Page 102 of Sovereign

The crowd parts for me, one of the benefits of being tall. I slide into the last empty seat at the end of the bar and rap my knuckles on the table. The woman turns to cuss me out and stops short. Her red mouth falls ajar and her eyes dart over me.

“One second,” she says.

I lean back. The room smells faintly of whiskey, but after all this time, I don’t find it tempting. I’ve tasted addiction too thoroughly to go back to it.

The woman returns and leans on the counter, tapping her red fingernails on the shiny wood. She’s wearing a cropped shirt that shows the tattoo coiled on her lower belly. A blue snake surrounded by black flowers.

“What the fuck are you doing in my bar, Sovereign?” she says quietly.

“I’m here to see your brother,” I say.

She narrows her eyes, cocking her head. “You still single?”

I shake my head. “Locked down.”

“Good for you,” she says, clearly taken aback. “Lucky woman.”

I glance over the room. “Where’s your girlfriend, Lisbeth? I thought she worked with you.”

She rolls her eyes, shaking back her hair. “We broke up. She quit. It’s fine. Want a drink or still sober?”

“Still sober,” I say. “Is Jack upstairs?”

She jerks her head to the back of the room. “Go on up, I texted him the minute you walked in.”

She goes back to pouring beers and I push through the suffocating crowd to the back stairwell. The roar of voices dulls as I turn the corner to reveal a dark hallway with a cracked door at the end. It’s been a while since I met with Jack, but he knows we have an agreement to uphold.

I knock once on the door. He clears his throat from somewhere inside.

“Come in, Sovereign.”

I enter, my boots loud on the glossed wood floor, and shut the door behind me. It’s a dimly lit room decorated a lot like the main house back at Sovereign Mountain. A bull skull glowers down from above his enormous fireplace. A thick bearskin rug covers the floor beneath the couch. Against the far wall is a bar, a shelf of whiskey, and a stockpile of barrels.

Jack stands by the fire with a whiskey in hand. He’s in his late thirties and his glossy black hair doesn’t have a speck of gray. It’s slicked back over his head, complimenting his clean shaven face. The eyes that fix on me are usually bright green, but in the dark, they’re two glittering points.

“What can I do you for?” His voice is low and smooth as silk.

I take the card and cross the room, holding it out between two fingers. His eyes dart down and snap back up.

“I didn’t give you that,” he says.

“No,” I say. “You didn’t.”

“So where did it come from?”

I take my hat off and smooth back my hair. “You tell me, Russell. I thought I was paying out the nose for a non-compete clause with you. So why was that card in Clint Garrison’s possession?”

His brows rise. He flicks the card around and in between his fingers quick as a flash. In another life, Jack would have made an excellent magician.

“Clint is dead,” he says. “How did you come by this?”

I sink into the couch and cross one ankle over my knee. He stays by the fire. The tension between us is palpable. There’s a short silence and he realizes I’m not going to answer so he sets aside his whiskey and crosses to the other side of the room. There, he rolls the top back on his desk and sets the card down.

“Clint approached me two years ago with a job,” he says.

“And you took it?”

“Yes and no.”

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