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“Yeah, I hadn’t gotten around to telling him about that night at Sweetwater. I could’ve taken her brother out then, but Nick asked me not to. He was already on my list, and I should have done it. The Russians are gaining too much control around here.”
“True dat, but you had other shit on your mind.”
“Yeah, I did.”
We sat in silence for a minute while Jonathan finished his smoke, and I lit another one.
“You sure did leave a disaster at the office,” he said quietly.
I didn’t have to ask what he meant. Killing Terry and Bridgett in the storage room at the bottom of Rinaldo’s office wasn’t so bad, but leaving the bodies behind instead of cleaning up my mess—that was a fairly serious faux pas.
“Is that new girl ya got a hooker, too?”
I flinched and turned to glare at him.
“She’s not a fucking hooker,” I growled.
“Easy.” Jonathan put his hands up in the air in a surrender gesture. “Just askin’.”
“Well, she ain’t.” Fuck, I was already picking up that stupid, contagious accent of his again.
I knew he was just posing the question, but the idea that anyone would think of Lia in such a way pissed me off. I went back to my smoke and hoped he would go away soon, but of course, he didn’t.
“You gonna treat this one better than the last one?”
“Fuck you!” I snapped as I stood up. He stood as well, and towered over my six-foot-two frame by a couple of inches. “She was feeding information to Greco!”
“Yeah, I ain’t talkin’ about takin’ her out—that needed to happen. Kinda surprised you did it yourself, but it still had to happen. I just meant in general. You treated her like shit and then took her around so everyone knew she was with ya. Might as well have just painted her with a fuckin’ bull’s-eye in case Terry didn’t get the hint.”
I was fuming, but where other people would have cowered under my anger, Jonathan stood his ground. I knew why, too—he was right, and he had no doubt about it. He must have also assumed it wasn’t a death-warrant kind of remark because he had to have known I’d be packing.
“She was a fucking hooker,” I reminded him. “It wasn’t a goddamned relationship.”
I chose my words intentionally—Jonathan hated it when people broke that particular commandment. He didn’t give a shit about most of the rest of them, but that one was a sore spot. I didn’t know why, but saying “goddamn” definitely pissed him off.
It did earn me a nasty glare, but he didn’t say anything about it—he just went right back to me and my issues.
“So the new, non-hooker—what’s that?”
“Fuck off,” I grumbled as I sat back down.
“Seriously, man,” Jonathan said as his voice softened, “you were locked up. Where’d she come from?”
“Arizona,” I mumbled without thinking. I should have realized someone as perceptive as Jonathan would put it together.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed. “She’s the pussy you got while you were out in the middle of nowhere? What’d she do? Track ya down?”
I closed my eyes and silently berated myself for giving away too much. This wasn’t information I wanted him to take back to our boss, and I had to try to play it down as much as I could. If I blew it off too much, he’d know I was hiding something.
“Something like that,” I said.
Jonathan let out an artillery-burst-like laugh.
“That’s custom!”
I rolled my eyes.
“Damn, bro.” He whistled and leaned back against the bench again. “So what are you gonna do with her?”
