6. Jezebel

CHAPTER 6

JEZEBEL

“ Y ou know, when I heard Jerry Knight was down the hallway with yet another injury, I told the nurse, ‘No, that’s impossible. Jerry’s resting at home with a fractured tibia.’” Doc Martinsson checked my chart and raised an eyebrow. “And yet, here you are.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that, I’d be playing golf right now.”

“We only went out for dinner.”

“Dinner where? The Diamondback Devils’ clubhouse?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

True, some members of the motorcycle club could be violent, but they weren’t irrational. They didn’t stab you in the thigh with the broken stem of a champagne glass just because you said five words to their boyfriend. Even if those five words were, “Your girlfriend is a psycho.” Anyhow, the wound wouldn’t stop oozing, so after a restless night, I’d given in and driven to the hospital. It was either that or fix the mess myself, and I had to reluctantly admit that Doc Martinsson was skilled when it came to sewing .

Plus I had a hangover.

He poked around in the hole. “This needs stitches. Are those glass fragments?”

“Probably.”

“Go on then, entertain me while I repair the damage.”

I lay back on the exam table and sighed as he jabbed local anaesthetic into my leg. Would I end up with another scar? I was into double figures already, and each one of them had a story. Most of those stories were classified.

“Marcel was on a date, so we figured we’d go to the Salt Shaker.” Marcel was our assistant, and he did most of the cooking. It wasn’t that we couldn’t make dinner by ourselves, more that he got snippy if we messed with his kitchen. “A nice quiet meal, an early night, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“We were waiting at the bar for a table, and there was this guy. Reasonably hot, a little too smooth, hanging out with another dude, so we figured he was there with friends. Or maybe gay, but he didn’t act that way.”

“How does one act gay? Did you expect him to toss glitter and kneel for the pride flag?”

“It was more that he kept checking out Barbie’s boobs and my ass.”

“I see.”

“They bought us drinks.” Usually, I’d have told them where to stick their offer, but I was annoyed. Annoyed at myself because a certain night kept playing over and over in my head, and I stupidly figured that lousy sex with an idiot might erase the tape. “And then it turned out the pair of them were there on a double date, and the jackass who was into Barbie was waiting for a lunatic.”

“Let me guess—you got into a fight?”

“Not really. She threw some things, and I was trying to stop her from clawing Barbie’s eyes out when she grabbed a glass from the table next to us. ”

I’d had her in a bear hug at the time, her dumbass boyfriend was shrieking—which was when I pointed out she was a psycho—and her BFF was trying to loosen my grip. A shocked Barbie had flattened the bitch afterward, but I still had to suffer the indignity of visiting the hospital.

And Barbie was right to be shocked. I’d taken my eye off the ball, something I never normally did. I’d been out of sorts lately, and it didn’t take a shrink to work out why.

Cole fucking Gallagher.

Two weeks had passed since our liaison, and he still kept intruding into my thoughts. One part of me wanted to find him again, just to prove he wasn’t as good as I remembered. The other part of me wanted to drive out to the desert and scream into the void.

So far, my self-control had prevented me from doing either, but it was a battle. I’d even driven past the Galaxy once. That was where his hot ass spent most of its time. Thanks to Echo, I knew that he’d inherited Nebula Holdings by virtue of being Uncle Mike’s closest living relative, and as such, he owned the casino and the old place in McNeil. Although rumour suggested that might not be the case for much longer. Like the house, the Galaxy was tired and run down, and the banks owned more of it than Cole did.

She’d offered to dig further, but I’d told her to stop. Cole wasn’t a gangster. The four men on ice in the morgue had been local guns for hire, we knew that much, and they’d most probably been after me. Sin had heard rumours that Bastian’s former buddies were on a quest for revenge, plus we knew there was at least one high-level mole somewhere in the government. Too many secrets had leaked over the past few years.

“Might I suggest getting takeout next time?” Doc Martinsson said.

“I don’t give in so easy. ”

“I was afraid you might say that.”

The doc finished stitching my leg with his usual efficiency and taped a dressing over the wound. If I hurried, the café nearby might have a couple of bacon double cheese croissants left—those usually sold out by mid-morning.

I jumped down from the table, cursed at the pain in my leg, and fished in my pocket for my car keys.

As usual, the doc didn’t look happy. “Tell me you’re not driving.”

“I’m not driving.”

“Is that the truth?”

“You didn’t say anything about telling the truth.”

I grabbed my crutches and skip-hopped into the corridor before he could give me another lecture about recovery times. Driving was fine. My car was a 1971 Porsche 911 with a Sportomatic gearbox, one last gift from my absent father. The keys had been posted through the mail slot on the morning of my eighteenth birthday, the car left on the driveway with a note on the driver’s seat.

I’ll always believe in you.

Love, Dad

P.S. Her name is Thelma.

Was it possible to both love and hate someone at the same time? Absolutely.

I’d been doing it my whole life.

For the first twenty-six years of my existence, I’d had nothing but a name—Jeremy Pope—and stories from my mom. Their relationship wasn’t serious, but it wasn’t quite casual either. Nor was it balanced—there had been more love on Mom’s side than on his. Jeremy sold printers, he said, which meant he travelled frequently, so for a week they’d see each other every night, and then he’d disappear for months. Phone calls weren’t his strong suit. There was nobody else for my mom, and she didn’t think Dad was seeing anyone but her either, but setting up house together was never in the cards.

Then she realised she was pregnant.

Mom broke the news on the same day as Dad announced he’d accepted a job overseas, leaving the following Tuesday. He didn’t offer to change his plans, nor did he suggest Mom go with him, and that final Monday was the last time she ever saw Jeremy. The silver dollar was his parting gift. I’d had it valued once, and I probably shouldn’t have been carrying it around with me, but it was the only piece of my dad I had left. Not even his surname had come to me. He’d told Mom that I should take hers.

But then the money started arriving, every month until I turned eighteen. He hadn’t abandoned me, but he hadn’t wanted me either.

A memory came back. After Bastian but before Priest, when the DIA thought I might try jumping off a building and they weren’t sure whether to strap me into a straitjacket or help me on my way, they’d tried sending me to a shrink. She’d listened to my story and nodded solemnly.

“I understand why you have trouble forming relationships,” she said.

No fucking kidding.

Anyhow, Priest had found me, and I’d finally found my place in life. Friendships weren’t the impossibility I’d once assumed, and teamwork wasn’t so bad either. But bureaucracy was still a pain in the ass.

And my father? Well, I now knew he hadn’t been a printer salesman, but as for his whereabouts, that was still a mystery. Nobody even knew whether he was alive or dead. But unbeknown to me at the time, his name had pulled invisible strings. Dice had befriended me after Priest got curious about the girl with half of Jeremy Pope’s genes, and although I’d been mad when I discovered her duplicitousness, without their help, I’d probably have wound up sweeping the floor in a fast-food joint. Or dead. Or in prison.

Yet here I was.

Thelma’s silver paintwork gleamed in the sun as I approached, the sheen looking out of place beside a trio of sand-coloured military vehicles in the parking lot. Like me, she could be a temperamental little bitch, but I loved her anyway. Sometimes, I swore I could still smell the ghost of my dad’s cologne on the leather seats.

“Be good today?” I pleaded as I slid behind the wheel.

The only answer was a low grumble as her engine burbled into life. Home was a half hour away, the compound to the north of Vegas that we called Casa del Gato. The Cathouse. Once upon a time, the house had belonged to Dick Steele, better known as the Prince of Porn, but Priest had acquired it at the Choir’s inception to turn into our base of operations. One of the main attractions had been the sprawling sex dungeon, now repurposed into a bunker, an armoury, a shooting range, and an office for Echo. So few homes in Vegas came with a basement, and we liked having a space hidden away from prying eyes.

Thelma lived in the six-car garage, along with Priest’s Mustang, Dice’s Viper, a collection of motorcycles, and an armoured Range Rover. Storm’s helicopter rolled into a hangar out back, and various other vehicles were shaded by a carport to the side. We might have shared our transport, but nobody else ever drove Thelma. Partly because they knew how much she meant to me, but mostly because she broke down a lot.

A habit she didn’t quit today .

“Daughter of a bitch,” I complained as the engine cut out on West Craig. “Not again.”

I coasted to the side of the road and tried restarting her, but she spluttered and died. At least the needle on the temperature gauge wasn’t jammed into the red this time.

“I bought you new oil, and Thomas lovingly serviced you less than a month ago. What’s your problem?”

The quiet ticking sound from the engine didn’t tell me much.

“Did you do this shit to Dad? Did you? Huh?”

She just sat there looking pretty as I called Thomas. This was a regular occurrence, so there was little surprise in his voice.

“What happened this time?”

“Engine cut out.”

I didn’t hold the constant breakdowns against him—he was the only person in Vegas who could fix Thelma at all, and we’d both long since come to the conclusion that the car was mechanically cursed.

“You want me to send Brett with the tow truck?”

“I’m on West Craig Road outside Harry’s Hot Chicken.”

“At least you can get lunch while you’re waiting.”

Sure, if I wanted food poisoning. I leaned against the fender, the cast propped out in front of me—high-tech 3D-printed plastic secured with low-tech zip ties—but I hadn’t been there for two minutes when my phone buzzed.

Sin

Are you outside Pet City? Can you pick up pig ears for Saint?

I glanced at the neon sign a hundred yards away. Sure, why not? At least Pet City had AC. And if Saint had pig ears, she wouldn’t be tempted to chew on anyone’s arm while they slept.

Echo

Did Thelma quit on you again?

Rather than replying, I looked up at the sky and gave whatever satellite she was using to spy on me the finger.

Echo

That’s not very nice.

Maybe I’d get Saint one of those buffalo tendons as well? That would keep her busy for another five minutes, and Marcel wouldn’t have to yell at her for stealing a whole raw chicken off the counter again. But I’d barely got my crutches out of the car when a shiny red truck pulled up behind Thelma. A man climbed out of the driver’s side, and I squinted into the sun, watching him. There was something familiar about that face. The dark hair, the square jaw…

Oh, hell.