Page 93 of Gluttony
“Why?”
“This is the moment you chase after the girl. Don’t let her get away because of your idiocy.”
“She’s been lying to me, Liza.”
“So what? We lied to her for months. Give her a chance to explain.”
Goddammit. She was right. “Fuck.”
“Exactly.”
Thirty
It tookdays to recover from what its liberator had done to it.
It had thought she was its savior. It was wrong.
So it stayed hidden, out of sight. It fed when it could and drank the drips of water leaking from the last downpour. It stayed down in the darkness for days, feeding sporadically on the rats and insects that crossed its path. It remembered there was another savior once. She was its world. Its wife. It wanted her. All it could think of was her. It missed her. It needed her.
All of her.
Thirty-One
Bailey hadn’t stayed longat Nightingale. The moment she’d walked in and seen the faces of her crew, she’d collected a jacket from her locker, and then turned around, taking the file of information with her.
Ignoring the questions from Max, she pushed out the glass door and walked into the cool fall air. She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t know which way was up, and which way was down. All she knew was that Tony had looked her right in the eye after kissing another woman—not just any woman, the stalker—and then turned the other way. Like she didn’t exist.
It was almost the same thing she’d seen months ago, when she’d first met him. Then, he’d been on the arm of a stunning supermodel. He’d been blind drunk and hopeless. This time, it was a different woman, same scene. This time, instead of coming her way, he went the other. Bailey had overheard some of the conversation. It was clear to her that the woman was the one responsible for all the petty nonsense with the keyed cars and dolls, and she was certain Tony was smart enough to have figured it out. Except, she’d hardly had a moment of normalcy to actually have a conversation with him. She couldn’t remember if she’d told him what the woman had done to her car.
God, she was messed up for him. Just like one of his groupies. Just like she’d promised she’d never be.
This was it.
Proof that she couldn’t make sane decisions about her life. It wasn’t the booze. It was her. Sanity said don’t get involved with celebrity. Sure, maybe it seemed like his heart was in the right place, but clearly she’d had it all backwards. He didn’t have a heart. It was either that, or her parents were right. They’d never seen her either, no matter what she did or how she’d tried to please them.Shewas the problem. There was something wrong with her.
Barging into the first drinking establishment she could find—a run down hole-in-the-wall bar. It was two in the afternoon, but fuck it. She was a big girl. And she was spiraling.
The place was narrow and long, with only the bar on one side, and small booths on the other. A series of industrial lamps swung overhead, and napkins were pinned to the wall with various signatures scribbled on from famous visiting patrons. Her thighs stuck to the sticky stool. Five people were there, including the barman with the handlebar mustache.
“Cosmopolitan,” she said to him.
He gave a short laugh and indicated to the sign behind him. It had a silhouette of a Martini glass with a red line through it.
She picked the only place in the city that didn’t sell cocktails?
He took one look at her face and then poured her a glass of straight bourbon. “You need something harder than a cocktail, lady.”
Nodding her gratitude, she took the glass in her hand and stared at the liquid. It smelled sweet, sour, heady.
She glanced to her right where she’d put the dossier file on the bar. It was filled with dummy information about the Lazarus family. Just noise. She’d made it up herself and knew it wouldn’t keep the CIA off her tail for long, but it would give them a clear understanding that she wasn’t giving up any information. She wouldn’t be turned.
Iman had said they suspected the family of having ties with international terrorists, but he never said who. He’d also never accused them of being the Deadly Seven, so they’d either not known, or were keeping it to themselves.
Bailey stayed at the bar for hours, staring into her untouched drink, wondering what to do. Go home, give up, or go back to Tony’s... again, and be the unseen person he came home to at night time to get his fix. She’d had it all wrong. She wasn’t the one in danger of the drink. She was the drink. And she was being used.
Another glance at the folder and doubts crept in. In the reflection of the mirror between the wall of stacked bottles, she saw her face and grimaced. What was she doing here? This wasn’t her. She was better than this.
She was trained to think through any situation with a level head.
