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He jerked, Devereaux’s question dragging him out of the recesses of his thoughts. “At work, I imagine. The address for the bar is in the file.”
Devereaux flipped open the folder and haphazardly shuffled papers aside until he had the one he wanted. His lips moved silently as he read through the information.
“How do I get in there? Into the apartment.”
Simmons frowned. “How the hell am I supposed to know that? My job was to track and surveil. If you wanted B and E, that would have cost you a lot extra. Besides, you probably don’t want to draw that much attention to yourself.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Devereaux snapped. “I asked you for information.” He paused and collected himself. “But you’re probably right. Best to try and fly as far below the radar as possible. Is she working today?”
“That would be my guess. She didn’t work yesterday.”
That murderous look lit his eyes again, but he smoothed it out. “Good. That’s good. You did fine work, Simmons.”
“I told you I always do.”
Devereaux reached into the breast pocket of his perfectly pressed suit and pulled out an envelope. “I especially appreciate a man who can be discreet.”
“About that,” Simmons replied, plucking the envelope from Devereaux’s hand and peeking at the bills inside. It looked like it was all there, but he’d count it to make absolutely sure. “This has been a long job. It took more time than either of us realized.”
“Additional time you’ve been compensated for.”
Devereaux raised a brow in a look so snooty Simmons had to grit his teeth to keep from snarling a response. Fuckers like this really did think the world was at their beck and call.
“What I’m getting at is…if you want to permanently buy my silence, it’s going to cost you a lot more.”
“Are you trying to blackmail me, Mr. Simmons?”
He shrugged. “Call it whatever you want, but I suspect you don’t want folks back home knowing your pretty wife faked her own death and ran out on you or that she’s spent the last year running away from your sorry ass either. If you want to keep that between us, you’ll need to cough up more cash.”
“You’re right, Mr. Simmons. I do want to permanently guarantee your silence. And it is going to cost a lot more than either of us realized when we started this.”
Devereaux moved so fast Simmons didn’t have time to react before the blade of the knife he’d used to cut his steak and eggs at breakfast was buried in the side of his neck. He stumbled forward and slumped down onto the edge of the nearest bed.
Reaching up to touch his neck, his hands came away covered in thick, bright red blood. He couldn’t swallow all the way, and when he tried to take a deep breath, it was like he could feel air leaking out from a hole he’d never be able to close.
His fingers danced over the handle of the knife, but he couldn’t make himself grab it. His hands had stopped working properly. The edges of his vision dimmed, and he collapsed onto his back on the bed. For the first time, he noticed a water stain in the corner of the ceiling, and then Devereaux’s face filled his vision.
“It’s fascinating how much blood can come from such a small cut.” Devereaux’s eyes dipped down to trace the path the blood made as it leaked from Simmons’s neck onto the bedspread underneath. “I used to make a study of how close to death I could take my dear Alice before allowing life to flood back into her body.”
His smile was cold. “You won’t be so lucky, however.” Simmons tried to speak, but every word sounded like wheezing gasps. “No, no. Don’t try to talk. You’ll just get blood everywhere. It’s unsightly.”
Devereaux bent to retrieve something off the floor and then was back peering into his face. “You sure are taking forever to die.”
He gripped the handle of the knife with a napkin and wiped it off. The motion caused pain to lance through the numbness invading his body.
“Let this be a lesson you take to the grave, Mr. Simmons. Figure out who you’re dealing with before you decide to fuck someone over.”
Simmons heard the muffled sound of footsteps receding, the soft click of the door closing barely audible over the buzzing in his ears. His last conscious thought was the fact that he was never going to see home again and nobody was alive to miss him.
ChapterThirty-Three
James didn’t need to be at the Orchid to cover Mike’s usual opening shift for a little over an hour, so he drove to the warehouse where their biggest shipment of the week had been delivered the day before. Maybe he was a coward, but he didn't think he could face Delaney just yet.
It was quiet. The crew he’d tasked with sorting the crates into smaller shipments wasn’t due to arrive until the afternoon, but the manual labor of hauling around heavy boxes was the perfect distraction.
They were stacked in neat rows two tall and in the same place where the unloading crew left them. Grabbing a crowbar from a nearby table, he wrenched off the lid to the nearest crate and made a tally on the inventory list in his pocket.
This sort of work was mindless, checking and tallying. It was why he normally assigned it to someone else these days, too busy for this kind of basic labor. Today he needed it.
