m sure. Haven’t brushed my teeth in a while.” The air felt tight in my lungs, cluttered by my fear, by that

whispering pull inside me that told me to fight, to do whatever I could to keep surviving. I’d taken worse scores, kissed uglier, dirtier men just to land a hustle. But none of them had taken my sister from me. I hadn’t wanted to kill any of them. Could I do it? Let him touch me? Use the advantage of his weakness for my sister to get out of this place? He continued to watch me, I guessed, deciding what he would do, if I lived or died. As he did I took in the room—low lights and small area, something like a large pantry with empty shelves and only this bed against the furthest wall. There was no flatware, no dishes or anything really I could use as a weapon, but he had tied my feet too close together, in the center of the headboard, not on each end. And my tennis shoes were easy enough to slip off. “I bet you taste sweet too,” he said, ignoring my stupid joke, chewing on the side of his cheek like he was hungry, like he wanted to take a bite from me. “I… I might.” I hated doing this. I hated pretending. With Ryan, I never pretended. I wanted him at all times, even just then, with that psycho moving closer, with his stale, hot breath getting closer and closer; what I wanted more than anything in the world was Ryan. But he would not be back from Biloxi in time and just like every other moment in my life where I had been threatened, where I had stupidly allowed myself to fall into a dangerous

situation, I would have to play my own rescuer. It’s what I did. It’s who I was. He pulled my hair back, and with his crazy eyes focused on my face he leaned forward and kissed me. I fought the repulsion, tried not to think of his too thick tongue licking against mine, and instead thought about how the kiss would distract him from how hard I had to wiggle my feet to free them from my shoes, and what I would have to do next if I was going to slip out of the bonds holding me down. He seemed to like the way I tasted, how I brushed my hips against him as I struggled to free myself and I felt his erection harden and his hands tighten in my hair, giving me the time to slide my narrow feet from the knotted rope. “I saved you,” he said, panting down on top of me as he held my face. “You were so tiny but I saw the fire, just like Stevie and I knew, one day you would be strong.” When I frowned, confused, the freak laughed. “Wanda said you would not last but I knew. I knew you had the fire.” And then it clicked together with the snap of dumb realization and I had to force myself not to scream. This was Davidson. The name had not come to me when Frank mentioned their client. He had not registered when Wanda had mentioned it infrequently over the years. But somewhere among all the bullshit I’d tried to forget, his name had come back to me, linking all the ties he had to my life. The bastard had done something

to maneuver my life. He’d been the asshole Wanda feared, the one who’d take kids like me out of safe, secure homes and tossed them into Wanda’s care so she could mold them, shape them into hustlers that would keep her bank account fat. He was the damn puppet master. “How…” I started. So many questions flooded in my mind, so many warring emotions of pain and fury and blind, blistering rage. Davidson had a small chip in his front bottom tooth. Most of the tooth was gone and when he laughed, his smile widening, I could see a cavity behind one of those perfect, straight molars. “You borrowed a light from me the last day of the trial. I knew you instantly.” It was hard not to shake or pull away from him when those cold fingers stroked my cheek. “You looked at me, cracked a joke about needing to stop smoking and then walked away. But I felt that spark between us. I knew you had grown strong enough for me.” It had been, quite literally, a 30-second conversation. So random, so innocuous that I didn’t even remember what I’d said. Until that night, I couldn’t have told you what Davidson looked like. But he had found me, after all those years, he’d found me again. “And now here you are, with me.” He leaned up running his hands along my ribs. “All for me. Not that bastard.” When I frowned, refused to say a word, Davidson pulled at my collar,

shaking me once. “You let that dirty roughneck touch you, didn’t you Stevie? Didn’t you?” “No,” I lied. “No… no one.” He waited. Watched, eyes hard focused before the grip on my shirt eased. “Mine, Stevie. All mine.” Well, shit. That’s what this was. I was the replacement. I looked like my sister, sure, and to this whack job I was her. No. I wasn’t going to play this game and when Davidson pushed up my shirt and nestled his nose against my stomach, right at the spot Ryan had kissed clean, I used his fondling as a distraction again, squeezing my hands together, wiggling them back and forth to loosen the knots. Stupid fucker. But I didn’t keep my attention on him and didn’t immediately notice that his breath no longer moistened against my skin. When I finally noticed and flicked my eyes down, away from the work I’d tried to do on the knots, I saw Davidson glaring at me, and his jaw clenching angrily. I’d been caught. “You are not a good girl,” he said, all the softness leaving his features. “No, Crazy Flakes,” I said, slipping down as far as I could on the mattress. “I never was the good sister.” And then I lifted my legs, using the momentum from the mattress to push my hips off the bed and wrestle my legs around Davidson’s neck. I squeezed,

pulled against the ropes still holding my wrists, but my thighs went tight, and I used all my strength and that ancient, raw adrenaline pumping in my veins to control the man with just my thighs and knees. He began to choke and tried to pry my legs from his neck, but a woman’s strongest muscles are in her lower body. Men may have upper body strength, but women are designed to stay lower to gravity, prepare for birth and birthing with those agile, strong muscles. Davidson couldn’t budge me away and I laughed, giddy, when he face turned red and that disgusting tongue of his bulged out of his mouth. “You’re going to untie my wrists,” I told him, getting an eager nod from him. “I’m not releasing you until you do.” And I didn’t, sliding on my back so that the man could loosen the knots and I held him like that, pathetic and panting until both hands were free and I was able to sit myself up with that crazy asshole still between my thighs. “See?” I told him when I’d gotten him onto the floor. “You weren’t wrong. I am strong. That fire is bright.” He slapped my leg twice and tried digging his fingers into my thighs before I eased up my hold. “Knew… knew you… would be…” And because he smiled, like some sick, proud father and

because my temper was primed and I wanted to do nothing more than bash the smile right off this asshole’s face, that’s exactly what I did, reaching onto the bed to grab my shoe. I whacked Davidson right in the nose three times. Blood poured out, covered my jeans, but I didn’t waste time worrying over if the creep was passed out or dead. It didn’t bother me either way and I grabbed my bloodied shoe and its mate and left that damn pantry and the bleeding psycho behind.

The house was older, right on the lake and there was a dock some two or three hundred yards away. It was secluded, except for a larger, older home on the lot next door. Both looked abandoned, as though it had once been a family parcel and everyone had left. Davidson’s place was wood framed and most of the white siding was gone or going with rows that were bare or at least threatening to fall. I climbed away from the house, down the long, gravel drive way with no intention of looking back and no idea how I’d get myself away from this place and back to Ryan. Looking up, to check if he’d followed, I noticed that the house was a Craftsman,

something that had once been fine and well maintained, but time and effort had exhausted its quaint front porch and intricate gables and round turrets. The place was completely dark, dwarfed by the large Victorian next door with a high deck and tower that rose up beyond the roofline. Past both properties was Lake Pontchartrain, calm, serene current stretching out for miles and all around the lots were trees and greenery that concealed the entrance to the gravel road out front. Seclusion, then for the crazy asshole who thought I could replace my sister. I thought about taking the boat docked below, but didn’t want to chance running out of fuel in the middle of the lake this late at night. So, like most of my life, I decided a walk down the road until I could find a store or somewhere to call Ryan would have to do. I had just made it over the hilly driveway, nearly to the entrance of the opening when the sudden click and distinct cocking of guns greeted me. “Don’t shoot!” I said, throwing my hands up as two enormous men jogged toward me with the lights on top of their guns blaring in my face. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” “Escaping,” I said, suddenly tired. I knew the Boy Scout ilk when I saw it and those two yahoos could be a print ad for head bashing security companies everywhere. They were dressed in all

black, looked like they were all amped up to play soldier, but I didn’t care about their size or the reach of their guns. I wanted to be home, safe and I wanted one of these G.I. Joes to go handcuff Davidson to a freight train. “Where’s Ryan?” Realizing who I was, they lowered their guns. “He’s on the other side of the property, miss.” The bigger of the two offered me an awkward pat on my shoulder. “Are you injured? Do you need a medic?” “No. God, no. I’m okay.” The second guy stepped back, chatted with a voice on his radio and I heard the shout and threat and the familiar grunt that Ryan generally made anytime I pissed him off. “Ma’am, Mr. Ryan will be here momentarily. He… a… says that you aren’t to move.” “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, trying to decide if it would be tacky to just fall down on the gravel while I waited. My addled brain actually debated it for a while, as if having something mundane to do was the most precious thing in the world. I’d just about confirmed that I did not care if it was tacky or not when I heard the thunder of footsteps to my right and felt my own feet being swept out from under me. I smelled that delicious, perfect scent of Ryan’s neck and felt his wide, wonderful arms around me. “Alex… shit. Oh thank God.” He squeezed me tight, like he

couldn’t stop himself and I decided right then and there that being wrapped in Ryan’s arms was the best place on earth ever. “Let me look at you,” he said, pulling only far enough away from me that would allow him to touch my face and run his free hand over my body. “Are you hurt? Did he touch you? I’ll fucking kill him.” “It’s Davidson,” I said, stopping Ryan’s incessant examination of my arms and shoulder with my fingers on his cheek. “I’m not hurt. Yes, he touched me, but I touched him back and I made that fucker bleed.” “That’s my girl,” he said, bringing me back to his chest. “We finally figured out it was him. Frank…” “Is Frank okay?” I asked, pushing back to look at Ryan’s face. Frank had looked so helpless on that office floor with his body twitching from the aftereffects of the taser and his head bleeding from where it had whacked the desk. “I was worried.” “He’ll do. He felt shitty about not protecting you.” I cocked an eyebrow at Ryan and shook my head. “You gave him shit? Because Davidson tased him? Hell, he tased me too and I might not be a Marine, but I can hold my own. That asshole was fast.” “That fucker tased you?” He said it more like a statement, something that had his jaw working and a slow, menacing grit forcing the words out. “I’ll be right back.” Then he snapped his

finger, calling over three of his men—all massive and loaded down with weapons. “Do not fucking take one eyeball off her.” “Ryan, wait.” I followed behind him, tugging on his arm. “Don’t be stupid and don’t you dare think about going in there.” “He put hands on you, Alex. No way he gets to live and that fucker sent me and my men on a wild fucking goose chase.” “And I knocked him out.” He moved again, as if he was going to ignore me and I stepped in front of him. “Don’t you dare go in there, Ryan or I swear to God…” I didn’t get to finish my threat or yell at him for the frustrated glare he gave me. Behind us there was a shout, the low whine of pain and we both looked toward the house as Sammy and Dean led a handcuffed Davidson out of the house. The man’s face was swollen and bloody and his nose was crooked with a twist right in the center bone. “Shit, Alex, what’d you hit him with?” Ryan asked as we walked toward them. “My shoe. Never mind that. Where will they take him?” I didn’t care what happened to Davidson, but I worried that he wouldn’t stop trying to contact me. Prisoners can still send letters and I knew that Davidson was well connected. “Our buddy Davidson will have some explaining to do,” Ryan said, stepping in front of me so I couldn’t see that prick. “Frank has

spoken to several interested parties that would like to know a little more about how he was able to put Wanda away so easily.” “And then there’s his boss’s involvement in a certain former governor going down for racketeering,” Sammy said. “He’s definitely interested in hearing what Davidson has to say.” Davidson’s laugh was grating, a high pitched sound that had my fingers itching to give him another smack. That bastard wouldn’t stop staring between Ryan and me and the hard look of hatred, disgust twisted his features tight. “The two of you. How ironic.” “Mind your manners,” Sammy told him, slapping the back of his head. But Davidson wouldn’t be silenced and he twisted against the handcuffs, managing to pull out of Sammy’s hold to stand right in front of us. “The stupid cop and the girl not even the state wanted and what do they have in common? What strings were pulled that had the two you moving closer and closer together? Two dead women, a sister, a poor, bitchy mama and the man who saw to it all…” But who that man was, Davidson would never say. At first, I wasn’t sure what had happened. I heard the zip of air whipping through the night. I saw the stunned silence on Davidson’s face, how he looked like he couldn’t believe someone had shut him up or how. And then the small circle of blood formed on his temple, some

of it splattering across my face, across Ryan’s and then I went down, that large, beautiful body on top of me, covering me, Ryan’s heavy, hot breath on the top of my hair and his arms curled on my head. “What happened?” I asked, not able to breathe with his heavy weight on top of me. I pushed on his shoulder, trying to nudge him, but Ryan just gripped my hand, squeezing it once. “Lie still,” he whispered, barely moving off me with his eyes narrowed, gaze catching Sammy’s as he lay on the gravel ten feet away. “Someone took him out.” Around the perimeter of the grounds I heard Dean barking orders and the static from radios as the men searched for the sniper. I didn’t move a muscle, hung on to Ryan with my fingers pulling at his shirt. From the gap between Ryan’s body and the ground I could just make out Davidson as I lay there, crumpled on the ground, eyes vacant, jaw slack. I knew I should have been horrified, but all I felt was a remnant of fear, even now, even with my assailant dead a few feet away, and a growing anger. This did not feel anything like a resolution. Sammy and Ryan moved slowly, heads nodding, directions being given until Dean jogged toward us. “He split. No sign anywhere.” And then Ryan pulled me off the ground. Both he and Sammy

frowned, looked out around the grounds, clearly pissed that someone, even a psychopath, had gone down on their watch. “Motherfucker,” I said, not caring that Sammy laughed at my curse or that Ryan looked down, frowning. “He was about to tell us everything.” Ryan shook his head. “No, darlin’, he was about to waste our time with bullshit that shouldn’t matter anymore.” He ignored my eye roll and touched my face, gaze moving down my body as he rolled to the side. “You okay?” “I’m not hit.” “But are you okay?” “I…” Was I? I know he wanted me to say that I was resilient and strong and I’d always be able to bounce back with no problems. But the man who murdered my sister, for whatever reason he had, had stalked me, touched me, tasted me. There came a small bustle behind us from the trees and Ryan stood in front of me, then I pushed him aside when I heard the croaky meow from the mangy, orange cat who sat staring at me. “Minion!” “Oh shit,” I heard Ryan mumble, but I didn’t care if he was a dog person, or if his building allowed pets. The smelly animal came in my arm easily and I nestled his head, not caring about the brambles stuck in his fur or the clumps knotted beneath it. This damn cat was a survivor. And he was strong, like I

had to be, but I wasn’t so sure how easily you can forget when the shit gets its heaviest. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Davidson’s attack, the small details he’d let slip rekindled a fire in me. It was barely a spark, but the inferno hinted behind the smoke smoldering in my chest. I wanted the truth about Stevie. I needed it. I only hoped Ryan understood that, that he wouldn’t get in my way. He came to my side, attempting to stroke Minion’s chin but the animal hissed at him, snuggled against my neck. “I’m tired, Ryan,” I told him, meaning it. “I’m just so tired.”

Alex had been in the tub for over an hour. She didn’t want me to help her. She didn’t want me touching her as she undressed. She damn well wouldn’t tell me what Davidson had done to her. My chest felt tight, like something heavy, like a fucking truck had landed on top of me and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to get it off. Useless. That would describe what I felt. How the hell are you supposed to help someone who takes all the bullshit, all the shitty circumstances and twisted situations life dumps in their lap and

buries it deep? She’d never let me get away with that bullshit, but I let her be for now as I sat on my living room floor staring at my mom’s jewelry box like it had any answers for me. I flipped open the top and wound the wheel watching the hidden compartments spring open, thinking about how much of a distraction Alex Black was. She took away my focus from the job I’d signed on to do. She kept me thinking about her skin, her mouth, her fucking laugh while I bumbled my way through cases with no concentration, zero attention. She had me thinking about the future and where I wanted us to land, here in the city or back home in Cavanagh. And we were connected, by death, by the unknowable, by the lies we’d been told and the bastards who withheld the truth like a cure-all from a dying, unworthy man. But no one made me laugh like she did. No one had ever touched me like she had, or made me feel as if my body, my mouth could work some great fucking magic. Only Alex did that. Only Alex had crawled into my chest and left behind the memory of her touch, the taste of her skin, the sound of her laughter. Still fiddling with the jewelry box, I noticed that the velvet on the left side compartment of the box was a bit loose. Frowning, I lifted the spot of fabric from the wood, squinting to see that nothing had worked the glue free, yet when I pressed it flat against the base, there was an imprint, some miniscule indentation that should not

have been there. It was shaped like a rectangle, only about two inches in length, too big to be a brooch or any other type of jewelry. I couldn’t remember all my mother’s stuff, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything that size or shape before. Still, it reminded me of something… An intriguing possibility came to me. I stood, and slipped into the dining room, to the cabinet that covered my wall board. Alex and I had filled in a few details, some facts and theories about her sister, about who’d she run across that might have gotten her pregnant and would have had motive to kill her. Flippantly, I made a note to myself about Davidson. He’d get a link and the files that Frank had on him would be added. But that wasn’t why I’d opened the board. I felt along the side and grabbed the flash drive we used to archive the information from the board. It was orange and white with a clear plastic case covering the metal USB port on one end and it was precisely the size and shape of the intention left behind in my mom’s jewelry box. I looked hard at the shape as I walked back to the living room, wondering if it was possible. Were flash drives even around back when my mom was killed? Then I picked up the box, and laid my flash drive against that faint indentation. It was a perfect match. But who would have put a flash drive behind the lining and why? I had no way of knowing. Just like everything else concerning

my mother’s case and why Dot didn’t want me selling the box, I came away with a discovery that lent itself to far more questions than answers. Behind me I heard Alex splashing in the tub. The water had to be cold by now. It seemed like she’d been in there forever, and the longer she stayed hidden under that water, the larger the tightness in my chest had grown. Damn that. She could be mad at me for intruding all she wanted. It was always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, right? So I walked to the bathroom door, listening as the water barely moved and the low, quiet sniffle that came from her nose. I opened the door before I could talk myself out of it to find Alex in the tub, huddled over her legs, arms around her knees and her right cheek resting on top of them, turned away from the door like she’d known I’d barge in and she didn’t want me seeing her crying. God, she was beautiful. That back curved and muscular, that long, impossibly black hair shielding her body from me. I wanted to take her just then. I wanted to bury myself inside of her so she didn’t remember anything but the way I feel on top of her and how often my tongue met hers. I didn’t say anything as I walked across the bathroom, hushing that ugly orange cat when it hissed at me and knelt beside the tub,

frowning when I dipped my fingers into the cold water. Alex only looked at me when I unstoppered the tub and ran the hot water. “I wasn’t done.” “I know that,” I told her, swishing the cold water toward the drain and the hot water toward her legs. “I don’t want you to freeze.” I glanced at her face, spotted the red streaks and puffy swell of her eyes before I placed the plug back in and adjusted the temperature on the faucet. She kept her gaze on my profile, looking for what I don’t know what. “You get it all out?” I didn’t look at her, not wanting to her to think I needed to monitor her expression. One small sniffle and Alex shrugged. “Most of it.” I nodded, cupping the hot water in my hands so I could pour it over her chilled legs. “Scoot forward, I’ll do your back,” I told her, needing some other reason to stay. I didn’t think she was going to give me an invite so I had to come up with my own rationale. Alex listened, inching closer to the pouring faucet as I took off my shirt to keep it from getting wet. The cat hissed again and I flicked water at its face, making it scramble out of the bathroom. Then I gathered Alex’s long, thick hair and pulled it over her shoulder before I soaped up the loofa and made circles of suds against her back. She instantly responded, closing her eyes and releasing a slow, happy moan. We went on that way for a while, me bathing her back, her

shoulders, scrubbing her hair until it was clean, and other than the few satisfied sighs she released she didn’t speak, didn’t ask why I was babying her. I didn’t think pushing her to talk about Davidson would help get her relaxed and out of that tub. When I was done, I handed her the loofa and made to get up, but Alex grabbed my arm, still silent, looking up at me with her big black eyes shining. I didn’t ask her what she wanted. I didn’t question why she tugged me closer, why she pulled me right into that tub, jeans and all. I just followed her lead and slid in behind her, pulling her against my bare chest when her tears started up again. People like Alex don’t cry. Not generally. There’s this unwritten code that they follow, the same one that tells them not to get friendly, not to love anything too much because life could be counted on to knock you on your ass and when you fall, it’s best not to have any attachments weighing you down. That code is something Alex had told me she depended on. She’d never had the luxury of loving anything because that, too, could be taken from her. So having her up against my chest, with her tears coursing hot and heavy, heavier than when she cried as I kissed her scars, was something new, something I knew that felt odd and foreign to her. I let her cry, jeans sticking to me like a second skin and that beautiful, naked woman grabbing tight to me. “Ryan,” she finally said, minutes later with her voice sounding

clogged and thick. “Yeah, baby?” I loved her snuggling against me, clinging. For once in my life I didn’t mind someone hanging on to me. “Thank you for coming to get me.” I rubbed her back, pulling her wet hair away from her neck. “Never any question, darlin’. How many times I gotta tell you?” I pulled on her chin so I could look at her. “I got your back.” “For how long?” “Oh, baby, as long as it needs getting.” I kissed her then, soft, brief and rested my chin on the top of her head, pulling Alex back with me when I leaned against the tub. “Hey, Ryan?” I smiled, wondering if she’d ever work up the nerve to say what was on her mind. “Yeah?” “Don’t… I mean.” Alex sighed, started to rub her fingertips against my chest hair as though she needed a second to sort her thoughts. “I meant… I mean…” She sat up then and stared right at me with this determined, focused expression. “I’ve never wanted anything for myself. Not ever. That’s not how I survived.” I nodded, letting her have the time she needed to get out what she needed to say. “And Stevie, she told me not sell myself short, that she would always be there.” Alex rubbed her face when fresh tears surfaced. “Tonight, Davidson, he admitted he killed her.” I sat up,

holding her arm to steady her, needing to steady myself and when I opened my mouth to ask all those questions, Alex shook her head. “We’ll figure it all out, but he reminded me of something. You and me, Ryan, we both lost someone because they got in someone’s way. That someone is pulling the strings. Davidson might have killed Stevie, but I know it wasn’t his choice. He wasn’t acting alone.” I had seen Alex determined. I’d seen her pissed off, but the look on her face now was different. She had a resolve to her now, and it was made of steel and reinforced with promises that she had made to herself, to the memory of her sister. I recognized it. It was the same resolve that had gripped me every day since I’d learned the truth about Simmons. He was a liar and I fucking hated liars. But like Davidson, someone else was making him dance. “And you wanna find out whose pulling those damn strings?” “Don’t you?” “Absolutely.” I couldn’t help pulling her close, needing to have my hands on her. She let me, held my arms when I rested them against her waist. “I mean, if we knew, when it’s over… I’d get it if you didn’t want… you know, you and me…” I took her then, pulling her onto my lap, stopping the worry before it came. This wasn’t typical Alex. This was her scared, worn out from the day and the shock of being taken. “You and me,

darlin’, will still be you and me. Finding the damn puppet master won’t change that.” “Because…” she looked down, then quickly back up again. “Because we… love each other?” My chest tightened, heart racing as the shy smile and the meaning behind what she’d admitted. She hadn’t said the words, but those softened features, the slow grin told me she would. “That’s it exactly, lady.” “Then,” she said, wiping the smile from her face. Alex draped her arms around my neck and her eyes fucking smoldered. “Can we go to bed?” She didn’t have to ask twice. I dried her off, had her under me, then on me before the tub had drained completely. Alex’s skin was luminous, the soft, sweet feel of silk, tempered only by the moisture from her bath and the thin beads of sweat that dotted along her collarbone. I’ve often thought skin, naked skin, was an art form into itself. The cascade of light against the dip of muscle and the ridges of breasts, the dark, bumpy texture of a nipple. That visual of beauty, skin and the feel of a body in movement, in the slick slide of activity of two bodies working together, has always felt like poetry, some wild art that only fucking makes.

Alex, though, made it seem like something sacred, blessed. My clothes littered the floor, tugged from my body by her eager hands and we got there in a tumble of limbs, blankets, pillows until the hot heat of her mouth, her skin still warm from the bath making me hard, eager, slipping flat on my back with her over me, leading, directing. Taking everything I had. I loved the way she arched over me, how my hands fit perfectly on her waist, guiding, how her sweet, perfect pussy took all of me, clenching, squeezing, milking my dick without question—an instinct, erotic reaction to how I felt inside her, surging up, pushing everything I was into her. “Ryan… there, baby. Please!” And I knew what she wanted, my thumb against her clit, my knees holding her up as she leaned back further and rocked down on my dick, driving us toward that sweet damn surrender that only we could make together. “Tighter, darlin’, squeeze me tighter.” And Alex did, grabbing my hands, locking her fingers into mine as she moved faster, each downward thrust harder than the one before and I copied her rhythm, rolling my thumb faster until she cried out, those tight, clenching muscles shooting me toward oblivion, toward that poetry I chased the second I first touched her. Later, when the tangle of our legs and arms were too twisted, too sated to separate, I heard Alex’s low hum and I smiled, wondering what had her nervous. I listened for a while, then smiled

when I realized what I was hearing. “Love is a Battlefield?” I asked, continuing the long stroke of my fingers down her back. “Umm,” she said, sounding half asleep. I never pushed Alex, I generally didn’t need to, not when I knew she had something she needed to say. “Ryan.” She didn’t wait for me to answer, but I felt her long sigh against my chest. “I… fuck. I love you.” “Umm,” I said, laughing when she jabbed me in the stomach and trying like hell not to smile too big or look like too much of an asshole when she kissed me. We still had a mystery to solve. We still had questions that no one seemed willing to answer, but Alex had my back, God knew I had hers and for today, that was just about damn good enough.

He had never liked the “gentleman”. Not even when the asshole had thrown around his money or his influence to get him that sweet job in Cavanagh and definitely not when the asshole had him—him, the seasoned detective!—covering up the messes he made. Those messes had started back in Atlanta when the asshole couldn’t keep it in his pants and that pretty little girl had to be taken care of. Simmons was still taking care of the “gentleman’s” messes. The man in question sat behind his desk, staring down into a full glass of

scotch. The ice floated on top of that dark liquid and Simmons wondered how long he’d have to sit there waiting for that jackass to take his first sip. “This is going to be a problem,” he told Simmons, not bringing his gaze from the glass in his hand. “He’s gone now. No one is the wiser.” The scotch spilled against that fine, wood desk when the man slammed his glass against it. “No one? Is that right? Just like no one knew shit about Stevie Rodriguez? Or how about that M.E. or, shit, how about everyone who knew your damn wife offed herself?” Simmons sat up, fist tight and as if ready to strike and the asshole glanced at his hand, smiling at the sergeant’s reaction. “Really? You’re going to resort to violence because I’m stepping on your fucking toes?” Finally, the man took a swig of his drink, eyes steady as he watched Simmons over the rim of the glass. “You think about knocking me around and you remember for every one of my damn skeletons, I’ve got three on you.” God, how he hated that asshole, had since they were kids. But Simmons knew he’d never be rid of him. “What do you want me to do now? I took care of Davidson.” “We’ve got bigger problems, thanks to you.” The gentleman opened his desk drawer and threw a thick file across the surface. “Alex Black and Neil Ryan. Recognize the names?”

Of course Simmons did. The girl looked just like her sister and had been a nosey thorn in Simmons’ side for almost a year. He pulled one of the pictures closer toward him, narrowing his eyes as he looked down at the girl with her arm around Ryan’s waist. “When the hell did this happen?” “How am I supposed to know? But your little mentee fucking Alex Black is the least of our problems. You see this one?” The man slipped another picture in front of Simmons, this one with the three brothers and Ryan, suited up with radios in their ears at the Marriott just a couple of months back. Each one of them had a logo over their chest, NOLA Elite Security and Simmons got the gist. “I need you to take care of this any way you can.” He stood, buttoning his jacket and smoothing it straight. “They ask too many questions and they become a problem. I say you stop that from happening.” “And if I don’t?” Simmons asked the man, coming to his feet as they both crossed the room. “Then, dear cousin, we are both fucked.” Simmons was fucked either way, but he knew if he didn’t stop Ryan from finding the truth and using his friends to do it, then more than just his cousin’s career would be on the line. And that was a line he was not willing to cross.

To the city of New Orleans and the magic you make. Nowhere on earth ever fills me with more love and comfort. Thank you. But not you, the asshats responsible for the 2015 New Orleans Saints Trade-Frenzy. That really just pissed me off. Sharon Browning, Karen Chapman and Lori Westhaver, specifically, really held my hand with this one. So, ‘thank yous’ are deserved and necessary. You ladies are my foundation and without

you, nothing I write would make any sense whatsoever. Thank you! To my wonderful readers, and Facebook, Twitter and GoodReads friends, especially those who trusted me to step out of my comfort zone and write something that wasn’t all smooching, all the time, thank you for sticking with me. Thank you to those of you who come out and say hello and support me at signings and cons, without fail. You are amazing. I could never say thank you enough. To my wonderful Sweet Team: Trish Leger, Judy Lovely, Leighanne Sisk, Heather McCorkle, Carla Castro, Naarah Scheffler, LK Westhaver, Lorain Domich, Melanie Brunsch, Michelle Horstman-Thompson, Laura Agra, Allyson Lavigne Wilson, Emily Lamphear, Chanpreet Singh, Heather WestonConfer, Betsy Gehring and Sammy Llewellyn, thank you for the continuous love and support. You ladies rock my world. As always, to my ride or dies: Chelle Bliss, Kele Moon, Ing Cruz, Penelope Douglas, Lila Felix and Amanda Lanclos, and all my CHPP bints thank you for having my back, for helping write summaries and working through plots that don’t make any damn sense. I love you all to the moon and back and wouldn’t publish a word without you!

To all you awesome bloggers who spread the love and support and encourage me, I thank you for the bottom of my heart, especially As the Pages Turn, Book Drug Love, Love Between the Sheets, Totally Booked, Three Chicks and Their Books, Michelle Monkou of USA Today’s Happily Ever After blog, Confessions of a YA and NA book addict and Smut Book Club. You guys are amazing! Thank you to Angela McLaurin for the beautiful formatting and to Alleskelle who gave Alex her name and made the most gorgeous cover and graphics I could have asked for. You, my dear, are a true artist. To my work girls, Marie, Sherry, Barbra B., Sarah and Kalpana thank you for the photo shoot and for all your lovely words of encouragement. You always have my back no matter what and I could never tell you how much that means to me. Big, huge appreciation and gratitude to my family, my nieces Jenny, Kayla and Joy who read everything and love it all, who nag me for the next book, to my mom who doesn’t quite mind the F-bombs, and to my husband, Himself, and my daughters for putting up with

me and my ridiculous writing schedule. I love you all. To Joey Frump, thank you for sharing my birthday with me and for holding my hand since third grade. I hate that we lost Sabrina. I hate that we had to share in that loss, but I love you for never forgiving what a life-long friend is supposed to be. Love you, lady.

Eden Butler is an editor and writer of Mystery, Suspense and Contemporary Romance novels and the nine-times greatgranddaughter of an honest-to-God English pirate. This could

explain her affinity for rule breaking and rum. Her debut novel, a New Adult, Contemporary Romance, “Chasing Serenity” launched October 2013. Since that time Eden has published six books and novellas including the Amazon best seller, “Thin Love”. When she’s not writing or wondering about her possibly Jack Sparrowesque ancestor, Eden edits, reads and spends way too much time watching rugby, Doctor Who and New Orleans Saints football. She is currently living under teenage rule alongside her husband in southeast Louisiana. Please send help.

Find Eden on Twitter (https://twitter.com/EdenButler_​), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/eden.butler.10), Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7275168.Eden_Butler), and her blog (http://t.co/HkEzgnxb5g). You can subscribe to Eden’s newsletter (http://eepurl.com/VXQXD)for giveaways, sneak peeks and

various goodies that might just give you a chuckle.

Chasing Serenity (Seeking Serenity, #1) Behind the Pitch (Seeking Serenity, #1.5) Finding Serenity (Seeking Serenity, #2) Claiming Serenity (Seeking Serenity, #3) Thin Love (Thin Love, #1) My Beloved (Thin Love, #1.5)