She slid me a sly look and my stomach dropped. None of it had been a mistake—even the debt had been a ploy to tie me closer to her. Somehow she’d let slip a detail to the Asshole that made him able to trace it all back to me. They’d been alone in that conference room for twenty minutes—who knows what she’d said while she tied him up, while she straddled him. I’d always assumed it had been my fault he’d found us. Because it couldn’t have been Lou. It could never have been Lou’s fault.

“I want you to know I wouldn’t have done this if you hadn’t forced me,” Lou said. Lou, or maybe really Rita Palmer. Unless that had been a lie, too. “You started to make such a mess. I asked Jackal to go to the Albatross that day because—well, because I know him. I knew what would happen, he’d never show up. And then I’d have a reason, you know? I could justify it with Jackal. You’d fucked up so bad, over and over again—I don’t know if you got sloppy or lazy or—”

My head was pounding, and I could hear my blood beat in the spaces where I should’ve been able to hear my own breath. It felt like I hadn’t taken one in minutes, hours. I backed up until my legs bumped the bed, jostling the suitcase with the gun nestled inside.

She could’ve thrown it in the ocean. That would have been so easy. But no. She’d kept it for a reason. For this.

“Or if you’re so in love with me you can’t see straight anymore.” Lou looked at me, very level, very steady, one hand supporting the elbow of her cigarette hand. She blew out a plume of smoke. “What’s our one rule with the girls?”

I reached a hand back and found the edge of the suitcase to steady myself. “Lou, what are you—”

“One rule, Jo. You get attached, you start to fuck up. How could you forget that?” She smiled a little. Like she was enjoying herself. That pretty face of hers, all angles, all sharpness where once it had been soft toward me, always soft to me. “I’m not going back to the streets, just me. You think you know tough? You don’t know anything about it.”

“I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“Be my guest. The police should be here any minute. I called them from downstairs just now. I told them I felt obligated to help in their search for justice.” She gave me a little smile and wink. “Don’t you think Ellen deserves justice?”