36. Ari
CHAPTER 36
ARI
A lexa called right after breakfast.
“Dusk will be there in a half hour with a lawyer and divorce papers. Make sure Selene’s dressed, okay?”
“Wait, what?”
“Divorce papers. They’re the things you sign when you don’t want to be married to someone anymore.”
“I don’t think Selene’s ready for a court fight with Jace. She doesn’t even have an attorney.”
She just wanted to lie low and cry every half hour. Kelsey and Erin were doing their best to keep her occupied.
“There won’t be any fight. She signs this morning, he signs this afternoon, and she keeps the whole of her trust fund. A nice clean break before she moves away.”
“Why do I get the feeling I’ve missed a step here?”
Granted, I hadn’t yet been married myself, but I was a PI in Vegas. I knew a fair amount about the divorce process. Even a joint decree, the type of divorce that didn’t require a court hearing, needed agreement and a notarised signature from both parties.
“Dusk and Sin are going to walk Jace through the steps this afternoon. Which, coincidentally, is also when the FBI will be picking up Jackson.”
“The red room thing?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did they find out who was behind it?”
“No.” Alexa’s voice cracked, and I could only imagine what she’d seen on that livestream. “The girl was a fifteen-year-old honour student who disappeared from Berkeley, California. We’ve been looking for these people for years. Years. They’re so damn careful, and they always cover their tracks.”
The victim was a child? Oh, man. There was a special place in hell for her killers, and I hoped that someday, the Choir got to send them there.
“I didn’t realise you worked with the FBI.”
“Only when it suits me. Just make sure Selene’s ready.”
Selene, predictably, wasn’t ready.
“Ohmigosh, are you crazy? You can’t just walk up to Jace and request that he sign divorce papers. He’ll laugh in your face.”
Dusk perched on the edge of the kitchen table, checking a chip in her manicure.
“I swear, he’ll come around to our way of thinking. We can be real persuasive.”
“What if he gets violent? What if he locks you in the apartment until you tell him where I am?”
“That won’t happen. But if you’re not ready to take that final step, we’ll totally understand. We can revisit this later on.”
“I want a freaking divorce. I want Jace Fuller out of my life, but I’m not sure he’ll ever leave. ”
“Then sign the papers. We have an online notary waiting to act as witness.”
Finally, Selene picked up the pen and nodded.
“Jace is going to lose his mind.” A sob burst out of her. “He’s going to destroy all my grandpa’s paintings, and they’re the only thing I have left of him.”
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Where are the paintings? Maybe we can get them back?”
“I-i-in the apartment. Some on the walls, and more in the safe.”
“Do you know the safe combination?”
“It’s our birthdays.” The sobs shook her shoulders. “Jace was so nice before we got married. He promised we’d always be together.”
Dusk sighed. “What size are these paintings?”
“The biggest is a portrait of me. It’s forty-eight inches by thirty-six.”
“We might need to ditch the frames.”
“I don’t care about the frames. Only the p-p-paintings.”
“Okay. Okay, we’ll get what we can.”
Dusk set up the signing with the notary, and a few minutes later, Selene was halfway to a divorce. The easy half. Out in the hallway, I stopped Dusk before she reached the front door.
“Can you really do this? Make Jace sign the papers, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Do I want to know how?”
“Probably not.” She blew out a breath. “How do you feel about coming along?”
“Me?”
“It’s not as if this is an official op. We planned to bring some of Selene’s stuff, but not thirty paintings, and we’re short of manpower this week. Priest, Tulsa, Barbie, and Dice had to take a trip to San Gallicano. ”
“What’s going on over there?”
“You don’t want to know that either, but Cole’s being surprisingly understanding about the situation. Are you coming?”
“Am I likely to end up in jail?”
“Have a little faith, sister.”
Maybe I was the crazy one because I was hella curious about how they worked, and this might be the only chance I’d get to see their methods up close. I’d just be picking up paintings, and the paintings belonged to Selene in any case. Plus Dusk was the reasonable member of the Choir. The nice one.
“What should I wear?”
She gestured to my jeans and T-shirt. “We’ll give you a uniform. Tie your hair back, and I’ll bring you a pair of gloves.”
“No ski mask?”
“Echo will take out the cameras before we go in.”
Of course she would. I should have guessed.
Alexa didn’t just take out the cameras; she took out the whole damn hotel. Elevators were frozen in place. Doors locked and unlocked seemingly at random. Lights flickered. Sin led us straight to a bank of elevators at the rear. The Choir had clearly scouted the place out beforehand because there was no hesitation in her movements. We also had keycards, and as we moved through the building, Dusk swiped every lit reader, presumably so Alexa could track our movements. We were all wearing earpieces, but Dusk and Sin seemed to be getting more commentary than I was. Keeping me out of the loop? Or just shielding me from illegality? We’d put on navy blazers with maroon piping, the same as the staff wore, so apart from a handful of panicked questions from guests about what was going on, we made it through the building unchallenged.
The lights on the leftmost passenger elevator blinked into life as we approached, and once inside, Dusk pressed her card against a panel beside the numbered buttons.
“This elevator takes us straight to Jace’s penthouse,” she explained.
“What if we get stuck inside?”
“We won’t.”
“What if he isn’t there?”
“He is.”
He was there because Alexa had locked him in. When the doors to the elevator opened, he was waiting to greet us, and by “greet us,” I mean he started yelling before we could get a word in edgewise.
Dusk stepped forward and kicked him in the balls, and as he fell forward, she booted him in the stomach. I dodged the vomit that flew in my direction.
“Wait, I thought you were the nice one?”
Dusk just laughed, and there was an unhinged quality to the sound. Oh, hell.
Sin grabbed my arm. “C’mon, we have paintings to find.”
“What about?—”
“She can handle it.”
Each of us had brought a backpack, and in each backpack was a large, lightweight duffel. Barely a sound came from the foyer as I took paintings down from the walls and Sin worked on the safe’s combination lock. We had to remove a dozen paintings from their frames and roll them up because they were just too big to carry, and Sin didn’t so much as glance in Dusk’s direction as she rifled through the safe. The final tally? Thirty-seven paintings, a box of jewellery, four bricks of cash, one large gold ingot, and several flash drives. Rather than pocketing the drives, Sin plugged each one in turn into a small unit she’d brought in her bag.
“A gift for Echo,” she explained. “If she found out there were flash drives and we didn’t save her a copy, she’d get in a snit.”
“What about the cash?”
“Alimony.”
“And the gold?”
“Compensation.”
“Time to go?”
“Time to go.”
I half expected to walk into a bloodbath in the foyer, but the white marble was pristine apart from the pool of barf. Instead, I saw what looked like a giant silver maggot lying by the elevator with Dusk crouched beside it, her back to us. She must have used an entire roll of duct tape on Jace. Loud rumbling sounded, and she jerked his head out of the elevator shaft an instant before the car flew past.
“Now, I really wish I hadn’t been forced to do that, but you didn’t leave me much choice,” she said to him, her voice sing-song. Something smelled revolting, and I was fairly sure Jace had shit himself. “Did I get that right? The gaslighting part, I mean. You’re the expert in it.”
The elevator car trundled upward again.
“Ready for another try? Isn’t this fun?” Dusk pressed his head backward again so it stuck out into the shaft. “Did you know that scalping was a big deal in the seventeenth century? Most people think it was only the indigenous peoples who liked chopping off body parts—and let’s face it, the colonists deserved that—but the settlers were every bit as bad. Scalp bounties and genocide. On three?” She giggled. “If I get it wrong, do you think your head will pop off? Or will it just get smushed beyond recognition? ”
Okay, I took it all back. Dusk wasn’t the sweet one. She was fucking nuts.
She twisted to look at us. “Oh, hey, guys. We’re just playing chicken with the elevator car. You want a turn?”
Jace began wriggling on the floor. “She’s a savage!”
“Don’t fidget, sweetie. You might go Humpty Dumpty all the way to the bottom, and where’s the fun in that?”
Sin didn’t seem even the tiniest bit surprised by developments. “Guess it makes a change from Russian roulette. What do I have to do?”
“You win, okay?” Jace cried. “You fucking win. I’ll sign the damn papers.”
“You don’t want to have one more go? Feel the wind in your hair?”
He turned pleading eyes on me. “She’s crazy. She’s fucking crazy.”
“I can see that.”
Dusk giggled. “Actually, my psychiatrist says I’m not completely crazy. I just have trouble with impulse control.”
“Maybe we should let him sign the papers?”
She pouted. “You’re no fun either.”
Sin and Dusk carried Jace to his desk and propped him up in his swivel chair. Dusk ran several more loops of duct tape around his waist to hold him securely in place, and then Sin pulled out a vicious-looking knife and freed his arms.
Before they connected with the notary, Dusk issued one more warning.
“Remember, sweetie, if you try anything dumb, they’ll be shovelling you into a closed casket. Don’t forget to smile, okay? You look so pretty when you smile.”
Ten minutes later, it was done. We had the signed papers, the paintings, and enough cash to tide over Selene until she got access to her trust fund. Before we left, Dusk dropped a single blunted razor blade onto the credenza in the foyer.
“You can cut yourself loose after we’re gone. And remember, if you try to find Selene, I’ll find you first.”
The hotel was still in chaos, so we stripped off the blazers and waded through the melee until we reached the street. Marcel was waiting nearby in a nondescript blue SUV.
“That was a hoot,” Dusk said as we climbed into the back seat. “We should do it again someday.”
Sin clicked her seat belt into place. “I thought you were going to scalp him on that last run.”
“Me too. It’s not as if I practised beforehand.”
Thank goodness for that.
“It was just an act, right?” I said. “You don’t really have impulse control problems, do you?”
“Oh, no.” She waved a hand. “My impulse control is A-okay. I have a few psychopathic tendencies, is all. It’s actually an advantage in this job.”
Super. Psychopathic tendencies? That was totally fine, then.
What the hell had I gotten myself into? Sin and Dusk might have considered me Choir-adjacent, but I wasn’t sure I fit in with these women. Could I follow the breadcrumbs and solve a case? Yes. Work as part of a team? Yes. Skirt the bounds of legality? Yes.
Duct tape a man and threaten him with decapitation? No.
“Ari, you’re quiet,” Sin observed after a minute or two had passed. “The elevator thing made you uncomfortable?”
“I couldn’t do what you do.”
“You don’t have to. We all have different skills. You’re smart and empathetic, and you’re great at hunting out clues. Plus you bring folks together. Sometimes, we need that kind of person. ”
“You seemed to manage the ‘bringing together’ part just fine on your own last night.”
She snorted. “I can’t say it was entirely unpleasant.”
“Well, thanks for taking one for the team.”
“Anytime, Coyote. Anytime.”
“Coyote?”
“If you’re gonna work with us again, you need a nickname. Coyote. You’re wily. Cunning. That baby daddy idea was smart.”
Huh. I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or terrified by the suggestion. Did I hate the idea of working with them? Not entirely. The prospect of twisty, challenging cases got my blood running, more than hunting for cheating spouses anyway. And that red-room thing…
“I have a life in California now, and a daughter, plus I still have to cover Rennick’s stuff.”
“We’re not talking full-time. Just the occasional job. Running down leads when we’re short of time, that sort of thing. You’ve done some work for Echo recently, and that was mostly our stuff, indirectly. Talk to her about it if you want—she’s a contractor too.”
“Maybe,” I said, but now that the seed had been planted, I kinda liked the idea of letting it grow. That girl was fifteen years old. “Will you promise not to decapitate anyone in front of me?”
“It would be disingenuous to rule it out completely—if there’s a zombie apocalypse, it’ll be every woman for herself—but we’ll endeavour to keep you away from the nasty stuff.”
“But zombies don’t exist. Do they?”
“Of course not,” Dusk said.
“There’s some weird shit that goes on in places I can’t talk about,” Sin told me. “I heard rumours they were experimenting with a fungus that fucks with your brain. ”
Dusk groaned. “Please, not this again. Or we’ll have to start calling you Super Conspiracy Nerd.”
A pause. “S-C-N. Scone?”
Scone? Wait, Sin was an acronym? “What does ‘Sin’ mean? I just assumed you were… Never mind.”
“Immoral?” She snorted. “I mean, that works too.”
“Super Intel Nerd,” Dusk supplied. “Sin talks with a lot of people and hears a lot of scuttlebutt.”
I bet she did, and now curiosity was eating away at me again. “So, do you guys want to get drinks? After we drop off Selene’s stuff, I mean.”
“Sure. Let’s swing by the Steel Horse Saloon. We need to drop off a package there, anyway.”