Please let it not have anything to do with her, she thought. Please let her old life not be catching up with her.

Vin’s voice rippled through her head. He’s coming for you….

Resolutely shutting that part of things out so she didn’t lose her mind with fear, she focused on the fact that in less than a half hour she was going to be sitting down with the police. Trez had seemed confident that her cover was going to stick, that the whole I’m-just-a-dancer was ironclad. But God…what if she were arrested for what she did?

See, this was another thing she’d learned from her husband: If you lived a life with a shaky foundation, the walls could cave in on you pretty damn quick once the cops got to asking questions.

It had turned out that was really why he’d had to hit the road. He and his “friends” had killed one too many of their “clients” in the “building” trade and the feds as well as the locals had come after them. The one saving grace for her was that as a mere wife, she hadn’t had a clue about the way the mob had worked. His mistress, on the other hand, had known much more and been brought up on charges as an accomplice.

What a mess it had been. What a mess it still was.

Marie-Terese took the bowl of cereal to her son and got him one of their two TV trays. As she walked around, her heart was pounding so hard it was a wonder Robbie couldn’t hear the thing, but she did her best to remain calm on the surface.

Clearly, he didn’t buy the act. “Are we going to move again, Mama?”

She paused in the process of flipping open the tray’s legs. She didn’t lie to her son—okay, not about the majority of things—but she wasn’t sure how to coach her words.

But then there was no way to do that, was there.

As her phone rang again, she looked at him before she accepted the call from the sitters. “I don’t know.”

CHAPTER
17

As Vin drove through Caldwell’s outer reaches, his efficiency was autopilot more than awareness, and it was hard to know what was riding him harder: the shit with those dead boys or that hideous dream about Devina.

The cops were absolutely going to show up at the Iron Mask for a hi-how’re-ya-what-the-fuck, and if anyone said a peep about what had gone down in the hallway, they were going to want to see what those security cameras had caught. Which wouldn’t be good news. Sure, neither he nor Jim had thrown the first punch or pulled a knife, but then, they were still breathing whereas the other two had had a matching set of lead pacemakers implanted in their chests.