by Kyra Davis
After a moment, Micah reaches across the table and pets my hair. “Don’t shed tears over this, Sweet. Nick Foley deserved to die for what he did to her. Somebody disrespects you? You hurt them. Your mum did the right thing.”
I pull back from his touch and wipe impatiently at my tears. “Even if that’s true, did she have to be so stupid about it? She wrote down the fantasy before she lived it! What if someone else had found that diary? She wouldn’t have gotten thirty years, she would have gotten life! Although given that she ended up committing suicide, maybe she didn’t care about that. And that means . . . that means she didn’t care about being with me. She didn’t just kill Nick, she abandoned me.”
“She wasn’t a professional criminal,” Micah reasoned. “She was a wronged woman with a debt to settle. She made some mistakes, maybe she was a little careless in her actions, but in the end, her heart was in the right place.”
“She was a murderer.”
“Murderer, vengeful angel . . .” Micah waves his hand in the air dismissively. “I’ll leave the semantics up to the poets and lawyers. All I know is she was your mum and you shouldn’t hold this against her.”
“Micah, that’s insane.”
“Is it?” he asks as he gestures to our waitress that it’s safe to approach. “Is being angry at her going to get you anywhere?” The waitress comes back with her pen poised, ready to take our order. “You gotta try the salmon,” he advises me. “Tender, seasoned to perfection, and good for the heart. You must always take care of your heart.”
“The salmon, please,” I say weakly as I hand off my menu.
“Make that two,” Micah says jovially. “And get the lady another martini. She’s having a rough time of it today.”
I nod in agreement as our order is taken off to the kitchen.
“Your mum was a good woman in a bad situation,” Micah reasons, returning to the subject at hand. “Don’t you ever forget that.”
I respond with a halfhearted shrug.
“She was,” Micah insists. “I bet there was lots of lovely things in that diary. I bet she talked about how much she loved you, didn’t she?”
“She did,” I say grudgingly.
“And I bet she talked about Nick. I bet she was quite eloquent in her expression of her love for that fucker.”
“She did love him,” I whisper.
“Of course she did! That’s why she was so upset! Tell me, what else did she say about him? Did she talk about how he wooed her? How he made her feel special and trusted? Did she write of the secrets he confided to her?”
I’m very careful not to show my pleasure at his last question. “She wrote a little about how romantic he was. But . . . the secrets he was confiding to her?” I ask. Outside I can hear the muted wail of a siren as it fights its way through New York’s traffic. “Why would Nick tell secrets to some maid he was just sleeping with?”
“To gain her trust of course!” He pauses as my second martini is placed in front of me along with a bread basket for the table. “Some men are clever like that,” he says once we’re alone again. “Tell a woman one secret and she’ll think she’s special. Works every time. It could be about anything. Maybe something about his past, his family, his work . . . anything at all, really. But then, you read the diary,” he says with a laugh that is just a tad bit forced. “You tell me!”
“If he told her any secrets, I didn’t recognize them.” I select a roll, tearing into it slowly. “Anyway, I burned the diary.”
Micah blanches and then leans forward, his forearms on the table. “You burned it? It was one of the only things you had left of your mother.”
“I have a necklace and I have her gloves.” I finish the last vestiges of my first drink and immediately reach for my second. “I’m trying hard to just remember her for who I thought she was when I was little. I don’t want to keep a book around that undermines that.”
“Ah.”
Looking at Micah, I can’t tell if he’s relieved or disappointed. “I’m sorry I didn’t initially believe you about Travis and his father,” I add. “I should have known you would never steer me wrong. It’s just . . . he seemed like someone who was capable of doing something like that. But then obviously I’m not quite the judge of character I thought I was.”
“Now, now, it’s understandable. We all get a bit unreasonable when emotions are involved.”
“I suppose. But I swear, Micah . . . the way he treats his wife . . .”
“Domestic relationships are complicated things.” He selects a roll and drops it onto his plate. “People fall in and out of love, blame each other for their own shortcomings. It’s a fucking tangled web we weave,” he says as he reaches for the butter.
“I guess. But . . . I don’t know, Travis takes things pretty far. The other day he was right in her face, screaming at her. He threatened her life, Micah . . . and yes,” I say, quickly pushing on as Micah tries to interject, “I know people say things they don’t mean all the time, but the way he was with her . . . I thought he was actually going to hit her—and he might have if Javier and Edmund hadn’t shown up when they did.”
For a very brief moment, Micah freezes, a piece of bread halfway to his mouth. It’s only for a moment, but I catch it.
“Javier and Edmund? My Javier? The guy who was in the limo with us who offered to pay for a little time with you?”
I feign embarrassment but continue. “Yes, of course. I’m telling you, Micah, if you had heard the things Travis said to Jessica—”
“Why were Javier and Edmund there? How do those two even know each other?”
I shake my head as if bewildered. “I don’t know. They clearly had made plans, because when they showed up, Travis apologized for not being ready for their dinner. I don’t know where they all went . . .”
Micah stares at me for a beat, I see a quick flash of anger cross his features, and then, just as quickly, he regroups, casually tearing off another piece of bread. “Hell, I don’t need to keep up with Javier’s social calendar.”
“So, he doesn’t work for you?”
“For me? No. With me occasionally. I’m the one who introduced him to Travis, and you know what? It’s great if Travis has now introduced him to his dear ol’ dad.” Again he digs into the butter, putting so much of it on his bread that you can barely tell that he’s eating anything but butter. It’s not how Micah normally eats.
I sense stress eating. Good.
“I think I’ll have another martini too,” he continues. “It’s that kind of a night, don’t you think?”
I smile sweetly, nod, and excuse myself to use the ladies’ room. Once I get there I take out my phone and see the text from Lander:
All good?
I respond with one word:
Perfect
And it’s true, our plan is starting off absolutely perfectly.
chapter two
* * *
The dinner goes long, and when Micah offers to have his limo drive me home I accept, although I have plans to stay at Lander’s. Micah knows I’m seeing him, but I don’t see any reason to advertise how close we’ve become. Besides, the plans Lander and I have made for our evening aren’t entirely romantic. Earlier in the day Lander began to show me the evidence he’s been gathering against his family. He insists that he doesn’t have enough to seal their fate . . . yet. But still, he’s collecting clues, arrows that will point us where we need to go and signs that will help us plot our journey.
But Micah can’t suspect any of that. So I ride through the East Harlem streets in a limo and camp out in my small studio apartment for almost two hours before taking a cab back to see my partner in crime.
When I arrive at Lander’s it’s almost midnight. He opens the door wearing light cotton pants and an open robe, both the color of dark steel. His bare chest is a compelling advertisement for his strength and physical discipline. But his mussed light brown hair and sleepy hazel eyes are almost childlike . . . sweet. Not for the first time I’m st
ruck by how odd it is that one man can at times be so very gentle and then suddenly become so very dangerous.
“Perfect?” he asks as he takes my coat, brushing his fingers against my neck as he does.
“He bought every word.”
“Did he give anything away about who this Javier is, or who he works for?”
“He told me that Javier works with him, not for him. That’s all I got tonight, but I’ll get more.” I turn and lean my weight against the door. “I was good, Lander.”
He laughs despite himself, his eyes moving slowly over my form. “We’re going to make this work for us, Doncia. And I’ve gotten more information from one of my men,” he says, referring to the many private detectives he has in his employ. “We’re getting closer.” He reaches forward and slides one finger into the waistband of my skirt, using it as a kind of hook to pull me forward, taking me off-balance. “Go, make yourself comfortable and meet me in the dining room. We’ll pick up where we left off this morning.”
Thinking about this morning brings a smile to my lips. It hadn’t all been business.
It only takes me a moment to go to his room and slip out of my shoes, and then, after only a moment’s thought, my clothes, choosing one of Lander’s Kiton shirts that he’s carelessly draped over a chair as a nightgown, rolling the French cuffs up to my elbows. When I meet him in the dining room he smiles appreciatively as I take in the scene.
The dark oak table is covered in papers, timelines detailing the activities of brutal men and surveillance notes passed along by the private detectives who took to the shadows to stalk our prey. There are photos of criminals—some with menacing tattoos, others in suits with brilliantly white smiles—and reports detailing the violence and corruption both groups are spreading over the world.
And in the middle of all this evidence of evil are two crystal champagne flutes, filled to the brim and rising from the chaos like roses bursting from a field of weeds.
But of course, that makes sense. This is what working with Lander is like. We’re down in the mud, using our bare hands to dig up the ugliest secrets we can find . . . and yet even as the filth cakes under our fingernails, Lander finds a way to bring a little elegance to our pursuit.
Aware of his gaze, I move to the table and take my seat beside him. “Shall we begin again?”
His smile. It’s the smile of a righteous outlaw. He reaches forward and taps a photo on the table while lifting his glass to his lips. “Have you ever seen these men?”
I lean forward, impatiently pushing my hair out of my face when it threatens to block my view. “They look familiar but I’m not sure why . . . maybe from television? Are they reality stars or something?”
“In a way. Do you remember when the FBI busted that huge gun trafficking operation in Texas? They were smuggling guns into Mexico for a cartel. In fact, the smugglers were thought to be an extension of the cartel itself.”
I look at the men again. “They’re not Mexican,” I say definitively. The men are fair, but that’s not why I know they don’t share my mother’s nationality. It’s an American myth that all Latinos have dark hair and tanned skin. But these men seem to uphold stereotypes that belong exclusively to a rather specific American demographic. One is wearing a UFC T-shirt; the other is wearing a baseball cap with an eagle on it. Their skin is pasty, which makes the UFC fan’s Iron Maiden tattoo stand out all the more.
“They’re white supremacists,” Lander explains. “In some ways it was rather clever of them. No one expects the Klan types to team up with Mexican drug dealers. But in the prisons it’s not at all uncommon for the two groups to join forces against the black inmates, so apparently they decided to just extend the alliance into the outside world and make a little money off it.”
“What does any of this have to do with Travis? Is he a white supremacist now?”
“Travis doesn’t care about a man’s skin color as long as the color of what’s in his pocket is green.” Again Lander taps the picture, this time moving his index finger over the man wearing the baseball cap. Unlike his companion, he looks fairly clean cut. He’s wearing a nice pair of khakis paired with a black polo shirt. Only the eagle baseball cap indicates any kind of connection to the working-class culture. “I happen to know that my brother had lunch with this guy less than a week before his arrest. Less than forty-eight hours after meeting Travis, Kliff opened two accounts at HGVB: one for his legitimate but only marginally profitable gun stores, and one personal account. Kliff deposited over a hundred thousand dollars in each account. And any transaction over ten thousand dollars—”
“—has to be reported to the Feds for tax purposes as required by the federal Bank Secrecy Act, aka the anti-money-laundering law,” I finish for him.
Lander arches an eyebrow, appreciation flashing in his eyes.
“You think I would snake my way into your life without studying the rules of your world?” I ask, incredulous.
He pauses for a moment before reaching forward and touching my face, letting his fingers slide along my cheekbone to the contours of my ear. “Adoncia Bellona,” he says, pronouncing both my real name and my alias with an equal measure of affection. “Sweet warrior.” He laughs softly and shakes his head as his fingers dance down the line of my jaw. “If you wanted to destroy me you took the wrong path.”
“Did I?” I stand up and slowly straddle his lap, now weaving my fingers through his hair. “Have you ever had another enemy get this close to you? Has an opponent ever before had the opportunity to strip you of all your defenses and make you cry out their name?” I’m pushing his robe off his shoulders, watching a new and mischievous glint light up his eyes.
“And yet,” he says, his hand now pressed against the small of my back, pulling me toward him. “Here I am, not destroyed.”
“Mmm.” I reach behind me, picking up the photo of the two men, and then hold it up in the small space between us. “Tell me,” I say, running my finger over the form of the man with the eagle hat, “what happened to dear Mr. Kliff’s accounts? Were his transactions reported?”
“They were.”
I lean back so I can look into his eyes. I hadn’t expected that answer.
“It was documented less than an hour after Kliff’s arrest and only two hours before the arrest was shared with the media,” he clarifies. “So the reporting was delayed, but, yes, it did happen.”
“Someone tipped Travis off,” I say thoughtfully.
Lander nods. “He was a little careless about it. Not significantly careless, but it was enough to help me understand what I needed to look for.”
“Money laundering.” I say the words slowly, taking some pleasure in their acidity. “But this morning you showed me evidence of three other HGVB accounts that are clearly held by fronts.”
“I did.”
I shake my head and drop the picture back onto the table. “Three huge accounts! I mean, you have a fruit company,” I say, putting imaginary quotes around the words, “that opened up an account in an HGVB Cayman Islands subsidiary and wired over a million dollars to the Cypress account of a known Russian gangster. Over a million dollars, Lander! That’s got to be enough to lock these people up!”
“It might be,” Lander admits, “if the people you’re talking about are the individuals running that particular subsidiary. HGVB is a multinational behemoth. There are a lot of things that can happen that won’t ever come to Travis’s or my father’s attention. Or at least, they could argue that in court. You see, I don’t need three illegal accounts. I need one illegal account that has their fingerprints on it. Otherwise they’ll just throw the government a low-level scapegoat and keep on doing what they’re doing.”
A shudder runs up my spine even as I try not to allow my face to show how that remark affected me. I’m well aware of the Gables’ ability to deflect attention with scapegoats. “What about the Iranian thing?” I ask hopefully. “You said you thought they were doing business with them, didn’t you? That they were violating US s
anctions. Can we tie them to that?”
“Yes, I thought I glimpsed something on my father’s computer when I was visiting him. But when I went back to check . . .” He shakes his head. “I’ll find what I need to make that one stick. It’s just going to take time.”
“Hmm.” I look up at the ceiling as I conjure up a morbid fantasy. “I’d really like to send Travis to an Iranian prison . . . or maybe Saudi Arabia or some POW place in the Middle East. Can you see Travis sleeping on a concrete floor, subsisting on moldy bread and the rare glass of water? I wonder if he could keep his famously imperturbable composure under those circumstances.”
“I understand they’re gouging out the eyes of their prisoners in some of those places,” Lander muses. “It might be a bit much.”
“You’re right,” I agree, twisting slightly away from him as I pick up my champagne flute. “I like Travis’s eyes. They’re such a pale blue; it’s that blue you get early in the morning right after sunrise.”
“How romantic,” Lander says coolly.
“I guess, although I don’t really mean it in a romantic context.” I tip the glass against my lips before bringing it to his, watching carefully as he drinks. “I just like his eyes, that’s all. And it’s important that he keeps them. Otherwise, how will I ever see him cry?”
Lander cocks his head as I take the glass away. “You are a dark angel, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m just me. Your sweet warrior. And you?” I run my fingers down his chest, his muscles making little hills and valleys for me to trace. “You’re just my lover, my only ally, the gunpowder to my cannon.” I lean in, nibble on his ear. “Tell me, how do we light the fuse? What do you need to prove what you know about Travis’s and Edmund’s dealings with Iran?”
“Just a match made of all the usual materials,” he says. I can feel the slight pressure of his palms against my thighs, moving up and down, warming me to new possibilities. “A few incriminating emails or memos would be good.” His hands move up to my hips, pushing the shirt I’m wearing higher so now it gathers at my waist along the sides and falls in soft folds between my legs, concealing myself from him . . . but only barely. “And of course I’ll need files, accounts, digital records; all the things that they’re hiding.”
