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“A locket.”
A locket.Oh. He remembered that locket. He’d gotten a pretty penny for it from the man who ran the migrant aid group near the border. He’d eaten regularly for the next month. It’d been a good month. Cedro didn’t have many of those. “I don’t know anything about any locket. You probably got drunk and lost it, pig.”
Grim let out a chuff of laughter.
“Who are you, anyway?” Cedro asked. “And why are we here together? Who took us?”
“I have no fucking clue,” Grim mumbled. “One of the gangs, I assume.”
“What do they want with us?”
Grim glanced over, and his face looked like his name. “No clue,” he mumbled again, but Cedrowasa liar, after all, and he could spot another one.
“What do you do, other than roll around in your own vomit?” Cedro asked.
Another rattly cough. “A little bit of everything.”
A little bit of everything.Which probably meant he took money from anyone who was desperate enough to pay an old drunk for his services. “Do you take people into the desert?” He refused to sayhelp. Help was hardly ever what came to those who let someone else guide them out into that brutal place where even fewer laws existed than in the town where he lived.
“Sometimes,” he said. “I help those who can pay for it.”
“Help? Oruse?”
“Look who’s talking, pickpocket.”
Cedro startled when the door directly in front of their cages slid open and a man walked through. He had a receding hairline and greasy black hair that fell past his shoulders. Cedro crawled quickly on his knees to the front of his cage. “Hey, mister. Let us out of here. Please. I don’t have anything you want. I’m an orphan. No parents, not a dime to my name. I sell vegetables on the street, just enough to feed myself. Please.”
The man gave him a slight smile, but it was cold, and it chilled Cedro so much that he let go of the bars and slunk back. “I am not authorized to make deals with you,” the man said. His speech was clipped, and he had a slight accent that Cedro had never heard before. “You’ve been rented,” he said.
Cedro’s mouth went even drier than it already was. “Rented?” he croaked. He didn’t look over at Grim, but he could tell by the still silence that he was watching this interaction closely, unmoving. “I ... what do you mean?” But he thought he knew.Oh, not this.He’d done anything and everything not to have to do this. He’d stolen vegetables from others almost as poor as him and sat in the hot sun hour after hour to sell them on the street for nothing but change. He’d slept in alleyways, covered in trash so no one spotted him. He’d rooted throughgarbage for food. He’d picked pockets and sold what he’d stolen. He’d taken chances and barely survived. But he’d told himself he was doing okay because he hadn’t resorted to making the trip to that squalid street where kids no older than him, and some younger, stared hollow eyed out of upstairs windows while old men entered through the doors below. “No,” he said, more so for himself than because he thought he had any voice in this matter.
“You do have a choice, however,” the man said, crossing one foot over the other and leaning on the corner of his cage.
“What? I’ll do anything,” he said. He hated to beg. He hated it. But in this case, he would do what he had to do.
The man jerked his head backward toward Grim’s cage, a smile spreading over his lips. “Come with me, or I’ll take his eye. Just one. He has two, after all.”
From beside him, Cedro heard Grim release a long breath. “Ah, fuck me,” the old drunk muttered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Is that you, Noelle?” Chantilly called.
“It’s me,” she said, stepping into the massive bedroom suite and closing the door behind her. Chantilly wheeled out of the dressing room, a luxurious space that featured racks and racks of designer clothing, a marble-topped counter built to Chantilly’s chair height in the middle that held her sizable collection of jewelry and accessories, and an entire wall of shoe racks that stored all her footwear, from the Louboutins to her pink feathered slippers.
Chantilly was seventy-five, and she still wore heels. Some might say the wheelchair made that possible, but Noelle knew the woman well enough to know she’d likely be wearing heels even if she’d had use of her legs.
“Well look at you,” Chantilly said, her hands at her ear, head tilted as she put on an earring. “What’s the occasion?”
Noelle smoothed her palms over her outfit. It wasn’t overly formal at all—a cotton floral maxi sundress. But it was strapless and hugged her breasts, even if it was flared out from there, just grazing her ankles. “You know it’s the turtle-hatching watch party tonight—”
“Yes, I’m well aware of the social events scheduled at Sweetgrass,” she said, turning her chair and leaning toward a large gold filigree mirroron the wall and smoothing a platinum-blonde hair back into place. She turned, eyeing Noelle again, her gaze moving quickly over Noelle’s hair—blow dried and curled in loose waves—to the makeup she’d spent fifteen minutes applying. Which meant thirteen minutes more than she usually spent on her face. She felt herself blushing under the older woman’s knowing perusal. “What’s unexpected isyou.” A twinkle came into her sea-green eyes. “And I’m wondering if it has anything to do with a certain guest who checked in to Atlantic Moon last night.”
Noelle sank down onto the red velvet settee by the door. “You don’t miss a beat, do you?”
“Not around here I don’t,” she said, the soft whir of her chair sounding as she moved toward Noelle and parked herself next to the settee. “Who is he?”
Noelle traced a button in the tufting. “He’s Callie’s father,” she said softly, not meeting Chantilly’s eyes.
