I study Alex Danfrey, this man I know intimately and yet apparently, don’t know at all. This expert sorcerer who’s about to take down everyone I’ve worked with, everything I’ve worked for, all in one night. One bust. This double agent who’s crossing his own agency just to carve a path that lets me walk away.
We’ll get ahead of this—the only way you get out—we deserve each other.
Maybe . . . maybe we could start over, in another city—Alex, me, Ruby, and Ben. And once we clear our names with the Feds and move on, maybe . . . maybe we bury the caging spell like Alex said, keep it a secret as Mama always meant for it to be, and we get back to our performance. Alex and I had true magic on our stage, that’s something you can’t walk away from. We could open our own place. A different place—without the violence, without the Gunns of the world breathing down our necks—just a place to make magic together. Alex says he’s working for the Feds, but I’ve seen him in action. And I know what he can do, what he won’t be able to live without forever, despite how much he’s turned himself around otherwise.
We’ll work it out, we’ll figure it all out, together.
“Promise me you’ll take care of my family after all this is through?” I say slowly, as I wipe a tear from my eye. “And my name is never tied to any of it. As far as the papers, anyone is concerned—Joan Kendrick never existed.”
Alex rests his hands on my shoulders. “I will, Joan. I promise. It’s what I want.” He glances toward the window. “Stay up here, get some rest if you can. I’ll be in the lounge with the others tomorrow, finishing up our shipments, just to avoid tipping Gunn off that anything’s wrong. You do the same. You act like everything he’s been planning is finally coming together. Soon as I know when Colletto’s coming, I’ll phone it in to the Feds,” he says. “And when the gangsters exchange the cash and the goods, we pull our final trick—we clue in the troupe, and lock those thugs in the VIP lounge. Then the Unit arrives to take them down.”
I nod slowly, wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “I understand.”
He presses his lips gently to my forehead and pulls me into him. And I smell his scent again, that mix of soap and cologne. I breathe it in. “We’re in this together, Joan,” he whispers. “We always have been.”
We both climb through the window, Alex angling around Ruby to make his way to the foot of the bed. “Until tomorrow,” he says, after I break my spell on the door.
And then he’s gone.
I lie back down. I toss and turn, running it all through, praying to God that Gunn doesn’t get a whiff of this and break Alex apart, only to break me next. I’m angry, more scared than I’ve been in a long time, so twisted around that sleep is now a dream. But there’s one thing I know deeper and truer than anything:
Alex was right.
Even though we didn’t know why, or how, or what it was all for, Alex and I have always been in this together.
DEAL SWEETENER
ALEX
I leave Joan’s room and creep downstairs, settle onto the sofa in the lounge, determined to catch a little rest before tomorrow breaks wide open. There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep—my nerves are shot, my heart is beating so fast that I’m surprised it hasn’t taken off—but I should try. Tomorrow is going to be a long, backbreaking day of finishing up the shine shipment for Gunn, making sure Agent Frain is ready for our score, and then all the paperwork I’m sure will take place at the Unit, after.
Of course it was a huge risk, coming clean to Joan. A huge, potential career-and life-ending risk. But I trust her. Regardless of whether I should, I do. And I can’t leave her behind. No matter how much I try to lie or trick myself, the truth remains. I’m in love with her.
What’s left of the night passes by in a fit of strange dreams, and tossing and turning on the lounge’s sofa. When Ral and Billy show up in the morning, they look me up and down, and Ral actually asks if I’m strung out.
“I’m fine,” I say, as I stand and light a cigarette. “Just tired is all.”
“After tonight, Gunn sure as hell better give us a night off.” Billy picks up one of the jugs of water resting in the corner and pours the optimum twelve ounces into an empty bottle. “Can’t take much more of this.”
“I’m with you,” I say.
Once the rest of the troupe arrives, we slowly get to work, dig our heels in, and we all keep a steady pace for a few hours, working as a team. Around late afternoon, we each brew our last trick of shine, and fill the final quart container. Despite the collective exhaustion, the air in the lounge becomes festive, excited. Win comes in a few minutes later, and when he sees the finished shipment, he calls for Gunn.