“Sure. I’m Bonnie.” He smiled, and I practiced my flirting as the crowd poured out around us.
“Steve.” He leaned in close, too close. But he was so handsome I kept getting distracted by his face, instead of his roaming hands.
My head started to spin halfway through the last drink, and I knew it was time to leave. “Uhm, thanks for the drink Steve, but I have to get out of here.” I turned and fled with more drama than the situation probably required, but I felt him close behind me.
“Hey, come back here!”
Luckily, Colby, the hot bartender stopped him, giving me enough time to get out of the club and the casino, where I started the path home.
In hindsight I should have taken Maisie up on her offer, because walking home—if the hovel I rented by the week could be called a home—at two in the morning wasn’t the smartest idea I’d ever had. I could have driven, but after the interrogation, I never wanted to see another police officer or detective again and the state I was in was a sure invitation to a DUI. Calling an Uber would cost money I couldn’t afford to waste, not until I had steady income.
The small efficiency apartment I rented in downtown Glitz wasn’t what I had in mind for my first place, but it was all I could afford without going through my savings in a couple months. Thankfully, my parents had left me with the car they’d gifted me in my last year of college, so I could make it to job interviews, not that anyone was interested in hiring someone who had been accused of murder. Even though it was all a farce.
“Hey sweetheart, let me take you for a ride on the bologna pony!” The crude deep voice pulled me from my thoughts, reminding me that I was no longer in the quiet, gated suburban neighborhood I grew up in. This was the city. Dirty and gritty and filled with all types of people.
“No thanks,” I called out in the direction I thought his voice came from and picked up my speed on the trash-lined street, as much as I could after six drinks and a line of coke.
It felt like someone was following me even though I knew that couldn’t be true, didn’t even really make sense. Yet, I felt it, and I walked so fast, I was almost running. I didn’t stop until I could see the brown house with the mustard shutters where I rented a room. It wasn’t safe, but it had four walls and a bed, which made it a lot safer than the outside.
I slowed down, and I shouldn’t have because that gave trouble time to find me. “What’s the rush sweetheart?”
“Just trying to get home,” I said and tried to step around the guy in front of me while aware of the one behind me. “Excuse me.”
“Excuse me,” he laughed. “So fucking polite.”
“Yeah, real polite,” the other one said. “That means you’ll make this easy. Give me your money and your jewelry. Now bitch.”
I had about eight dollars in cash on me and only a small gold necklace with a cross on it, which I’d been wearing since I was six years old. I snatched it off my neck and handed it over with the eight bucks. “Here.”
“The rest of it,” the other one barked.
I laughed. “You think I’d be around here at this time of night if I had more than that?”
“Dumb bitch.” I didn’t see the blow coming, but it hit the back of my head. All I remember was how slow the journey to the pavement felt, the hard cold feeling as my face crashed against it.
Chapter Two
Cal
If I didn’t know better, I’d say Addison Beck, the FBI agent on our ass about the priest murders, had spent some time undercover. Details on her personal life, aside from her social security number, had taken a lot longer to find than it should have. It had been buried deep and that piqued my interest.
I pushed back from the desk and looked up at each of the five monitors with intimate details of Agent Beck’s life. She’d grown up in a small town just outside of Boston called Malden where her mom worked as a secretary at the local high school and her father was curiously absent. So far. There was something about the woman I didn’t trust. I knew Ma and Jasper, and even Virgil and Kat would say it would be stupid to be anything other than suspicious of so-called law people, but this was different.
Her heat, her anger toward the Ashby name, felt personal.
I might not have the business skills like my oldest brother Jasper or the muscles and bloodlust of Virgil and none of us had Kat’s brains, but I had my own skillset that I used to keep the family safe.