River rolled onto his stomach and closed his eyes.
The darkness felt like water.
Cool, cool water.
Blood was in his mouth.
The taste was strange but not necessarily bad.
He didn’t mind it.
He’d earned it.
He sat up to see how far away from the road they were, which he guessed to be fifty or sixty or seventy steps, it was hard to tell. It was close enough that someone driving past could have seen the fight if they’d looked in this direction. They might have been able to tell that one of the fighters had long hair.
He didn’t remember hearing any cars during the fight.
That was good but not conclusive.
Obviously he wasn’t focused on the road.
Right now, in any event, there were no cars around. If someone had looked over they didn’t bother to hang around.
The biker woman was still on the ground, watching him with fearful eyes.
River walked over, extended his hand and helped her up.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, and headed for the road.
She fell into step.
Then she stopped and said, “Wait a minute.”
She went back to the closest man, pulled a wallet out of his pants pocket and stuck it in hers. Then she did the same with the other one, the one with the chain. She hovered over him for a second, narrowed her eyes and then dropped a mouthful of spit onto his face.
“Okay,” she said.
16
Wilde silently backed out of the woman’s bedroom when her thrashing and moaning got sufficiently loud, then he tiptoed down the stairs, ducked out the door and was gone.
Back at his office, he drank coffee and had a smoke.
He still needed to talk to her.
Should he head over now and knock on the door?
He pictured it.
No, she was too fresh in his mind.
He wouldn’t be able to look her in the eyes.
So now what?
He struck a match and watched the smoke snake up. The sulfur smelled like sex and was just as addicting. He lit the whole book on fire and stared at the flames. They were always the same. They were predictable.
Secret St. Rain.
Who was she behind those haunting eyes?
Suddenly the door opened and a woman walked in.
It wasn’t Secret.
It wasn’t Alabama.
It was someone Wilde didn’t know.
Their eyes locked and in that brief moment, Wilde’s life got complicated.
If Secret was yin, this woman was yang. She was just as hypnotic but in a contrasting way. Her hair was black, her skin was sun-kissed gold, her eyes were mysterious and her lips were made for one thing and one thing only. She was older than Secret, somewhere around the twenty-seven mark, four years younger than Wilde.
A perfect age, actually.
She was conservatively dressed in a crisp white blouse and a black skirt that was tight but ended slightly below her knees. Her hair was up. She wore a simple gold necklace. An image flashed in Wilde’s brain of him ripping it off and licking her neck.
“I’m London Marshall,” she said. “I’m in trouble and I’m hoping you can help.”
Wilde tapped a Camel out of the pack and held it towards her.
“No thanks,” she said.
“You don’t smoke?”
“I do, but only when I’m on fire.”
Wilde smiled, lit the stick and blew smoke.
“So what kind of trouble are you in exactly, London?”
The woman exhaled, pulled an envelope out of her purse and handed it to him.
It was too light to be money.
“This is what has me in trouble,” she said.
“This?”
“Right. Open it up and look inside.”
17
The man fixing sandwiches at Murphy’s Deli looked sideways at Waverly when she ordered an Italian sausage and said, “Is this for Sean Waterfield?”
Yes.
It was.
“Tell him he’s lucky, this is the last one left. Tell him I could have sold it ten times but was saving it for him,” the man said.
“I will.”
“I’m Murphy,” the man said. “Sean always gives me a 2-bit tip, 4-bits when I save him the last one. Did he tell you about that?”
Waverly wrinkled her forehead.
“No.”
“He’ll confirm it when you get back,” Murphy said.
“Okay.”
“You look like you’re not so sure.”
“No, it’s okay, I trust you,” Waverly said.
Back at the office, Waterfield was nowhere to be seen so Waverly walked into the guts of
