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“Laugh while you can, rich boy,” McMurphy said, his voice frozen in a way that would make most men flinch and cover their balls. “I know all about you now. You and all that money. Hiding that little bit of information, were you? A billion fucking dollars? Keeping that all to yourself? I thought we were a club.”
“I was never part of your club,” I said.
“You know that’s why she picked you, right? It wasn’t your cock or your pretty face. She wants your money, that’s all.”
Was that supposed to bother me? I’d known it from the first. I was a means to an end, and if she got a few real, honest-to-god orgasms out of the deal, it was just a bonus. For both of us. I didn’t deserve her anyway—I didn’t deserve anyone. “That’s funny, because I assume you want my money too, and you aren’t even fucking me, McMurphy. So who do you think is gonna win?”
“She doesn’t give a shit about you,” McMurphy said. “She doesn’t give a shit about anyone. You want proof? Why don’t you ask her who she really is?”
I went quiet in surprise. I glanced at the door to the hairdresser’s again.
“Didn’t know about that one, huh?” McMurphy sounded pleased. “Yeah, I got my brother to do a little digging online. I know all about you, and all about her. Get her to spill the little piece of information she didn’t tell either of us. Maybe instead of fucking my woman, ask her who she really is.”
“It doesn’t matter who she is,” I said, though in the back of my mind, I wondered. McMurphy didn’t sound like he was lying. “And she isn’t your woman. She was never your woman. And she sure as fuck hasn’t been your woman since the minute she packed her bags, left you, and got in my car with me.”
“You’ll be begging me to take that little bitch back before long,” McMurphy said. “She’s a liar, a shitty fuck, and more trouble than she’s worth. Maybe I’ll take her back, and maybe I won’t. But I’ll make you both pay.”
“She’s so much trouble you’re following her halfway across the state,” I said. “Try again. You can’t find us now, and it’s over. Give up.”
“Ask her,” he said again, and hung up.
Dani chose that minute to come out of the hole-in-the-wall hair salon. She’d really done it—she’d cut off all that long, glossy hair. It was shoulder length now, still damp, shaped nicely around her face, with long bangs swept to the side. It was just a haircut, but it changed everything about her. It made her look older, less girlish, more sophisticated somehow, even though she wore a t-shirt and jeans and no makeup. Jesus, I thought to myself, I’ve been fooling myself. There’s no way to lie low with a woman that beautiful.
She got back in the car, smiling at me. “Done,” she said. “I told her to make it quick because I wanted to surprise my boyfriend, and she totally believed me.” She touched it self-consciously. “Do you like it?”
I looked at her, with McMurphy’s voice in my brain. Why don’t you ask her who she really is?
“What?” Dani said, looking at my expression. “What is it?”
“You have something to tell me?” I asked her.
The change in her expression was immediate, and unmistakable. The tentative pleasure left her face, replaced by blankness. Her skin went pale. It was just a few words I’d
thrown at her, but I recognized that expression. It was fear.
And I’d put it there. I’d put that fear on her face.
Fear was McMurphy’s currency. Not mine.
And in that split second, I made a decision. I decided that no matter who the hell Dani No-Last-Name was, I was still getting her out. I was still taking her somewhere where that expression would leave her face for good.
Maybe it would get me killed. But I already knew I had no problem with that.
I started the car, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed for the highway. Dani was still silent in the passenger seat. “Forget it,” I said to her. “You don’t have to say anything.” And then, because I was an asshole, I added, “Your hair looks nice.”
“I never lied to you,” she said finally, looking straight ahead out the window. “I just… What happened while I was in there?”
I pointed to my phone, which was in the well between my seat and hers. “McMurphy gave me a call. He told me to ask you who you are.”
She reached into her purse and found her sunglasses, which she’d taken off to get her hair cut. “So ask,” she said, her voice brittle and hard, unlike her usual tone.
“I told you,” I said, “I changed my mind. I don’t care.”
“You should,” Dani said. “It’s bad.”
“This is already bad. For both of us. Degrees of bad are a detail at this point. There’s no turning back, anyway. There never was. There’s only forward.”
She was quiet. She was ruminating on something, turning it over in her mind behind those sunglasses. She was already changed from the woman who’d come into my tattoo parlor. That had been yesterday.
