AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lyla doesn’t hug him hello. She doesn’t even greet him. She leaves her suitcase at his feet and walks straight past him to the classic Mustang parked outside, it seems, without uttering a single word.
If I think her attempt at seduction is a little different to how I imagined it, I try to remind myself that she knows Rye. She knows what she’s doing. Or, at least, I really hope she does.
Lyla puts on a brave front. Hell, with the snarky wit and go-fuck-yourself attitude, she comes across as an outright bitch quite often. But that’s not her at all. She feels too much, too often.
Beneath me, Rye just grins and hefts the suitcase up in one fluid movement before following after her, completely unphased by her attitude.
It would seem that he has her figured out too.
Chapter 17
Aiden
June 30, 2008
“Here we are,” Mani announcesfrom the driver’s seat of his cruiser.
I take in the two-story structure that is the Mousetrap nightclub. In broad daylight, the building is even less appealing than at night. At least at night, the sparkling, neon lights detract from the ugly black façade. In daylight, it’s just a black square with black, painted windows, a black roof, and an unlighted sign that looks about twenty years old.
The building itself is plonked on the corner of Los Angeles Street and 5th. On either side of the large intersection, vendors associated with the Fashion District hawk their wares, selling fake brands and plain, civilian gear imported in bulk from various third-world countries. Signs boasting ‘FIVE FOR $1.00’ litter the sidewalks. Colorful awnings reach out into the streets, their outstretched canvases protecting shoppers from the Los Angeles’ heat and delineating one store from the next.
At night the scene couldn’t be more different. The vendors roll up their steel garage doors and go home, content with their informal economizing. Everything falls quiet. It is dark. If you were to drive past the intersectionbetween six and nine-fifty-five at night, you’d revel in the peacefulness.
Until, at ten o’clock sharp, the lights of the Mousetrap flicker on. The music starts, the bass traveling underneath the sidewalk, and slowly, like mites out of the woodwork, the clubbers come, filtering from all over Los Angeles for a night of drinking, dancing, drugs, and debauchery.
From what I know of Elizabeth, it doesn’t take much for me to imagine her here, signaling to the bouncer as she saunters through in a tiny dress and impossibly high heels, unchecked. A regular. An Insider.
The other girls…Even if I were to see one of them standing out front, I wouldn’t believe they were actually going in. Maybe, just passing by. Or stopping on the sidewalk to realign a shoe. Antoinette is too above the drama. Juliette, too afraid. Lyla seems like she couldn’t care less. And Catherine—I can’t even picture her standing out front.
Five days, I think the moment she pops into my mind. It’s been five days since I saw her. Five days shouldn’t feel like an eternity; it should feel, at most, like a long work week, one of those ones that just drags on and on, each hour feeling like an eon.
We haven’t spoken since the night of the fundraiser, and I keep wondering how she’s doing. Or, if she’s thought about what I said. And, although I hate myself for it every time, I wonder how many dates she’s gone on since I held her in my arms on the unfinished twenty-fifth floor of the Twelfth Tower.
I meant what I told her—that I wasn’t ashamed of what she did. But shame and jealousy can be very different emotions, and whenever I think of somebody else touching her, well, the jealousy rises with a poisonous intent that leaves me feeling ashamed.
It is not easy, to have a momentous decision entrusted to someone else’s hands, irrespective of how gentle those hands may be. And it is far worse to watch someone you care for take their own life into their hands, regardless of how capable they are. It’s like watching them core an avocado, the sharp knife separated from their unbroken skin by nothing but the fruit’s soft flesh and a pip of indeterminable size. You can know that they have complete control of their motor neurons and still want to warn them to be careful of the blade, or, better yet, let you do it for them.
That’s the hardest part for me—trusting her to make the best decision for herself. But she has to be the one to make the next move. So, although it has taken every ounce of self-control I possess, I haven’t tried to contact her.
I’ve pulled up her number countless times—she added it to my phone as “Cat” (with a cat emoticon made from parentheses, dashes, and carets)—to do just that. But then I just end up staring at it until the numbers blur.
Although he never leaves the station without it, Mani takes his gun out of its holster beneath his suit jacket and checks the mag before sliding the safety on and slipping it back in. “Ready?”
We have fallen into our same routine, but neither of us has talked about the argument we had. As far as I’m concerned, it’s water under the bridge. And, right now, it has to be put out of mind.
“Yes. Remember, we’re playing it cool, gauging his reaction to the new information we have. He knows we’re coming. The station has our location. Everything’s kosher.”
“I still don’t like this guy,” Mani practically spits, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “Gives me the heeby jeebies.”
“Yeah, me too.” I’m not proud to admit it.
I’ve only met Sascha Sokolov once.
But once was enough.
When I looked at him, his sins leeched out of him. It’s as if all the suffering he’d caused couldn’t help but grab me and wrap around me until I heard the cries and the screams.
“Don’t do anything rash,” I warn Mani, not trusting the feverish glow in his eyes. “We’re here to pump him for information on Elizabeth York, nothing else.” When he doesn’t reply, I clamp my hand on his neck and force his eyes to mine. “Mani. Today’s not the day this goes down.”
