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“Maybe you did,” I retort.
Agnossio looks at me. “Maybe we could go back to agreeing we hate each other and work this shit out. Harry the jeweler got a note.”
“So did I.” I hand it to him.
He frowns. “Why the fuck do they think you have it? And who’s they?”
“Not sure.” I’m not willing to share my theory of the gun runner. “Thoughts?”
“I’ve been looking, but I don’t know where she is. I haven’t turned anything up.” He shrugs. “I’m seeing how this plays.”
Stalemate.
Even through my anger that bubbles and spits, I don’t think he’s playing me. It’s not how Hendrick does shit.
“However,” he says, nodding to the door behind me, “I thinkshe’sgot some thoughts for you. A lot of them.”
She?
I turn. There’s the pretty little jeweler and her eyes are ablaze.
Oh great.
“Where is she?” Harriet Esterhazy demands.
“I don’t fucking know.” I take a defiant swig and catch the subtle nod of Carlos’s reflection.
Harry’s baby blues turn from fire to ice. “Liar.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Hendrick says.
She shoves her hands on her hips and slams the door shut. “I’m glad you and your boy toy here are working out your repressed homoerotic feelings for each other in a hotel room, but I don’t have time for this. Where is she?”
Cold bricks hit my stomach.
With the two of them in the room, everything suddenly gets very fucking real, very fucking fast.
“Something fucked up is going on,” I tell them both. “We definitely need to talk.”
THREE
MAGDALENA
This time I come awake in stages, to softer light, golden and warm, and my hands are free, or…free enough.
Handcuffs. My hands in front of me.
And I’m lying on something impossibly soft and subtly scented.
There are voices, soft, that move away and disappear with a click of a door. I look around.
The room’s vacuously gorgeous, pure decadent luxury, a canvas for sleep and other activities.
I know a hotel room when I see one, but ones like this with that generic tastefulness the filthy rich who come to visit Delacroix City might stay in are places I’ve seen in magazines and on TV.
Never in real life.
I go to my lovers’ homes. Almost never hotels.
