That’s the end of our exchange, and I follow her as she weaves through the crowd. I have no doubt that more than stripping happens in this building, one way or another, but the shows on stage certainly attract enough masses on their own.
The Small One is waiting for us at the back corner, and she’s not too small to find both my weapons when she pats me down. She takes the stripped handgun I got at a Georgia pawn shop before crossing the border, and the jackknife in my back pocket. That one’s more of a Hail Mary than a genuine threat.
“You’ll give those back to me, right?” I ask, and The Small One rolls her eyes at me, hard. Miel’s girls seem young, but the look she’s leveling at me right now makes this one look like she could be a teenager. “Got it.”
I walk into the small office, and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust from the blinding neon lights of the club to the hazy darkness. Miel isn’t sitting at the cheap desk in the center of the room, but she keeps it between us, leaning against the back wall with her arms crossed. The stance strategically highlights the pistol tucked into her waistband. It also lifts the hem of her tank top ever so slightly, revealing a slip of tight, bronzed stomach. I force myself to keep my eyes on hers, framed in the thick black eyeliner that she’s always favored.
“Why did you invite me in here?” I ask, taking a wide stance of my own on the opposite side of the office. “You know what I’m in Miami for.”
“You’re here to kill me,” she says, in the same unaffected monotone that one would use to tell a stranger the date. For a moment, I flash back to the night she said the words in reverse, I’m here to kill you. Her voice had been thick with an emotion I still can’t put a name to. Something dark and hungry.
“So why would you want to meet with me?” I repeat.
“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” she counters, a challenge. Miel Conde doesn’t show an ounce of fear, and I don’t doubt that she doesn’t feel any, either. But fear is a survival instinct, something planted deep in every animal to keep them running when it’s time to tuck tail. Miel’s lack of it isn’t a strength; I realize that with conviction as her dark eyes bore into me, refusing to look away. Her fearlessness makes her reckless, and reckless gets you killed.
To answer her question, I reflect her words from that night, too. “Because I want to make it slow.”
This seems to satisfy her. She shifts, reaching into her jacket pocket. I tense, but all she pulls out is a lollipop, which she unwraps slowly, not taking her eyes off me. She doesn’t care that I’m here, that’s what her body language says. But the fact that she threw me out of her club every night before this tells another story.
“Why haven’t you killed me?” I ask, because recklessness is contagious, I guess.
She eyes me in that cold way of hers, revealing nothing, and crunches the candy in her mouth before answering. “I don’t know.”
She says this in a thoughtful way, as if she’s also taken aback by her answer.
“What am I here for, then?”
Miel walks around the desk now, and my whole body tenses at the movement. I’m hyperaware of every inch no longer between us, of the way her skin glows under the single bulb above us, of the way her body flexes and curves as she leans back against her desk. Something stronger than electricity crackles between us. Something dark and violent, a current of untapped potential. The scar she gave me begins to throb, and I have to fight the urge to take a step backward. Not because I’m afraid of her, either. I’m afraid of this energy our proximity sparks, of the ways it makes me want to hurt her. I never felt anything like this before her, before she carved into me with a smile on her face. The feeling is uncontrollable, and addictive. I crave it like I’ve never craved anything before, and that’s what frightens me. Is this how easy it is to become someone like Miel Conde, someone like Javier Vega and Selina Palacios? Someone more animal than person, more monster than man?
But I’m not like them, and I never will be. I’m here for Miel and the blood she owes me. When I’m done with her, I’ll wash my hands and go back to Atlanta, free of this fixation and thirst for revenge.
“I wanted to personally tell you to stay the fuck away from my club,” she says, the answer to a question I’ve nearly forgotten. “Stay the fuck away from me. You won’t get a second warning.”
My lips curl up at her venom, my fire stoked by her hollow threats. I can’t wait to show her what I’m capable of when stripped of a badge, to remind her what fear feels like.
“I don’t need a second warning, Miel,” I say, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve called her by her name. It drips off my lips like honey. “The hunt is over. The next time we see each other, only one of us is walking away alive.”
Chapter Seven
Miel
Shortly after Andrews leaves, Daveed raps lightly on my office door and peeks in. I force a smile and gesture for him to come in.
“Who was that jacked dude?” he asks, slouching into the only other chair in the office. “He looked intense.”
If I were the type of person to have friends, Daveed Simmons would be my friend. He’s closer to my age than the girls, and he possesses the quality I treasure most—a complete lack of curiosity, especially about my past. If things were different, if I was different, we might even grab drinks after work or go to the movies together. Maybe the version of myself that wasn’t a hand grenade with a loose pin would ask him out on a date, like normal people do. But when I look at him, his masculine cheekbones and welcoming body, I feel the same thing I feel about everyone else: nothing.
Except Reggie Andrews. Reggie Andrews makes me feel everything, all at once, and it’s nearly painful.
“No one,” I say in reply to his question, and Daveed raises a perfect brow. I sigh. “He’s just someone from Atlanta.”
“That guy followed you from Atlanta?” He looks impressed. “Damn, Miel. That’s the kind of man you usually have to chase down. Why do you look so pissed about it?”
“I always look pissed,” I grumble, pulling a Chupa Chups from my drawer. “It’s not what you think.”
Possibly the only time that phrase has been true. Andrews followed me here in the most literal sense of the word. He stalked me, hunted me, made me his prey. And for what? No matter what I did, I’m not worth crossing state lines for. Plenty of people have wanted me dead, but they had the sense to see that a roach like me isn’t even worth the time it would take to scrape my guts off your shoe. But here Andrews is, a year and god knows how much effort later, ready to put in the elbow grease and take me down once and for all.
His mistake.
“Did you see what Darcy did with her hair?” Daveed changes the subject, knowing that trying to get me to talk about myself is a losing battle. “She does not have the facial structure to pull off an undercut.”
“It’s better than when Jackson tried to grow out a beard for Christmas.” I crunch down, and shards of candy explode in my mouth. “Remember that?”
We chat for a bit longer about the only thing we have in common: this job. Then Daveed has to go oil up for his set, and we part ways, still not knowing a single real thing about each other.
I don’t go home that night.
Not because I’m worried about Andrews’s threats.
Because I’m tired, so fucking tired. I feel as if I haven’t slept in a week, and maybe I haven’t. Days and nights are all one blur, an undecipherable mess of flashing lights and cold metal. It’s not just that, though.
I’m tired of feeling, of being. Tired of endlessly battling for my life in a world determined to kill me. I used to fight out of spite, out of vitriol, out of a need to prove that I could.
I don’t know why I’m fighting anymore.
My first memory is of my mother screaming my name as they ripped me out of her arms. That’s the moment I was born, I think. The real me, the girl who never stopped kicking and clawing and biting back. The girl without a family, without a past, without a future.
I
slump back into the cheap, thin padding of my chair, swiveling a little from side to side. The silence in the empty club is louder than the busiest night of spring break. My head throbs, and my eyes burn when they close. They burn when they’re open, too.
For a moment, I think about the first few weeks after Javier joined me at my Tia’s tiny apartment. Tia Ofelia was friends with his mom, so when both his parents were killed in the span of a week, she took him in. He didn’t have anyone else, either. He didn’t speak for two weeks. After the lights went off, I would lean off the top bunk in the closet-sized room we shared and pepper him with questions. I wasn’t just curious, perplexed by the strange creature who moved around my home like a shadow. I was lonely, and I wanted a friend. After two weeks of silence, I told him as much. I remember the way his eyes snapped open, piercing in the darkness, even back then.
“You shouldn’t want anyone,” he had finally spoken, his voice low and hoarse from disuse. “Everyone leaves.”
It took me a few more months to crack him, and for two decades, he was my only family. He was by my side through the years we spent in El Sombrerón’s hell, and I was by his when he was ready to break free. I stood by him even after he led me directly into the monster’s maw, even when I knew his obsession with Selina Palacios would get us both killed.
And then he fucking left anyway.
He didn’t just leave, though. He took everything from me first, stripped me of my skin and yanked my bones out. Stood me atop the mountain and pushed me off with both hands. My brother, the only person I ever truly loved. He killed me, in every way that matters.
If Reggie Andrews succeeds in capturing me, he’ll only be disappointed.
You can’t kill what was born dead.
Chapter Eight
Andrews
I haven’t talked to my mother in three months.
That’s the only reason I answer when my phone lights up with her name on my screen. Guilt.
“Hey, Mom,” I say, putting the phone on speaker and setting it on the dashboard. The prolonged angry speech about my unexplained absence lasts almost as long as the absence itself. In the end, she sighs in resignation and asks where I’ve been.
“I’m on a case,” I tell her, and it’s not entirely untrue. It’s a personal case, if not official police business. “I’ve been in deep, and I’m finally getting close. I’m sorry I haven’t called, I’ve just been busy.”
Silence on my mother’s end. She’s suspicious, or maybe she already knows the truth, and I just failed a test. My chest clenches. I’ve stared death in the face more than a few times, but it’s my mother’s disappointment that I truly dread.
“Where are you now?” she finally asks. “I know you’re not in Atlanta. Your sister and I went looking for you at your apartment, and they told us you moved out months ago.”
“Mom,” I begin with a sigh, but no good lie immediately springs to mind. “I’m in Miami, following a lead.”
Another worrisome pause.
“How long have you been on this case, Reg?” she asks, her tone more serious than I’d like. “Is this another one of your—”
I cut her off, a dangerous move, but my time is limited. I’m supposed to meet my new lead in half an hour.
“No, I’m not ‘obsessing’ over a case again.” I put enough emphasis into the air quotes to make them materialize in Georgia. “It’s just complicated. Time consuming.”
“Too complicated to come home for your niece’s first birthday?”
Fuck. Her words are calculated, her tone designed to dig deep. It works. I learned some of my best interrogation skills from my mother.
“Yeah, listen, I’m really sorry about that,” I say. My hands grip the immobile steering wheel harder. “Tell that to Gabby, too. I promise, as soon as I wrap up business down here, I’ll be home.”
She makes a guttural sound that means yes, I will either be home soon, or she’ll come eviscerate me herself.
“You get too invested in these cases, Reg. Your father never would have wanted this for you.”
Yeah, well, it’s not like he’s around to confirm that assumption. I like to think my dad would be proud of me for my commitment. He’d understand why I work so hard to make wrong things right, even when no one else seems to care. Especially when no one else cares.
“Is Alexis around?” is what I say aloud. “I want to say hi to her, too.”
“She’s right here,” Mom says, and I hear the shuffle of them handing off the phone, then a pause as my youngest sister likely exits our mom’s hearing range.
“Bruh, what the fuck,” Alexis hisses into the mouthpiece a few moments later. “We haven’t seen or heard from you since Christmas. Mom’s been losing her goddamn mind. Like, she’s about to start calling hospital morgues about Black John Does.”
“Okay, it can’t be that bad,” I say, rolling my neck. “Listen, shit’s just been busy—”
“You’re right, it’s not as bad as it could be,” Alexis continues, still in the angriest hushed voice possible. “Because I’m the one who called the APD asking after you, and they told me you got fucking fired, Reggie. Like, a year ago. I haven’t told Mom yet, so, you’re welcome.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. My sister speaks again before I have a chance to think of an appropriate response.
“Where the fuck have you been? It’s literally like you dropped off the planet. You’ve never been gone this long before. I swear to god, if you’re still chasing that random ass rich bitch, I’m gonna kill you myself.”
“No, it’s not that,” I say quickly. It’s mostly true. I made the mistake of underestimating Selina Palacios, and she got away free and clear. I’m not repeating that mistake with her husband’s right-hand woman.
“Then how the hell are you ‘on a case’ after being relieved of your badge and gun?” The air quotes I just lobbed Mom’s way hit me on the forehead like a fucking boomerang.
I rub the bridge of my nose. “Alexis, you just have to trust me.”
“Been there, done that,” she snaps, a little louder than she meant to, I can tell. Her voice lowers again. “You always get way too obsessed with these cases, Reggie, and it’s gonna get you killed one of these days. Let that shit go, whatever it is, and come home. Maybe you can get a job here in Alpharetta. You’re a good detective, the sheriff would be crazy not to take you. There’s this new guy at church that works in private security, if you’re done with the cop thing.”
Never in my life have I been able to just “let shit go.” Not since I saw our dad get gunned down in our front yard, at the same house my little sister still lives at. She’s too young to remember, but I do. I remember everything. I remember the way our middle sister shrieked without pause until the EMTs arrived, the way our mother’s face didn’t move for years, holding her own grief at bay so she could be there for us. I remember the grandparents I’d never met before flying down for the funeral. Mostly, I remember the day they called Mom to tell her they were closing the case, there was nothing more they could do. That was the first time she cried. For her, I’ve never let shit go, not even once.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say instead, sighing. This was a mistake. It would have been better to leave them wondering for a couple more weeks. I’ll be done with Miel and home in time for Easter; Mom will love that. “Listen, I gotta go—”
“No, fuck you, Reggie, I know that’s not true,” my sister growls into the phone, dangerously loud. If Mom hears her saying that kind of shit, Alexis will get a lashing of the tongue, if nothing else. Our mother doesn’t believe that her rule as a parent ends at eighteen. She’ll be on our asses until the damn grave. “Don’t you fucking dare hang up on me, dude. You’re—”
I dare to hang up on her.
She’ll be pissed, they’ll all be, but I have to do this. Miel Conde is a bad person, and I’m going to make her pay for her mistakes.
It’s what I do.
No one gets away on my watch.
Chapter Nine
/> Miel
It storms on Saturday, so it’s a slow night. Sometimes bad weather makes people rush to any indoor activity, sometimes it makes them hole up in their hotel rooms. It’s luck of the draw. Tonight, it’s bad luck for me.
The Breaker will be coming for King’s cut in a couple hours, so I busy myself running oily singles through the bill counter. We’re a little lower than last week. I can’t help but feel that’s somehow my fault. All I have to do is make sure things run smoothly, and things did, but I’ve never been more distracted. I hope this doesn’t make King change his mind about increasing our delivery.
I need to solve my Reggie Andrews problem, and fast.
Someone raps on the door, too light and shy to be Lucia. I shove the stacks of cash out of sight, and yell at the knocker to come in.
It’s Mallory, one of the kids who helps run the bar on weekends. She’s way too young to be serving booze, but she needed the money, and I needed the cheap labor.
“Mal, what’s up?”
“Um,” she begins, tugging at the already loose knot of hair atop her head. “There’s something wrong with a delivery.”
“Okay, so get Liam, or Lucia.”
“They’re busy,” the young girl says quickly. She’s on edge, but she’s always been nervous by nature. It’s fucking annoying. “And the guy says he wants to talk to the boss.”
I sigh and push out of my chair. It’s late for a delivery, but with the kinds of deals King cuts for us, most of our business happens under the cover of darkness. I’m too tired to question it.
I follow Mal down the hall toward the back entrance, only realizing I left my leather jacket behind when we’re almost to our destination. The rain outside is hitting hard enough that I can hear it, even over the fading sounds of Sam’s set. Fuck, no wonder it’s a ghost town in here. Mal pushes the thick metal door open, and I follow her out, my hand up to shield my face from the downpour. It’s a useless gesture. In a moment, my hair is heavy and wet, and even my waterproof eyeliner must be dripping down my cheeks, beaten off by the sheer force of the storm.
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