by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
Confusion?
My stomach was uneasy, and not from the blood that washed down the drain. There was a bizarre feeling of near-guilt, but that wasn’t quite right either. I didn’t regret killing that asshole. I never regretted anything, so I didn’t know what this feeling was.
I guess that made it confusion.
Since Bridgett still had my robe, I walked over to the dresser naked, pulled on a clean pair of boxers, and then climbed into bed beside her. She didn’t move to look at me when I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against my chest, but she didn’t resist, either. I lay my head just above hers on the pillow, inhaled the scent of her hair, and pressed my lips to her temple.
“You killed him,” Bridgett whispered, “didn’t you?”
My fingers trailed up her arm, over her shoulder, and to her lips. I didn’t press down because of the cut there, but still made the point.
“Shh,” I replied.
She turned then, and her red-rimmed, black-and-blue eyes turned to mine.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you kill him?”
I raised an eyebrow at her. I wasn’t going to answer a question when I had already refused to admit there was anything she could ask about anyway.
“What am I going to do?” Bridgett’s voice cracked as her hand moved to cover her mouth. “I can’t be on the street with no protection!”
“Carry a gun,” I suggested.
“I’ve never even fired one!” she exclaimed.
“Then find another pimp,” I said. It occurred to me that I could teach her to shoot, but making this about more than the sex had already caused an issue once. I didn’t want to do that again. “That isn’t the only street corner in the city, you know. You probably don’t even have to go anywhere – some other dude will come up and take over the girls there.”
“What about the other girls?”
“I don’t really give a shit about the other girls,” I said.
She glared at me.
“What if the new guy is one of the ones from across town?” she asked quietly. “The ones over by the warehouses.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You don’t work for the fucking competition,” I snarled.
“What competition?” she asked with feigned innocence. “You don’t seem to actually have a job.”
A couple hundred potential rebuttals went through my brain, but I knew when I was being baited. I also knew when a situation was likely to escalate quickly, and silence was the best way to combat it. We watched each other for a full two minutes before she sighed and put her head down on my shoulder.
“What am I going to do?” she asked again. “Even that apartment is in Melvin’s name.”
“I got some money for you,” I said. I hadn’t actually taken any cash from Melvin, but she didn’t have to know that. I had twenty or thirty grand lying around in the back of my closet. “You already earned it.”
“I’m not taking your money,” she said.
I took her chin in my hand.
“First off, you will take the fucking money because it’s yours, not mine. It’s the money from those fucking bastards who hurt you. Secondly, if I decide to give you fucking money, you’re going to fucking take it.”
“Fucking am I?”
I tried to scowl, but she grinned at me.
“You can earn that money, too,” I said. “As soon as you’re up for it. You don’t even have to have any other clients.”
She gave me a strange look, like she wondered what the hell I was suggesting. I wondered myself until I heard it come out of my mouth.
“Just stay here,” I said.
So much for keeping it only about the sex.
Immediately, the atmosphere between us changed, electrified, and heated the air. Bridgett’s tongue darted over her cut lip as she processed what I had said.
“You want me to…what?” she asked. “Stay here and be your personal whore?”
I paused, thought about it, and decided that yes – that was exactly what I was suggesting. It made sense, in a way. She was here often enough before, and she wouldn’t have to worry about bills and food – just fucking me. That way, it was still just about the sex.
More than anything, I’d sleep better if she was here every night, and I couldn’t help but see that as a positive thing.
I looked in her eyes.
“Stay here,” I said again. “No bills, no pimp, no worries.”
“You’re asking me to move in with you.”
I hadn’t quite thought of it like that.
“I’m saying, instead of me picking you up on some other street corner, you just stay here, and I can fuck you whenever.”
“You can’t be serious.”
I watched her look at me and saw the last thing I wanted to see – the desperate need for it to be true. She wanted it. She wanted to stay here – to live with me – not because it was convenient, but just because she wanted to.
“It doesn’t change anything,” I told her. “This is still what it is.”
“You don’t even try for anything else,” she said quietly.
She was right, of course. I didn’t.
I wouldn’t, and I won’t – ever.
My fingers moved a strand of her hair away from the bruise around her eye.
“I don’t have anything else to give you, Bridgett,” I told her. “This is all there is.”
There was just no way to make it something it wasn’t.
Chapter Eleven
Painful Betrayal
“You better git yer ass over there,” Jonathan informed me. “I didn’t get the deets, but Mario was on edge and Rinaldo wasn’t sayin’ a damn thing. I read through his email but didn’t see nothin’ there.”
“You hacked the boss’s email?” I rolled my eyes at the phone as I slid into the back seat of the bus. “Are you crazy?”
“What? It ain’t hard – the password’s always ‘Luisa’ with a number after her name. He just increments it every month.”
“Why does he do that?”
“I told him it was safer to change it every month instead of leavin’ it the same.”
Another eye roll before I hung up the phone. I could have sworn he did that kind of shit just to prove he could get away with it. I remembered that I hadn’t given him the Save Ferris T-shirt yet and made a mental note to toss it in my car when I got home.
It was the first really hot day of spring, and the jacket I wore to conceal my Beretta was too warm for the afternoon sun. I rolled the sleeves up, but I was still sweaty and uncomfortable. I wished I had driven myself for once, but I jumped off the bus and walked the three blocks to Moretti’s office.
Mario was there and Terry was just leaving. Rinaldo was standing behind his desk, waiting for me. He motioned for me to come in the office, and Mario stood just to one side of Rinaldo’s desk chair. He gave me a nod, which I returned as I stood at-ease in front of them both.
Moretti didn’t waste any time.
“You want to tell me why you decided to take out a pimp on my payroll?” Rinaldo asked simply.
“No, sir,” I replied. I wasn’t surprised by the question – I kind of assumed it was why Jonathan had told me to high-tail it over here. The only real surprise was that it had taken a week for him to call me out on it. I’d made two other kills for him during that time and had been glad to get back to sniping.
“You know his whole stable is all over the place now – a bunch of trained birds scattered to the winds and looking for a cage to nest in. It’s not my favorite line of business, but now some of his property – property I had a vested interest in – is lost.”
I looked up at him carefully but couldn’t see any actual anger in his face or posture. He wasn’t thrilled, but he wasn’t all that pissed off, either. I hadn’t expected him to be, but I had still prepared myself for the conversation.
“My apologies,” I replied. “You want me to pay for it?”
Rinaldo laughed, and the tension in the atmosphere died down.
“No,” he said, “I had another task in mind. Something more along the lines you’re most comfortable with achieving. I’ve received some troubling information that a woman has been giving information about my business to Greco’s men. No one seems sure exactly who she is, and I’ll need you to find that out and take care it doesn’t happen again.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
Rinaldo handed me the picture, and I tried not to show any reaction in my face as my mind starting jumping around and doing flips in the air.
“You sure this is the target?” I asked. I tapped the edge of the picture with my forefinger. “This girl?”
“You think my sources are unreliable?”
“No, sir,” I replied. “I’m just…not sure what they’d want with her.”
Rinaldo stared at me through narrowed eyes.
“Evan, do you have something to tell me? You know this bitch?”
I was going to have to play this very carefully.
I kept my expression completely lifeless, shrugged one shoulder one time, and then looked to Rinaldo’s face as I tossed Bridgett’s picture back onto the desk.
“I’ve been fucking her,” I said simply. “So finding her isn’t an issue.”
Rinaldo’s eyes narrowed and his eyebrows tried to meet each other in the middle of his head.
“Explain,” he said quietly.
“She’s a hooker.”
“A hooker?” he repeated.
“Yes, sir.”
His face darkened, and his jaw tightened. He took a step over to his desk chair and sat down heavily.
“She belonged to that pimp you killed, hmm?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rinaldo leaned forward over the desk and pulled at his cuffs to straighten them.
“You better tell me everything,” he said quietly.
I didn’t like the tone of his voice, not in the slightest. It sounded way too much like the tone he used right before he exiled me to Arizona, and I did not want that happening again. The very thought of him being pissed off – disappointed in me – made my skin crawl.
“There isn’t much to tell you, sir,” I informed him. “I’m one of her regular clients. I pick her up on the street; she comes to my apartment. I fuck her, and she leaves. That’s it.”
“Until something happens and you kill her pimp.”
“He crossed a line,” I replied steadily.
“Beat her up, huh?”
I nodded my head once.
“Is this the same girl I hear you took out on the town?”
Fuck.
“Yes, sir,” I admitted.
“Sounds like she’s more than just a hooker you fuck.”
“No, sir,” I replied. “That is all she is.”
He eyed me meaningfully for a moment, and I couldn’t help but see it for what it was – fatherly concern for me. I liked that he did that, even if it was annoying at the same time. I had the feeling it was the way fathers were supposed to behave, and it made me feel strangely warm inside. I’d seen him do the same thing with his daughter on occasion.
And with Nick, for that matter.
“We’ll see,” he finally said. “Regardless, there’s been talk that this girl is feeding information to one of Greco’s boys about heroin shipments coming in from up north and about the Russian connection who came up dead the other day. Information you are privy to hearing.”
My eyes met his, and I knew immediately what he was thinking.
“No,” I said definitively. “No, sir. I do not discuss business while I’m fucking whores. Absolutely not.”
Our eyes remained locked together as he seemed to be deciding something – most likely my fate. His chest rose as he took in a sharp breath and then huffed it out through his nose.
“All right, Arden,” he said.
I hated that he was back to calling me by my last name. I glanced towards the door to make sure my face didn’t show how I felt about it.
“You find out what’s going on here,” Rinaldo said, and he tapped his finger against the surface of his desk. “If what I’ve been told is correct…”
His voice trailed off, and I leveled my gaze at him.
“I will take care of it,” I said.
I tried to keep my voice completely steady – completely normal. I didn’t though. The very last syllable dropped as my throat went dry. It was enough for him to notice.
“Getting close to a girl,” Rinaldo said, “can be a good thing. If you were someone else – someone less complicated – the worst that can happen is you don’t work out. You’re a complicated man, Arden, and you are in a complicated position. Bitches make it even more complicated.”
“I’m aware, sir.”
“You’re aware,” he mocked. “Will that change anything when someone finds out you give a shit? What better to hold over your head than a warm cunt, huh? You take better care not to show your affection for her. You’ve done a shit job on that front with that pup of yours.”
His dark eyes darkened further as we stared at each other.
“You know Greco will use what he can to get at me,” Rinaldo reminded me. “You are a good way to get at me. One of the reasons that makes you ideally suited for your job is because you have no attachments that could be used against you to get to me. You were always careful not to show your affection for the dog in public. You aren’t as careful anymore.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said to him, “but that still won’t happen.”
At least my voice stayed steady this time because if I thought about it deep inside, I wouldn’t give Odin up. Not a fucking chance. I’d blow them all away first.
“You like this girl,” he said.
“She’s a whore,” I replied.
“And my wife used to dance on a pole in one of my clubs,” he retorted. “Married twenty-five years now with Luisa in our lives. You think that doesn’t concern me sometimes?”
“I know it does, sir.”
He paused significantly, and I didn’t move.
“Divided thoughts,” Rinaldo said softly. “That will never do for you.”
I continued to look him squarely in the eye.
“I only have one loyalty,” I informed him and then nodded my head towards him.
He returned the nod but gave me a long, increasingly sad look.
“No good can come of what you’re doing, son,” he said. “One of you will get hurt.”
I looked up at my boss and shrugged one shoulder again. The word “son” flowed over my skin and warmed me as I answered him.
“It won’t be me.”
* * *
Finding Bridgett was supposed to be fairly straightforward because she was still supposed to be in my apartment where she was when I left. Like a typical woman, she wasn’t going to be that easy, even if she was a whore.
Aside from Odin, the apartment was empty when I got back – no note or anything. She had been there for several days, and though she had gone out before, she usually told me first. I tried her cell, but she didn’t pick up. I took a deep breath, jumped in the Mazda, and cruised around looking for her but to no avail.
When I returned, she was still gone.
She wasn’t back the next day, either. I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter because there was a lot more I needed to figure out before I talked to her again. If there was even the slightest possibility that someone was framing her, I had to know who it was and quickly.
Who even knew about her?
I spent the next several days wandering around town, trying to catalog all the possibilities in my head. As sleep deprivation mounted, my thinking was a little less clear. The main problem was a lot of people knew about her. Just like Moretti had said, I wasn’t being as careful as I usually was.
I blamed it on the lack of decent shuteye.
I had taken her to all the best spots around the Magnificent Mile on a freaking d
ate, and anyone could have seen us together. Those at the 676 Restaurant and Bar certainly knew about her, as well as the people at the restaurant where we had dinner, and the saleslady at Tiffany’s. Rinaldo knew I had been seeing someone prior to showing me the picture; he just didn’t have a name to put with the face.
“Seeing someone?”
I shook my head to clear it.
Jonathan had picked her up and brought her to my apartment when I was sick. Just like it had been when Greco moved on Rinaldo, I had to consider him. Terry was always a suspect for anything, as far as I was concerned, because he was a douche.
For the next several days, I continued to drive around trying to find her. She didn’t appear to have returned to her apartment. None of the other streetwalkers were admitting to seeing her, and she didn’t come back to my place. She seemed to have disappeared completely.
I had to consider that it was all true, and the very thought sent me to the shooting range. The idea was so distasteful, I pushed it out of my tired mind, missed the bull’s-eye twice, and left in a pissier mood than when I had arrived.
I just couldn’t keep myself occupied anymore.
With no better direction, I continued to consider who knew of my relationship – however that was to be defined – with Bridgett.
Pete, the security guy in the apartment lobby – he saw her come up here to the apartment all the time. He’d been having trouble a few months ago with his wife, but I never followed up on the details. Maybe he knew something. Maybe he did something.
Why did I continue to assume she was being framed?
Because that made the most sense. If someone had seen me with her, then they might think they could use her to get to me. What easier way would they have than to plant the idea in someone’s head that she’s divulging information to Greco?
I also couldn’t fathom the alternative.
Bridgett wouldn’t betray me; I was sure of that. She wanted to live with me and set up house, for Christ’s sakes. She wouldn’t tell other people about my business. I never told her about shit I was doing, so there wasn’t even anything for her to tell.
I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. I was getting a headache from the lack of sleep. I hadn’t had two hours of sleep in a row for a week, maybe more. I was starting to lose track of time a little.
