Authors: Bryan Smith
He knew it had all been bullshit the moment he spotted Cora smiling at him from atop a stool near the far end of the bar. Summoning a fake smile, he approached her and slid onto the empty stool next to her. “What’s this about?”
She smiled and swirled the swizzle stick in her martini glass. “Oh, I think you know.” She raised a finger and a bartender in a bowtie approached them. “A scotch for the gentleman. Rocks.”
Casey frowned as the bartender went off to make the drink. “I don’t drink scotch.”
“You do now.”
“I’d rather have a fucking beer.”
Cora smiled over the rim of her martini glass as she took a small, ladylike sip. “Your preferences don’t matter much. Consider this the beginning of your transformation.”
“My what?”
“Right now you are a caterpillar, lowly in stature and unsophisticated. By the time I’m finished with you, you will be a butterfly.”
Casey scowled. “I ain’t gonna be any fuckin’ butterfly, lady.”
“Mind your mouth.”
Casey began to slide off the stool. “It’s been a trip seeing you again, Cora. Or Carolyn. Or whatever the hell your name really is. I admit it’s a coincidence for the ages, but there’s no reason to make this anything bigger than what it really is. Oh, and tell Ted he can fuck himself for setting me up.”
“Sit down, Casey.”
Casey smirked. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll have Ted call off this foolish rescue expedition.” She took another dainty sip of her drink. “And don’t overestimate his fondness for his tattooed harlot. He loves his sister more and will do whatever I say. So sit down and have your drink.”
Casey stared into her eyes long enough to know she was serious. He sat and reached for the newly arrived glass of scotch. “All right. I’ll play along. For now. What’s the fucking deal here?”
Cora sighed. “I’ll resign myself to doing something about your foul mouth another time. The deal, Casey, is simple. Ever since our night together, I’ve thought of you frequently. I’ve fantasized about you. No one else I’ve been with has ever fucked me quite the way you did. Like a fucking
animal
.”
“Now who has the foul mouth?”
Cora turned fully toward him and put a hand on his knee. “You’re coming back with me to Florida once this foolishness is over.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Casey laughed. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t heard anything this crazy in…well, ever. “I’m not going to Florida. I have a girlfriend.”
Her laughter had a condescending edge. “What, that tattooed bimbo who was clinging to you in the room?”
“Yes. And her name is Echo.”
“You’re done with that cheap bitch, Casey.” Her gaze bored into him, cold and devoid of empathy. “I’m sure you’ll want to argue further, so I’ll make this simple. Fall in line and do as I say or I’ll have her tortured and killed. While you watch. And then you’ll come to Florida with me anyway.”
Casey gaped at her, unable to talk.
She slid off her stool and continued speaking as she removed a wallet from a tiny handbag and peeled off some bills. “I always get what I want, Casey, and I happen to agree with my brother on the subject of coincidence. Clearly this reunion is a product of fate and I would be a fool to buck fate. I allowed you to slip away once before, but not again.” After dropping the bills on the bar, she kissed him on the cheek and put her mouth close to his ear. “You belong to me now.”
And with that, she walked away from Casey, leaving him alone and stupefied at the bar. He stared at the untouched glass of scotch, the wheels in his head spinning crazily as he desperately sought some way to make sense of what had just transpired. But it was useless. He couldn’t even begin to process it.
Minutes passed.
He glanced at the clock on the wall behind the bar.
Time was running out. They would be heading out soon. There was no way to figure out something this big in a matter of minutes. He could only roll with it for now and hope an acceptable solution presented itself before it was too late.
He slammed the drink and hurried out of the bar.
Dez initially wanted no part of the raid on the cult compound. The idea of suiting up in unsexy body armor and swooping into the place via helicopter as part of some half-assed commando raid struck her as absurd. She had zero interest in getting herself killed trying to save someone she didn’t know and didn’t give a damn about. Wilkinson had put together a team of professional mercenaries—all of them hard-bitten ex-military thugs—who were perfectly capable of executing the raid without assistance from a gang of gorgeous strippers.
That the issue had been up for debate at all both exasperated and infuriated her. Echo wanted to suit up and ride along with the mercenaries because that’s what her guy was doing. Just thinking about Casey made Dez’s blood boil. She understood he was more or less the perfect embodiment of a type that made many women swoon, the rugged but somehow pretty bad boy, with a perpetual shadow of stubble emphasizing the perfect jut of his chiseled jawline. But she didn’t get the appeal of the type at all. She barely understood the appeal of men in general. And it upset her that Echo was willing to put her life on the line to help a man who’d fucked her over severely not so long ago. Had the bitch learned nothing from their year on the road together?
It was true things started to sour some toward the end of that year, but the three of them had shared something special. They were beautiful, strong, ass-kicking, badass women who did what they wanted and took no shit from anyone, especially men. But now Echo was reverting back to square one where the male of the species was concerned. She was making decisions based on her feelings for a man. It was too bad it wasn’t just the three of them anymore. In the past she could have slapped Echo around until she came to her senses, but that wasn’t currently an option.
Perhaps the most galling thing of all was that it was Casey who came up with the alternate solution she found acceptable. She and the other girls would ride up to the compound’s main entrance shortly ahead of the helicopter raid to create a diversion. Given that most of the compound’s security force were men, what diversion could be more effective than a trio of long-legged and scantily dressed gorgeous women? They would exit the Impala at the entrance and do their best to create a commotion, either by pretending to be lost or by demanding to see a friend or family member who’d recently joined the Order of Wandering Souls.
It sounded like an excellent way to contribute to the success of the raid while staying out of the main action. The brilliant part was it actually made a lot of strategic sense. Once suggested, the idea took a lot of the wind out of Echo’s argument and she was soon convinced of the wisdom of Casey’s idea.
So that’s what was happening.
They were on their way out to the compound now and would be there in a matter of minutes. Echo was behind the wheel of the Impala and Lana was slouched down in the shotgun seat with her feet up on the dash. Echo had the radio on, tuned to an oldies station playing “Wild Thing” by the Troggs. She was drumming her thumbs on the steering wheel and bobbing her head as she mouthed the words to the song. Though they were headed into a potentially dangerous situation, the mood in the car was more excited than nervous or frightened. And why not? They had all perpetrated more than their fair share of violence and carnage. Such things didn’t scare them.
Dez raised her voice to sing along with the song, doing her best to pretend her mindset was in alignment with that of her friends. The whole time, though, she was busily imagining ways she might feasibly kill Casey Miller and get away with it.
She looked at the back of Echo’s bobbing head and smiled.
Yes
, she thought.
Be happy while you can. Because I’m going to make you cry soon.
Hours before the tattooed strippers headed out to the de Rais compound, Cora Wilkinson entered an elevator at the Renaissance hotel and hit the button for the twentieth floor. She put her cell phone to her ear and waited for the number she’d dialed to connect.
Ted Wilkinson answered on the second ring. “Things go how you wanted?”
Cora smiled. “He’s not happy, but I made him understand the consequences of not falling in line.”
Ted made a contemplative noise. “Hmm. And you’re sure this is what you want?”
“Quite sure.”
There was a brief silence from Ted. Cora made out dim voices in the background. Feminine voices. The girls were arguing about something. Hearing them elicited nothing but contempt from Cora. They were low-class trash, nothing more. Soon Casey would wonder what he’d ever seen in such women.
When Ted spoke again, the background voices were dimmer and he was speaking in a lower tone, clearly striving not to be overheard. “And what about the other thing? Is it really necessary?”
“It certainly is.”
Ted sighed. “Even Lana?”
Cora harrumphed. “Even her. I want all those bitches dead. You can always find another cheap floozy to whore around with. There’s no shortage of them at your gentlemen clubs.”
She hit a button to disconnect the call and dropped the phone in her handbag.
A young married couple stared at her with horrified expressions from the other side of the elevator. Cora almost laughed. She had been riled up and had forgotten herself. This was the problem with other people. They were frequently in the way. Investing her tone with her patented brand of savage sophistication, she addressed the young marrieds. “Pretend you did not hear that. I can make you disappear. Also, stop looking at me. I don’t exist.”
The woman clutched at her husband as they both immediately averted their gazes. They scrambled out of the elevator upon arriving at their fourteenth-floor destination. Cora committed that scrap of information to memory and made a mental note to have the couple tracked down by private investigator once this current business was finished.
She pictured them with their throats cut.
The image pleased her.
Full dark had descended by the time John walked out of the meeting hall with one of the last surviving members of his personal security detail. A last glance inside the building before his man closed the door invoked a sense of melancholy while also filling him with pride. But this was not a self-directed pride. He was proud of the immense courage displayed by his faithful. The world would not soon forget what they had done tonight. As for himself, he had merely accomplished another in a series of phases of the larger task assigned to him by God.
His own ultimate test of courage was still ahead of him.
And just minutes away.
So strange, though, this almost total silence in the wake of the raucous, roof-shaking jubilation of less than a half hour earlier. The meeting hall was as quiet as a tomb, an impression John recognized as apt even as it further fueled his melancholy.
The security man fell into step next to him as they began to trudge across the ground toward the big house. Though he said nothing, John sensed his anxiety. It rolled off him in waves, as palpable as the stench of a manure pile.
John glanced up at the clear sky. As a kid in Texas he’d stared up at the stars and thought about the other worlds that must be out there so many billions of miles away. He’d tried hard to imagine what life on those worlds might be like. “Beautiful night.”
The security man’s gaze turned upward. “Uh. Yeah. I guess it—”
John reached beneath his shirt and tugged his pistol out of his waistband, jamming it beneath the guard’s chin before he could react.
John said, “Godspeed, son.”
He squeezed the trigger and the guard fell over dead.
John stared at the dead man for a few moments and tried to think of his name. He thought maybe it was Gordon. Not that it mattered. John had been around long enough—and done enough—to know what a man sounds like when he’s about to experience a failure of nerve. John had done the man a service by doing for him what, in the end, he would not have been able to do for himself.
John returned the gun to his waistband and resumed his journey across the yard to the big house, where destiny awaited.
It’s almost all over
, he thought.
Almost time to go home.
The rage Jade displayed when the heavyset man dared to question her treatment of Keely was a fearsome thing to behold. She hauled him off the edge of the bed by an ear and cracked the butt of her gun against his nose, breaking it and drawing forth an explosion of blood. The plump woman who was his wife or girlfriend screamed and went to him as he dropped to his knees and cradled his face in his shaking hands.
She glared up at Jade, her face twisted in anguish. “What’s wrong with you? How dare you! You’re not in charge here!”
Jade snorted. “Like fuck I’m not.”
From her prone position on the floor, Keely stared up at Jade’s murderous expression and had to wonder why anyone here would bother standing up to her at this point. They were all prepared to die anyway. There was no reason to incur the obviously unhinged woman’s wrath. The only thing Keely could deduce was that this confrontation was a byproduct of festering feelings unrelated to the current crisis. There was a history here and it was an ugly one.