Page 2

CHAPTER TWO

S aint…

It was late afternoon, and I was sitting at the bar in the club, sipping on my favorite poison – Casa Noble tequila. The liquid – spicy, flavorful, and crisp – went down smooth. I also had to admire the way the liquor coated the inside of the glass I sipped from as I swirled it.

It was a weird liquor for a born and bred Italian, New Orleans native, and wholly raised Southern boy like me to pick up, let alone enjoy as thoroughly as I did. But hey, a man liked what he liked, and I certainly was no exception to that rule.

It’d been a long fuckin’ day, but the day was done, and I was just chillin’ at the bar on my own, sipping my drink and keeping to myself.

I wasn’t really looking for company. Didn’t really feel like peopling, but sometimes the chicks that liked to come around here, lookin’ to ride a man who rode motorcycles, came unbidden and uninvited. They were generally all the same – looking for a thrill in all the wrong places.

I thought that’s what she was, at first, when I heard the scuffling footstep in the doorway. I hadn’t seen her coming from behind the boarded-up windows, but I heard her, and as soon as her shadow fell into the oblong, canted rectangle of light spilling in from the doorway to the outside? I turned and looked. I took my time sizing her up from her hiking boots to a pair of shapely thighs clad in boot-cut jeans. Her arms were lightly tanned, her shoulders just starting to pink with sunburn. As much as I should have been captivated by her large, heavy breasts straining the rib knit of her army green tank top, it was the sweeping curve of her shoulder, up the long and elegant line of her neck, kissed by stray tendrils of dark chestnut hair that escaped a messy bun in a claw clip at the back of her head that caught my attention more.

Her sunglasses were perched above a sweep of bangs across her forehead, long, wispy tendrils to either side, framing her face.

It was a pretty face, but for the sour look on it.

She didn’t look thrilled to be here, and I half wondered what kind of Karening she brought with her. Because she was starting to look the type.

She had a strong jaw with a hard set, but it wasn’t out of place. It worked with her face with its thick arched brows and long dark lashes. I wanted to say she had some type of Hispanic in her, but then her flashing light green eyes caught mine, and I was hit with an almost feeling of déjà vu …

“What’re you lookin’ for darlin’?” I grated out, and took another sip of my tequila.

“Not what, but who,” she said, approaching me cautiously.

I arched a brow. “I’m looking for Garnett Whitcomb?” she said, the name lilting off her tongue with a question mark hanging on the thick, still, and muggy air between us.

We still ain’t had the air conditioning fixed from where the unit out front had taken some stray bullets.

“We don’t use government names around here. You’re going to have to be more specific. Besides that, who’s askin’?”

“I’m Velina Young, and I think you guys called him Louie. Have you seen him?” she asked.

I straightened up in my seat and took her in, searching her face.

“Why you wanna know?” I demanded.

“I just do,” she said. “Have you seen him?”

I cleared my throat and turned around, fixing my eyes on the back wall beside the bar. At the eight-by-ten framed mugshot of Louie hanging there and the floating shelf under it, his gunmetal gray urn sitting squat on it.

I turned back to her, made eye contact, and jerked my head in Louie’s direction.

“He’s right there,” I said. “Afraid he’s not much of a conversationalist no more. Now who the fuck are you ?”

She paled, her tan suddenly floating over the surface of her smooth skin like a sickly oil slick on the swamp waters you sometimes got around here. She seemed frozen, staring at the picture and at the urn. Finally, her steps carried her closer, almost automatically, as if they were unbidden from any real thought from her.

I straightened up further and slipped off my barstool.

“I’m serious. Who wants to know?” I demanded, but it was like she couldn’t hear me, her eyes growing luminous with unshed tears that damn sure threatened to spill.

Just who the fuck was this bitch? How did she know Louie?

“Talk to me,” I ordered, and her eyes flicked from the photo and urn to mine as her nose grew red and the tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Are you serious right now?” she demanded, more than a hint of outrage to her tone. “Can you just give me a fucking minute to absorb this?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Ain’t never heard of you, and don’t really care at this point. Either tell me who you are or get out .”

“Wow, fuck you!” she cried, as she went for Louie’s urn. I stopped her, with a hand on her chest, and she batted at it ineffectually.

“Uh-uh, where you think you’re going?”

“Closer to my brother’s urn if you don’t mind!” she snapped, and I barked a laugh… and I kept right on laughing. I couldn’t help myself.

“Louie ain’t got no siblings, so try-a-fucking-gain,” I said and put a sharp edge of menace into my tone.

“That you know of!” She looked up at me, high spots of color in her cheeks, her chest flushing, and those green eyes of hers flashing with temper.

I blinked, long and slow, and took a second look at those eyes.

I dropped my hand from holding her back and said, “Well, I’ll be damned…”

“Yeah,” she muttered. She went up to the floating shelf, bracing a hand to the cinderblock beside it and leaning heavily against the wall. Her head bowed, her shoulders shook, but she didn’t make a sound.

I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling really fucking awkward when Cypress came out from the back and stopped.

“The fuck?” he demanded, in his thick swampbilly accent.

“Give her a minute, man,” I said. “She’s Louie’s sister.”

Cypress barked a laugh, but it died with the sour look on my face.

He looked surprised and asked again, “The fuck?”