If it was Escobar, I was completely fucked. If it was MacLeish, I had options. She’d been drinking. She’d fallen in the bathtub, hit her head. It happened, I knew it did.

But I wasn’t so sure I wanted options. Jackal was gone, Lou was gone. Ellen. All gone. Was there anything left for me, now, that was better than being locked up? The Lady’s business, for all it had been about taking down bad men, had left so many dead women in its wake. And I was a part of that. Maybe it was better for everyone if they caught me. Maybe that was the only end left, the best end left, for dangerous women like Lou and me.

I left the bathroom and picked up Lou’s gold lighter from the bedroom floor, where she’d dropped it in our struggle. I wanted something of hers close to me as I did what I knew I had to do. It wasn’t a trophy. It wasn’t that.

I clicked it with each step back down her stairs, dropping the hammer like a tiny guillotine. I glided my hand over the polished mahogany handrail for the last time. My prints were all over the place anyway.

I descended the staircase. Through the fogged glass of Lou’s front windows, I could see the pulse of blue and red lights, hear the slap of car doors closing. My breath was tight in my chest, and my hands were cold and soggy with Lou’s pink blood, and dripping red with Ellen’s, even if I was the only one who could see it. Through the window I saw shapes moving closer, two, but I couldn’t tell who they were. MacLeish and Escobar, MacLeish and someone new?

One of the shapes was close to the door now, and as he raised an arm to knock—the other hand moving to his hip—I took a deep breath and flipped the lock, placing my hands securely on my head in supplication, and then I waited.

I didn’t have to wait very long.

What had been our biggest rule? Oh, Lou, if you didn’t believe you taught me anything, believe this: I won’t make the same mistake twice.

Chapter 32

The alarm went off: 6 p.m. Officially time for a drink. I was proud of myself; I’d been managing to wait longer and longer every night. It was even dark now.

I poured myself a little bourbon from the bottle that I kept under the sink in what had been Jackal’s office and dropped two sweating ice cubes into it. The heat had cooled but hadn’t left completely, even as we’d passed Thanksgiving and Christmas was on the horizon. Not that I had anyone to buy gifts for this year.