My head filled with water, like a kiddie pool inflating. A half-submerged memory, from my early days with the Lady: a woman, one of the Lady’s runners, who’d dropped items from the Lady to Lou. She’d always stopped by Jackal’s office, where she paused too long, laughing at his jokes, her mouth sticky like red vinyl, training her breasts on him like a sniper. We’d started up by then, but I wasn’t jealous. I’d never be her, I thought, not with Jackal—my favorite thing about the man was that he didn’t make me preen for his attention. But their familiarity had its own intensity, too, and I’d understood that he meant something to her—or maybe that she was trying to mean something to him. And then one day I realized I hadn’t seen her around for weeks. I’d asked Lou, and she’d shrugged me off with some half-baked answer, some don’t worry about it bullshit. I’d been dumb enough that I hadn’t.

“She’s done this before?” It was only half a question. “That woman. Jackal’s ex. The Lady dealt with her, too?”

Lou stubbed out what remained of her cigarette. She didn’t meet my eyes. Finally, she said, “Unpleasant business. Jackal understood.”

I imagined that slick red mouth opened wide in a scream of terror, and I shuddered. So Jackal didn’t mind that his workplace paramours had a shelf life. For all his assurances this morning, none of it had been as important as whatever shiny object had distracted him. The chills started in the pit of my stomach and moved up my spine to my scalp. “What do I do?”

“I’ll talk to her,” she said. “I’ll beg her. But it has to be this week, Jo. The money this week or”—she licked her lips and her eyes were pleading—“you’ll have to leave Los Angeles. For your own good.”

I gripped the edge of the table, trying to think. The ancient mariner of a waitress popped her head over Lou’s shoulder to check on our drinks. Neither of us said anything. Eventually she got the memo and moved on.

Once we were alone, I promised Lou: “By the end of the week.” She nodded and grabbed both my hands in hers, squeezing tight.

I didn’t tell Lou the thing I’d noticed in Ellen, that Klein was more than a job to her now. It was our one unbreakable rule for the girls: don’t get attached; never lose yourself in someone else. Once you developed feelings for the mark, you couldn’t do your job. You couldn’t see clearly, once you were attached. I should’ve told Lou then, but I had bigger concerns. So I was worried about Ellen, but not the way I should’ve been. I’d find a way to handle it, I told myself.