by Liz Maverick
“That’s hideous, what you’re saying,” Cecily said.
Jane gave Cecily a smile. “You know I love you, but you’re a size two. You have no idea what I’m saying.”
“Okay, yes, you are a substantive woman, but—”
Jane gave her a look and tossed her magazine back on the coffee table. “That’s weirder than saying ‘fat,’ although very nice and PC. Don’t think I don’t appreciate your delicacy, pal.”
“Stop interrupting me. I’m trying to point out that if you think your size is actually an issue, you should think back to Nick and be reminded that the men of the Hudson Kings aren’t just superhot. They are also extremely large. Extremely large, superhot.”
“True,” agreed Ally, crunching on ice. “Compared to them, we’re like elves. Cecily’s barely visible; she’s practically microscopic.”
“Look, I don’t have a thing here. I don’t sit up nights thinking I’m not good enough for whatever and whoever. I’m merely pointing out the fact that insanely rich, hot men can choose whoever they want. And they don’t generally choose women who look like me. It’s a fact of life, baby. Besides, he’s not my type,” Jane said. “He doesn’t even own a spatula.”
“For the record, Nick isn’t the type to put up with a model without a brain. He isn’t superficial,” Cecily said.
“And I’m not fat,” Jane said. Although she wasn’t sure she meant either of those things.
“I think we need to drink more,” Ally said. “Especially because I think this is supposed to be an after-dinner drink, and since we haven’t eaten yet it can’t possibly count.”
“I don’t think it counts anyway,” Jane said. “Cecily makes tiny drinks suitable for gatherings of tiny people.”
“You make the next round,” Cecily said to Ally with a grin.
Ally nodded. “After we drink more, I think we need to snoop around Nick’s apartment to solve the mystery. Is Nick superficial? Or is he simply . . . extremely clean?”
“Is Ally drunk?” Jane asked. “Or is she simply insane? We’re on camera, you know.”
Cecily groaned, and Ally rolled her eyes in a way that felt like “Oh, not that again.” Like this happened all the time, this video camera business. Huh.
“Watch this,” Ally said, all sass. She took a lipstick out of her purse, and then jumped up and grabbed a free chair, pulling it up to the camera in the living room.
Jane looked at Cecily in alarm as Ally climbed on the chair and smeared her lipstick over the lens. Then she got down and carried the chair to the kitchen and dining room to do the same thing with those cameras. “As long as we don’t go in the bedroom, I think we’re safe. There’s no camera in the bathroom,” Jane called.
“There’s one in the bedroom?” Ally asked, coming back out.
Jane suddenly felt defensive. “If someone wanted to kill you, I think the easiest time would be while you’re sleeping. It seems perfectly reasonable to me. It’s not like he didn’t point it out.”
Ally’s mouth twisted in amusement. “I drew the line at my bedroom. Rothgar can kiss my sweet naked ass.”
“I’m starting to wonder if you actually like the sound of that,” Cecily murmured, which got her a sharp look from Ally.
“Did you and Rothgar ever have a thing?” Jane asked. She just couldn’t help it.
Her friend looked totally confused. “What kind of thing?”
Jane stared at her. “Were you in love with him?”
Cecily failed to suppress a gasp.
“I was a kid. I had a boyfriend,” Ally said. “Missy’s brother. Apollo was my boyfriend. Rothgar’s a . . . man.”
Okay, now Ally was blushing. As if she just realized she’d grown up and turned into a woman, so Rothgar being a man didn’t actually count as a negative. Ally blinked rapidly, still trying to process what should have been a totally simple question. Finally, she picked up her drink, tossed her hair, and said, “I hate Rothgar with a white-hot passion.”
Jane did not mention that the sentence still included the phrase “white-hot passion.” She also did not suggest to Ally—an excellent linguist, who actually got to use her French at her day job—that there was probably a foreign dialect somewhere in which the word for “denial” was pronounced “Rothgar.”
But Ally looked a little ill, and it was Jane’s fault. “I’m sorry, Ally. I shouldn’t be so flip about this stuff. I know you also lost Apollo. I won’t bring it up again.”
Ally stared into her empty lowball glass, then her head swung up and she stared Jane right in the eyes. “I was about to break up with him,” she blurted. Then she took a huge breath and spent a long time releasing it. “Wow. I’ve never actually said that out loud before. I hope Nick has good mixers,” she added too brightly, heading to the bar cart to rifle through the bottles.
Taking the cue, Jane got up; she ducked into the bedroom to give Rochester a belly rub. He was pleased by the attention but also made it clear he was dedicated to the idea of not getting out of bed. Just checkin’ on the kids, Mr. Dawes.
The doorbell rang followed by the sound of Cecily’s voice taking care of the delivery. Jane returned to the living room, where she pushed aside Ally’s magazine stash and helped unload dinner along with paper plates, plastic forks, and napkins. “I ordered lobster rolls and a pound of fresh crabmeat. And stuff to go with it.” Ally collected the exotic-booze bottles and went back to the bar, presumably to make something involving elderflower syrup.
“Nice.” Cecily went for the stereo system, where she picked up the remote and scrolled through the music for a while before settling on a melancholy British band from the ’80s that apparently did not have a memorable name. “Ally, do you have the cards?”
Ally turned around, her hands clasping two bottles of booze. “In my purse. Two decks.”
Jane sat down and unwrapped one of the lobster rolls but didn’t take a bite. “I’m having a crisis of conscience,” she said.
“Why?” Cecily asked.
Jane stared around the penthouse and then back at the spread on the table, and then back at Ally’s fine work ongoing at the bar cart. “Dunno. It’s his stuff. His money.” She frowned, trying to parse her thoughts.
Ally got that belligerent look in her eyes Jane now recognized as the look she always got when she wanted to not care about the men of the Hudson Kings. She walked up to Jane, swapped one of the fresh elderflower cocktails for Jane’s lobster roll, and stole a bite. In a barely intelligible lobster roll–chewing voice, she said, “When he solves his problem and moves home, he can throw a party of his own.”
“What else do you know about Mr. Dawes?” Jane asked, figuring that if she’d been thoroughly vetted by Missy, then turnaround with Ally was fair play. She took a gulp of the fruity-floral drink. Yeah, that’ll work.
“More than I should,” Ally said, giving the roll back. “I remember Graham talking about Nick early on. He said that there was this guy who had the Midas touch, who Rothgar was interested in. The team needed some serious equipment, and it was a constant battle trying to fund the missions before the paydays came in. So, Rothgar set out to find a guy who could make money for the team. Like, that would be his job. And he’d also be useful working with Cecily’s brother, Dex, messing with finances online, using his knowledge of the behind-the-scenes stuff with banks. I don’t know what Rothgar gave Nick to join, but I think Nick was happy with his side of the deal.”
“So, what happens if he doesn’t solve his problem?” Jane asked.
“Then he dies,” Ally said, chewing. “Just like my brother did. Okay, so I’m calling the first game. Five-card stud. Let’s do this. Cecily, look at Jane’s face; this music is making her depressed and sympathetic. Can we put on something else?”
Cecily immediately went to change the music.
Jane dug into her food while Ally dealt. She decided to stop thinking about Mr. Dawes, because her friend was absolutely right. I’m just a fish sitter. I’m nobody to him. And I’ve got plenty
of problems without being sad about my boss, who wouldn’t look at me twice if he weren’t so trapped in his own life. He probably doesn’t actually get to talk to a lot of people in a given day. And even fewer women. That’s why he calls me. Once he solves his problem—and he will solve it, because if anyone can solve it, it’s gotta be a man like Nick Dawes—and starts feeding his own fish again, he won’t remember my name.
At the bottom of the tiny Negroni, Jane had successfully convinced herself that Mr. Dawes did not need or want her sympathy.
At the bottom of the elderflower cocktail, Jane tried to remember why it seemed plausible that her boss called her so often to discuss the welfare of his fish.
At the bottom of a third drink that really could have been anything, Jane couldn’t seem to hold an image in her head beyond that of Mr. Dawes’s smile as he ran his finger down her leg.
And that’s when Ally mixed a fourth.
By the end of some number of hours that Jane couldn’t keep track of, Cecily had won most of the money. Granted, they were playing low stakes, but still. Cecily apparently felt bad enough about taking all their change that she insisted on giving them tarot card readings.
Never mind that it was sort of difficult not to keep knocking the cards on the floor, and Cecily was slurring quite a lot, and Ally kept interrupting the proceedings to make her own dirty interpretation about the illustrations on the cards.
Ally was, in fact, doing a fake reading about Jane and Nick that involved a naked star goddess and a bunch of cards with a lot of phallic symbols or wands or whatever they were, when every light in the apartment extinguished at the same time.
CHAPTER 15
It had taken one hour for Sokolov’s suggestive little threat to screw with Nick’s mind. And that was when Dex reported that the electronic warning system attached to Nick’s security system at the penthouse was going off; when they pulled up the cams, everything was black.
All Nick could think was: Not Jane.
“Geo!” Nick clipped, confirming with a nod from Rothgar that the hit man was free.
The two of them took off at a run.
Cecily and Jane’s screaming at the top of their lungs from the living room was pretty funny once Nick satisfied himself that the back of the apartment was clear of danger; Geo was clearing the front. The men had gone in dark, just in case.
Hence the screaming. Ally didn’t make a sound, though, and when Nick whispered to Geo via his earpiece that he was turning the lights back on, there Ally was standing—well, swaying—in front of the hit man, drunk and determined to look, well, like Ally always looked. Brave and disapproving of Hudson Kings business.
Objectively speaking, Geo was a hell of a sight when he was geared up in black, packing heat, and rocking night vision. “The alarm went off at HQ. Someone covered the cam.” His voice was so low it was obvious he was calibrating it to be too low for microphones.
In one hand, he kept a loose grip on a gun with a long silencer; in the other, he was holding up a gray utility cloth smeared with crimson lipstick. He looked at Ally. “Everything here kosher?”
“Couldn’t you hear us talking through the camera?” Ally sassed.
“Everything kosher?” he clipped again, not answering the question.
She stared at him. “Like a babka from Zabar’s, Geo.”
He walked right up to her and put his arms around her, like a hug, and whispered something into her ear. Ally stared straight over his shoulder like a zombie, but she lifted her hand and gave his arm two squeezes. He let go of her, scanned the boozy, lobster roll–riddled detritus from the party, and then looked back at Nick.
“Mr. Dawes,” Jane said, from her place on the couch, where she was sitting bolt upright. “Um . . .” She looked spooked, nervous, and totally disheveled, with her black curls popping all over the place and most of her makeup wiped off on what looked to be a napkin sporting a happy lobster design.
Nick thought she looked wonderful. And he was beyond relieved to confirm that it was just a false alarm.
For a second there—for a really bad fucking second there—he thought maybe Sokolov had moved Jane into collateral damage territory. It was all the more reason to keep his hands off her—at least until he was out of the woods.
I can’t have Sokolov thinking I care. I can’t take the chance. And then, of course, even as he told himself to stay away, he walked away from the others and went directly toward her.
“Do I have something on my face?” Jane asked.
“Your face is perfect,” Nick said.
A couple of different emotions flashed over said face—pleasure, confusion . . . she wasn’t as good at concealing her feelings when she was drinking. He could tell that the minute the lights went on.
“You still look uptight,” Nick said.
“That’s because I’m trying to decide whether or not to acknowledge I’m having a party at your place.”
He shook his head, laughing. “Cat’s out of the bag.”
“Now there’s a cat?” she said in mock outrage.
“Okay, no cat. Just me and Geo.”
Jane finally relaxed back into the sofa cushions. “So, why are you here?” she asked. “No, wait, this is your house. Make that, why are you here with him?”
Nick looked over at Geo. Yeah, when you took it in from a distance and didn’t know all the background (and sometimes even if you did), Geo looked pretty damn scary. “It was a false alarm. Don’t worry about it. Go back to your night.”
“Go back to my night? You thought something happened to us. Something worthy of attending to with a backup dude carrying a gun longer than my femur. Why would you think that? Are you ever going to tell me what’s happening to you?” Jane asked. “I mean, like, meaningful details.”
God, where should he even start?
“What sort of problem is this?” Jane pressed. And then: “Maybe I can help.”
Nick thought for a minute about how to say it. But this was Jane. He didn’t need to try so hard. “Someone wants to kill me, if I don’t jump through the right hoops. And I’m not jumping.”
“Why does someone want to kill you?” Jane asked.
“I screwed something up.”
Jane didn’t ask the obvious question, which Nick found pretty interesting. After a while she said, “I was hoping you were going to say that someone didn’t actually want to kill you, and it was an exaggeration.”
“I wish.”
“Are you in danger now?”
He looked her square in the eyes. “Yes. But when the alarm here sounded, you should know that I assumed it was a false alarm. I wasn’t actually worried.” Maybe concerned just for that one second. Mostly, I was surprised. The timing was right after Sokolov’s call. If I’d been worried, that would mean that I actually believed you were in danger because of me, and that can’t happen. “I needed to check it out because of . . . because of a recent interaction with the person I’ve fallen out with, let’s just say, but it was, as I expected, a coincidence. A false alarm.”
“Ally’s lipstick,” Jane said with a nod.
He watched her face, and then suddenly his heart sank as he imagined her asking the obvious next question: “Does being near you put me in greater danger?” “I want to make it clear that I don’t believe you’re in danger because of me. This was a precaution. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, and there’s no reason it should. That’s not how these things work. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
Eyebrows up, eyes wide. “I wasn’t thinking that,” she said.
“You weren’t?”
“Maybe I should be?” Jane looked a touch confused. “It just seems highly unlikely you’d blithely let me walk straight into danger for the sake of some fish.” She added hastily, “However lovely those fish might be.”
Nick fought the urge to sit down next to her. If anything, maybe they needed more distance between them. Instead, he hovered in front of the fireplace. “How to put this . . . the peopl
e in my circles, even the ones who could profit from offing me, aren’t sloppy, and they have some respect for the idea of collateral damage.” He shrugged. “I’d expect a bullet to my head or something if they get close enough. But nothing for you.”
Jane picked up her drink, stared at it, and then took a gulp. “This is a very odd conversation. I’m starting to feel a little sick.”
“Don’t worry, though. I’m on it. Gonna fix it . . .”
“You’re not freaking out,” Jane said.
“That’s not my MO.”
“Are you freaking out inside?” she asked.
I feel better when I’m around you. “Gonna fix it.”
“You don’t seem like the sort of man who screws things up to the point where people want to put a bullet through your head. But that’s just my gut,” Jane said.
Nick thought about making a joke. Instead, he said, “If I’m being honest, I brought this on myself. It was a split-second decision where I wanted to prove something. Fucking stupid.”
Jane didn’t say anything, but she got up and joined him where he was standing. She was close enough to touch, and Nick stayed silent until he couldn’t take it anymore. “You’re quiet,” he said.
“It’s all a lot to absorb, sir.” And then she said out of nowhere, “I like talking to you on the phone.” She grabbed the poker and started poking at (and missing) big chunks of ash. “If you ever just want to talk about this stuff you’re worrying about, you can call me. It doesn’t have to be about the fish. I mean, you don’t have to, or anything. I’m just saying that you could.”
“I know I don’t have to,” he said gently. “Just like you don’t have to pick up.”
But I hope you do. Because when you talk to me, I don’t feel so alone, and it takes my mind off the things I might have to do and the person I might have to become in order to get out of this mess I made. Or the fact that maybe I made the wrong move in front of the wrong guy, and things are getting real.
A chime sounded, signaling an incoming text. With her free hand, Jane pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the message. And then she just deflated.
