“Hey, that’s my car!”
She turned.
The words came from a woman.
The woman was alone.
She was drunk.
“I’m just borrowing a smoke,” Secret said. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the window. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Damn right you shouldn’t have done that.”
The woman charged.
Fists flew.
Then a head slammed into the curb.
It was the head of the other woman.
She laid there, sprawled out, not moving.
Waverly ran over.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“She wouldn’t stop, I tried to stop-”
Waverly kneeled down and checked the woman. She felt no pulse. She detected no movement of her chest. She brought her face close to the woman’s mouth and detected no movement of air.
Then she stood up and said, “She’s dead.”
They stood there for a few heartbeats, frozen, then ducked into the alley.
No cars came.
No people came.
They dragged the body into the alley, back far, way into the deepest shadows.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Waverly said. “I have a red dress at home. I’m going to go get it. You stay here. Then we’re going to take her to the roof and drop her off.”
“Why?”
“Because then you didn’t kill her,” she said. “The guy who killed my sister killed her.”
They got the body to the roof, made sure the woman was dead, changed her into the red dress and dropped her off. They disposed of her clothes in a dumpster three blocks away.
“There’s a PI in town by the name of Bryson Wilde,” Waverly said. “Tomorrow, what you need to do is hire him. Pretend you’re a witness to the murder. Pretend that the guy who did the killing may have seen you. Pretend that you’re in danger. Pretend that you want Wilde to find out who the killer is.”
“Why? I don’t get it.”
“Because Wilde will have a pipeline into what the police are finding out,” Waverly said. “If they start getting close, Wilde will know it, then we’ll know it.”
Secret exhaled.
“Okay.”
Wilde emerged from the crowd, set a fresh glass of wine in front of Secret and slid in next to her.
“So, are there any more secrets I should know about?”
She looked like she was in thought.
Then she grabbed Wilde’s hand, brought it under the table and set it on her leg above the knee.
“That’s for you to find out,” she said.
He inched his hand up.
“It looks like I have no alternative but to do a little exploring.”
She opened her legs, just a touch.
“It looks that way.”
