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10
TRAP
* * *
Iwalk into Alix’s office, hoping she has a minute to go over schedules before I head to Wilmington for the monthly Chamber of Commerce meeting. Clients are starting to hear about the incredible job she did auctioning Jim Farquhar’s Monet. With the end of the calendar year approaching, three of my most valuable customers want to run their own sales. There’s a suite of ten Warhol prints, each one a different endangered species. There’s a Picasso nude from his Blue Period. And there’s a bronze Rodin sculpture, a life-size version of hisThinker, cast while the sculptor was still alive.
I know jack shit about art. But I can plug words into Google. And the answers I’m getting say we’re talking about fifty million dollars worth of art changing hands. And the freeport gets a cut of every deal.
I’m already entering her office as I knock on her door. So I’m perfectly situated to see her leap six feet in the air as surprise squeezes a bark from her throat. She slams down the cover of her laptop and plucks both buds from her ears.
“What are you watching?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she answers, too quickly.
Butnothingdoesn’t make a person breathe like they’re wrapping up a marathon.Nothingdoesn’t make hands tremble.Nothingdoesn’t leave palms sweaty enough to cast ghost shadows on a desk blotter.
I’d think she was watching porn, but I know what Alix looks like when she’s turned on. And the woman I’m keeping satisfied in bed doesn’t need to watch made-up shit to get off.
“Bullshit,” I say, closing her office door before I walk around behind her.
“Trap—”
I open the computer. A video is frozen on the screen—Alix in a latex cat-suit, triple-teamed by the fucking Herzog brothers. Her face is stretched into a scream that rips something open deep inside my gut.
“What the fuck?” I demand.
She closes the screen before she answers. Her motions are tight. Prim. Like she’s the fucking schoolmarm in some Old West town. “I need to watch it.”
She answers like that makes perfect sense. She needs to drink water. She needs to breathe air. She needs to watch those jizzwipes fuck her.
“The fuck you do.”
“We need to get to them, Jonas and Ansel. We need to stop them before they release the Diamond Ring’s names.”
“Ineed to stop them.”
“You said we’re in this together.”
Fuck. I did say that. But I argue, “I hire private investigators. I buy off hackers. I pay Sawgrass mercs to blast their way in. You don’t wade through this shit anymore.”
“I lived this shit,” she says, and the word sounds dirtier because her mouth’s so clean. “I lived it, and it’s part of me, and I’m never going to forget it. You can hire all the guys you want, but that hasn’t worked so far. Men havedieddoing things your way. Now I have to try this. I have to fix this. I have to make it right.”
“Princess—” I start.
“Don’t say that.”
“Alix,” I try again, willing to choose my battles.
“I tried talking to Leo!” she says, like the words claw at her windpipe. “I went to the hospital, and I asked him for help, and he started babbling like a madman!”
Not for the first time, I wonder if I made the wrong decision on the Philadelphia docks. If Leo Fucking Key was rotting in the ground right now, Alix could finally begin moving on. Getting over his betrayal.
But I say, “He’s got a long road ahead of him. He came in half-starved. He had Hep A, Hep B, and the clap. Load detox on top of that, not just withdrawal, but the hard shit, kicking the actual addiction… It’s going to be a long time before Leo’s able to talk to you.”
“We don’t have a long time! Jonas and Ansel are going after the Diamond Ring in five weeks! And you and I could be indicted any day! So could Braiden Kelly.”
I hear the panic in her voice. I could shove aside that fucking computer and bend her over her desk. I could make her come three times in the next half hour and order her to suck me off by noon. I could keep us both here till midnight, until we’re chafed and raw and half-dying of thirst.
