Under the Bones Read online

They were even. She owed him nothing. So why was she fetching him clothes and food and letting him sleep in her bed?

  Forget about it, she warned herself. She was about to work a job. She didn’t need her mind wandering on its own. She needed to be absolutely focused or she’d get herself killed. Just like her father. But she saw Konstantine’s black hair, wet and curling around his hard face, the hungry look in his green eyes.

  Fuck this. She gave herself over to the darkness, feeling the wall at her back go soft, and the warm air replaced by a fresh breeze.

  Lou’s hand found purchase on the rough bark of an oak tree. A mourning dove on an electric wire cooed at her entrance. A light breeze ruffled the grass in the park, which had been recently mowed. She could see it, saw it sticking to her black boots as she settled all her weight in this time and place.

  A woman sat alone on a swing twenty feet away. Her back was to Lou, dyed auburn hair cascading, stark against a black wool coat. The swing creaked as the woman swayed back and forth, her boots trailing through the wood chips and sand beneath her.

  Plastic tubing coiled and unfurled like caterpillars, yellow and green between the swings and adjacent fence. Lou scoped the area. The chain-link fence on all sides. The quiet houses settling beyond. The cars parked on the street with empty windows. Dogs barked somewhere on her left. Maybe a block over. Then understood why when the mail truck rumbled past.

  Now certain they were alone, Lou crossed the playground. When the woman didn’t look up at her approach, Lou intentionally stepped on a twig. Her black boot snapping it in half where it lay, no doubt blown down by the last storm.

  The woman named Benji turned and fixed her wide brown eyes on Lou. “Shit. You scared me. You got my page?”

  Obviously, Lou thought. But she didn’t say it. She’d come to accept that people repeat the obvious all the time. In fact, it made up the majority of her conversations. And the quickest way to glean the information she wanted, was to let the babble run its course. If she pointed out what was useless, people became defensive. Or they stalled and stammered, weighing every word before uttering it until the conversation twisted in on itself like an ouroboros eating its own tail, stretching the conversation painfully toward infinity.

  “You told me to page you if Jason got out of jail,” she said.

  I know what I told you. “So he’s out?”

  “Yeah.” She worked the cell phone back and forth between her palms nervously. Its bejeweled case sparkled, casting diamond shapes across her skinny jeans. “He came to my house last night, with flowers. Said he’d changed.”

  Lou was struck by her long nails. Ridiculously long, at least a full inch beyond their fingertips, and the color of maraschino cherries. How could she do anything with those? “Do you know if he’s talking to Camry again?”

  “He’s with him now. I saw his mom’s car in the driveway on my way here. His girlfriend Teena says they went down to the beach.”

  Lou didn’t need to know where Jason was. She only needed him out of jail. If she could put the two of them together—Jason and Camry—it would confirm Camry as the supplier. And if she plucked Miami’s major supplier off the streets, well that would be a great day.

  Lou glanced at the darkening horizon and realized she’d lost an hour jumping from St. Louis to Miami.

  A white Cadillac rolled by blasting a Spanish pop song through its open windows. It hit the speed bump beside the park too fast and popped up comically.

  “The restraining order is shit. Ain’t no body gonna enforce it,” Benji said. Her black makeup looked a day old, smudged around her eyes. You promised you’d get rid of him.”

  “I will,” Lou said, feeling the Beretta shift against her ribs.

  The woman loosened a breath from her chest. “I need him out of our lives.”

  Our lives. Lou had forgotten about the kid. A little girl, four or five years old. She’d seen her sleeping beneath a My Little Pony coverlet one night, as Lou had stood in the dark of her bedroom, listening to Benji and Jason scream at each other in the other room.

  The girl had woken to the sound of Jason’s fist connecting with her mother’s stomach. Her eyes were as wide-set and brown as her mother’s. But she’d gotten a thick head of curly hair from someone else. Not Jason. Maybe Benji didn’t even know who the father was herself.

  “Are you—” the girl began, but Lou had put a finger to her lips. The girl sat up in bed, but said nothing.

  Then they’d both hovered in the dark, listening to her mother cry against the backdrop of Family Feud.

  “I hate it when they fight,” the little girl had said.

  “They’ll stop,” Lou assured her, tucking her into the pony sheets.

  “When?” Her eyes were black marbles in the thin light through the curtains.

  “Soon,” Lou had promised.

  But she couldn’t take credit for Jason’s disappearance one week later. It was the cops that had pulled him from the little girl’s life.

  “He’s being good now,” Benji said, brushing her auburn hair back from her face. “But in a week or two, he’ll be back to his old shit again.”

  “He’ll be gone soon,” Lou said, her eyes scanning the street again.

  She imagined it was something her father would say. She pictured Jack Thorne, six feet of solid muscle in his full DEA SWAT gear, storming into Benji’s home and arresting Jason. Slamming the scrawny man to the kitchen floor, twisting his arms up behind his back and cuffing them.

  If he’d seen the little girl what would he say? He can’t hurt you now.

  Something meant to reassure her.

  And there was something about her own path—how even though Jack had been removed from her world twelve years ago—somehow she ended up here. Chasing men like Camry Sanderson. Following the leads up the chain of command. Was her work so very different than her father’s? He hunted with the full force of the law at his back, true. But Lou didn’t need any of that.

  But if he’d lived, would she be on the other side? In a vest? Part of a team?

  Or was she always meant to do this her way?

  She thought so. And how would Jack have felt about that? Sometimes she wondered if his death might have been a gift, a way to preserve his perfection for all of her days. If he had lived, there was the chance they would’ve grown apart as he’d grown apart from Lucy.

  She couldn’t imagine he would’ve approved of her methods.

  He cleared the streets of drugs by arresting the men, obeying due process, only taking their lives if necessary. She plucked them from the earth. Judge, jury and executioner. Her father had only fired his gun a dozen times during his tenure on the force. She’d lost count before she was twenty.

  Not executioner, not always, she thought. Sometimes, Lou gave that job to Jabbers.

  Is that why Konstantine wanted her? Because she was ruthless and unforgiving as he was?

  She hadn’t needed to see his erection to know he’d wanted her.

  She’d known from the moment she’d seen his face on the deck of Ryanson’s boat. The blind desire that had consumed him even as she shot down man after man around them.

  It didn’t matter what he wanted. It mattered what she thought of him.

  And there was the rub.

  Her mind couldn’t reconcile Konstantine the crime boss with Konstantine the Italian boy. Or Konstantine the man who so lovingly dusted soil from his mother’s moonlit bones.

  Or even the Konstantine she’d stood over with a gun in her hand, weeks after killing her father’s murderer. Konstantine had been bare-chested and laying on top of his sheets. Italy asleep outside the window behind her. She’d stood there and watched him, unsure for the first time in her life of what she wanted to do.

  All she knew that she wanted was to hit him in his pretty mouth with her pistol.

  But she hadn’t.

  I understand drive. I know how hard it is to stop before a thing is done. If you need this, take it.

  But she hadn
’t needed to kill him. The rage that usually filled her, rolled her like a wave never came as she’d held the gun to his head. For the men walking the streets, polluting the lives of those around them. Yes. Without effort.

  She held no hate for Konstantine.

  You came to me when you were dreaming. Did you dream of killing me?

  No. She’d dreamed of having someone who understood her like her father did. Someone as steady and immovable. Someone to replace what had been taken from her.

  What sappy pathetic bullshit was that? What the hell is wrong with me?

  Konstantine was probably asking himself the same thing. She saw his mortification when he’d bent over the side of the tub to hide his erection.

  Another car rolled by the park slowly. Men hung through the open window shouting obscenities. She realized the men from the stopped car were shouting at her.

  Movement in the corner of her eye drew her attention. One hung from the driver’s window, his other hand on the wheel.

  “Hi Mami!” he called, dragging a thick tongue over his golden grill. His voice was distorted by the bass rattling the car. “You wanna show me what’s under that leather coat, baby?”

  “Sure.” Lou pulled the Beretta in one fluid extension of her arm and shot the car. Three clean bullet holes punched through the back fender and the red Camaro dashed forward, hitting the first speed bump so hard it popped up. A chorus of male voices howled inside, mixing with the excessive bass rattling its tinted windows. A loose hubcap spun off the back wheel. Its tires squealed as it disappeared around a corner.

  “Jesus Christ!” Benji screamed, clutching her red hair in each fist. “You could’ve killed someone.”

  “Hardly.” She’d clipped the very back of the car. If someone had been in the trunk, she supposed, then yes. They were dead.

  But people didn’t usually ride around with living people in their trunk. So she hoped the odds were with her.

  Lou had the decency to reholster the gun and flash an expression that could’ve been mistaken for apologetic. Probably.

  “I have to go. Page me if anything changes.”

  “But when are you going to pick him up?” Benji stood from the swing, as Lou marched across the park toward the large tree. It would look like she left out the back gate.

  “Soon,” Lou called over her shoulder. “And you better leave now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because those guys will come back.” As soon as they pulled their frightened heads out of their asses.

  She paused only long enough to make sure Benji was obediently jogging out of the park. The chain-link gate swung shut behind her, and heading east, she walked in the opposite direction of the cat callers.

  With Benji out of sight, Lou slipped through the shade of the tree, thinking of her closet.

  She hadn’t wanted to wear body armor when meeting with the woman. Something about guns and ammo and looking like a warrior put women like Benji on edge. They wanted her to solve their problems, yes. Ride in on a white horse, certainly. But they wanted her to also look like a woman while she did it.

  Her converted linen closet manifested around her and she placed one hand on the door, ready to push it open.

  But then her bed creaked, shifting under the weight of a restless body.

  Right.

  For a moment she’d forgotten about Konstantine’s claim on her apartment. Even though he’d nearly died and was in no shape to confront his enemy, she suddenly wanted to pitch him from her second-floor window into the pool below.

  With a feeble attempt to suppress her irritation, she pressed her shoulders against the closet wall again and sighed through the dark.

  Unfinished wood materialized beneath her feet. Cold air licked up the side of her face. She reached up and pulled the string on the lightbulb suspended overhead.

  A room came into focus around her. It smelled of sawdust. She’d built it herself two months ago, after her first encounter with Konstantine. She’d done a pretty good job of it, though a couple nails were crooked in places and one of the shelves slanted at an angle.

  But she doubted anyone but her would notice it. It was what sat on the shelves that would hold their eye.

  She surveyed her secret stock pile. She didn’t need the guns, the blades, or flamethrower for a stakeout. Grenades and tear gas were certainly overkill. She needed some good body armor and enough firepower in case unexpected trouble arose.

  She reached for her father’s adjustable vest.

  Despite the abuse it had taken in the last few years, it looked much like it had when she first took it from her parents’ home a few days after they’d been murdered.

  In addition to the vest and some of her father’s flannel shirts, she took his cut-resistant Kevlar sleeves which had to be resized later, but she’d found someone to do it.

  The ones she used now slid over her black sweat-licking shirt and cut-resistant forearm guards.

  Her father had worn it at the biggest size, the straps stretched fully extended. She wore it at the smallest, with the Velcro overlapping. Before she grew up and found a use for her father’s vest, she would wear it on the nights she couldn’t sleep. She’d put it on, tighten the straps, and crush it against her just to remember what it had felt like to have his arms around her. To be so completely engulfed in his strong arms and to feel safe.

  Body armor on, cut resistant sleeves slid over each pale forearm, she checked her guns and ammo.

  Good enough.

  She exchanged her leather jacket for a larger Kevlar jacket preferred by bikers. Something large enough to fit over the vest.

  The planks of her apartment creaked above. Konstantine was up and moving around now.

  All the more reason to get going.

  She pulled the string, extinguishing the lightbulb. For a moment she stood in the dark, hearing his feet gently slap the wood above. But then the dark softened, faded into the background and another piece of the world rushed up to replace it.

  The smell of fish hit her first. Overpowering to the point of nausea. And then behind that, the ocean and breeze.

  She emerged from the shadows and peered out. She was up high. On the second level of an enormous building, suspended on a wooden platform. It seemed as she was the only one up here, the wooden walkways bare in each direction. She peered over the railing and saw the concrete floor below.

  A warehouse? A man lifted enormous fish out of a wooden cart and threw them onto a conveyor belt.

  She was in the fish market, not far from the beach.

  The whole place reeked of fish left in the sun. Another man with sweat shining between his shoulder blades and the back of his neck sprayed a hose on the concrete floor, washing the remnants of guts toward the drain.

  In another corner, Lou spotted Cam. He was the only blond in the sea of black-haired workers, most likely illegal immigrants who’d hit the Miami shore looking for a better life. Cam spoke low, but animatedly, chopping his open palm with this other hand, emphasizing some point to the man in front of him. Lou took him to be the foreman. He was in a dress shirt and loafers, not the gut-smeared work clothes of the men handling the fish.

  Jason hovered a few paces back, leaning against a wooden post, aiming for casual but failing. His shifty gaze darted from Cam to the fish cart to the workers too quickly. When he uncrossed and crossed his ankles, Lou saw the silhouette of a gun.

  They weren’t the only ones watching the workers.

  An audience of seagulls had perched on the rafters, chattering away wildly as the man continued to hose down the fish guts. Lou suspected the gulls had infiltrated through the hole in the roof, a jagged mouth opened on blue sky in the southern corner of the building, facing the ocean. One more hurricane and surely this place would be lifted off its stilts and washed out to sea.

  Oblivious to his audience, Cam stood in a tank top that reached nearly to his knees, his hairy pits flashing every time he raised his arms to point his finger at the man in front of him
.

  They were fighting, but Lou was too far away to hear about what. She stepped into an adjacent shadow, trying to get a good look at the man, hoping that maybe this was the contact she was looking for. The next link in the chain. Or at the very least, a new lead should this one fall through.

  She placed her foot on the next plank, heard the wood groan and crack.

  The planks gave way under her weight, splinters tugging at her jacket as she crashed through, pulling down half the dilapidated walkway with her. She threw her arms out instinctively, trying to seize anything to stop her fall. A scrap of wood, a hanging beam. But her hands found only air.

  The concrete floor rushed up to meet her.

  13

  King spread the glossy magazines on the white coverlet. He angled the magazine’s shiny faces so Lucy could see what was advertised in each. Dresses. Cakes. Honeymoon vacations with bikini-clad women strolling on pristine white beaches, shielding their eyes from the sun with their hands. Marriage wasn’t a billion-dollar industry for nothing. “Where do you want to start?”

  With a shaking hand, she groped each magazine. Her moist fingers stuck to the pages even as she tried to push them aside. She settled on a thick catalogue advertising wedding dresses. The brunette on the cover was someone King recognized. A model for a makeup commercial or something. Or facewash. He couldn’t be sure.

  It was Lucy’s own scent that had made him think of soap.

  Someone had washed her hair for her, so she smelled of lilacs. King was betting on Naomi. And he also noticed the pillow. A large cushion with some sort of Tibetan design of spirals in rich orange, mauves, and gold.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked, scratching at the beading along one seam.

  Lucy paused in her flipping to follow King’s gaze. “I woke up and it was here.” Her eyes flicked to the foot of her bed.

  “You don’t know where it came from?”

  “Oh, I do. It’s mine. It’s my meditation cushion. And there’s this.”

  She turned and pointed at something King had missed upon entering the room with his magazines and jumbo coffee. A little wooden Buddha. Fat and happy, his hands over his head in a victorious pose. And in his upturned hands, some sort of cup, filled.