Ellen’s big brown eyes got watery, and she cocked her head, a kicked puppy. No, I thought. She can take a bit more. “Why are you so mean?”

“Here, I’ll dial.” I started to punch the numbers in, and Ellen practically vaulted over the desk to knock the phone out of my hand. She glared at me, more fire in her face than I expected.

“Stop it! Stop. I’m not doing it anymore, I told you,” Ellen said, her voice squeaky but harsh. “I’m not calling anyone and I’m not seeing him again. That’s final.”

“Come on, Ellen, if you want out, you’ve gotta—”

“I can make calls, too, you know.” Now she was standing straight, towering over me still seated at my desk. “What if I make a call to Mitch Carrigan’s office and warn him about this, this, this honeypot brothel you’re running here, huh? Tell him he better watch his back because I have it on very good authority he’s the next target. What if I do that, huh?”

Her threat bounced around my office, getting bigger with each passing second. In the vacuum, just the sound of both of us breathing—Ellen, hard; me, barely at all. No air at all while I thought of what Lou would say, what the Lady would think, not only that I’d screwed the Klein job to bits—all those weeks of preparation and we’d end up with nothing—but that I’d managed to scuttle our newest job, too. “Mitch Carrigan, our biggest score ever,” Lou had said, practically bouncing on her toes. There’d be no salvaging that fuckup, no matter how much Lou begged. And it was Lou she’d overheard. Lou would be on the line then, too. The thought struck me cold.

I stood up. Even in flats, I was taller than Ellen by more than an inch or two, and she stumbled back and almost tripped ass-first into the chair. But I bypassed her and walked to the liquor cart, grabbing the gin myself. My hand drifted over the bottles as I thought of what to say. No answers in any of them, but it didn’t stop me looking. I topped off my own glass and then waved the bottle under Ellen’s nose, but she twisted away like I’d raised a hand to slap her. I took a long deep drink, and when I came out of the glass, I knew what I was going to do.

I pulled the Lady’s fleur-de-lis envelope from the drawer and held it out to Ellen. “For Thursday. On top of your cut.”

“What?”