Page 23 of The Next Lie

Noir Night survives on secrets.

Tonight, one of them walked across the floor in a black dress and called Reva by name.

I should have known Delia wouldn’t stay hidden forever. Nothing hidden stays buried in New Orleans. The ground is too wet for that. Dead things rise here. Rot floats. Bones work themselves loose and wait for someone unlucky enough to step on them.

Still. I wasn’t ready for Reva’s face. I’ve seen men die with less devastation in their eyes.

Nash shuts the door of his office behind us. The man has a space here, one upstairs—very bare bones, that one—and one at his home.

Once upon a time this was our office. It’s the same as it always was. Dark wood. Locked liquor cabinet. Desk positioned so the man behind it sees the door, the window, and anyone stupid enough to think shadows make him safe. Years ago, this room belonged to all of us in the way young men claim spaces they have not yet paid for. We came through it loud and cocky, drunk on power we hadn’t fully earned and position we thought made us untouchable.

Now Nash stands between me and the door like I am the thing that needs containing.

Fair enough.

He does not sit.

Neither do I.

For a long moment, we just look at each other. He hasn’t changed as much as he should have. Older, yes. Harder in the jaw. More contained. Less boy under the expensive suit. But the bones of the man are the same. The same calm that used to make weaker men mistake him for merciful. The same eyes that could weigh a body and decide whether it belonged in the room.

“You trying to kill her?” he asks.

No build-up. No throat clearing. No wasted breath.

I stare at him.

Of all the questions he could have opened with, that one is so far from what I was expecting it takes me half a second to understand he means it.

“What?”

His expression does not shift. “You heard me. Are you trying to kill her?”

The room goes very still.

I feel something old and ugly move beneath my ribs. It skims anger, skirting closer to disbelief at first. Then the anger slides in, cold enough to clarify everything around it.

“You think I’m trying to kill Reva?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

“No.” I take one step toward him. “You’re not asking. You’ve already built a story in your head and left just enough room for me to hang myself in it.”

His mouth tightens.

I laugh once. There is no humor in it. “Jesus Christ, Nash.”

“Answer.”

“No.”

“Say it clean.”

I look him dead in the face. “I am not trying to kill her.”

He watches me for another few seconds.

I let him. If he needs to measure my breathing, my pulse, the angle of my hands, he can waste his time doing it. I have lied to better men than Nash Blackwood about shit, but not about this. Never this.