Fatal Beauty (17 page)

Chapter 24

She naps for a few
hours, and at first, it’s restless. A week and more of worrying about Charlie
constantly has made it very hard to relax and trust that she wouldn’t fall
apart while driving down I-8.

But eventually, the
hum of the tires and Charlie’s soft, off-key singing to the radio lull her into
a sense of calm and sleep ropes her, pulling her down hard. When she wakes,
night is falling across the desert, a sight she’s come to love and loathe over
the past week, and she straightens in her seat. Charlie glances at her as she
switches lanes to slide around a slow moving tanker.

They pass a road
sign and she glances at Charlie. "We left Arizona," she says, her
voice startled.

"Couldn’t stay
there forever," Charlie says, almost amused.

EJ studies her as
she drives.

The past week has been
hell. Every time she saw a cop car, she tensed, sure that they would turn
around, blues flashing. Every night was spent with a bottle and Charlie almost
catatonic. She's lost weight she didn't have to lose and black circles are
under her eyes. She looks haunted. Devastated.

But now she's
different. Not just alert and interacting. She looks determined.

Somewhere along the
way, broken is mending. Still fragile. But mending.

"Can you call
your guy?" Charlie asks, killing the silence with the question and a look
that says she's aware EJ is analyzing her and she's not happy about it.

EJ smirks.
"Yeah. We need to stop for the night soon and buy a phone."

Charlie glances at
her. "What happened to Jacobs' burner?"

"He was
tracking us with it. That's how Marco and his mad dog found us."

Charlie's grip on
the wheel tightens but she doesn't say anything.

"Where are
we?"

"Yuma. We're
about five hours from Vegas."

EJ straightens.
"Do you want to stop for the night or push on?"

Charlie wrinkles
her nose, "Stop. I'm not showing up in Vegas looking like trailer trash
that hasn't heard of a shower."

EJ laughs and if
it's a little too giddy with relief, neither girl comments on it.

*

The shower helps.
It doesn't make everything better, but it makes her clean and that makes her
feel like herself. EJ leaves while she's in the shower, shouting that she'll be
back soon. She dresses and dries her hair and then sits on the bed, her legs
pulled up to her chest. Thoughts are beginning to crowd close and it occurs to
her that she is, blisteringly, sober.
 
When the hell did that happen?

She rubs her eyes
and lets out a breath. Her hand twitches toward the phone and she almost picks
it up.

The door swings
open with a muffled curse and EJ spills into the room in a mess of bags.
Charlie watches as she tosses everything on the bed.

"Did you knock
over a computer store?" she asks, arching an eyebrow.

EJ snorts and
unearths a bottle of wine. Charlie takes it and goes about opening it.

"We're getting
out of the country. Frenchie is expecting us tomorrow afternoon. But here's the
thing..." EJ pauses and studies her. Charlie resists the urge to squirm
under the appraisal, and pours two plastic cups of wine. She extends one
silently to EJ and raises an eyebrow in question.

“We have the
account numbers for every account Jacobs has. And I’m going to clean him out.
Then we vanish.”

Charlie shakes her
head. “It’s not enough.”

EJ goes still and
Charlie smiles. “All in, EJ.”

She looks vaguely sick,
but Charlie doesn’t back down. If anything, her expression gets harder, fierce
and demanding.

“Charlie,” she
whispers.

All in. Charlie
walked away from everything—her life, her family, even her college sweetheart.

Now it’s her turn.

All in.

She takes a
shuddering breath, and picks up the phone. Dials silently, from memory, her
finger shaking just a little. Charlie doesn’t comment on it, and she doesn’t
comment on the tears that are thick in her friend’s voice when she says,
“Jacobs. We need to talk.”

Part 4:

The High

Las Vegas Police
Department. Interrogation Room B.

Detective Blackmon:
Your room—

Charlotte Brooks:
Not mine.

Blackmon:
The room secured with a
credit card in your name. Tell me about the dead body we found there.

Brooks:
I’m not sure what I can
say. I told you—that’s not my room. We weren’t even staying in that hotel.

Blackmon:
We?

Brooks:
(silence)

Blackmon:
Look, if you could be
straight with me, we could move this along, ma’am. Who is we?

Brooks:
Don’t be cute, Detective.
You know I was traveling with EJ. I didn’t ever deny that. Now. Moving along.
Not my room. Never been there.

Blackmon:
Do you want to also sell me
on the story that you weren’t in the
Ceaser
?

Brooks:
I was gambling, with a
date. I’m not sure when that became a crime.

Blackmon:
And Miss Munro? Where was
she last night?

Brooks:
How ‘bout you find her and
ask.

Blackmon:
I will hold you for
impeding an investigation, ma’am. I don’t give a fuck who your daddy is.

Brooks:
I like you better when you lose
your shit, Detective. You’re almost
fuckable
.

Blackmon:
Is that what the man in
your room was?
Fuckable
?

Brooks:
Not my room. Don’t know
about the boy.

Blackmon:
Tell me about Anthony
Jacobs.

Brooks:
Why?

Blackmon:
Ma’am—

Brooks:
Detective, I’ve been really
nice and answered your questions. I’ve cooperated with you. But I’m exhausted
and I’m hungry and I want to know where the
fuck
EJ is.

Blackmon:
(silence)

Brooks:
Why are you looking at me
like that?

Blackon
:
You really don’t know, do you?

Brooks:
Know what?

Blackmon:
Ma’am, we can’t find Ms.
Munro. She’s been classified as missing and a person of interest in the case.
But—we found a substantial amount of blood in that hotel room. And Anthony
Jacobs was seen at the Palace with Ms. Munro.

Brooks:
(Quietly) you’re wrong. I
know what you’re saying. But you’re wrong.

Blackmon:
Am I? If she’s alive—where
is she?

Chapter 25

Frenchie is a whip
thin man with a shiny bald head, abnormally tall, with a wide smile and the
squeal that makes her flinch just a little.

He pulls her into a
tight hug and EJ huffs out a tiny laugh. “Oh my
gawd
,
baby girl. Do you know how long it’s been since I saw you last? What are you
even doing here? Why are you standing there like lumps, come in and sit down.”
He tugs EJ into the room, and gives Charlie a quick appraising look, then
glances at EJ. “Bringing home the pretty ladies now? How does Jacobs feel about
that?”

“I didn’t ask,” she
says blithely, and he laughs, letting the door close behind him.

Frenchie is a force
of nature, and one of the few people in
Jacobs
world
that she trusts not to rat her out as soon as she turns her back. He might want
to suck Jacobs’ dick—and there was that one time in Bora Bora on a dare that
happened—but he’s always been loyal to her. Maybe because they were friends
before Jacobs discovered how good he was at forging documents.

“Word on the street
is the boy is pretty upset you skipped town,” Frenchie says, sliding past
Charlie and leading them deeper into the stucco home. It’s brightly lit,
cluttered and messy, smelling faintly of incense, weed and baked goods.

EJ makes a small,
dismissive noise. “He’d be more pissed you referred to him as ‘the boy’.”

Frenchie smirks at her,
and puts a plate of cookies on the table before sitting down across from them.
“What do you need?”

“The works, for
both of us.” EJ says.

Frenchie’s eyes
narrow, and he glances at Charlie. “US citizenship?”

She nods, and he
nibbles his lip, before he grabs a cookie. “How much you planning on using it?
Is it safety like the last one, or—” he glances at EJ and what he sees there
makes his eyes go wide.

“What the hell
happened between you and Jacobs,
lil
sis?”

She stays quiet,
almost stubbornly so, and he
let’s
out a low whistle.
“Damn, sugar. I didn’t think anything could tear you and Jacobs apart. Ok. How
fast do you need them?”

EJ smiles thinly,
and if it’s a little bit scared, Charlie doesn’t comment on it. She just sits
quietly at her friend’s side.

“As soon as you can
finish them.”

Chapter 26

She’s sitting on the hood of the Nova. Frenchie has been fussing
over Charlie for hours, touching up her hair and darkening the color so she
looks more natural and less like a fugitive. He’s snapped her picture a dozen
or more times, and touched up her make-up to cover the bruises he’s been smart
enough not to ask about.

Seeing those bruises hurts almost more than seeing the ones on her
thighs. Because she got Charlie into all of this. She dragged Jacobs into it,
because she’s always fucking turned to him, consequences be damned. She’s never
cared that someone would get hurt, because that someone was never her. But now,
it’s Charlie taking the worst of his people’s violence. And it’s infuriating.

She feels guilty, a feeling she hasn’t experienced in so long it’s
startling to her.

“She’s cleaning up,” Frenchie says. He looks tired, his shoulders
a little stooped, the bow tie he was wearing when they arrived long gone. He
isn’t done—not even close. But she knows he’s tired. He extends a joint and she
takes it and the lighter. When she inhales, it loosens some of the tension in
her, even before the drug starts working into her and some of the tension eases
in her shoulders.

“What happened between you and Jacobs?”

“It’s complicated.”

“
Mmmm
. Is that why you have the Nova and
Marco is dead?” He nods when she glances at him sharply, “Yeah, EJ, I heard
about that. Talk to me.”

“There isn’t anything to say, Frenchie. This is the way it is
now.”

He’s quiet and she hits the joint again. Extends it to him. She
leans back, her head craned to stare at the sky. The lighter clicks and flares
to life and he pulls hard, coughs a little.

Frenchie is living outside of Vegas proper, almost secluded, and
although she can see the glow of the lights in the distance, she can’t get over
the vast expanse of star-studded dark night sky.

“Where will you go?” he asks, softly.

“
Dunno
,” she says.

He laughs, and it drags her attention away from the sky to him.
She
quirks an eyebrow at him and he grins. “That you think I
would believe you is a little bit insulting. Amusing.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were taught by Jacobs, EJ. He’s never not had a plan. You
wouldn’t get this far without one.”

“I’ve run from Jacobs before without a plan,” she says
conversationally.

“With your IDs that he had made for you. That’s not running.
That’s throwing a fit to get fucked. This is different and we all know it. Even
Jacobs knows it.” He pauses, waiting for her to say something. Anything. When
she doesn’t do anything but stare at the sky in silence he releases a long
breath. “You don’t have to push us all away, just because you’re pissed at the
boss, EJ. You know you have friends.”

“Of course I know. That’s why I came to you.” She rolls her head
to the side and smiles at him.

He smirks, “You came to me because I’m the best.”

“
Mmm
, that too.” She agrees.

They smoke in silence until the joint is gone and he straightens
away from the car. “Will you tell him?” EJ asks, staring at the sky. “When
Jacobs comes and asks what you made—what my new name is and where I am. Will
you tell him?”

He hesitates before, “Do you want me to?”

She doesn’t answer and the door beyond them opens.

Charlie is standing there, her hair a sleek curve around her face,
big brown eyes just a little worried, long legs wrapped in black jeans. She’s
wearing a white top, off the shoulder, and white peep toe heels and she’s
fucking breathtaking. EJ sits up on the car and Charlie gives her a tiny smile.

“No,” Frenchie murmurs. “I won’t. I’ll purge my files and get the
hell
outta
Vegas.”

She shivers as a wind kicks up across the desert. It’s hot, a
balmy caress, but it still feels like a harbinger, somehow. A promise of
something coming.

“Do it soon,” she says as she slides off the hood of the Nova. She
goes on tiptoes to kiss his cheek and then drops on her heels. “Call me when
you’re done.”

He nods, “Thirty six hours.”

Charlie smiles awkwardly at him as she slips into the passenger
seat, and EJ slides behind the wheel.

They’re about five minutes from Frenchie’s house, when she says
softly, “I like him.”

EJ smiles. “Frenchie is
kinda
hard to
not like. Jacobs even likes him, and he doesn’t like anyone.”

Charlie makes a choked laugh. She hasn’t asked about the
conversation EJ had with him, leaning against the door to their hotel room last
night. She keeps thinking Charlie will bring it up, but she’s been almost
scarily silent about the matter.

And as long as she’s willing to ignore it, so is EJ.