Chapter 24 Harrison
HARRISON
A small clatter resounds from the Hearts section. I look up. Bianca is standing among the musicians in her band. Her face is sheet white. She quickly bends over and picks something up, placing it on top of the drums, before she crosses over to her mic and begins her set.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my apologies for the noise. I guess there’s a reason I’m not in the band!”
Light laughter from the Hearts patrons.
Whatever happened, I’ll get the story later. Bianca is safe, and that’s all that matters.
I continue serving drinks through the rest of her set. Bianca sings beautifully, though her voice is a little shaken. Something must have really spooked her. I look up as she wraps up her set, and she’s staring directly at me.
She darts her gaze toward her dressing room door.
Right. She wants to talk.
I nod before returning my focus to the Clubs patrons. I fill a few more drink orders before I’m able to steal away into Bianca’s dressing room.
She jumps off her pink chaise and wraps her arms around me the moment I walk inside.
“Oh, Harrison!” she lets out with a sob.
“What’s the matter, babe?” I slide my hands over her arms.
She wipes her eyes, steadies herself. “It’s Pierce. My drummer.”
“What about him?”
“I told you he stopped showing up the night after I sang the unauthorized song.”
“Right.”
“I saw a pair of drumsticks he left on his set. Or at least, I thought he left them.”
“What do you mean?”
She takes a deep breath, lets it out on a shaky exhale. “He… I mean, the drumsticks… The ones I found… I think they were made of bone, Harrison. Pierce’s bones!”
My stomach sinks. “Fuck. It’s a message.”
“Yeah, and it’s pretty damned clear. Fuck around and find out.” She lays her head against my shoulder. “Maybe we should just make a run for it. Run away, get on a plane to some exotic place. Somewhere Rouge will never find us. Live out our days in peace.”
I sigh. I’d like nothing more.
Spending my days in some tropical locale with Bianca, sipping mai tais on a white-sand beach, letting the world and all its cruelties roll over us like water off a duck’s back.
But…we can’t.
“We’re the only ones who know what your sister is up to,” I say. “We have a moral obligation to confront her about it, do everything in our power to make her stop. So many lives hang in the balance.”
She sniffs a few times. “You’re right, of course. I just wish we’d met under different circumstances.”
“You and me both.” I tip her chin up and kiss her on the lips. “But we’ll make it out of this. Both of us. We’ll live a long and happy life, have lots of kids. And we’ll bring them up in a world that’s a little bit safer than the one we’re currently in.”
She blinks away the last of her tears. “Kids?”
I wrap my arms around her waist. “You do want them, right?”
“I’ve always thought about it. But I never thought it would be possible given my job. Given the way I… At least, the way I used to…”
I place a finger to her lips. “All in the past, babe. If you want kids, I want to be their father. It’s a big conversation, one we can save for later.”
“If there is a later,” she mutters.
“There will be, damn it.” I squeeze her body to mine. After a few moments, her breathing has eased, and her heart beats in tandem with my own. I finally release her. “Besides, those bones might be a good thing.”
“How on earth—” She claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God. Do bones have DNA?”
“They do.” I grin. “Rouge might have been trying to freak you out, but she might have implicated herself in the process.”
“We’d have to get some other sample of Pierce’s DNA to prove it’s a match.” She paces the room. “Maybe he was a blood donor or something.”
“We’ll figure it out, babe. But grab those drumsticks and lock them away somewhere in your dressing room. Somewhere Rouge would never think to look for them.”
“I got it.” She flies out the door.
I’m glad Bianca is feeling better. I’m good at soothing her, turns out.
I just wish I was as good at soothing myself.
Because I’m fucking haunted right now.
Bones. A man’s bones were removed from his body and carved into a set of drumsticks.
At this point, I shouldn’t be shocked. At least with the organ harvesting, another life is being saved. It might be the life of one of Rouge’s degenerate friends, but still, the organ serves a greater purpose. With these bones, though… A man’s corpse was defiled just to send a fucking message.
But with a little luck, it may be Rouge’s undoing.
I hope that’s the case.
Or else Bianca’s and my bones will end up on that stage right next to Pierce’s.
* * *
Things are wrapping up at Aces. The bulk of the patrons left around midnight, and now just a few stragglers sit at the bar in Spades, with a couple more sitting in Clubs, high off their minds, I’m sure. Bianca’s finished up her final set and her band is packing away their instruments.
Rouge didn’t show up the whole night.
I can’t believe our luck.
She almost always makes an appearance at Aces every night it’s open, at least as far as I can remember. Even if she had an engagement at another club, she always pops in, usually at the least opportune moment.
Maybe she was here, and I didn’t notice.
But I would have felt her presence. Her aura of menace. It clings to her like stink to a wet dog.
Of course, the night ending at Aces is just the beginning for us.
My spending the night serving patrons as the Ace of Clubs is just a pretext to get me back on the bus to the Caterpillar Hotel. Keep an eye on Jack from now until the end of the night.
Then my heart sinks.
There’s a very good reason Rouge wouldn’t be here tonight.
Rose’s injury.
Her main confidante—the man who carries out some of her dirty work in secret—currently has a pen sticking out of his eye. By now, it’s probably been removed by a doctor. He might make a full recovery, but he’ll likely lose sight in his eye.
One fewer eye to look at me lecherously, I guess.
Rouge would certainly fly to his side, and it won’t take a deductive mastermind to figure out that Bianca and I were the last ones in the room before the paramedics were called.
She’ll be able to connect the dots. She already knows I’ve been poking around about Maddox, but now her sister will be implicated as well.
Fuck!
The whole time this was going on, the one thing that kept me calm was that if I went down trying to make Rouge face justice, at least Bianca would be okay.
That’s no longer the case.
I should have just killed him. Left his body in his office and locked the door on the way out. That would have at least bought us a few extra hours.
I take a deep breath, try to ease my pounding heartbeat.
Right now I have to focus exclusively on the task at hand. If we can save Jack, we can find a way to pin this all on Rouge. Then everything else will fade into the background.
But one thing is clear.
We’ve got one shot to make this work. No mistakes, no fuckups.
So I’m locking in.
Not concerning myself with what Rouge may or may not be figuring out on her own.
I spend a few minutes helping the other cards with cleanup. Some of them have already changed into T-shirts and athletic shorts, but I have no idea where they got them. I’ll stick out on the bus if I’m still in these booty shorts.
“Ace,” a soft voice whistles into my ear.
Mr. Night. I turn to him, bow my head.
“I assume you’ll be taking the bus back tonight?”
I nod slowly.
“Excellent. You’ll want to grab a spare T-shirt and shorts from the supply closet then.” He points a bony finger toward a gray door between Clubs and Diamonds.
I mouth the words, “thank you,” and then move to the closet. I grab a white T-shirt. It’s a little tight, but it’ll do. I find a boxy pair of shorts and slip them on, pulling the drawstring to keep them on my slim waistline.
While I’m in there, I grab a vacuum cleaner. I’ll plug it in and look busy until the rest of the cards begin piling onto the bus.
It works. Mr. Night gives the Clubs section a final onceover and nods. “Clubs is dismissed.”
“As is Diamonds,” one of the Blackjack dealers calls.
“Spades.” The guttural voice of Dudley—the first words I’ve ever heard him speak.
“Hearts is set as well,” Bianca’s soft voice calls from the stage.
“Excellent.” Mr. Night turns to me and the other Clubs waitstaff. “Off you go, then.”
I get a few looks from the other cards as I line up with them. They don’t recognize me. But I could easily be a new hire. I’ve been here one night before as well, so I have some legitimacy.
A large bus idles in the alleyway outside the staircase of shattered mirror that leads out the red door in the ladies’ restroom.
The cards and I pile in. Not a word is spoken.
I’m guessing none of them are allowed to speak until they are in their rooms at the Caterpillar.
One of Rouge’s Kings, his face shrouded in darkness, sits at the front of the bus.
I wish I had my phone on me. I could keep in contact with Bianca, make sure she’s okay. But she has her spare key, and she’ll be following right behind us. I trust her.
Even if the bus loses her, she knows its destination. We’ve been there before and she can plug the address into her GPS. Everything will be fine.
Unless it isn’t.
I wish she were on the bus with me. Then I could make sure she was protected. I could place my body between hers and the King’s. Do everything in my power—up to my dying breath—to guarantee her safety.
But that’s not the hand we were dealt.
She’ll be fine.
She has to be.
I love her so much.
I glance out the bus’s back window. The car behind us isn’t Bianca’s.
But then again, it wouldn’t be, would it? She had to sneak over to the hotel and get her car from there.
But… fuck! If Rouge is attending to Rose, she might still be there.
She would have gone straight to the hospital if that were the case.
We should have never left our cars there. We had no way of knowing Rose ran the hotel. It’s named after him, but I thought it was just named after the flower.
Damn it all.
It’s out of my hands.
Bianca is smart. She’ll keep herself out of trouble.
At least I hope she will.