“No, Flavia!”
He shook me by my shoulders so violently I had no choice but to shut up. An instinctual fight-or-flight reaction made me open my eyes, and he was not a pretty sight to see. It was then for the first time I saw the hitman side of him. I suppose it’s there in every man, especially every man who has seen bloody battle. There is some off-kilter, crazed PTSD look in a combat veteran’s eyes when he’s fighting to preserve something he holds dear. I’d seen it in Russell’s eyes when he cold-bloodedly turned me over to the Joneses. And I’d seen it in the eyes of the baby gangsters working in the warehouse when the ATF had raided us.
“No what?” I shrieked.
“No I am not going to kill you!” And he angrily took several steps away, his back to me, then stopped.
I wasn’t about to let up. “But you admit you work for the Joneses.”
He came back, looking frantically from side to side. “Keep it down, woman! Yes I sometimes work for the fucking Joneses. But that’s not what this is about.”
“Oh, it’s not, is it? You’re a sicario for the Joneses and I’m testifying against the Joneses and it’s just a fucking coincidence you show up in Pure and Easy?” I had to force myself to shut up in order to hear the answer. I could have screamed forever.
“Listen, Flavia, the answer isn’t that simple. Maybe I was sent originally to track you down. But once I saw you, once I realized their beef against you wasn’t legit—”
“Oh, you changed your mind? You changed your mind? Holy shiz, Travis McShane”—I yelled that name extra loud, on purpose—“you were sent here to bury me but I’m supposed to forget all that because you changed your mind?”
Fox shifted in his boots, looked around at everything other than me, huffed and puffed. He clearly had no answer.
I slapped my thigh. “Oh, that’s just great! Just fucking great! What am I supposed to do now? Should I tell my handler about you, and get relocated all the fuck over again and start yet another brand new fucking life just because you decided to change your mind?”
“Well what did you expect me to do?” he yelled. “Not change my mind? Just go ahead and do it?”
He had a point. We stood panting, shooting daggers at each other, our jaws askew, at a loss for words for once.
And then his fucking phone chimed.
And he fucking answered it.
It wasn’t just any call, it was some moron—Santiago Slayer, as it turned out—FaceTiming him, Skyping or whatever it’s called when someone does a video call.
“I’ve got to take this,” snapped Fox, holding up a forefinger. “Don’t go away. Hola, ese,” he said to the smiling, well-groomed face of his brother in the murder trade.
“Que esta pasando?” Slayer said smoothly. “How is the conflagration of the annual motorcycle going?”
“How the fuck did you know where I was?” I heard Fox ask, although I was angrily storming away.
Slayer guffawed. “Oh, pfft. It is not that difficult when you have faces in all the right places.”
Fox guffawed right back. “One of the Bone Lickers told you.”
“Well, perhaps, but it always comes down to who knows who.”
I had stormed too far by then to hear any more of their idiotic conversation. I had almost stalked right past Tobias, too, by the time I recognized the sullen, lonely tech guy. He morosely drank a beer while casting glances at the fiery motorcycle.
“Tobias!” I said, almost angrily. “Have you gotten any news on my sister?”
He sighed deeply. “Sister, schmister. Everyone wants something from me except that which I’m prepared to give.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Yes. I’ve got news. Sorry. In the heat of having my fighting skills laughed out of town by every biker within a five hundred mile radius, I forgot to give you the intel on your sister.”
“Let’s go somewhere quiet. There’s a bar a couple blocks up.”
“Agreed, as long as it’s somewhere I don’t have to have my face ground into the combined crotches of Tracy and Wolfgang Fuckboy Glaser…”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FOX
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I knew the day would come that Pippa would confront me with knowledge of who I worked for.
I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.
I was unprepared, fumbling around like a moron in the bushes, not knowing what to say to her. When Santiago Slayer called me with an uncustomary bad sense of timing, I had to take it. I had no fucking choice. Who knew when he’d move onto the next party or hit, and go off the grid?
“Que esta pasando?” He seemed to be in a hotel room from the sterile, uniform looks of things. Nauseatingly, he was shirtless, displaying a sort of gold monogrammed necklace, and two skanks cavorted on a bed behind him in their underwear. But he was all business for the moment. “I have found your Phil Din for you, and in the most unexpected of places, I might add.”