Page 18

“I was going to get your stuff when I went back to the house,” I explain.

“Right. I’ll be fine for a couple of hours. You don’t have to rush. And if you’re worried about the yams, if you’re just boiling them, I don’t think they give off much of a smell, certainly not a super strong one that would play havoc with my system.”

Wait. Does she like spending time with me? Is she scared and worried, and do I, the big bad monster, make her feel better?

My chest feels like it’s glowing. Literally, glowing. The feeling is so strong that I look down to check, but all I see is a grease-stained, smoke-smudged Hawaiian shirt and grey pecs covered in scars.

“Let me see if Manny left any big pots and pans here,” I mumble, and trot back to the kitchen.

Chapter Seven: Victoria and Lazarus

I congratulate myself. I have infiltrated. I’m above the place where he works, where his family works— a little apartment above the small office built onto Manny’s Automotive, what looks to be the gas station, car rental, and auto shop of this tiny burg.

It may look small, but this is a treasure trove of vulnerability and information.

And I’m dozing off in a recliner with scalding hot mac and cheese in my belly and enough Migraine-Aways in my bloodstream to mellow out a blue whale.

Lazarus hums when he cooks. He found a big, dented pot, and he’s mincing yams with a tiny paring knife that looks like a doll’s accessory in his big hands.

When I wake up—he’s gone, but water, another can of Coke, and a bag of pork rinds are sitting on a fold-out television tray next to me.

He even left the remote and took the old slimline phone from the wall, followed by ten feet of slender gray wire, and put it next to my water glass. Propped up against it is a note on the back of an old cover of the 1993 Pine Ridge Yellow Pages beside me.

I don’t know if the television still works. I didn’t try turning it on in case it woke you up. I’ll bring your stuff back by six. Call if you need me.

Lazarus

He gave me his number.

He’s a fool.

No, Victoria. He’s nice. Kind.

He’s taking better care of you than any ex or any rich employer has. You’re helpless. That’s a write-off to Pazcuso.

You know he’d never let you leave your job. He’d never let you live.

When you took this job, you were so dead inside, and so eager to deal out justice. You were numb, and other people’s pain made you feel better. Bad men’s pain.

I don’t usually have time to sit and think. I don’t let myself sit and think.

But now I can’t move, and my head still hurts, a dull pain that warns it can come back bigger and stronger at any second.

So I try to sleep.

I usually don’t sleep well. I stopped sleeping through the night before I lost her, even before I was pregnant. I think it happened after the first fight I had with one of my “clients.” Ever since I started being someone’s mistress, my sleep seemed to get scratched away, little by little, first by guilt for being “the other woman,” and then by worry because the guy I was sleeping with could give me a thousand-dollar necklace one night and a bullet in my brain the next.

You made bad, bad choices, Victoria.

Killing bad men is a good choice, isn’t it?

My temple gives a warning throb.

Lazarus killed a dozen guys. You watched it. Like a horror movie meeting a meat grinder, carnage that was real, and nothing like a little bullet hole in the head from a long, careful distance, or a quick slice through an artery, and then out the window.

So... He’s a bad man. A bad monster. Right? Just because he was killing henchmen and sicko scientists doesn’t mean he wouldn’t kill anyone else in his path.

You don’t know that. He’s a wild card, an uncertainty.