Chapter 9
SYLVIE
THE EXOTIC PET shop sits at the dead end of a service road in Hyattsville, wedged between a shuttered muffler garage and a self-storage lot. It’s the kind of place you’ll only find if you already know it’s there.
The sign over the door says REPTILE WORLD in faded green letters, three of which have burned out, so it reads “EPTLE WORD,” which feels about right for a business that keeps its real inventory in the back: laundered money.
I’m not interested in the loot. The bills are likely marked. Been there, done that, learned that lesson with Dani the hard way. I’m just here for my pet.
Inside it smells like heat lamps and cricket dust and something faintly rotten underneath.
Glass tanks line every wall, stacked three high, and behind the murk I can see the slow shapes of things that shouldn’t be sold to the public—a fat albino python coiled like a rope, a monitor lizard doing tiny push-ups against its glass, a tarantula the size of my palm sitting perfectly still in a way that means it’s starving and will feed on whatever is stupid enough to dip its hand in its tank.
The owner matches his store. I’m not sure if he’s part of the off-the-record business in the back, or just oblivious.
He has greasy hair, scraped back off a forehead that shines under the fluorescents, a twitch in his left eye, fingers that won’t stop moving on the counter’s edge.
Okay, so printing money in the back, dealing reptiles and drugs in the front.
And he looks like a man who samples his own supplemental merchandise.
“The animals are sorted alphabetically,” he says, and then his eyes flick to the beaded curtain behind him and back, quick, conspiratorial. “You a cop?”
“No. But I’d lie to you if I were,” I snap, staring at the python that’s sizing me up.
“You’re too hot to be a cop,” the shop owner decides. “Do you need anything else while you’re here? I got…other stuff. Better than bugs. Something to take the edge off a long day.”
I let the silence sit long enough to be insulting.
“No,” I say. “I called a couple days ago. Are you Riggs?”
“Yeah.” He steps around the counter and looks me up and down. “Who’s asking?” As he gets closer, I realize where the rotten smell is coming from.
“I’m Maeve. I inquired about the scorpions. Just need what I ordered. Please.”
He holds my gaze a beat, decides I’m not going to be an easy sell on coke, fentanyl, or whatever the hell else he has back there.
“Suit yourself. Gimme a minute, they’re in the temp-controlled room.
” He disappears through the beads, and I hear a door, and then I’m alone, migrating toward the counter, with a giant tarantula judging me behind my back.
My phone buzzes.
Not my phone. The phone—the other flat black burner I keep zipped in an inside pocket, the one with exactly one contact and no name attached to it. I feel the temperature of the room change even though nothing’s moved. I pull it out and answer the call.
“Yeah.”
“Progress.” Salisbrie doesn’t do hello. Her voice is the same as it was in that garage weeks ago—smooth, unhurried, the voice of a woman who has never once had to raise it because her mere presence is the threat. “And there’d better be some.”
“Calm down. I’m working on a plan.” It’s technically true and mostly a lie, and I say it too easily, distracted, watching the beaded curtain sway.
“A plan.” Her tone is so chilling, I shudder involuntarily. “You’ve been in my city for weeks, and what I’m hearing is a plan. I contracted a professional. I’m beginning to wonder if I overpaid.”
“You didn’t. Because you haven’t fully paid me yet. Be patient if you want this done right. He’s a complicated target. You said yourself he’s holding onto a detonator or intel. You really want me to rush through this, sloppy, and blow this whole damn thing to pieces?”
“It should take less time than you’re taking.
” The smoothness sharpens, just at the edges.
“Let me be very clear, because I don’t enjoy repeating myself.
The clock is running. I need this handled soon, and I need it handled clean—no noise, no trail, nothing that so much as breathes in my direction.
Do you understand what’s at stake for me right now? ”
“You sure you’re suited to be the Secretary of Defense? Because you’re all attack, Salisbrie.”
“Don’t fucking say my name out loud. And in case you’re confused, I have no time for puns, and no sense of humor.”
“That’s abundantly apparent.”
“Silver,” she bites out.
“I got it. I understand.”
“I don’t think you do. So, I’ll put it in terms your kind respects.
” Her tone drops, and there it is, the small uncontrolled thing under the silk, cold and patient and absolute.
Her ambition is getting the best of her.
One slight step out of the measured control.
“Get it done. Do you hear me? Fucking get it done like your life depends on it. Because from where I’m sitting—it does. ”
Your kind? What the hell does that mean? Shouldn’t it be our kind? Or, does she not see what she actually is?
“Saoirse, we clear?”
“Crystal.”
“Good. One more thing.” A pause, and when she comes back there’s something almost solicitous in it, which is worse than the threat.
“I contracted you because I thought you could handle this on your own. But if it’s proving too much for one person, if you need hands, a second shooter, someone to handle the parts you can’t, say the word.
I have a guy who can help. I can send him to you by morning. ”
The offer lands like a slap dressed up as a kindness, and every ounce of pride I have flares hot.
“I don’t need your guy,” I seethe, and the sharpness gets away from me before I can rein it in. “I’ve never once had help. I don’t need it. Send someone to hold my hand and I’ll send them back in a box. This gets done my way, alone, or it doesn’t get done at all. That’s what you paid for.”
“Mm.” I can hear her smile. She got exactly the reaction she wanted, and only now do I realize she was testing me—simply poking to see if the blade’s gone dull. “Good. Don’t give me a reason to offer help again. Get it done.”
The line goes dead.
I stand for a moment with the burner in my hand and my pulse doing something I don’t like, because she used the name.
My real one. It was a clear threat. She knows too much about me, and it’s possible I’m a loose end to a woman who doesn’t do loose ends.
It’s possible the payout was so generous because she plans on getting the money back.
Fuck. See? Never ever trust a politician. Especially not a wannabe one.
I zip the burner away just as the beads clatter again.
The owner returns holding a small plastic terrarium very far away from his body. He sets it on the counter between us, so gentle, like it’s a bomb.
I lean in. Looking at my new babies.
Two of them. Pale as old bone, almost translucent, that sick milky yellow you only see on things that evolved in total darkness.
Black stripes mark their segmented tails, curled up over their backs, each tapering to a bulb and a needle.
They’re even smaller than I expected. Good. The venom is extra concentrated.
“You know what these are?” There’s a new note in his voice, wary, almost reverent.
“Because I gotta be honest with you, lady, I’ve moved a lot of ugly things across this counter.
Nobody’s ever asked me for these. I had to call in favors I didn’t know I had.
Guy I got ’em from wouldn’t even look at me straight. ”
“Leiurus pallidus mortis,” I say. “The Pale Death. Deathstalker’s meaner cousin.
Nearly extinct in the wild. There’s maybe a few hundred left, in a stretch of desert most governments pretend isn’t there.
” I look up at him. “Yeah. I know what they are. I have to say, nothing about you impresses me, except that you were able to get your hands on these. Good job.”
His twitch gets worse. “So you know what they do.”
“Tell me anyway.” I want to hear if he actually understands what he’s been handling, or if he’s just a man who moves boxes.
He swallows. “One sting. That’s it. Game over.
Grown man, picture of health, doesn’t matter—one sting and you got under a minute before the paralysis sets in.
Starts in the limbs, moves in. Then it hits the lungs and they just—” He makes a small closing motion with his fist. “Seize. You suffocate while you’re awake for it.
There’s no fixing it. No antivenom, nothing on earth, once it’s in you, it’s in you. Sixty seconds—dead.”
“Do you know what’s extra special about them?” I muse, staring at the scorpions.
“Besides being the devil’s favorite critters?”
“Their venom is untraceable. You can kill a guy in less than a minute and even the most expert coroner will be scratching their head forever.”
He wipes his palm on his jeans. “You got a screw loose, don’t you lady?”
“Several. Are these male?”
“No, both female—”
“I asked for males.” I look up at him with a tempered brow, as if his failure is acceptable.
“You’re lucky I got these. But here’s an added bonus. This one”—he points to the fatter one—“gravid.”
Oh, he’s right. Now, I notice the swollen, distended abdomen. “Gravid?”
“It means she’s pregnant—”
I roll my eyes. “I know what it means. I’m impressed that you do. How are you this well versed in…critters as you called it?”
“I’m an entomologist. PhD.”
My jaw drops as I study his greasy demeanor and inhale his stench with my next drawn breath. A high school dropout living in his drug-dealer daddy’s basement—sure. But a PhD?
“Forgive me for asking like this, but I don’t know another way…” I clear my throat. “What the actual fuck happened to you?”