As she was leaving, Ellen turned at the door, and said, “You know, when I first met you, I thought I wanted to be exactly like you. You were wearing these snakeskin pumps and leather pants, and it wasn’t even 10 a.m. yet, you were at the dentist, for chrissakes, and I thought, Now, there’s a woman who knows what it’s like to take what she wants instead of waiting to see what’s left when the world gets around to her. I thought, What would it be like to be dangerous?” She laughed again, unhappily, shaking her head. “And now I know you, this world you slither around in, and you know what?”

I wondered if she’d start crying again or tell me she wished she’d never met me. My lips twisted and my nail tinked against the crystal tumbler. In that pink sweater, she looked sixteen years old, the little sister I’d never had, except the coloring was all wrong. She’s too shortsighted to see what I’m doing for her, what we’re doing together by taking down assholes like Klein, I thought, right before she surprised me for the third time that day: “I still think I want it. It’s the craziest goddamned thing.”

And then she left, taking with her the Lady’s bribe money for the police, and leaving me back in a hole that looked, from the bottom of it, exactly nineteen grand deep.

Chapter 5

After Ellen left, I tried to clear my head, get back to Carrigan. But it was no good. Nineteen grand now and a week to pay it back—my stomach dropped. Less, I realized. It wouldn’t take the police long to discover their hush-hush money was missing. I couldn’t count on more than a few days before they brought it up to the Lady and put their heads together and figured out where the cash had gone. If everything went perfectly, I’d have the money Friday. But now I’d need more from Klein, I realized. If we got fifty grand for the photos, that meant my cut was twelve point five. I needed nineteen now. Which meant I had to get seventy-five from him. The slaps might not be enough to warrant that kind of money. Ellen might have to deal with something worse than slaps. I tried not to think of what that might be.

It became a chant in my head—something worse, something worse—as I scrolled through different clips of the new mark, killing time so I didn’t go crazy waiting to hear back from Ellen. Or imagining which would be worse: the Lady forcing me into “retirement” or what the police would do to all of us if I couldn’t deliver their money quickly. Something worse, I thought, trying to focus on Mitch Carrigan’s handsome face.