Chapter 2
two
. . .
Ms. Saul?
Sunbreak Harbor isn’t shy about drinking before noon, and the bar at the Bluefin Marina doesn’t attract a subdued crowd, either.
It’s already packed, and it’s ten in the morning.
I wait with my drained glass, the tropical mimosa already wreaking havoc on my empty stomach.
I have to force myself to stop bouncing my espadrilles up and down on the rung of the chair.
I raise my hand, but the bartender’s busy with a bachelorette party across the bar, chatting up their tiara-clad star.
I can’t hear what she’s saying, but she slaps the bar and laughs out loud.
She reminds me of my sister. Looks a little like her in the eyes, has a lilt to her laugh like Nicole did. A walking wild streak, fun and free.
She’s got to be older than Nicole was when she died, though, if she’s getting married.
My head starts an ache up behind my eyes. I shouldn’t have gotten this drink, and I damn well shouldn’t be aiming for a second. It’s noisy here at the bar, too noisy. The waves lapping the shore can’t drown out all the raised voices.
Harvey’s thirty minutes late. I haven’t thought this through, not at all.
I wonder if Nicole would have gotten married. If she’d survived.
If she never met Harvey.
A month ago, he tried to have me killed. Denied it afterward, of course. Begged me back to work for him. New town, new scams, new targets.
I’m not sure if this is going to be a friendly conversation, or another repeat of our last rendezvous in Halo City.
I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and whirl, and I’m face to mustache.
“Oh shit.” I know this mustache, and it’s not Harvey’s.
“Happy to see you too.” Armin blots out the sun, and he looks like a damn narc in this bar: suit and cowboy boots to everybody else’s shorts and flip flops.
“What are you doing here?” I keep my voice low. If Harvey sees me with the sheriff who tried to put him away back in East Greenwich, it’s over. He’ll know something’s up. Years of undercover work blown in a few seconds.
The last time we were all together, Harvey was fucking me up against the wall of a museum gala, or trying to, anyway, and Armin pistol-whipped him unconscious from behind.
“What are you doing here?” A question for a question, and he’s already got my blood boiling. “You working? Still?”
“Yeah, I’m a working girl,” I snap. “You know that.” My stomach turns over, half butterflies, half dread. I’d be happy to see him if I wasn’t wearing a wire, if we weren’t so close to putting Harvey away forever I could smell his prison sentence.
But if Harvey shows up now, with Armin at my side, it’s over.
“I know.” His eyes turn tortured, sad. I can’t believe he’s trailed me again. He reaches for me and then checks himself, lowers his hand. “You don’t have to be.”
“Witness protection program doesn’t pay a living wage.” I search over Armin’s shoulder, my heart thudding in my ears.
“Meeting someone?”
“I can’t do this,” I blurt. I hop off my choice spot at the bar and bolt. I silently beg him not to follow me.
I make it outside, a few stumbling steps onto the pier, and I crash headlong into the cigar-smoking heft of Harvey Blagas, plus his latest driver-murderer in tow.
“Where you going so fast, sweetheart?” He takes my elbow, his grip hard, and exhales a cloud of Cohiba that envelopes us both.
I fight not to wince, not to grimace or pull away, and it takes everything inside me to fake any measure of happiness while pressed up against the filth who ensured my sister wouldn’t live to see her seventeenth birthday.
If Armin follows, he and I are dead.