I’d been so relieved to see Dani, to have her safe and alive and unharmed, but now the rest of my brain is starting to catch upand realizing the pieces here don’t quite fit together. “What are you doing here?”
She glances around at the unconscious bodies and the desk stacked with record tablets. “Just… trying to dig up some information. That’s my favorite currency, after all.”
I study her. Noting how her eyes flicked to the side when she spoke, just for a second. How she keeps fidgeting, twitching her right foot almost imperceptibly.
Dani Morales is lying to me.
She knew where my lodgings were. If she saw them blown apart and destroyed, she must have gone there the night that airship job went all to hell. Something that she’s never done before in the years I’ve known her. And what reason would she have to do that unless she was worried I was in danger for some reason?
If Kilpatrick wasn’t the one who hired the Butcher for this job, then who did? Who contacted Dani with a fake story and the cash to buy my services?
Suddenly the question I asked myself back on that damned airship tastes a lot different—bitter—and I have to look away for a moment to swallow it down.
The door suddenly swings open, and Orion sweeps inside, gun drawn but safely pointed at the ground. His eyes find me in the corner, and he visibly relaxes. “There you are. For fuck’s sake, you can’t just run off like—” He stops short, taking in the bodies on the ground, Dani behind the desk with a pistol in her hand. “Wait, who is this?”
Dani looks Orion over, her gaze hard and glittering. “Well, if it isn’t the Skywayman in the flesh. Didn’t know I’d be meeting outlaw royalty today or I would’ve worn my good shirt.”
I expect him to bristle at her acidic tone—I definitely would ifI were him—but he just smiles at her, all congeniality. “I’d say the pleasure is all mine, but I have no idea who you are. What a pity.”
“You didn’t tell him about me? I’m heartbroken.” If I didn’t know Dani any better, I wouldn’t be able to catch the thread of actual hurt running beneath her words. She lifts her chin. “I’m Dani Morales. Frontperson for the Butcher.”
Orion nods, but I can see the tension in his jaw as she talks about her work. My work. “An important job. Must be hard to keep the schedule for the most in-demand assassin in town.” He says it like a joke, but there’s no laugh behind his words, no brightness in his eyes. I feel a prickle of anger surge up my spine, but Dani jumps in before I can bite out a response.
“We kept busy,” she says with a grin. She flicks a glance over at me. “Since when are you connected to the Skywayman, ghoulie?”
“Surprised?” I raise an eyebrow. “Funny, I thought you knew everything.”
Orion’s gaze sweeps back and forth between us, and he holds his hands up, clearly confused. “Okay, what exactly is going on here?”
“It was you,” I say to Dani, ignoring his question, staring right into her keen, amber-brown eyes, daring—hoping—she will deny it. “You set me up on that airship job. You knew the second they saw me phase I’d kill everyone in that room, including Bloody Bill Kilpatrick.”
She hesitates for a second, like maybe she’s going to go for the lie, try to play innocent, but then she grimaces. “Yeah. Sorry about that,” she says, although she doesn’t sound sorry in the slightest. “Trust me, I would’ve much preferred to kill him myself,but Kilpatrick closed ranks right when I was about to make my move. I figured you, being who you are, could take him out and get clear without a scratch on you. Killing folks kind of is your specialty, after all.”
Orion shifts his stance subtly. He doesn’t outright point his gun at Dani—it’s not really his style to make a situation worse if he doesn’t have to—but he’s got it positioned in front of him, ready. “And what’s your specialty exactly?”
“Like I said, information.” With her free hand, she pats the stack of tablets she’d thrown on top of the desk. “In this case, I want Gold Town information. Every operation they run, every official they pay off, every shabby little closet in Covenant where they’ve hidden away a stack of cash.”
One of the Gold Towners groans and twitches, looking like they’re trying to wake up, but Dani steps over to them, slams her boot down on their chest, and shoots them dead. Right through the back of the head. There’s even a twist of dark satisfaction to her mouth as she does it. Like she’s been waiting to let this side of her out for a long time, simmering to a rage like a teakettle.
Orion blanches, turning his head away. “You two really do give off the same energy, huh?”
Her expression right now is so foreign that I don’t even recognize her for a moment.
Or maybe it’s not foreign. Maybe it’s just that I never really knew Dani Morales at all.
The thought lands like iron in my chest, which doesn’t make any sense because I’d already figured out she set me up. I shouldn’t feel so surprised. Or hurt. This is how it goes in the dust, right?You do what you need to in order to survive and carve out your own goals, your own space, and damn the consequences to anyone else. Still. Cold weight presses against my rib cage. There’s a roaring in my ears that’s maybe white noise or maybe it’s Trinity’s song or maybe it’s both.
“Is your name even Dani Morales?” My voice sounds quiet and raw.
“It is now. I changed it four years ago, right after the seventh night of the Month of Gratitude.” She looks up from the Gold Towner’s body, her jaw set and hard. “You remember what you were doing that night, don’t you,Butcher.”
I don’t at first. I frown at her, my brain flipping rapidly through my memories until it all comes rushing back to me in an instant.
“Big Haul Cruz.” The name slips out of my mouth on an exhale, hitting me like a cheap shot to the gut. How long has it been since I thought about him? Since the paper I was making made it easier and easier to erase his face?
“Took you long enough.” She shoots me a quick look as she crouches down and starts rummaging through the guy’s pockets. “He had a lot of people who believed in him. People who were left behind after you laid him out in that alley. Didn’t you ever wonder what happened to all of us?”
I hadn’t. I hadn’t thought past the payday. And if a few extra souls wound up headed for the Depths over the next couple of weeks as the Gold Towners cleaned house, it hadn’t registered through the haze of security that that cash had bought.
