Treachery in Death (In Death 32)

“I’m not swallowing a suspension, and I’m not getting cut out of the Giraldi deal. I’ll fuck you up, Renee.”

“Understood. So ... who punched you?”

He tossed back whiskey. “Fucking bitch.”

She lowered her glass, had to set it down because the hand holding it shook with rage. “Are you telling me you got into it with Dallas? Are you telling me, goddamn it, Garnet, that you hunted her up and got physical? Again?”

“She earned it. IAB sniffing around me—I got word on it. That whore set them on me, and she’ll get more than what I gave her tonight before I’m done with her.”

IAB—it was a slap in her face, and a singular threat to her business.

Goddamn Garnet. Goddamn Dallas.

“In the fucking name of God! I’m surrounded by idiots. I put Freeman and Manford on a standard tail, and she goes out, and they lose her in five damn minutes. Then you go after her? How the hell did you ...” Fury wanted to choke her. “Freeman told you. You got Freeman to tell you she went out. What the hell did you do, Bill? Don’t tell me, fucking Christ, you went to her house?”

“The house everybody knows she whored herself into.” His knuckles went white on the glass as he gulped down the rest of the whiskey. “So what? Her word against mine, and Freeman will back me. He’ll swear I was with him tonight, and nowhere near that cunt.”

It was falling apart around her, she thought. Men. Goddamn men. She’d be damned if she’d let any of them screw her out of what was hers, what she’d worked for. What she’d built.

What she owned.

She turned away again, struggled for control. And picking up her glass again, her brain went ice cold.

“All right. We’ll deal with it. We’ll deal with her. She’s gotten in the way once too often.”

“About fucking time.”

“I need to set it up. Go hook up with Freeman, make sure you’re seen. Then go home, wait. I might be able to work something tonight to get her off our backs. All the way.”

“I want to do it. I want to do her.”

“Fine, but it’s going to take me awhile to work it. A couple hours, maybe three. Go hook up with Freeman, have a couple of drinks, make it public. Then go home, Bill, and wait.”

“If we don’t clean this up tonight, I’m taking care of it myself. My way.”

“It won’t be necessary.” She took his glass. “Get out.”

“You’re going to give me one too many orders, Renee, and regret it.”

But he got out.

She took the glass into the kitchen, deliberately and viciously smashed it in the sink. “Fucking asshole!”

Everything that had gone wrong in the last few days had started with him. Keener slipping his collar, with the 10K? Direct line to Garnet’s screwup. If not for that she wouldn’t have Dallas on her back, in her face, in her squad. Wouldn’t have had to swallow the commander’s refusal to push the bitch out. Wouldn’t have had to humiliate herself to her stiff-necked, unbending father.

He’d become a liability. Calmer, she poured herself another short whiskey. Liabilities needed to be corrected, and if correction proved impossible, eliminated.

Thinking, she circled the living area of the apartment she’d furnished with care, with some style, and within a strict budget.

She wasn’t a fool like so many who worked for her.

Her home in Sardinia, now, that was a different matter. There she could indulge herself in the lush. She could buy art, jewelry, clothes—everything and anything she wanted. And keep the highest of high-end droids on staff to maintain the house and grounds immaculately.

Nobody was taking that from her, much less an ex-lover who’d lost his edge, and all his appeal.

Time to fix it, once and for all.

She opened her purse, took out her disposable mini-’link, and contacted Bix on his.