4. Jezebel

CHAPTER 4

JEZEBEL

P riest perched on the credenza in Cole’s living room, arms folded, legs crossed at the ankles, and he didn’t look thrilled to be there. Although every so often, his lips twitched, and I couldn’t work out whether he was mega pissed or trying not to laugh.

“Well, Jezebel, you sure hit the jackpot tonight.”

Tulsa was sitting on the arm of the chair I was currently parked in, and she couldn’t resist poking the bear.

“Just for clarification, are you talking about all the dead bodies or the fine gentleman unconscious in the bed upstairs?”

Priest blew out a breath and raised his gaze to the ceiling.

“You could bounce quarters off that ass,” Dice put in as she taped black plastic over the windows. “It would’ve been a shame if someone shot it up.”

There was a medic with Cole now, the same medic who’d strapped up my leg, and a spoilsport had covered those glorious butt cheeks with a sheet. But not before Tulsa, Dice, and Sin had shown up to admire the view. I was never going to hear the end of this .

“You have no idea why these men were here?” Sin asked.

“Nope. Do you recognise any of them?”

Sin—or Super Intel Nerd, to use her full nickname—was our intelligence specialist. Mostly, she dealt with bigger-picture issues, governments, military, and foreign agents, but she still kept her ear to the ground in Vegas.

And now she poked one of the dead guys with a toe. “This jackass looks familiar. I think he worked for the Sad Hatter a few years ago.”

“The coke dealer?”

The Sad Hatter had gotten his moniker because he favoured a fedora and always looked thoroughly miserable.

“Yup. His crew scattered after he went to prison. What do you know about Cole?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “I picked him because he was pretty, and I didn’t even realise he lived in Vegas until we ended up here.”

“This place is weird.” Dice crinkled her nose as she looked around. “Like he bought the contents at an estate sale. Could somebody pass the scissors?”

“Maybe he bought the house and furniture as-is?” Sin helped Dice to cut another piece of plastic to size. Once we’d covered the windows, we could light the place up properly. “I’ll check the property records.”

The pieces still didn’t fit. “I don’t think he bought the house. He only had forty bucks in his wallet, and he basically said he was poor. Plus the address on his driver’s licence is in San Gallicano.”

“Okay, maybe he’s poor because he spent all his money on somewhere to live?” Sin tapped away on her tablet. “Oh, wait a minute… This place is registered to a company. Nebula 68, Inc.”

“Should be Nebula 69,” Dice muttered.

I glared at her. “No, it shouldn’t. ”

“So you’re telling me you didn’t have a little taste? Go on, let’s see how good you are at lying.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t taste it; I’m saying that I did it in a different position.”

“Nebula 69 would still capture the spirit of the event, don’t you think?”

Priest chuckled. “Entertaining though this discussion is, let’s not forget why we’re here. We need to ascertain whether this was an attempt on Jezebel’s life, and if so, who was behind it.”

“Hey, is that the Cleaners?”

Tulsa flipped her mane of red hair back and rose to her feet. “I’ll get the garage door.”

If I was going to end the night with a pile of bodies, Vegas was the place to do it. Or LA, or NYC, or DC, Austin, Denver, Des Moines, Seattle, Richmond, Jackson, or Miami. The Cleaners had teams based in a number of major cities, plus they’d travel if the need arose. They’d remove the corpses, clean up the bodily fluids, and fix any damage, and they’d do it so well that nobody would ever know there was a crime scene. Remember the time a president’s son smashed up his hotel room in a fit of rage after a hooker overdosed in his en-suite? No, of course you don’t. Because the Cleaners were good at their job.

Valeria pulled the easily forgettable white cargo van into the attached garage, and a minute later, she led her team into the house. We’d already sent over photos and video via a secure link, so they knew what they were dealing with. Those images would erase themselves after twenty-four hours, and the Cleaners would be finished long before that.

“What happened this time?” Valeria cast her gaze over the room, assessing the damage. “You couldn’t have spilled white wine? It had to be red?”

“It was dark. ”

“Not dark enough for you to miss the targets. Who are they?”

“We don’t know. Can you put them on ice while we work that out?”

Valeria tutted but nodded her agreement, and then she walked around the room, poking at bullet holes and picking up brass.

“How many shots?” she asked.

“I fired eight. We’re guessing eleven collectively from the others, assuming they were each carrying a round in the chamber.”

We’d gathered up the weapons—all semi-auto .22s—counted how many rounds were left in each magazine, and worked out the number fired. There was a lot to be said for revolvers.

“Then we’re missing three cartridge cases. Your team can help to look for them while we wrap up the bodies and spackle the bullet holes.”

“The medic told me to stay put.”

“Always an excuse. You make the mess, and then you don’t want to clean it up.”

Valeria grumbled some more and then turned away to organise her people. Priest said she’d been in this role for over twenty years, and I knew from unfortunate experience that she’d do an excellent job. I spent my life working out the best way to destroy things, and she did the opposite. In a drab warehouse in North Las Vegas, there was a whole collection of paint, wood, tiles, building materials, tools, fabric, furniture, and so on, just waiting for situations like this one. When Cole woke in the morning, tonight would be nothing but a distant dream.

At least, I hoped it would.

If those gunmen had been here for him rather than me, I wasn’t certain what my next steps would be.

“Nebula 68 is a subsidiary of Nebula Holdings,” Echo said on speaker as I lay in the hospital. “And Nebula Holdings owns the Galaxy.”

Echo wasn’t a full-time member of the Choir—her choice—but she was my closest friend. We’d met long before Priest came into our lives, eleven years ago in fact, when she was a teenage runaway and I’d still been trying to find my place in life. Those days in Blackstone House had been fun, at least until one of our roommates was murdered.

The worst part? Ruby’s killer had never been caught. Echo and I had talked about it many times over the years, and nothing about her death made sense.

But that was all in the past.

Today, we had a new fuckup to deal with.

“Cole had a room card for the Galaxy in his wallet.”

“So maybe he knows the owner?”

“The owner died,” Sin said, putting her feet up on my bed. She’d claimed the visitor chair while Tulsa went to hunt food. “About two months ago. Had a heart attack in his office, so I heard.”

“What was the guy’s name?” Echo asked.

“Michael Trevino. Folks called him Uncle Mike. Nice old dude, by all accounts, but not much of a businessman. Maybe the house was his? It has the feel of an old-man home, and he could have bought it back in the days when real estate was cheaper.”

“Then why is Cole staying there?” I mused.

“Could be family?”

“He said he was at a crossroads and reevaluating his life. I guess it’s possible he inherited the house, and he’s trying to decide what to do with it. ”

The door opened, and a nurse shooed Tulsa inside. “Ma’am, you can’t just meander around this facility.”

“She was only looking for food,” I told her. “We’re starving.”

“If you want food, you press the button.”

“When can I get out of here?”

“When the doctor says so.”

“Service with a fuckin’ smile,” Tulsa said once the nurse had backed out of the room. “Should’ve gone to a regular hospital—there’d be better vending machines.”

After the Cleaners took over, I’d been shipped to the private medical facility at Nellis rather than the nearest emergency room—they’d ask fewer questions on base, and the staff were used to our antics, which was both a good thing and a bad thing. Spare me the lectures.

“How do you feel about busting me out of here?” I asked.

Tulsa sighed. “You should wait.”

“Michael Trevino didn’t have any kids,” Echo said. “His parents predeceased him, and his only sibling was a brother, also dead. He got married at twenty-five and widowed at thirty.”

“Definitely no sisters?” Sin asked. “Cole’s surname is Gallagher, not Trevino.”

“Not that I can see. I can focus in on Cole again, but there’s nothing significant in the public domain after he graduated from the University of Coastal California, San Diego campus.”

“So go to the non-public domain,” I said.

“I will, but if he’s based in San Gallicano, that makes things harder. And whoever landed on his phone last night did a damn good job of breaking it.”

Valeria had bitched like crazy about the phone. There was no way of repairing the damage, so she’d swapped it for a dead version of the same model. Cole would have the inconvenience to deal with, but at least we’d fixed the bullet holes. The Cleaners had even replaced the wine, which happened to be a seven-hundred-dollar bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild—cue more bitching.

Tulsa dropped onto the bed beside me, and I gritted my teeth as red-hot pain surged through my left leg.

“We need to consider all the angles,” she said. “Sending a four-man hit squad after a person isn’t an everyday occurrence, and from what we know so far, Cole Gallagher doesn’t seem to be a guy in that kind of trouble. Right?”

I had to agree. A man who made powerful enemies generally had an inkling that he was a target. He carried a gun. He watched his back. Cole’s only weapon was in his pants, and he definitely hadn’t been aware of his surroundings. At the Black Diamond, his eyes had stayed on me and only me.

“Right.”

“But Jez was there too, and she’s earned that honour many times over.”

True, but I did watch my back. My front and my sides too. Nobody had followed us to McNeil last night; I was certain of that. And as for the hit team… The thought that someone would send those four idiots to kill me was almost insulting.

“That doesn’t fit either. Nobody even knew I was going to be at that property.”

“What if Cole was bait? You said yourself that he was short of money—what if somebody noticed your penchant for hitting it and quitting it and decided to set you up?”

I shook my head. “If that were the case, they’d have sent a prick in a suit. A guy older than me, a little drunk, a little horny. Cole wasn’t my usual type.”

“So why did you go home with him?”

“I don’t know! He was nice, I guess.”

Tulsa grimaced. “Yikes. ”

“Don’t start.”

The doctor chose that moment to make his entrance, carrying a manila folder and a clipboard. Let me get out of here.

“How are you feeling, Ms. Knight?”

“Just tell me what the damage is.”

He sucked in a breath and slapped an X-ray onto the lightbox. “This is your tibia.”

Which was obviously fractured.

Fuck.

“I’m supposed to be flying to Belarus tomorrow.”

“You will not be flying to Belarus.”

“But—”

“As fractures go, it’s relatively benign. You were lucky. It’s a closed fracture, and the bones haven’t been pushed out of alignment. You’ll need a cast. Crutches too, and most importantly…” His gaze lasered in. “You’ll need to rest.”

Tulsa snickered beside me.

“You think this is funny, Ms. de Vey?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m aware that your entire team finds instructions difficult to follow, but if you keep running around with an injury like this one, you’ll only prolong the healing process. And believe me when I say that I don’t want to see you back here any time soon.” He turned to Sin. “Ms. Fischer, I trust your hand has healed?”

She flexed her fist. “Feels good to me, doc.”

“Excellent. Perhaps you could avoid punching anybody else for a few months? Please ,” he added under his breath.

“I’ll do my best.”

Four hours later, I’d been scanned and studied, and the medical team had fit me with a temporary boot while they 3D printed the cast I’d have to wear for six to eight fucking weeks. I could shower and float around in the pool, but I wasn’t supposed to put any weight on that leg. Not that I wanted to, because it fucking hurt. They’d reevaluate the fit of the cast once the swelling had gone down, but for now, Doc Martinsson had ordered me to Netflix and chill.

I was ninety percent sure he didn’t know what “Netflix and chill” meant, and after the Cole incident, I’d have to rethink my pickup strategy anyway. In twenty-four hours, my life had been turned on its head. Tulsa was packing for her trip to Belarus, and I was sidelined.

I should have been royally pissed at the upheaval.

But as I lay back on the sun lounger beside the pool with the shushing of the waterfall in the background, all I could think of was Cole.

And that annoyed me to no end.