Page 17 of Roses Are Dead
I stared him down. “Does everyone include you?” I knew damn well it did. We’d cut back on our deals with him deliberately so he’d cultivate other assets. Twenty-four K is a lot of product tied up with a volatile asset like Carl. But if in the act of cultivating he’d run afoul of the feds or something worse, we needed to know.
“Don’t threaten me.”
That was Carl. That holier-than-thou attitude he’d honed seeped through his tone.
“Why can’t I? What’s stopping me from drilling a hole through you and that fancy-backed chair?”
A noise sounded behind me. There was barely space for a rat to crawl behind the couch, so it startled me. I stood up, pointing the gun downward as I tossed the heavy sofa into the center of the room.
Carl jumped out of the way of the moving couch, but the chair he had sat on so primly took the brunt of the hit. It clattered to the floor, breaking into a skewed mess.
I barely glanced at it.
The woman I’d seen driving Carl’s green sports car cowered in the space that had been between the sofa and the wall.
“Who the fuck is this?” I knew damn well who it was, but I also needed to play this to the nines. Scare him. Maybe even make someone piss their pants. I rammed the point of my gun against her head. “You said we were alone!”
Carl stretched to see the woman without getting too close to me.
“She’s no one.” His tone dismissed her and tempted me to pull the trigger.
I grabbed her by the frumpy housedress she wore and pulled her to her feet. Her hair was all wrapped up in a braided crown around her head. I could have held her more securely by that, but I didn’t want to hurt her.
She weighed barely more than an SUV tire. And that housedress? Already torn and revealing an odd woolen undershirt. The dress ripped farther as I shook her.
Her hands gathered the fabric around her body and tried to cover what she could. But her legs were bare.
Distractions rarely bothered me. Unless they were shaped and scented like a woman.
Like… this woman.
Her feet were bare, too.
I was staring. Carl would catch on to my weakness quickly. I blurted out, “She doesn’t look like no one. Name, now!” I shook her again.
“Roishin,” she said right as Carl said, “Mary-Rose.”
I glanced between them. “Which one of you is lying?” I pointedly glared at Carl because I knew she went by the new name.
His nostrils flared. I tightened my grip and turned the gun from the woman to him, hoping he wouldn’t make me use the weapon. It was one thing to shoot with distractions. And a whole different thing to shoot someone with an unpredictable bundle of hissing she-cat barely controlled in the opposite hand.
“Forgive me, I’m used to her… dead name.”
What interesting phrasing. And he spoke it casually, as if I weren’t holding a gun on him at all.
“Roishin Black.” She had a lyrical voice. The notes of it were quiet, soft, and utterly feminine in quality and timbre.
“Did I say you could talk?”
Carl stepped forward with a raised hand.
I stuck the gun out, aiming in a deadline for his nose. “Did I say you could move?”
He froze. Slowly, he lowered his hand.
Even more slowly, a smile grew on his lips. “Do you like her?”
This was not going as I expected. When did he gain the upper hand? I had a gun on him. “Not if she’s a fucking narc. You know what happens to narcs. Is she one?”
