Page 60 of Slow Burn

When she reached out for the money, his hand came down over hers, hot as summer sweat.

“Uh-uh. Not until I’ve heard what I want to hear.”

Before she was done, he’d let her take the five hundred, fold it into neat halves, and stick it in her socks. After that, he took out a half-full bottle of Chivas Regal and poured two paper cups.

When that was empty, he found a full bottle.

“’Slate,” Bradshaw mumbled. He tried to pick up his paper cup, but turned it over. Whisky peed off the edge of his desk onto his pants. “Shit. Shit. See that? Shit.”

For some reason, it was ungodly funny. Velvet laughed until the room started spinning, then put her head down on the desk until it stopped. From time to time, giggles bubbled up and dribbled out of her mouth, gooey with Chivas.

“Not the first time,” she said. “Not the firsht time shomebody died with me. Y’know?”

“Yeah?” He snorted wetly and searched for a handkerchief. “Damn. Damn.”

“My sister.”

He started laughing, a high thin laugh like a jackass. She wished she was close enough to slap him; it seemed like way too much effort to go around the desk to do it. She settled for throwing the rest of her drink on him, then reached for the bottle and poured. Most of it missed the cup.

“Don’t fuckin’ laugh, you asshole. Ash-hole. Good kid. She was … you know … young.”

“Lemme guess.” Bradshaw’s laugh sawed at her again. “Drunk driving.”

“No.” She tried to sit up straight, but the room took a funny lurch. “Drunk, not driving. Blow jobs.”

“Huh?”

“I was blowing this guy—y’know—in the backsheat. Seat. I dinnit know she wanned to go home. She started walking an—an—thish other guy he—” All of a sudden she was crying, bawling, shaking all over. “Amy—”

She didn’t remember any of it too well—just crawling out of the car, half-dead from the booze, seeing the other boy throwing up in the bushes. Seeing Amy lying in the mud, her face in the mud.

“Suffocated,” she said, clearly. “Dinnit mean to do it.”

That’s what he’d said on the witness stand,I didn’t mean it, I didn’t know she couldn’t breathe, I didn’t mean it—

And she’d sat up there looking out at the courtroom, at her friends, her mom, and said,I didn’t know, I didn’t hear it, I was drunk, I was in the backseat giving his friend a blow job while he raped my sister and she choked to death.

God, oh God.

“Life sucks,” Bradshaw said solemnly, and hee-hawed like a jackass. Velvet stood up with all the dignity she had left and pointed her ink-smeared left hand at him.

“Fuck you,” she said, and staggered away.

The freezing night air cleaned her up a little. She sat down shivering on the curb and waited for the bus. Her mouth tasted like Scotch and semen.

She opened the trial bottle of Listerine and gulped it down in two quick shots.

She had the distinct feeling that when she sobered up, she was going to regret this whole thing.

Chapter Twenty-three

Ming

Ming liked the quiet, late at night. Sometimes, in the distance, she heard a siren wail, but all in all it was silent, and cold. She never turned the heat on unless it was cold enough to kill, and even then only enough to keep her alive.

Cold focused. Cold crystallized purpose.

She sat naked on her rough cotton mattress, hands clenched into fists, and stared at a blank brick wall. There was nothing in this room. No clothes were allowed here. This was the place of utter nakedness.