Chapter 12
HARVEE
"Five green tea shots, please!" Mel slaps her card on the bar before any of us can argue.
The bartender winks and turns away to make them. Mel leans toward my ear. "Is he cute or am I already drunk? I genuinely cannot tell."
The bar is doing a nineties R&B throwback night, which nobody warned us about.
I don't mind. Mel's aesthetic and his are clearly cut from the same cloth — gold hoop through the eyebrow, one through the nostril, dark hair spiked up, broad shoulders filling out a plain black t-shirt in a way that suggests he knows exactly what he's doing.
"He looks like exactly your type," I tell her. "Shoot your shot."
"I plan to." She straightens up and smiles at the bar like she already owns it.
The rest of the girls filter over for the shots. They've all been wonderful to me tonight, which I didn't expect and needed more than I'd realized. Mel's friends are the kind of people who make you feel like you've known them longer than you have.
Delilah, Dee to everyone, is a curvy Latina with dark eyes and thick dark hair that falls to her waist and a single dimple on her right cheek that has single-handedly procured us a significant amount of free drinks tonight.
Staci stands almost as tall as me, red curls and green eyes and pale freckled skin, a thin frame that barely contains what is very clearly a recent and expensive purchase, her two-year-old son smiling up from her lock screen every time she checks her phone.
And Meghan, the quietest of the group, blonde and blue-eyed with a curvy build and a way of observing a room that makes me think she notices more than she lets on.
They all grew up together, elementary school through everything, and the ease between them shows.
Mel is deep into negotiating her way through a conversation with the bartender — Nico, apparently — when a voice comes from directly behind me.
"Damn. Sorry to eavesdrop, but that was actually going to be my opener. Are you from Tennessee? Because you're the only ten I see."
I turn around. Broad chest, immediately too close. I take a step back and look up.
Tall. Six-three, maybe. Tousled blonde hair, bright green eyes tracking me with an interest that doesn't bother to be subtle.
"I've never heard that one before," I say.
"I know. It was bad. I'm sorry." He grins like he isn't sorry at all. "I'm James."
"Harvee."
"Let me buy you a drink?"
Mel catches my eye across the bar. I give her a shrug and a thumbs up and she turns back to Nico, satisfied.
James is easy enough to talk to, in the way that men who are used to getting what they want tend to be.
He sells cars. I can tell before he says it — the cologne is expensive, the Rolex sits on the bar like an invitation, the Louis Vuitton wallet gets set down with just enough deliberateness to be accidental.
He asks about me the way people do when they want to seem curious, eyes dropping to my body between questions.
"What's your drink?"
"Vodka Red Bull."
He flags down Nico without looking away from me, which I'll admit is a reasonable move.
Over his shoulder I catch the girls drifting out to the patio. I make a mental note. We rode together and I've had enough that the room is starting to soften around the edges, the bass from the speakers pressing against my chest, the lights a little brighter than they were an hour ago.
"What brought a southern belle to Miami?" His eyes do the thing again.
"Fell in love with the city in college." He doesn't need the longer version.
We talk for another few minutes, easy and surface-level. At some point he gestures vaguely behind me, toward a table of men who don't look over. I turn back and catch something shift in his expression, a quick adjustment, a near miss with his beer bottle. Strange.
I drain my drink. "I should find my friends. We rode together."
"I'll help you look."
The patio is empty. No Mel, no Dee, no Staci, no Meghan. The music seems louder suddenly. My heartbeat is in my ears and the lights are blurring at the edges and I'm grateful, more grateful than I want to be, that someone is standing next to me.
We push back through the bar. Near the door I catch a face that stops me. Familiar. Caramel eyes, wide now, fixed on mine. I know those eyes. I can't place them and then James has my elbow and we're moving again, out the door, into the thick wall of Miami humidity.
"I still don't see them." My voice sounds far away.
"I wonder if they went this way."
We're walking. The street tips slightly. My heels are wrong on the pavement and everything is spinning in a way that has nothing to do with how much I've had to drink, or not only that.
"I need to sit down."
"There are more bars down this alley, come on."
"No — I need to—"
I don't finish the sentence. My stomach empties itself onto the gravel and my knees follow, skirt riding up as I go down, hands shaking, vision narrowing to a small bright point.
I'm trying to tug the hem down, trying to keep my eyes open, and the ground is cold and the alley smells like wet concrete and I cannot get up.
James grabs my arm. "Come on. We have to find your friends."
"Get the fuck away from her."
The voice cuts through everything.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Get the fuck away from her."
Then the sound of a gun cocking. A single clean mechanical click in the dark.
Silence.
That's the last thing I hear.