Chapter 3
Mia: Dinner at our place next Sunday? Everyone is coming.
Chase: I’ll bring something to keep the kids occupied.
Mia: No instruments this time please.
Chase: Sorry for trying to expand their skill sets.
Mia: Playing the recorder is a skill set I can live without them having. In fact, I insist.
Chase: Harmonicas it is.
Mia: Do you want to die?
CHASE
“I didn’t know you were here.” I raise my brows at my brother, who doesn’t even glance my way, remaining facing the bar with his hands braced on the ivory marble slab crowning it.
The Chilson House is a members-only watering hole for Manhattan’s elite.
Soft piano jazz serenades the exclusive patrons, twining with the background chatter and the occasional glass clinking.
It’s not like my older brother Mason is out of character to be here, but it would have been nice for a heads up or an invite.
He simply grumbles, reaching for his drink. I watch for a second, seeing so many of my own features in his. So many memories. So many disappointments. He’s familiar and distant all at once.
I roll my eyes, forcing myself to ignore the flash of something sharp at his cool brush-off and nod at Zeke, who smiles subtly over our typically frosty interaction. Well, Mason is the one who is frosty, not me.
“Don’t let him fool you that he’s not happy, he’s been calling me every night to ask how many more sleeps it is until we see each other. Isn’t that right, bud?” I slap Mason on the back of his black suit and earn myself a bland stare.
“Now, now, ladies,” Zeke warns, handing me the scotch a server just slid across the bar.
The Chilson staff are trained to recognize members and serve their preferred drink order promptly upon arrival.
No money changes hands on the account of the $500,000-a-year membership fee.
Think of it as the one percent’s version of an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“Thanks, brother.” I take it gladly and sip, letting the iced alcohol coat my tongue.
“No ball and chain tonight?” I tease, glancing around the room, half expecting a flicker of flame-red hair to appear and feeling disappointed when it doesn’t.
Zeke’s wife Chloe is one of my favorite people on this earth.
She’s a little crazy, loud, and a whole lot of fun.
“She’s with Mia.” Zeke tips his dark head at Mason at the mention of my sister-in-law—his wife.
“You mean they had girls’ night without me?!” I feign alarm, my brows shooting north.
This time they both grumble in response, but Zeke adds, “Thank fuck for that,” before lifting his drink to a scarred mouth.
I grin. What can I say? I like to wind my friends up by hitting on their wives.
We all know it’s a joke, and it’s been going on for far too long to stop now.
Since before they were even their wives to begin with, and I’ve got a theory that it helped these baboons realize that they were hook, line, and sinker for the women who now make up half our group.
My phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out, frowning at an unsaved number. No one gets this line unless I already have theirs saved, so I hesitate to answer it, but after a fraction of a second, curiosity wins.
“Walker,” I answer, frowning further as a polite round of applause breaks out for the end of a piano piece, drowning out any sound.
“Sorry, what?” The hand holding my crystal tumbler leaps to my ear, pressing in an index finger so that I can better hear the tinny voice on the other end of the phone.
“This is a collect call from the Seventh District Police Precinct.”
My eyes jump up to Zeke in alarm, because I’m fairly certain I only know one person crazy enough to get herself arrested and she’s married to the Colombian in front of me.
Correction, I only know one person crazy enough to get themselves arrested who is currently on American soil.
Because my sister, Emily? Absolutely a candidate.
“Would you like to accept call charges from—”
The automated voice cuts off and a pre-recording starts with a small sigh, followed by, “Pepper Quinn.”
Zeke raises his brow at me in question, but I shake my head and turn away whilst racking my brain for who the hell Pepper Quinn is and why she would be calling me…from jail.
The automated message kicks in again and this time, I close my eyes when the recorded voice speaks. I can sense the reluctance in her cadence, it’s almost…resigned.
“Yes,” I agree on a whim, listening to an automated beep before the line connects. I open my eyes when I hear a soft breath and feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
“Hello?” the woman asks around a faint crackle.
“How do you have this number and why are you calling me?” I shake my head at a passing server who gestures to my half-empty glass and then take a few more paces away from the piano as a new piece begins.
“I need you to come and bail me out.”
“What? Wait—I don’t even know who you are.” I debate hanging up but the bizarreness of the situation has me hooked, my brain whirring to try and make sense of it.
“Yes you do, Wolfie.” The woman chuckles without any real humor, the sound coming out oddly hollow. “And this is your opportunity to huff and puff and blow my house down.”
***
“In here.” The ruby-faced Detective Morris twists a clunky stainless-steel handle and pushes open the door to a small, dim rectangular room.
I step in and nod my thanks to the brusque man who didn’t take kindly to being overruled by his commanding officer, having initially denied me access to his detainee.
One phone call, and here I am in the bowels of the Lower East Side station holding cells.
He harrumphs, blowing wiry strands of his grey, too-long moustache skyward, and then slams the door.
An eerie silence falls over the small viewing room. I turn in place and allow my eyes to adjust to the gloom, a solitary figure on the other side of the thick rectangular glass window nested in the wall the sole focus of my attention. Something electric chases down my spine.
The woman who sits at a small table is nothing like I imagined her to be and against all odds my first thought is…
wow. Silvery pink hair flows to her waistline in poker-straight slashes and the stark contrast against rich ochre skin astonishes me.
The neon strip light above glances off a slim silver nose ring as the woman sighs.
She tightens a cream teddy coat around herself with crossed arms and throws her big brown eyes at the ceiling.
One glossy black nail taps impatiently on her arm.
I absorb her with intense curiosity, the visual image I had created of my adversary eaten up by the glow around her.
Call me crazy, but I had somehow sensed she was female through her taunting messages, perhaps tapping into some sixth sense I don’t fully understand.
However, I had pictured someone less…well, there is no denying it, less attractive.
So this stunning woman is the one who shopped me to the media…
The thought brings me back into the room with a thunderous clatter, pulling my brows together into a frown.
My eyes jump to the door beside the one-way window, and I steel myself.
My brain has been whirring with every eventuality on the way over here and I keep coming back to one conclusion.
Someway, or somehow, this striking woman is about to blackmail me into helping her. I can’t think of any other reason she would reveal herself and summon me here to the police station.
Resigning to get this over with, I reach for the handle and open the door.