Page 15 of Too Many Beds

“Fuck him,” Lee said with a grunt. “That fucker always treated you like shit. Kicked you around. He fucking deserved to be put down like the dog he was.”

“But he was Avi’s…” I trailed off because we weren’t supposed to say the boss’s son had aboyfriend. Everybody knew the Fortier family’s heir apparent was gay, but if we said it, the boss would beat the shit out of us, and we might find ourselves in a pair of cement shoes at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain.

“Just ‘cause he’s putting it to the boss’s son doesn’t give him the right to treat you like shit, Jasper. You’re…you were a part of the family, same as him. You were supposed to be equals, and that cocksucker treated you worse than dirt ‘cause he could. It was about time someone fucked him up.”

“I did more than fuck him up. I shot him.” I closed my eyes. “I killed him. If you hadn’t been there…”

“Hey, hey. None of that. I told you I was thinking of getting out of the game anyway. Why do you think I’ve got this so well planned out, huh? You think I thought of all this just now? I been planning to split for months.”

I sighed, wondering if that was true. If it was, it would be a surprise. Lee loved the mafia lifestyle. He loved the power, the money, the respect. Me, I was in it because it was better than the life I had before. The Fortiers lifted me up from nothing, gave me a life I never thought I’d have, and I threw it away because of some bully. Maybe Laurent was right. I didn’t deserve the chance.

A fat raindrop struck the window, and I sat up with a frown as the sky opened up.

Lee yawned and reached to turn the wipers on. Headlights from a passing truck on the other side of the interstate washed over us briefly as Lee cracked his window so he could smoke. He looked tired. He probably was, considering we’d been on the road for almost eight hours.

“Maybe we ought to think about stopping for the night,” I said.

Lee tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette and looked over at me. “Maybe,” he agreed, and we kept on driving.

Lee

The rain got to be too much about an hour north of Nashville, so we pulled off the highway near Bowling Green in Kentucky. I figured it was safer to steer clear of the bigger hotel chains, since they’d want a credit card for incidentals. By now, Avi had probably realized what’d happened and was watching my accounts, but I still had plenty of cash.

The Blue Mountain Inn seemed as fine a place to lie low as any, so that’s where we went. It was one of those single-story motels where the office was in one building and the rooms were spread out in a big U-shape behind it. Since the motel was empty, the attendant said we had our pick of the place and gestured to the wall of keys before disappearing into the back like he couldn’t be bothered to pick rooms for us. I grabbed two random keys from the wall and tossed one to Jasper, who caught it.

Then I had a thought. If Avi’s goons somehow tracked us, they’d know exactly which rooms to search to find us, since only those keys were missing. So I grabbed a bunch of other keys off the wall at random, passing half to Jasper and keeping the other half for myself.

My pants jingled, weighed down by all the keys, as I walked down the line of doors to select one at random. The rain hadn’t really let up, but it didn’t bother me. It took a lot more than a little rumble in the sky to make me jump.

Jasper, though, was a mess. Ever since he shot Laurent, he’d been jumpy. Guess I couldn’t blame the guy. It was his first kill.

First time I shot a guy, I threw up. That was mostly because I was stupid and hadn’t realized what a twelve-gauge would do up close like that. Anybody would throw up if they got brain matter splattered all over them.

It was one of the reasons I didn’t fuck with guns anymore. Too messy, too regulated, too mundane. This was America. Every-fuckin’-body had a gun. I wasn’t going to make a name for myself doing what everybody else did. So I thought I’d be smart, figure out ways to get my targets to do most of the work for me. I’d sneak into a smoker’s house and turn on the stove burners, let the gas seep in so that when he went to light up… BAM. Instant fireball. Take out the trash and the evidence in one move. It was fucking beautiful.

Except Avi said I couldn’t do it the same way all the time or people would catch on, so I had to keep getting inventive. I watched, learned, and waited for opportunities to present themselves. Most people were so fucking oblivious to all the dangerous shit they did all the time. It made my job easy. A shove into busy traffic. Cut some brake lines. Slip peanut powder into their protein powder and steal his epipens. Every fucking time, it looked like an accident, but people knew it was me.

I made it look easy, but it was a lot of hard fucking work.

Lazy Lee Ducaux my ass.

But Jasper wasn’t like me. He was a good kid, even when he was being bad. Worst thing he’d ever done before he pulled that trigger was stitch up killers like me and keep his trap shut about it. He wasn’t rotten to the core like the rest of us.

It was why I liked him. He gave me hope that there was still some good in the world.

Footsteps scraped along the sidewalk behind me, and I came to a stop. Without turning around, I knew Jasper was right behind me. Of course he fucking was. He was like a lost puppy, always following me everywhere. Except I wasn’t a fucking dog person. My heart was too black for anyone sane to want any part of that, even man’s best friend.

“You know you don’t have to follow me, Jasper.” I finally turned around and dammit, the kid was standing out in the rainlike a half-drowned rat, his arms wrapped around him. How was I not supposed to feel like shit when he was just so damn sad?

A good man would’ve offered some comfort, or at least a distraction. Maybe a couple of beers and a shoulder to cry on.

But I wasn’t a good man. I was barely a man.

“I wasn’t,” he lied and dug around in his pocket to pull out a random key. “I’m just looking for room…” He glanced at the key. “…fourteen.”

“Try about five doors back the way you came.”

“Oh.” He frowned down at the key before turning to go.

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