I turned to face him. “Have you known him a long time?”
He laughed, and it was big and hearty. “Oh yes. Me and Dario, we are like brothers. He’s a coonass, same as me—though you can’t tell it from those suits and da fancy accent he spits.”
“Did you ever meet Gwen?”
The smile dropped as quickly as it came, and he watched the road for a long moment before answering. “Nah. I seen her from afar. He didn’t like to mix his worlds. And she…” He shook his head soberly. “She had enough evil in her life already. Didn’t need no Cajun spirits entering into that. He kept her away from us. Prob’ly good he did.”
Cajun spirits. He spoke of them reverently, as if they were real, and a blanket of unease settled over me.
“I’d like to speak to him. Is his number in this phone?” I turned the Motorola over in my hand and opened the top of it, struggling to use the menu.
“Nah. Give the man some time. He’s got a lot of fires going right now.”
Fires? I thought of the crime scene. Her foot. The blood. What was he telling the police? Did they know I was there, that I found her? My parents popped into my mind and I fought the urge to dial their number, one of the few I knew from heart.
“Let’s talk ‘bout your rules.”
Rules. My back stiffened at the word.
“No talkin’ to anyone, other than me. No calling anyone. If that phone rings, you can answer it. It’ll be the boss man, checking on you’s. But you don’t call anyone, got it?”
I nod. “Got it.”
“I’m serious. No getting yourself killed with cooyon shit.”
“Cooyon?”
He sighed. “It means foolish, stupid.”
On another day, I’d have snapped at him and dialed my parents, then the boys, and maybe my roommates.
But it wasn’t another day. I watched the passing of big branched trees that lined the dirt road. His truck slowed and I watched a dog run across the road, his ribs visible, tail tucked. I curled my knees to my chest and thought back to that Vegas suite, and how close I came to dying.
This wasn’t a game. I thought I knew that before, had weighed those consequences a week ago, but had I really understood? Right now, my friends would believe that I was dead. My parents. What would that news do to them?
If I had been in that suite instead of Gwen, and looked down the barrel of a gun, would I have regretted my love for Dario?
I probably would have. I probably would have stood there and begged for mercy, given him up and promised to never see him again.
Love wasn’t worth dying for, not when death could be avoided, not when two souls could part ways and each carry on long and healthy lives.
But we hadn’t parted ways and that decision had killed her. I stole her husband, then stole her life. I did it all and then ran away, to this cooyon truck, in this cooyon swamp, and regretted it all.
I rested against the seat, closed my eyes, and asked Gwen for forgiveness.
* * *
ROBERT HAWK
Robert Hawk walked down the dark hall, his steps confident in the dark. At the room at the end, he opened the door without knocking, pleased to see the thin figure at the window. He stepped inside and stopped, crossing his arms over his chest. “I just spoke to the police. They confirmed Bell Hartley’s death.”
Claudia turned to face him, and the bedside lamp illuminated the lovely angles of her face. In the half-light, her features relaxed, she reminded him of her mother. Thankfully, that was where their similarities stopped. Unlike Gwen’s mother, who had been a majestic and graceful woman, raised in upper-class London, with the fancy accent to prove it, Claudia’s mother had been a stripper. Claudia’s childhood had been a grab bag of public schools, TV dinners, and cheap clothes. The girl had practically raised herself, navigating through her mother’s terrible choices and laziness. If Robert Hawk hadn’t stepped in when he had, who knows what sort of worthless individual she might have become.
Now, she smiled, and he could see the pride in her face. “I told you.”
“And I told you that I verify everything.”
She knew this, of course. She remembered everything, this one. She was diligent. Smart. Obedient. Loyal. And now, as she had proved—capable of solving problems. He smiled at her clean and swift disposal of Bell Hartley. It wasn’t the first girl he’d killed to protect Gwen’s lifestyle and happiness. Not that the spoiled thing had ever appreciated it. That’d always been her problem. He gave the child everything she wanted, and when he expected Gwen to sacrifice for it, to earn it, she’d always balked at the actions necessary to achieve the results.
It was the same way with his pets. The girls he kept—they didn’t understand that they were being groomed and could be rewarded, based on their performance and respect. Respect was the hardest. You poke a cattle prod in a girl, and she would perform. Spark that baby, and she’d dance upside down on her tits if she could. Performance was easy. Respect … that was more difficult. Respect without fear, that was almost impossible. Out of twenty-four pets, he’d only had one who’d ever learned, one who took the lessons as they had been intended. Claudia.
Sometimes he wondered, if he had put Gwen through the same training, would she have shone, as Claudia did—or would she have failed, as all the others had.
He cleared his thought, meeting her eyes. “You did very well. I’m very proud of you.”
She swelled with the praise, a small blush coloring those cheeks. In his pocket, his cell phone rang. He pulled it out and smiled when he saw Dario’s name. It had taken long enough, seven hours passing since Claudia had returned.
He toyed with the idea of not answering it and making the man wait. Surely, he understood what he’d done. Surely, he knew that Robert was responsible for taking his fuck toy from him. His grin widened. Surely, Dario was furious.
Maybe this would be the moment when Dario’s temper was finally displayed. He’d felt hints of it, seen a few sparks of fury, but had never had the chance to watch it explode. It seemed a pity to experience it through a phone.
His anticipation got the best of him and he pressed the button and answered the call. “Dario.” His exuberance slipped through the name, and he couldn’t help but inject warm affection into the next question. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
When Dario spoke, his words were tightly controlled wedges of dynamite. “I’m outside. I suggest you open the front door before I break it in half.”
Hawk straightened to his full height, his grin widening.
This. This would be fun.
Three
DARIO
Dario’s fury flexed, his grief and anger mixing into a cocktail he fought to contain. Now was the time to stay calm and be smart.
The ornate door swung open, revealing the opulent interior. Robert Hawk squinted at him. “It’s early, Dario. You’re lucky I wasn’t in bed.”
“I wasn’t aware the Devil had to sleep.”
The old man barked out a laugh, his eyes gleaming. If Dario was right, if he had set up Bell to die, he certainly wasn’t feeling any remorse.
“Come in, son. You seemed upset on the phone. Night not going your way?” He stepped back, waving off the suits behind him. Dario assessed the security detail. Two large men with guns on their hips, both carrying the sort of dead-eyed allegiance that money bought. If need be, he could take them, but he’d risk death in the process.
Hawk moved into a sitting room and took a high-back chair, one built for grandeur over comfort. “Well?” Hawk raised his eyebrows and couldn’t—or didn’t try to—control the glee on his face. Soon, he wouldn’t be so happy. Soon, once he found out about Gwen, he would implode.
Dario cleared his throat and forced his words to come out in as calm a manner as possible. “A couple of hours ago, I received a call from the police. There’s been an incident at The Majestic.”
“I can’t be bothered regarding every little incident that occurs, Dario. Surely you’re a big enoug
h boy to handle these sorts of things by yourself.”
“I’m here because I suspect you had a part in this.”
The man all but preened, his legs crossing, one hand reaching up to run through his thick mop of white hair. Dario imagined him scalped, that patch of hair hanging from his grip, the blood dripping from it.
“I have a part in everything that goes on in my casinos.”
“Including murder?”
Hawk shrugged. “If the situation calls for it.”
Dario walked over to the row of bookshelves, his steps measured, eyes flicking over to the bodyguards, who flanked either side of the door. He eyed the shelves, which held an assortment of collectibles and first edition books. He reached forward, picking up a Getty bust and examining the deep lines in its face, the dead look in its eyes. Hawk revered the man. Dario had sometimes wondered if he hadn’t left his daughter at the mercy of Mexican kidnappers in an attempt to emulate the man. Only, Gwen hadn’t lost an ear. She’d lost so much more.
“I don’t engineer situations, Dario. I respond to them. Just like I respond to disloyalty.”
Dario waited for him to continue, to confess something, but the old man stayed silent. He set down the bust and carefully chose his next words. “You think disloyalty should be punished?”
“I think you’re talking in circles when you seem to have an accusation to make.”
Dario moved further down, circling the end table, until he was back in the man’s line of sight. He stopped, his hands in his pockets, and met his gaze. “I want to know why you had her killed.”
“Ah. I thought I heard something about a woman dying. A brunette, right? But surely you don’t think I had anything to do with that.”
“I think you had everything to do with it.”
The man’s mouth curved a little at the sides, a gruesome half-smile forming. “As I said before, I have a part in everything that goes on in my casinos. My casinos. Not yours. Just like Gwen. Gwen is not yours, she’s mine. And you haven’t been treating what’s mine with the right level of care.”
The urge to smash his head against the table, to break his neck and rip his body into pieces… it was too great and Dario forced himself to take a moment. He sat behind the heavy oak desk and pulled open a drawer. “I need a drink. You have a fucking drink in here somewhere?” He slammed the drawer.
“I’m intrigued to see that you’re so affected by this woman’s death, Dario. It disappoints me, to say the least.”
The second drawer of the desk was half open when Hawk spoke. Dario paused, his hand inside the drawer, before pulling his hand back out. Slowly rising to his feet, he pushed the drawer closed with the toe of his shoe.
Walking forward, he halted before the man and lowered himself until he was crouching, their eyes level with each other.
One of the guards protested, and Robert Hawk waved him off. “Let the man speak.”
“I am affected by her death. I want you to look into my eyes and see how affected I am. I want you to look into my eyes and know that I loved her. I still love her. I cherished her. And I cared for her. I broke my fucking back bending over to care for her.”
“Be careful Dario. Every word you speak is a spit—”
“Shut up, old man.”
The goon’s hands closed on Dario’s arms, yanking him to his feet and pulling him backward. When Robert Hawk rose to his feet, his face was hard, his eyes glowering, and he stalked forward with the gait of a younger and stronger man.
“You act surprised. Why? You disrespected me by sleeping with that trash. You disrespected my daughter by keeping a mistress. You have gotten too big for yourself, Mr. Capece. I removed the distraction. I righted the ship. You should bow forward and thank me for putting you in line and punishing your slut—something that you didn’t seem strong enough to do yourself.”
“You didn’t right the ship. You sunk it. You think you punished my slut?”
“That bullet did. I heard she sank to her knees like a whore when it hit.”
“No.” Dario yanked his arms free from the men and glared back at Hawk, the fury and emotion leaking out of the corners of his words. “That was your daughter that sank to her knees. That was your daughter that the bullet found. That brunette you are so fucking cheery about dying? That was Gwen.”
* * *
The reaction rippled off Robert Hawk in stages. First came a tremor. The edges of his beard trembled, his eyes narrowed, and Dario watched as his gnarled hands tightened into fists. “Excuse me?”
“Your man killed the wrong woman. He killed Gwen.”
Hawk opened his mouth and wiped a trembling hand over his beard. As he swallowed, his Adam’s Apple bobbed. “I was told that the Hartley girl was dead. It was verified.”
Dario shook his head. “Your source was wrong. I saw her. Held her body. Unless he killed both of them, he got the wrong girl.” He pulled out his phone and flipped through the photos, his heart tightening when he got to the one he had taken of Gwen. Taking a deep breath, he held up the phone and let Hawk see the image.
At the sight of her body, his eyes flared, the famous Hawk temper emerging. His hand jerked out, latching around Dario’s throat and squeezing. The air supply cut off and Dario’s chest seized, his phone dropping to the floor and clattering across the wood. Dario reached up and wrapped his hand around Hawk’s wrist. It’d be easy to rip it free. He was ten times stronger than the old man. But he let him have this moment.
“You did this!” Hawk’s voice broke, his fury and pain mixing together in a cocktail of rage. “You and your swinging dick put my little girl—” His words broke off, and he abruptly released his grip on Dario and turned away.
Dario inhaled deeply, the spots in his vision clearing, Hawk’s blurry outline sharpening as the man stopped before the desk. “You can blame me all you want, but this is on you. You left her in that fucking Mexico shithouse to die, and you’ve been killing her ever since. This? This is just the final swing of your ax.”
“You cheated on my daughter. You—”
“I LOVED your daughter. I loved her more than you ever did. I did not cheat on Gwen. I was honest with her. We were honest with each other. Our marriage, despite what you may have thought, wasn’t sexual and it wasn’t exclusive.”
“Bullshit.” The man spit out the word. “Don’t try to make excuses to me, Capece. I gave you the world and you shit all over it, and all over your marriage.” He whirled around and pointed to Dario. “Search him.”
* * *
THE DOOMED
Through the crack in the open door, Claudia watched, her breaths short and fast, her panic and guilt escalating with each word out of Robert Hawk’s mouth.
Dario was lying. He had to be. She had shot Bell. She had to have shot Bell. She couldn’t have… she felt suddenly lightheaded and pulled away from the view, leaning against the closest wall.
Dario had shown him a photo, something that had caused Robert to react, to believe that Gwen was dead. Could she be? Could Claudia have actually … her vision tunneled and she circled her waist with her hands, frantically rubbing her clothing, pulling and stretching at the cotton without thought of why.
She had to go see Gwen. Prove the ridiculousness of this all. Prove that Dario was lying. Claudia was right. Claudia had killed BELL. She’d watched her sink to the floor. She had watched Gwen for years and Bell for weeks. She would have been able to tell the difference between the two glossy-headed brunettes. She would never have made that mistake.
She stepped away, her ankle turning, and she grabbed at the wall for balance.
She killed Gwen. It had to be a lie, but the mere possibility of it terrified her. If she killed Gwen, she might as well die now. The thought of Robert’s reaction… she made it to the end of the hall and turned left, moving past a housekeeper and quickening her steps, the back door ahead.
She had to go to Gwen. Find her. Prove that this was all a lie.
And if it wasn’t?
She pushed on the door, the night quiet, the garage just ahead, her car inside. She stopped, taking a moment to think, fear pricking at the edges of her consciousness. Her car, like all Hawk vehicles, had a tracker on it. Stepping into the shadows, out of the view of the security camera, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. Dumping it in the closest potted plant, she hugged the edge of the home until she got to the front, darting past Dario’s Rolls and through the front gate.
In case he was telling the truth.
In case Gwen was dead.
In case Claudia killed her…
In case, in case, in case, in case…
She’d have to be smart about this. She broke into a run, her hands fisting into nervous grips. If Dario was telling the truth, her life was over.
* * *
DARIO
Dario put up a half-hearted struggle, his arms held tight by the two men, their hands patting over his body. When they pulled at his shirt collar, he stilled, closing his eyes when they undid the top buttons of his shirt and exposed the small mic and wires, taped to his stomach. Hawk spotted them and began to laugh. “Oh… what a stupid, stupid man.”
Dario stayed quiet as they ripped the tape off of his chest, following the wires down to the small recorder. It didn’t matter. The wire was, always had been, a decoy—something designed to be found and used for distraction.
“Does it have a transmitter?” Hawk asked the closest suit.
The big man picked up the tiny recorder and peered at it. “Nah. Flashdrive.”
“Destroy it.” He stepped forward until he was face to face with Dario. “Did you really think you’d be able to use that against me? I am too smart for you Dario. And you… you are a man with too big a dick and too small a brain.”