by JB Lynn
My stomach soured at the thought. Yanking my arm free of his grasp, I glared up at his blue eyes, which were narrowed at me suspiciously.
“What’s with the mask?”
“All the staff are wearing them.”
“Right, except you’re not staff.”
I showed him the tray I carried as though it was the only proof I needed.
“I keep telling you that you’re a lousy liar.”
There was no way I’d let him get away with acting like I was the only one with a hidden agenda. “Apparently you’re not. I believed you when you told Alice you were tired, but here you are, partying the night away.”
His lips, those lips that could work such magic against mine, flattened into a straight line. “I’m working.”
“Working? Like you were ‘working’ at The Big Day when you just happened to run into us shopping for Alice’s dress?”
“Stop it, Maggie.”
“And were you working when you were at the rehearsal restaurant the other night?”
“I can’t explain. I wish I could, but I just can’t.”
My heart fell. He was in business with Garcia. I didn’t need an explanation. I’d figured it out. It had taken me a while, but I’d finally worked it out. Zeke was no better than my drug-dealing target.
“You’ve got to get out of here.” Zeke turned his attention back to the dance floor.
Garcia was preparing to toast the bride and groom. He held out a hand, demanding champagne. It would have been the perfect opportunity to poison him.
“He killed Theresa,” I blurted out.
Zeke turned back to me. “What?”
“His drugs killed my sister. The driver who hit us was an addict. He got her hooked on drugs, so he’s responsible.”
Something that looked like a lot like pity shimmered in Zeke’s gaze.
“You’re no better than him,” I spat. “You’re just like your dad, a drug-dealing monster.”
Rearing back, he blinked, as though I’d slapped him.
A deafening snap, like a loud boom of thunder, ripped through the room. Instinctively I looked in the direction of the sound, just in time to see the disco ball fall from the ceiling. There was a crash and screams and bedlam.
Before I could figure out what had happened, Zeke grabbed my hand and started dragging me away.
“We have to get out of here!” he shouted above the din.
Dropping the champagne-laden tray, I allowed him to lead me from the chaos. We raced out of the building to the parking lot.
“Where’s your car?” he asked.
“Not here,” I panted.
“What the hell were you doing here, Maggie?”
“What were you?”
Instead of answering me, he pulled his keys from his pocket and remotely unlocked his car, which was parked at the far end of the lot. “Run!”
Worried that Garcia’s goons would chase us, I did as he said.
We tumbled into the car and he peeled out of the lot.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ZEKE POUNDED ON the steering wheel as he sped away. “Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!”
“Where are you taking me?” My voice wobbled, suddenly afraid of him.
Glancing over at me, he noticed I was cowering against my door. He slowed down, took a deep breath, and ran a hand through his hair. “I am nothing like my father or Jose Garcia.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Home. So you don’t have to open that door and throw yourself out of the moving car.”
I relaxed a little. We rode in silence for a few minutes.
“So what was your plan?” he asked quietly. “To get up in front of everyone and tell all his family and friends what a degenerate scumbag Garcia is?”
“Something like that.” I fingered the necklace.
“It would have been useless. They already know, and he’s not the kind of guy you can afford to piss off.”
Something wasn’t tracking. He spoke of Garcia with such disdain.
“Why were you there?” I asked.
A muscle in his jaw jumped and his fingers flexed on the steering wheel. He didn’t answer me. Instead, he pulled into the parking lot of my apartment complex and escorted me to my front door.
I unlocked my front door and looked up at him.
He scowled. “Promise me you’ll give up on this idea of getting your revenge on Garcia.”
“Okay.”
“You are the worst liar.”
Before I could protest, he kissed me, so tenderly, I forgot how to think. Shoving my door open, he maneuvered us inside my apartment.
“God?” DeeDee panted curiously.
“God!” I groaned, tearing my lips from Zeke’s. I’d forgotten the little guy and left him behind! “He’s okay,” I assured the dog.
“Hear that, DeeDee?” Zeke petted the dog’s head. “She thinks I’m okay.”
I couldn’t correct him without sounding crazy, so I shut my mouth and the door, trying to gather my thoughts. I couldn’t remember ever being more confused.
“Can I trust you, Maggie?”
I shrugged, keeping my back to him.
“Look at me, Maggie.”
I turned slowly toward him.
“I’m not real.”
“You look real.”
“I’m all flash, no substance. I talk fast and think faster. You deserve better.”
The pain behind his words stabbed at my heart. It wasn’t Zeke the man saying these things, but the boy who’d been rejected by his own family.
Wanting to alleviate his suffering, I reached up and pulled his head down to mine. Our lips touched. “You feel real,” I murmured against his mouth.
He jerked his mouth from mine, but pulled my body tight against his, squeezing me tightly as though I were an anchor he had to hold on to. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I silently signaled I was there for him.
“Loyal, loving, Maggie,” he muttered into my hair. “I never deserved your friendship and I don’t deserve you now.”
“Zeke—”
“I’m a con man, Maggie,” he confessed on a rushed breath. “That’s what I am. I’m a scam artist.”
I stepped away so that I could look at his face. It was twisted in a mask of shame and regret.
“I came back to town to run a con designed to take down Garcia’s operation. I was at the dress shop because I’d heard his daughter was going there to pick up her gown.”
He stared at me, daring me to believe him.
And I did, maybe because it was no crazier than me being a hitwoman.
“So I’m part of your con?”
He shook his head vehemently. “You weren’t part of the plan, but then I saw you and Alice and something came over me, something stupid, and I wanted to reconnect. I wanted to be with people who knew my real name, knew where I came from, knew the real me.” He turned away. “But I don’t even know who the real me is anymore.”
I knew that feeling too.
“But the way you look at me . . . it’s been a major distraction. I never expected to be this attracted . . .” Agitated, he speared his fingers through his hair.
“Should I apologize?”
He whirled back around to face me, blue eyes flashing wildly. “How are you not freaking out?”
I shrugged. As much as I appreciated his confession, I wasn’t about to reveal that while he conned people, I killed them. “No one’s perfect. We all do things we’re not proud of.”
Reaching out, he cupped my cheek. “You have no idea how much I’d like to stay in town and find out where we could take this, but my employer won’t let me.”
“You have an employer?”
“It’s complicated.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Life is complicated.”
“God where?” DeeDee asked worriedly.
“So you’re going to leave?” I asked Zeke.
“I have to.”
“And I’ll neve
r see you again?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“So why tell me all this?”
“Because I wanted you to know . . . I needed you to know that this is about me and not you. You have no idea what an amazing woman you are. I didn’t want you to think my leaving had anything to do with you.”
“But you won’t stay for me,” I said slowly, not even sure I’d want him to, if he did.
“I can’t. I have work to do. Debts to repay . . .” He trailed off. Kissing me hard on the mouth, he turned around and left, leaving me standing there like a stunned statue.
“Now God?” DeeDee asked insistently.
It took me a second to focus on her. “Let me change into sneakers and then we can go get him.”
It would be a long walk all the way across town to get back to our rendezvous point, but I couldn’t let him spend the night out there alone.
Three sharp knocks on the door startled us both.
I peered through the peephole and then yanked open the door.
“Back already?”
Zeke smiled sheepishly. “There was something I forgot to tell you.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and did my best to pretend I was unhappy with him.
“You should learn to accept people’s help, Maggie. It’ll make it easier on you and them. Trying to be your friend, helping you, is hard. You’ve got all those walls up.”
“Is this your professional con man’s opinion?” I asked sarcastically.
“Armani’s trying to save your job, your aunts are trying to save your niece, and you don’t cut any of them any slack,” he said quickly, as though he thought I might slam the door in his face. “I’m pretty sure you may have saved me, Maggie. Thank you for reminding me who I can be.”
He lifted his hand in a slight wave, ran to his car, and drove out of my life.
“Now?” DeeDee asked impatiently.
“Maybe I should ask for some help,” I murmured.
Chapter Thirty
THINKING ABOUT ASKING for help and actually doing it are two very different things, when you’re a hitwoman. Patrick’s rule Don’t Get Caught was foremost in my mind as I ran through the possibilities of who I could ask to help me get my car. I couldn’t think of anyone in my life who wouldn’t find it strange that I’d left it across town, which was why DeeDee and I hoofed it there, in the dark of night, with a flashlight as our only companion.
“God? God?” she started barking as soon as the car was in sight.
“Shhh! You’ll wake the whole neighborhood and someone will call the cops and tell them a suspicious character is lurking in their neighborhood and I’ll get caught.”
“God?” DeeDee whined pitifully.
He didn’t answer. I started to panic. What if something had happened to him? What if he’d become the dinner of a cat or an opossum?
Kneeling down to peer under the car, I swept the beam along its length.
“Are you there, God? It’s me, Maggie.”
“It’s about time,” he groused from above.
Scrambling to my feet, I tried to find him. “Where are you?”
“Over here on windshield.” He’d wedged himself between the glass and a wiper blade. “Give me a lift.”
He climbed up my extended hand slowly and stiffly.
“Okay?” DeeDee asked, jumping up to put her front feet on the hood of the car so that she could see her little friend.
“I’m fine. I just want to go home.”
Getting both of them situated in the car, I said, “I’m so sorry I left.”
Settling himself into the inverted baseball cap I’d placed on the front seat for him, he said, “Don’t be. You were right to get out of there. The place was crawling with cops.”
“Cops?” I started the car.
“Air!” DeeDee panted as though I’d deprived her of oxygen for hours.
“You didn’t hear?” God asked slyly.
“Hear what?” I asked, opening the window for the mutt and putting the car into drive.
“Garcia is dead.”
I stomped on the brake so hard, the car shook.
“You’re a terrible driver.” His voice dripped with superiority.
“Again!” DeeDee barked excitedly.
I put the car in park and turned to look at the lizard. “Tell me that bit about Garcia again.”
“He’s dead.”
“But I never . . .”
“The disco ball.”
“Fetch!” DeeDee interjected.
“Shut up!” God and I yelled at her simultaneously.
“Sorry.” She stuck her head out the window.
“The disco ball?” I looked to God for clarification.
He yawned. “It fell on him. Well, technically it was going to fall on his cute little granddaughter, but he jumped in to push her out of the way.”
“So Armani was right,” I mused. “It all came down to a disco ball.”
“So it would seem,” God agreed. “The poor kid was traumatized.”
Which was why I hadn’t been able to poison her grandfather. “At least, when she gets older, she’ll know he died protecting her.”
“The scum dies a hero.” The bitterness in the lizard’s tone was unmistakable.
“Not exactly the justice Katie and Theresa deserve,” I said aloud, but secretly, I was relieved it was over.
God was out cold by the time we got home. His snoring sounded an awful lot like a whistling teakettle. Carrying the baseball cap inside, taking care not to jostle him, I gently laid it on the kitchen table beside his terrarium. He didn’t even stir.
“Couch?” DeeDee yawned.
“Sure.” The two of us curled up on the couch.
Exhausted, we all slept until almost noon. I visited Katie and then spent the rest of the day vegging in front of the TV, waiting for Patrick to call and see how everything had gone. I ate all the olives I had.
He never called.
I went to bed early and slept until my alarm went off the next morning.
“Turn it off,” God groaned.
I rolled off the couch, shuffled into my bedroom, slapped the clock to make it silent, and staggered into the shower.
I was glad it was a Monday morning. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself since Alice’s wedding and Garcia’s death weren’t on the near-horizon.
After I walked DeeDee, I checked in on God. He looked pale. “Do you need anything?” I whispered, unsure if he was still asleep since he was lying so still at the bottom of his terrarium.
“I need you to go to hell,” he grumbled, turning his back on me.
Lost in thought, worrying that Alice’s rehearsal dinner and the Garcia wedding had been too much for the little guy, I didn’t even notice Harry’s pepperoni breath when he snuck up behind me as I took a claim from someone who’d driven into her own garage door.
“Much better empathy,” he said.
Startled, I jumped in my seat, almost choking to death on the mint Life Saver I’d been sucking on. I coughed so loudly, half the place turned around to see what was wrong with me.
Once I could breathe again, I gasped, “Did you want something, Harry?”
Eyes narrowed, he shook his head. “Just wanted to give you some positive feedback on the excellent job you’re doing.”
“Thanks, I guess?” Nice Harry was even creepier than regular Harry.
“We’re good, right? You and me?” He actually pointed to indicate who was “you” and who was “me.”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“Good. Good. Carry on.” He hurried away.
A moment later Armani limped over to my desk. “What was that about?”
Remembering what Zeke had said about her, I said, “You tell me.” I fixed a steady gaze on her, waiting to see how she’d react.
She raised her eyebrows. “When did you figure it out?”
“What exactly did you do?” I countered, offering her a candy.
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Taking one, she rested the hip of her bad leg on the corner of my desk. “Someone,” she said, unwrapping the candy, “may have let slip that somebody may have been building a sexual harassment suit against poor Harry. And somebody might have mentioned that you’d hired a lawyer. You did hire a lawyer, didn’t you?”
“To fight for custody of Katie,” I said slowly.
“Somebody may have forgotten to mention that part of the equation.” She winked at me.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But—”
“That’s what friends are for.”
She got up and headed back toward her own desk.
“Armani?”
She looked back at me.
“Anything else you can tell me about the cactus?”
“Maybe they’re a symbol of the desert wasteland that is your love life, Chiquita.” Chuckling, she turned and walked away.
Considering that she’d been right about the disco ball and that Zeke had left town, I couldn’t discount her theory.
I THOUGHT ABOUT not visiting the hospital after work, but now that Katie was awake and aware, I wanted to see her even more than I didn’t want to run into Delveccio.
I really needed the lizard’s help figuring out how to best spin the story of what had happened with Garcia, but I didn’t have time to run home. Hustling across the parking lot, I decided that my safest course of action would be to let the mobster do most of the talking. It wasn’t like he was going to unleash his idiot nephew/bodyguard on me in the cafeteria.
There was a flurry of activity going on in the room of Delveccio’s grandson, so I scooted past, unnoticed. I closed the door to Katie’s room so that we could have some privacy, before I even greeted her.
“Hey, Baby Girl.”
Turning her head, she watched my progress as I crossed the room to kiss her on her cheek.
Noticing that she was covered by a new afghan, I asked, “Was Aunt Susan here to visit you?”
