Fatal Fugue (The Deadlier Sex Book 1) (4 page)

Chapter Eight

The lights of Vegas burned into Hayley’s retinas as the horizon revealed the skyline passing the mountains. It was breathtaking and sent a familiar tickle through her brain. She’d been here before. It was impossible to pinpoint how she knew that; it was like a childhood memory pressing to reemerge from the depths of an ocean within her mind. Nothing specific drifted up, just an affirmation she’d been here before and this place held all her destiny within its neon lights and flashing signs.

The buildings were an array of every color of the rainbow, and it was impossible to not gawk at the beauty of the city. There were no other places like this in the world. Somehow, she knew she’d been all over. A fucking world traveler and had almost seen it all in her youthful years. How was it that she could remember such random shit but nothing else? It was frustrating beyond belief.

Not only that, but Jay hadn’t divulged anything further about her. She wanted to choke the living shit out of the man, but he wouldn’t budge. It was to be told in Vegas. What she wanted to know would reveal itself there. The bastard probably didn’t know a thing about her at all and was pretending he knew her well. He probably just knew what he’d been told when he’d been sent to retrieve her.

But who had sent him? If she was the boss, who else would give the command to search for her? A partner? Co-owner? Jay obviously wasn’t her second in command or he’d be more forthcoming. Was there someone else in power that wanted her delivered back alive, or worse, dead? Maybe it’d been an order of dead or alive for all she knew. Either way, she was silently thankful Jay had so far decided to keep her alive.

“So when am I going to know more? We’re in Vegas already.”

Jay’s amused grin rubbed her like coarse sandpaper. If he wasn’t driving and she wasn’t afraid he’d veer off the road and kill them, she’d sucker punch him in the jaw. Curling her fingers tightly into a fist, she resisted the urge and waited for him to give her the standard answer he’d been repeating to her over and over again for a thousand miles. What was this inherent violent notion inside fighting to break free? Something told her she didn’t really want to know.

“I didn’t say the
moment
we got to Vegas you’d find out everything, but you will know fairly soon. We’re not that far from where it all began.” He paused and threw her a sideways glance. “Where it all ends.”

“What do you mean, ‘where it all ends’? That sounds a bit ominous, don’t you think?” Hayley caught a slight quiver in her voice. Maybe this uncomfortable feeling of dread creeping up her innards and gripping its tiny tentacles around her spine was wearing her down. A thousand possible scenarios raced through her brain.

“I promise you’ll be told everything. Really. Now it’s just time to be patient and wait. You might like what you hear. On the other hand, you might not. There’s no way to tell. You’ve forgotten it all, like some weird mental block or something. Why you’d want to forget baffles me.”

“Maybe there are things you don’t know about. Horrible things I’d want to block out.”

“Nah.” Jay shook his head. “I know everything that happens at Madame H.’s.”

Hayley shoved her fists into her sides, hugging her body as she pushed away all the possible violent ideas plaguing her thoughts. What if there were things he didn’t know about her, about her business? Anyone could keep secrets. Why not her past self too?

No one knows everything about everyone, right?

The lights of the Las Vegas Strip zoomed past like a hypnotizing streak of neon and taillights. Something about it felt familiar and comforting and yet full of doom. How one place could evoke so many emotions in a person was a curiosity. Hayley reached up to touch the cool glass of the window and felt the fading heat from the outside penetrating in like a constant friend reaching out toward her. Maybe the night would bless her with the memories she needed badly enough to be on this dark road with a stranger who held the keys to her life. Nothing made sense, but she was willing to bet it would be resolved soon.

Whether it was good or not was the question.

“How long have we been friends?” she asked. Her curiosity couldn’t wait any longer. If only Jay would open up more about the past, she might feel more at ease. Nothing made it harder than arguing with him about timing. He wanted to wait to tell her everything, but she couldn’t wait any longer.

“I’ve known you since you were in diapers.”

She turned toward him and scoffed. “You’re lying.”

“You wanted to know. I’m older than you by five years, and I remember everything.”

She watched him as silence ensued. Everything he answered left her with more questions. Was it even worth it to ask him any more, when it was just too much to take? After a moment, she decided it was. It was all worth it to find out who she was and what kind of people she associated with, no matter how much it would hurt.

“How many of those years were we lovers?”

He paused, contemplating her question in-depth before he answered. “From the moment we laid eyes on each other.”

“Come on. Really. Can’t you give me a straight answer, ever?”

“It’s true. I knew back then you were special. There was never a doubt.”

“If I was so special, what happened to break our bond?”

Jay glanced at her, and a strange, evocative look passed over him. “Who said it was broken?”

“It is, you know. You and I. We’re broken. There’s no way a pair of people who loved each other for so long with as much intensity as you tell me could ever be too far from each other without the other suffering ill effects. If we were all right, I wouldn’t want to forget any of it. I’d cherish every memory, despite being in this fatal fugue, all fogged up in here.” She tapped her temple. “Regardless of how damaging our love was to either of us.”

“True. But you don’t know that yet. Maybe one of us was broken. Maybe the other is trying to not give up on them.”

She drummed her fingers against the door handle, feeling the hard surface under her nails. Something told her she was right. They had been broken a long time ago, and it had taken this mental block to bring them back together. Maybe there was no fixing what was wrong, but the mess she was going to walk back into was pulling her in like a long-forgotten tether which would never let her go, no matter how far or how long she ran.

But running had gotten her nothing. It had brought her full circle, and regardless of what happened this time around, she wasn’t going to run away again. The demons had to be faced head-on.

“Would you do me a favor, Jay?” Hayley asked.

“What sort of a favor?” He kept flicking curious gazes toward her. The things running through his head were things she would love to pull out and sift through with a magnifying glass. She wanted to find the most impossible and darkest things she might ever discover about a person. He was a puzzle she wanted to figure out, a Rubik’s Cube that needed solving, but the longer she attempted to turn his fragments around, the deeper they bit into her fingers. Maybe he was unsolvable. Maybe he was the only one who could show her the way the colors went.

“When everything goes down or goes bad,” she said, “promise me you’ll be the one to end it.”

“What sort of bullshit favor is that? Why would you even ask me that? You don’t know what’s coming or how it’s going to go. It could be a good thing for you and me.”

Hayley sighed, closing her eyes and dropping her head back on the headrest. She hoped he was right. Oh god, she did.

Chapter Nine

Jay watched as she pulled her hand from the door and laid it in her lap. Her long, dirty blond hair draped around her like a curtain sliding closed across the stage. She was nothing but a mystery he thought he knew everything about. Maybe he didn’t know anything about her anymore. She’d had her secrets, that much he had discovered in the past week after she’d gone missing. How someone so close to him could retain such a vast well of things he didn’t know had blindsided him.

Everything about Hayley was his business. She was his piece of the game to play, and it was disorienting to hear her speak like they were doomed, no matter what was going to happen.

She couldn’t know that much; her memory was shocked. Stunned. It made him wonder how much she did remember. If she was hiding things now, it could prove fatal for both of them. He’d have to make sure she didn’t remember anything, especially what had happened the day she’d gone missing. It was fortunate he hadn’t been too far behind her when she’d torched the mansion. If he’d been gone just one more day, he would have lost her forever. He’d have to stay close to her and take care of it if it all came rushing back.

If it ever did come back.

“Just promise me, Jay. Please?”

He sighed, scratching the stubble growing out across his jaw. What to say to that?

“All right, fine. I’ll take care of it. I promise. But nothing’s going to happen. Trust me.”

But in truth, now that they were back in Vegas, in this brilliant desert of decadence, he was not the one in control. Hayley was his only chip. It was a big damn chip, no doubt, but it was all he had. For all his skills, there were so many more like him, and even though he was good—fuck that, the best—he really didn’t know if he would be able change the outcome of this endgame.

Do I even want to?
he thought.

What was it about Hayley that tortured him so?
Her smoking hot ass, for one!
But that wasn’t it. Her face was in his mind, always, and her words were in his ears every single damn night.

You and I, baby, always
….

No!

He shrugged off the memory violently, shaking his head to clear it. It was lies. All lies. That’s why she was in his head, because of what she’d done to him. She was a master fucking manipulator and an authority in mind-fuckery. This could all be a ruse. Who else could convince all those young, naive girls to go out and sell their sex and mouths for her? She was a brilliant, deceptive monster. A sexual poison that rotted the soul away, bit by aching bit.

But she isn’t that monster right now though, is she?

That was a thought that felt beyond his reach.
That’s out of your depth,
his adopted father would have said. But he pondered it nonetheless. She was Madame H., of course. It was her body he had loved so many times, her lips he had kissed, and her wicked mind that had committed innumerable crimes against women, men, anyone who got in her way. But it also wasn’t her. It was also the fragile, vulnerable Hayley under that mask of amnesia.

This was not Madame H., queen of illegal sex-trafficking in the Southwest. This was just a woman named Hayley who happened to share the same body with Madame H.
That body.
Oh yes.
That body.
Jay felt warmth flood into his face, and much, much lower as he thought about Hayley’s brilliant white skin and sexy, womanly curves. Oh god, that's what really did it for him. She was all hard muscle underneath, but covered with soft, supple skin which practically melted under his touch. Fiery memories rolled in of her legs wrapped around his waist, her hard nipples in his mouth and her hungry hands all over him, begging him for more. Pleading with him.

Those were memories he couldn’t keep away, and for all his discipline and control, for all the mastery of emotions he’d taught himself, there was no denying the primal weakness for this woman. He hoped it didn’t get his ass killed.

Not over a fucking woman. That won’t be the end of me,
he thought. Well, it was always over a woman, wasn’t it? Always. Men were brought to their knees and laid out in pools of their own pathetic blood because of women. The tales were old, tried and true. Only a fool would deny it.

His street approached, and he took the turn quickly, the Mercedes’ tires squealing just a hair as he executed the turn onto Blue Diamond Road. Another few miles down and he was turning again, back on his home turf. One more swiftly executed right-hand turn and they were on a gravel road, heading into the unforgiving scrub desert.

Ahead was the Red Rock Lodging, which was little more than a dozen small wooden cabins in a semi-circle with enormous gaps in between them for privacy. An old-fashioned style water tower hovered behind them, serving not only as a decoration but also as the only means of running water for the cabins. Out here in the desert, there really was no water unless you brought it, pumped out of the ground or piped it in, so each week the tower was filled by a tanker to supplement the small wells drilled into the earth all around the place. It’d been here a long time, and upon close inspection, the walls of the cabins betrayed their age.

In the center of the semicircle of small cabins, which probably covered a quarter of a mile, was a swimming pool which, though it looked like shit, was actually well maintained, with a single spiraling open-topped water slide for anyone who dared venture out into the daytime’s blaring sun and heat. It was a well-used retreat for the customers and staff alike. The small resort was a favorite of Jay’s.

This would be home for tonight. He had a lot of things to think about, and even though he was supposed to be bringing Madame H directly to the warehouse headquarters, they did not know he had returned to Vegas.

They could wait one night. She could have this one night for her troubles, couldn’t she? He stifled a pang of… what? Guilt? Regret? Sorrow?
Useless sentiments anyway,
he thought. The kind of shit that gets one killed, or worse, tortured.

Brushing the emotional cobweb of shit away from his thoughts, he pulled the big sedan into the single spot next to the cabin he’d rented days ago. He always liked to have a backup plan as an escape or just another option. It was how he’d stayed alive so damn long in this crap business. One had to have not only a Plan A and B but make damn sure there was a Plan C, D and E.

He threw the car into park and looked over at Hayley. She was just staring at him, observing him with her tiny, beady eyes like she could see past his facade and deep into his blackened soul.