by Audrey Faye
“I. Don’t. Know.” The words hissed out through my teeth.
“Yet.” Rosie’s eyes weren’t letting go. “Every single case I’ve seen the two of you tackle, you’re the one who figures out how to get it done.” She waved her chin Carly’s direction. “She’s putting out the fire he just set. That’s her part of this deal.”
She was connecting the dots all too well. “I’m supposed to take away his gasoline and matches.”
“Exactly. And you can’t do that if you think you’re a washed-up wimp, so toss the bullshit.”
I nodded slowly. “Turking leans on that. He makes me feel useless.”
She raised a wry eyebrow. “Why the hell do you think I’m throwing my two hundred pounds on the scales?”
For the same reason I’d lit my sticks of dynamite earlier—trying to get whatever we were doing firing on all cylinders. We weren’t going to take Turking down with anything less.
I took another sip from my lukewarm mug and sat quietly with Rosie, stoking the fires of our collective courage. It was hushed, almost meditative—and then the sexy gypsy’s head snapped around and her eyes glued themselves to Carly. “What are you doing?”
I sat up a little straighter, wondering what the heck she’d smelled in the ether.
“Same thing I’ve been doing for the last three hours.” My partner mouthed the words around the pencil between her teeth. “Covering the butts of idiots and innocents. Hanging mine out in the wind.”
It took a second for the last sentence to penetrate.
Rosie was faster. “Like hell you are.”
Carly’s eyes went assassin cold. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
“Wait.” I held out my palms like stop signs—and nearly got singed by the dual glares.
“Stay out of this, Jane.” Rosie was on her feet, staring down the woman with a laptop in her hands. “Exactly what are you doing to make yourself bait?”
“What it’s going to take,” said Carly, every word chipped ice. “He’s looking for dirt. I’m giving him some to find.”
My insides froze.
Rosie had turned white, but it didn’t make her any less fearsome. “The kind of stuff that could land you in jail?”
“Only if they catch me.”
Dead, suffocating silence. And then Rosie took three fuming steps, closed the laptop hard, and sat down on the floor at Carly’s knees.
The fiercest supplicant I’d ever seen.
Rosie took a breath, her hands fisted at her sides. “What happened five years ago—that wasn’t your fault. You didn’t make yourself a target.”
“I know that.” Blue eyes spewed rocket fuel. “You think I’m doing this because I’m fucked up in my head? I’m doing it to keep a sixteen-year-old kid safe.”
That was a low blow—and it barely registered on one furious florist. “I love you, you idiot. How long are you going to keep doing this shit?”
Carly was shaking now, and it wasn’t anger doing the quaking. “I need to be an assassin. I don’t know how to be anything else.”
“I know that—but do you need to be the kind who breaks the law every day? Who’s going to end up behind bars before I ever get to bake you a birthday cake? Then those assholes at the frat house win, C. They win.”
I took a slow step backward. This was totally not my fight anymore. It had been for three years—and I’d just been utterly, thoroughly replaced.
Rosie pinned me to the wall with a glance. “You stay right there. You let her do this, so I’m going to kick your ass too.”
She wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t said a hundred times. But she didn’t know the Carly of three years ago. The one who had needed to make herself a target, over and over again—and win.
The one who had crawled out of hell that way.
Rosie leaned over and rested her arms in Carly’s lap, two hundred pounds of pleading warrior. “You need to let yourself matter. Cover your own ass, dammit.”
“I do.” Carly’s voice was a bare whisper. “Some, anyhow.”
“Not nearly enough.”
A low rumbling sound, faint traces of Harley, leaked from Rosie’s pocket. She reached for her phone, face tense. “It’s my friends who have Lelo.”
The air in the room nearly crackled.
Rosie looked at the screen and her shoulders relaxed marginally. “She wants a meet.”
Wanted it pretty badly if she was turning hard-nosed bikers into her messenger service.
“Why?” Carly kicked the entirely innocent leg of the armchair she sat in, mouth petulant. “I suppose she wants to chew a piece of my ass off too.”
“Probably,” said Rosie wryly. “Loving you isn’t exactly an easy gig.”
My partner’s eyes welled up. “I keep telling you to stop.”
“I know.” The sexy gypsy smiled and reached out to touch a riled, sad cheek. “I guess you’re not the only one who knows how to hang her ass out in the wind.”
10
I’ve had a lot of people pretty pissed off at me in my life, but as I looked at the skinny kid in black leaning against the bar with her arms crossed, it occurred to me that she might be about to win that particular contest. Even without taking into account the six or seven people in well-used leathers flanking her.
I edged a little closer to Rosie. “I thought you said these people are friendly.”
“They usually are.” The woman at my side sighed. “She’s had a whole day to work on them.”
She’d clearly done her job very well. It wasn’t at all hard to tell whose side they were on. The ninety-pound kid had herself an army.
Lelo looked Rosie up and down, and then did the same to Carly. “Did you take care of him yet?”
My partner shook her head, mute.
I stepped forward, wanting to protect what was raw and vulnerable.
The kid switched her attention to me. “What the hell are you waiting for—little green men to come and get him?”
One of the guys leaning against the bar snorted. “That only happens in Area 51, Shortie.”
His friend elbowed him not-so-gently in the ribs. “She’s taller than you are, Riker.”
“Smarter, too.” Riker flashed Lelo a clearly besotted grin.
Beside me, Rosie groaned quietly.
“So.” The woman at the end of the line of black looked like she crushed rocks as a hobby. “Who’s the jerk-off who’s screwing with the kid, and how do we ride some tire tracks over his head?”
“We can’t.”
I blinked—those words had come from Lelo.
She leaned forward so she could see rock-crushing woman. “He’s an asshole, but we have to deal with him the right way.” Lelo gestured at me. “Jane’s the brains, so she has to figure out how to get this done. Until she says, nobody does anything stupid.”
My brain stuttered, trying to catch up. First, despite the lockdown she’d been in, the kid clearly hadn’t had any problem staying informed. And second, she wasn’t at all surprised at having fifteen hundred pounds of muscle ready to do her bidding. I raised an eyebrow. “What did you make them for dinner?”
She grinned. “Jambalaya.”
Contented heads nodded up and down the bar. Riker patted his belly. “Shortie can cook.”
Shortie could do a lot of things—but it was time for her to do them without her posse. I met Lelo’s eyes, hoping she could see the respect. And the plea. “How about we sit down and have a little chat, just the four of us?”
The bar line-up scowled in unison.
I raised an eyebrow. “We need to talk. You can’t stay in biker witness protection your whole life.”
Riker snarled. “Why the hell not?”
Rosie rolled her eyes. “Had her on a Harley yet, Stokes?”
The guy beside Riker nodded. “Yup. Kid’s got good moves. She just needs a few more pounds to handle the machine.”
Lelo grinned. “Or Rosie riding behind me.”
The sexy gypsy’s smile was a l
ittle sad as she steered the four of us to a quiet corner table. “When this is over, we’ll go riding.” Seven bikers took the hint and made themselves scarce.
Lelo watched them go, and then turned back to the three of us, face set in a hard look I’d never seen. “I don’t get why it’s not done.”
“Because it’s not that simple.” Rosie looked worried. “None of the usual stuff works with this guy. He’s smart and he’s dangerous and he has no morals and he doesn’t scare.”
“And so?” The kid’s face was grim. “Look, I know you don’t kill everyone, right? But you’re assassins, and he’s totally bad shit.”
I closed my eyes, finally understanding what it was she thought we’d tucked her away to do. What she was trying to keep her new biker friends away from. What she’d steeled her heart to accept.
And then I opened my eyes to my worst fear in progress. One blond assassin considering just how far she might go to keep a friend safe. The saliva in my mouth turned to instant sawdust. I’d seen that same look in Carly’s eyes just once before—three years ago in a down-and-out bar on the day we’d met.
A gasoline heart, preparing to throw her humanity on the fire to save someone else.
I stopped Rosie’s reaching hands in their tracks. This was still mine to do. I took Carly’s ice-cold hands and waited for her eyes to meet mine. Just the two of us now. Kindred spirits who knew what it was to stand at the edge of your life and be willing to toss it away.
I swallowed hard, trying to get words past the sawdust. “No. That’s not the way.”
Her eyes glistened with anguish. “It might be.”
There was only one answer I knew—one answer I’d always known. “Never.” Even if the asshole utterly, totally deserved it.
Lelo’s quiet inhale was the only sound in the bar. “Wait. You’ve never killed anybody?” The kid popped up to her feet, ninety pounds of righteous fury. “You’re freaking frauds?”
I found a little anger of my own. “We’re not. We do work that matters.”
She shoved her face in mine. “You call yourself assassins.”
I shoved right back. “We call ourselves what works.”
Rosie’s hands landed on Lelo’s shoulders. “Sit down.”
The kid nearly spit in her face.
“Sit.” The gypsy was in full warrior mode now. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”
“I do.”
“No.” Rosie’s eyes filled with grief. “If you did, you wouldn’t be asking.”
Lelo looked uncertain for the first time since she’d arrived on the back of Riker’s bike.
The gypsy’s eyes didn’t waver. “It would break the one who would do it for you. And we all love her way too much to ever let that happen.”
I could see it land—one sixteen-year-old, for the first time in her life, imagining what it would do to a human heart to take the life of another. She gulped hard, three times, face getting grayer with each swallow. And then turned to Carly and wrapped her gangly arms around whatever she could reach. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t. I’m an idiot. Don’t do it.” She was practically shaking my partner now. “Don’t. I’ll stay with these guys for as long as you need, I promise. Until I weigh three hundred pounds and I can ride a Harley in my sleep.”
A torrent of rolling, babbling fear. Washing over my partner, working its way into places she’d never let anywhere near the daylight. Trying to convince Carly, deep down in those dark, terrified, frat-house formed cells—that she mattered.
Lelo laid her hands on Carly’s face. And then mine. And then back to Carly. “You guys are so brave. You’ll figure this out.” Her smile was shaky as all hell, covered in tears, and utterly beautiful. “I know you will.”
I wanted, so very much, to rise up into that faith and light and be who she thought we could be. But I was horribly afraid she might have been right the first time.
That we were frauds. And that because we were, Turking was going to win.
11
It was the quietest, saddest breakfast I’d eaten in a really long time.
Or stared at—no one was doing much eating. Carly pushed crumbled bits of Danish around her plate, face bleak. Lelo’s speech had taken the awful light out of my partner’s eyes, but nothing had stepped up to replace it. We were two assassins with no weapons left, and we knew it.
I huddled into my flannel, cold and worn and helpless.
Rosie sat, hands wrapped around a monster mug of coffee, watching the two of us. Saying nothing.
“The kid is right,” said Carly quietly. “We’re frauds.”
Believing that was a sure path to doom—and we were both on it. “No, we’re not. We get the job done because assholes believe what we’re peddling. I’m not going to apologize for that.”
I could see faint glimmers of approval in the gypsy’s eyes—but still, she said nothing.
My partner kept making Danish dust. “There’s nothing we can do about Turking. That makes us frauds.”
That made us two women who’d taken on an evil we weren’t big enough to handle, but saying that wasn’t going to fix the miasma of despair hanging over our breakfast. “We’ll figure something out.”
Carly looked up at me, eyes suddenly ablaze. “Don’t try to sell me that crap again. We’ve been trying to deal with this bastard for two years and he’s smarter and faster and we aren’t going to win and a freaking kid is going to pay the price.” She slammed both hands on the table, startling the hell out of the lone other occupant of the diner. “And apparently I’m too chickenshit scared to do the only thing that might stop him.”
It wasn’t fear stopping her. It was something she wanted to feel even less—a far too firm attachment to her own humanity. I bowed my head, hating the mess we were in, and utterly at sea on how to even begin to clean it up.
“So.” Rosie lifted her coffee cup, and cleared her throat noisily. “Are you two done with the assassin pity party yet?”
I seriously considered stabbing her with my fork. “Just stop.”
She took a sip from her mug. “Can’t. I’m not going to sit here and watch two of the bravest people I know flog themselves bloody.”
Rosie’s steel was deadly. Her gentleness was even worse.
“Then what,” Carly forced the words out between clenched teeth, “would you suggest we do instead?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Rosie smiled slowly and jiggled the van keys. “I think it’s time for a road trip.”
I stared at her blankly—maybe somebody had drugged my Danish. Or hers. “To where?”
“To wherever you need to go to be reminded of all the good you do. It’s time for a hope tour.” She jangled the keys again. “I’m driving.”
Carly was staring like our florist had grown a second head. “What the hell is a hope tour?”
Rosie shrugged. “Take me places. Show me why you do this, who you save.”
My partner found her words first. “We don’t need a freaking cheerleading rally.”
“Good, I look weird with pom-poms,” said Rosie wryly.
“You think a ride down memory lane is going to fix Turking?” We could just try drowning him in flower petals instead.
“No. I think it might fix you.” She stood up, throwing a few bills on the table to cover our mutilated breakfasts. “Look, you have a problem. You have an asshole guy who doesn’t scare the usual ways, and he’s capable of landing a world of hurt on you if you keep waving knives and playing illegal games on the Internet, right?”
That was an entirely depressing summary.
She seemed to take our silence as assent. “So you have to figure out another way to come at him. Which you guys are good at, but it totally isn’t going to happen if you keep sitting here feeling sorry for yourselves. Consider me the associate in charge of ass-kicking.”
We’d apparently deputized way too many people for that job. I looked down at the scratches on the surface of the well-worn table and tried to keep my de
spair to myself. Two of us sitting here thought this one was unwinnable, and all the gypsy conviction in the world wasn’t going to change that reality.
A hand reached out and laid itself over mine. “What exactly do you have to lose?”
I looked at Carly’s pile of Danish dust, sighed, and got to my feet. She was right. There wasn’t much left to lose.
But I wasn’t sure we had anything to win, either.
-o0o-
It had taken two hours of random driving before either of us in the backseat had bent enough to give Rosie some directions. Or two hours of sulking, depending on your perspective. I wasn’t sure why I was so opposed to an effort to cheer us up. Maybe because the gypsy was usurping my usual job. Or maybe because this one felt dire enough that hope was somehow an illegitimate objective.
But eventually the cheerful humming from the front seat had outlasted my passive resistance. That and the persistent, annoying certainty that I knew the first place we needed to go.
I knew where hope had been born.
It was one of our earliest cases together, and in the deep, dark nights of loneliness, still one of my favorites. I knew my partner had figured out where we were headed. And more importantly—when she had figured it out, I’d seen her small, grudging smile.
Maybe Rosie wasn’t entirely wrong.
I directed our gypsy driver off the main roads and into an older neighborhood, and then into the parking lot behind the town’s rundown, but very well-used rec center. There was a steady flood of people heading through the front doors into the building, but it was a view of the field I wanted. For that, we didn’t even need to get out of the van.
I leaned forward, squinting out the front window. There were a lot of boys on the field, and a lot of men—but I had no problem finding the duo I sought. Keenan looked just like his dad. Kicked a ball just like him, too. Together, the two of them dodged other pairs of fathers and kids, working their way up the field.
A hulking giant stood in the goal with a girl in wild pigtails three or four feet in front of him.
Keenan got his knee on a damn good pass from his dad and wailed it straight at the goalkeeping pair. The girl in net got enough of it to deflect it straight between the legs of the man behind her and into their own goal.
