Marnie laughs. The bar has slowly begun to buck back up, conversation resuming, albeit a little more quietly than before. I can feel eyes burning into my back, but I don’t turn. “You don’t wanna see, trust me.”
“Come on.” I give her the kind of grin I used to use on Lexie. Sweet, vulnerable, but still with an edge. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“Oh, fuck you.” But Marnie grins back and turns, flipping up the hem of her tee and pulling down her waistband to reveal the delicate curve of her hipbone. I catch a blaze of pink lace, and a hungry thrill goes through me, totally unrelated to Marnie. There’s a skull inked there, undeniably Margot’s paper-thin needlework, with marigolds pouring out of its mouth. “Well? Like what you see?”
I meet her big dark eyes, find them pointed and low-lidded.Shit.“Yeah. I do.”
“Maybe you can check out my other ones later.” She winks, and I notice a little color in her cheeks. “You still a whiskey man?”
“Let’s find out.”
She laughs and pours me and her each a double.
“To the prodigal son’s return,” she says, toasting me.
I raise my glass, then take the shots. She does hers with a flourish, then pours us a pair of pints. “So,” I say. “Catch me up.”
“Well, Margot’s Margot, but you know that already. She’s always fine, even when she’s not.” Marnie stops talking to fix a mule in a brass mug for some pretty brunette. The girl sizes me up pointedly, pouted lips wrapped around her straw, before returning to her table. “You know most of the boys left town after…”
“Yeah.” Most of them got wise after Milo died. Most of them came to say goodbye. “Anyone left?”
“Pat,” she says, “and Nick. They come by a lot. They were here tonight, actually, you just missed them.”
“And Jockey?”
Marnie goes pale then and doesn’t look at me, instead focusing on spearing maraschino cherries with toothpicks that look like swords.
“He’s still running with those other guys, huh?”
“He comes around, too.” Her voice has gone softer. Her eyes dart over the bar. “He has…friends that hang around here.”
I sense, suddenly and acutely, that thesefriendsare here right now, and that Marnie does not want me fucking with them. “How many friends does he have?”
“More than you.” This Marnie says while leveling me with a sudden, guillotine-like stare. “You just got out, Liam. You really that eager to get back in? Maybe this time you don’t even get to prison. Maybe this time you get there in a black bag, feet first, right?”
Surprise must show in my face because Marnie shifts that glare back to the cherries in her fingers.
“Right,” she mutters. “Stupid Marnie doesn’t know what shit happens in this town. Of course.”
“You’re not stupid.”
“I know.” Her eyes flash. “It’s you and your friends and Margot who don’t.”
I watch her, miffed but a little impressed. There’s a subtle awareness to her I never noticed before. I always thought she was silly and a little oblivious, but maybe that was catered. She’s not the kind of person you’d expect to be taking stock, much less working it.
I could use that.
“So, this is Jockey’s town now,” I say, voice low, taking a long pull of my beer. “That how it is?”
She shrugs.
“Marnie.”
“More or less,” she says. She stops again to shake a martini, and when she comes back down the bar, she’s paler, the smile on her lips stiff, not touching her eyes. “You shouldn’t be here, Liam.”
I fold my arms on the bar and gaze at her thoughtfully. “This is my bar, as much as it’s anyone else’s. You know that.”
“No.” She takes my hand suddenly, leaning across the bar and meeting my eyes. “You shouldn’t behere, in town. Whether you’re here for revenge or not, you make those guys itch, OK? They know you used to call the shots. They know you’re from mafia blood. Whether or not you’re gonna make them pay for Milo, they’re always gonna be scared. Scared people are stupid people.”
