Page 94 of Justice for Francesca

At six o’clock,all of the staff reported to the lobby bar. Damaris was filling in for Jessa’s emcee duties. They used the seven-minute spot as a final practice session for her but also to pay tribute to Mila, Jessa, and Tilly, raising a glass in their honor. Then everyone broke off for the final minutes to regroup before opening.

At ten o’clock, Tripoli met Cosmos down in the lobby of Elysium. He greeted the guests, many thrilled the club’s doors were back open. As expected, he also had to field endless questions from several individuals who had only shown up that night to get a glimpse of where the tragedies had occurred. Those people would be sorely disappointed at what they found because the staff had been hard at work reconstructing the partitions and rooms so that even frequent visitors wouldn’t be able to find the exact spots.

The trapeze room had been restructured—reconfigured, repainted, and was unrecognizable now as a digital media room. Triumph had worked his magic by pulling videos from the footage at their cosplay club, The Lucky Rabbit, that they used nightly. For the last few days, he had been working hard to comb through artists—locally, nationally, and internationally—for an assortment of visual interactive art to put in the room that fit the club’s theme.

The aerialists had been given additional time off since their mechanics would need to be restructured and moved. The trio had offered to work in other areas until their space could be built, and given that Tripoli expected there to be record crowds until some other scandal captured people’s attention, he took them up on it.

Temporarily, the magic room had been moved into the private dining space. It was much smaller, making the act also smaller, but Tripoli promised their magician that in a week, they would have a more expanded space for him. He had said he was fine working where he was for a while. Since his equipment had been used in Tilly’s final moments, he wasn’t necessarily eager to return to the larger aspects of his act.

Rye had eventually come up with the brain trust to turn the magic room into an adult carnival area, complete with an actual working carousel—an area of celebration and fun that she thought Tilly might approve of. She had worked nearly round the clock with the bar and kitchen staff to reconfigure the space into a series of game booths, several fake food trucks that all led into the kitchen, an old-time photo studio, and clowns that traveled around to make naughty balloon creations. She’d done an incredible job, and it was unrecognizable to almost everyone as to what the space had been before the club had closed. Other than the main bar and the dance floor, it was clearly the most popular area of the club.

Cosmos had been touring the space with him since Michael was basically in the same position as Tripoli due to being the manager of the club. So far, Tripoli had been managing with the noise and lights, but spending time in the carnival area was proving painful. One of the games involved the strongman hammer, and he was standing alongside it when one of the patrons managed to hit the bell at the top. The clang rang loud in his ears, and a near-simultaneous shot from an air pistol to startanother of the carnival games proved to be the breaking point. His arms flew up in front of his eyes to block the flash from a strobe light.

Smoke everywhere. His ears were ringing. Shit, they hurt! He couldn’t see the men along the path. There were trees everywhere, moving all around him, their branches and leaves waving like people’s arms. Instead of the expected rebels, clowns were coming out of the jungle, stealthily creeping through the vegetation, hands outstretched. Mouths smeared red with blood, one still gnawing on Honcho’s arm with the jagged teeth he’d used to rip the limb off. Another was gnawing on the heart he’d pulled out of Mayhem’s gaping chest wound.

Weaving through the smoke and the trees, he saw Francesca approaching. No! She couldn’t be here! It wasn’t safe. She’d end up like Honcho, Mayhem, and Keys. He wanted to shout at her to run, to get out of the jungle, but his mouth wouldn’t respond to his brain’s commands, and his body wouldn’t move to push her out of the line of fire. She reached out to him as she moved toward him.

“Ethan? Come back to me. It’s okay, Ethan, I’m here.”

He felt warm hands on his, a steady pressure used to grip his wrists and lower his arms that he’d been trying to use to block the sights his brain had put in front of his eyes. She was smiling and attempting to reassure him.

“That’s it, Ethan. You’re safe. Look at me. You’re safe. Only look at me.”

Suddenly, the jungle was gone. The trees turned back into people. The clowns were now the smiling faces of the carnival staff in the game room. The noises returned to the typical rock ‘n’ roll music of the standard traveling circus.

“Francesca?” he asked.

“Yes, Ethan. Francesca. C’mon. Let’s get out of here.” She took him by the hand and followed Cosmos, who led them away.Once far enough from the craziness of the carnival area that the rock music was replaced with classical compositions, Cosmos led them to the Lion’s Den, one of the small, hidden lounges that were stationed throughout the club. Most important, though, was that no one was in it because so many were enthralled with the carnival games.

Francesca helped Tripoli to sit on one of the two-person couches. Cosmos reappeared with bottled water and napkins. His eyes registered the man speaking to Francesca, but he couldn’t hear them. She nodded to the security specialist, and then he squeezed Tripoli’s shoulder and left. A cool, damp cloth was pressed against his forehead, swiped across his cheeks, and then pressed against the back of his neck.

A cool hand touched his face. “You’re okay. Come back to me, Ethan.”

He reached up to lay his hand on top of hers. “You’re here.”

“Yes, I’m here.”

Both hands were clutching her face and pulling her into him. His lips crashed against hers, desperate to touch her, taste her, convince himself that she wasn’t a figment of his imagination. He was frantic to get closer to her.

“I know you asked for space to make your decisions. I’m trying so hard not to push, but I just can’t. Don’t leave, Francesca. Please. I can’t let you walk away again.”

She shushed him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“If you can’t stay here, let me go with you. I can live anywhere, but I can’t live without you. I can’t do it. I love you.”

“Ethan! I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying in San Antonio.”

Her words were finally sinking in. Refusing to let go of her, he backed his head away from her so he could look in her eyes. “You’re staying? You’re transferring to the FBI office here?”

“No. I’m staying, but I’m not… I quit. I turned in my resignation this morning. That was one of the things I had to do.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I have two more weeks of medical leave I can use. I let the chief know that I was using it as my two-week notice. I left my badge and gun and walked out.”

“But you love helping people. Love being an agent. You were good at it. It was so important to prove that not all of the McCabes were dirty.”

“It used to be important. Not anymore. I did feel useful at it. I was good at it, but I don’t know that I actually loved it. But… I do have a problem I could use some help with.”

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