by Cat Porter
A cold sea sloshed through me, jagged rocks of ice ripping at my veins. “She went to you?”
“Yes.”
He told me.
My insides twisted. Images of her alone, covered in that fuck’s blood. Struggling with his corpse, gulping it all down to stand up and keep it together. The fear, the fucking tidal wave of fear at being dragged back to Kansas.
Feeling she had no choice but to go to Turo DeMarco.
He eyed me. “It was a mess, and I handled it for her.”
“And what the hell did you want in return, huh?”
“Information on Med.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. And that was plenty.”
I leaned my head back, facing up at the dark sky. The clouds had smudged the ink of the nigh. There were no visible stars, not with the insistent glare from the city lights either. This wasn’t Nebraska. I gulped in the cold air, but the lightheadedness remained.
“She handled it all very well. She’d made up her mind and took care of business.”
I stared at the blurry cityscape of lights and dark outlines. “Thank you,” I muttered, the words leaving ash in my mouth.
His chin lifted. “They did that to you, didn’t they? Your face, your fingers. I remember it. What a fucking story.”
“It isn’t some story. This is my life.”
Holding my gaze, he took in a breath, the sudden silence stretching between us. “Are you and your buddy going to finish me off or what? If not, I need to go. I have an important meeting at midnight, and if I don’t show up there’s going to be trouble. I detest being late.”
“So do I. Give me her new name.”
“Lenore Yaeger.”
Lenore.
Turo had helped her, watched out for her. We both shared an admiration for her. I wasn’t sure if anything had happened between them, but I was fucking positive he’d tried. He wouldn’t be a man if he didn’t.
No, I wouldn’t kill him. I’d wanted to, that had been my rabid intention, but Turo DeMarco would be a useful connection. High level Guardino. A link to the most powerful family in Chicago. No, you didn’t kill somebody useful. I swallowed down the bloodlust that had coated the back of my throat, pooled in my mouth.
“You ever heard of Reich Malone?” I asked.
Reich had been looking to break into Chicago organized crime. He kept trying to court different families at different times. He was all for having a big organization at his back, the Flames back. That’s what his skinhead underling had been up to when I’d seen him in town that time. How far had that gotten?
“Flames of Hell from Ohio. Tries hard. Pompous pain in the ass,” he replied.
I squatted in front of him, so we were eye to eye. “He’s the one who put me in jail. I’ve known him since I was a boy. Ultimately, he’s the one responsible for this too.” I gestured at my face, with a maimed hand. “We have a healthy disregard for each other.”
“I’ll bet.”
“You ever worked with him?”
“I’ve met him, heard his pitch one too many times. I don’t care for his...style.”
“He has no style.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “No, he doesn’t.”
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, goes the old saying.
I slit the plastic and cut the ties on his wrists. “I’m grateful that you helped Rena. She trusted you, and you delivered.”
He rubbed his left wrist, his right, his eyes on mine. He was waiting for more. I’d give it. It was worth it.
I slid my knife back in my leathers. “I may have been…zealous in my approach this evening.”
He arched an eyebrow, a stiff smile etching his lips. “She’s worth it. Now you have something to lose, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer. Whatever happened between them, whatever they’d shared, I knew that when I found her, once we stood before each other, our eyes locked, the unmistakable, undeniable, unforgettable would boil between us as it always had. Everything that had come before would be rendered unimportant and obliterated.
“I won’t lose her,” I replied.
Turo rose to his feet, smoothing down his suit jacket. “Don’t ever fucking touch me again,” he said on a malicious hiss. A reptilian threat.
“I won’t,” I said. “You ever need anything under your radar, I can be of help.”
The muscle along his jaw clenched and unclenched as he adjusted the cuffs of his shirt. “I have a special delivery coming from New Mexico next week. A new shipper an associate brought in is suddenly playing hard ball, and it’s pissing my boss off. In fact, that’s what tonight’s meeting is about. I was asked to get involved to resolve the problem.”
I had no doubt he would.
I checked my watch. Eleven o’clock on the dot. “You’ve got plenty of time, but you’d prefer to walk in there with your own solution, wouldn’t you?”
His lips tipped up into an odd crooked grin. I’d figured him out, and he liked it. “Always optimum,” he replied.
“I’ve got my own system from California through Utah. You arrange for pickup in Nebraska, I’ll have it ready.”
“Your own system?”
“Carefully calibrated. I may have been in jail all this time, but I kept my shit up and running. Improved on it.”
“How can I be sure this isn’t you being pompous?”
“I gave you your life back just now, didn’t I? How many people take the great Turo DeMarco for a little rooftop Q & A? My friend here—” I gestured toward where Rhys stood still in the dark shadows. “—is an independent contractor and local. He can be your go-to man for the operation. Any operation, in fact. No one knows he exists. He’s a specialist. Has talents you’d appreciate.”
“You got a cigarette?” Turo asked. “I quit last week.”
I handed him my pack and lighter. He lit up and took in a deep drag. “It’s Reich.”
“Reich?”
He handed me back the lighter and my cigarettes. “Tonight. My problematic shipper.”
Yes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
“Give me the details and I’ll have a plan in place within thirty minutes,” I said.
He expelled a long stream of smoke, his eyes lighting up. “Impress me.” He gave me that crooked grin once more.
In that grin, my father’s words washed over me. “You got to consider the timing, the spectacle, and the afterwards…Know your opponent, be conscious of the blow back, where the particles will fall.”
I grinned back at Turo and flicked my lighter on. Off. On.
Yeah. Couldn’t wait to see those flaming particles fall.
33
“I love how you cut the dress. It looks so much better now, Lenore,” said Kelly, my assistant. We were on the set of a music video for an all-female alternative rock group, Sugar Dip.
“Molly has incredible legs. They need to be shown off.”
“And that slouchy boot is sheer genius,” Kelly whispered in my ear as filming began. “The corset showing just right underneath? It’s perfect. I can’t believe you made it yourself. I need one.”
I bumped her hip with mine. “I’ll make you one,” I mouthed, winking at her.
The band performed on a set designed like an old playground where all the rides were broken. Jamming on her guitar, Molly belted out the first line of her new single as she wandered through the broken swing set. The new, improved dress floated perfectly over her knees as she swayed and jerked her hips to the music playing over the speakers.
Kelly took a few notes as we both watched the performances and the choreography carefully, studying how the clothing moved on the women, and how the patterns and colors were working with the set pieces. I smiled to myself. We’d done a good job.
Filming wrapped, and I slipped out the security doors
, down the hall back to wardrobe. Kelly would collect the clothing from the band, and then we had outfits to review one last time for tomorrow’s shoot with another singer, and more clothes to choose and inventory for three assignments next week.
I pushed open the door as I checked my phone for messages. The door slammed shut behind me on its own. My head snapped up, and I froze before the reflection in the large vanity mirror, my eyes hooking on his.
Finger stood against the wall, a large, tanned hand splayed against the door. He was bigger, his shoulders and arms bulkier, his chest pronounced under a tight tee stretching across his upper body. His hair was shorter, barely touching his shoulders, his beard fuller. A faded red bandana at his neck. Dressed in black leather, coated with dust and dirt, probably from miles of riding, his thick boots splashed in mud.
He flipped the lock. “Hello, Lenore.”
My pulse screeched to a halt, my mouth dried.
Three years. Three years of him in jail, me on my own. Three, three, three years…
“Got nothing for me? No hello? No how’s it going? No, I missed you, so good to see you?”
I only stared at the vision before me, unable to move, to breathe, to think. But he was no vision. He was a man—rugged, virile, coarse, larger-than-life.
“Huh.” He cocked an eyebrow, slanting his head at a slight angle, the grooves on his face prominent. “That’s too bad.” He was amused.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“I’ll always find you.”
My stomach clenched at those words. I had tried to do the right thing, and it was a painful thing, but I’d done it. And instead of leaving a clean cut behind me, I had left a trail of blood, flesh, and bone.
And misery.
That’s what I saw in his big metal-brown eyes. Sheer misery repressed and now rising, steaming, mingling with mine.
“Nice new name, I like it,” he said.
“It was as close to my grandmother’s name as I could get.”
“Is that what you ratted out to Turo DeMarco for?” he spit out.
“You here to kill me for going against the bro code?”
“No.” His lips curved up slightly at the ends, and my heart squeezed. “No, I’m glad you did it. I’m here to take you home with me.”
“No.”
His chest rose and fell sharply, his eyes piercing mine.
A chaos of panic and emotion gripped me. Tentacles of wild feeling curled in my chest, pulling and twisting on my heart, bruising it. The tagged clothes hanging on the racks all around us listened, waiting. All the colors and textures in the dressing room faded, and there was only Finger. My Finger.
“I’m here to take you…”
I licked my lips. “I—”
He lunged at me, pulling me in his arms roughly, and crushed my mouth to his, smashing me up against the wall. Our bodies crashed together, and my breath jammed in my lungs. The scents of aged leather, dull metal, and the faded cinnamon of his taste took over, and I sucked them all in, wanting more. My hands dug into his hair, and I opened my mouth to his, knowing I’d be lost.
I was lost. I was damned.
Yet I was set free.
The two of us slid down the wall to the floor. The demand of his tongue, the sound of his hard breathing, the press of his body against mine, a stronger, harder, more developed body, made me greedy, satisfying the need I had put on ice so long ago. My soul cried out for him, for his touch with a sharp urgency that built and built. Memories clashed with sensation, with desperation. I ached.
My dress ripped, my underwear was yanked to the side. Fumbling, tugging, whimpers, groans. His grip tightened on my flesh, and he was inside me.
“Serena...” that husky, scratched voice filled my ear and uncoiled that intense rough desire that only he inspired in me. I clung to him.
His forehead slid to mine. “Baby.”
We both gasped, our skin damp. My body trembled.
I miss you.
I miss you.
The dam I had erected with the heavy stones of agony and necessity cracked and burst open with every fiery pulse of his powerful body inside mine, with every rasp of his jumbled words. Desperate words. I embraced them all, wrapped them around me, clutching him to me. I flew, charged on our hungry emotions, our hungry bodies. On the high that was us, on our absolute need to be together.
He throbbed against me, and a piece of me, that piece that was his, whisked away with him to somewhere else, somewhere beautiful and unfettered. Breathless, soaring. My fingers dug into the edges of his leather jacket, brushing over a stitched patch.
And I dropped back down to earth.
My heart filled with lead. My limbs stiffened. “We shouldn’t have done this. It’s not—”
“It’s been a long time. I know it has. But we’re so good together. Always will be, no matter what.” He nuzzled the side of my throat. “There’s never been a goodbye between you and me. Never will be. I love you. I’ll always love you.”
I pushed my hands against his chest, against those sweet hopes, and pulled back from him. His brow knit together as he slid out of me on a grunt. A chill raced up the base of my spine at the sudden hollowness inside me. At what I’d done.
I’d opened my Pandora’s box. How would I ever shut it closed again?
Finger adjusted himself. I sat up straight against the wall, my knees bent and pulled into my chest, pressing my shaking legs together.
Before Finger I’d never believed I was strong, not enough, not enough for the real world. And now he’d torn through any lines of defense I thought I’d built around myself these past three years alone. Crossed the moat, scaled the wall, battered down the gate.
I shoved my tattered armor back on.
He spoke. The sounds muffled in my head.
“Baby, none of that matters,” he said. “I get it, I don’t get it, I don’t give two fucks. I’m out, you’re free, you’re coming with me and we’re gonna be together.”
His words clattered to the floor at my feet.
“Finger.”
His eyes were full, shiny. “Yeah?”
I braced. “I’m getting married next month.”
His jaw stiffened, his eyes flashed. “Married?”
Yes, yes, fling your flaming arrows in our grey sky. I deserve every single one.
“Married?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“To who?” The most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.
“To someone else,” slid out of my mouth.
“Someone normal?”
“He’s not in the life. Has no idea.”
“Marry me,” he said.
“I can’t.”
His head fell back against the wall, his body sagging. An inhuman, savage wail escaped his lips. “You’re my heaven and my hell, you know that?” came his hoarse voice prickling the dull air.
“You’re mine too.”
The silence between us was thick and thorny.
His broad chest heaved. “You doing this on purpose? To get out from under me?”
“It has nothing to do with you,” I lied.
Eric and I had been together for a year now, and he was everything Finger wasn’t. He was incredibly easygoing, never had much of a strong opinion about anything except his music. The mood between us was light; he didn’t demand deep from me and I didn’t offer. The daily cares were dealt with and met with a smile every time. Eric was a ride in a convertible on a Sunday afternoon, top down, sun in your eyes, a song on the radio blaring that you both sing along to.
Finger was a hard ride on a loud motorcycle, a hundred miles an hour through a tunnel of fire. Heart pounding, holding on tight for your life, yet you knew you wouldn’t fall off.
You’d never felt more alive.
“What was this just no
w, then?” Finger snapped at me. “Your last little fling with dirty?”
“No, I just—”
“Thing is, I don’t want to get out from under you,” he said, his voice low, unsteady. “I’ve been enduring this all these years because you and me....you and me...”
His mouth, the mouth I knew so well, the mouth I’d retraced over and over on my own lips in the hellish quiet of the night all these years, would still feel on my flesh like the visitation of a ghost, pressed into a firm line. His shimmering dark metallic eyes sunk their fangs in my soul, drawing blood from the artery in my neck. The fierce sting shuddered through me. There would be no healing from this gash. I would bear the mark forever, like so many other marks.
Now so would he.
“I was pregnant,” I blurted.
“What?”
“I found out just before you got arrested. I thought I had some virus or it was stress. I got tested, and it was positive.”
He stilled, his stony eyes on me, his face pale, hard. “That was years ago. What—did you have an ab—”
“I lost it.” I stretched my dress further down my legs.
“A miscarriage?”
“I went to Turo for a reason. It wasn’t just for a new identity. Motormouth found me. He broke into my apartment and told me he was bringing me back to Med.”
“I know. Turo told me.”
“Motormouth saw photos of you and me. He was going to tell Med that you had gotten me out. I couldn’t let him take me back or ruin you. I couldn’t let them hurt you again.”
“Serena—”
“Guess murder affected me more than I expected, now that I live among civilized, normal society.”
His eyes shifted over me. Could he see the blood? Could he smell the agony that still clung to me?
“I killed Motormouth to protect myself, you, us, our baby. But I lost the baby a few weeks after. And that’s when I thought, is that how we’re going to start a life together, by killing? By kicking more of this horrible shit under the rug? It was just the beginning of his tiny life. Probably no bigger than a bean inside me, but—”
