“It’s like it’s getting harder to remember that it’s all fake,” Ellen said, turning her nose against my glass window. “It’s getting harder to remember that this isn’t really me. I find myself doing things, feeling things, and it’s like, who the hell am I? I don’t care about this man. I don’t care about this shit. But it’s like I can’t stop myself.” She stole a glance at my face and sighed. “I know you don’t get it. And I’m not fucking Joel. I was trying to . . .” She trailed off.

I felt a little sting in my chest and didn’t want to name it. So it wasn’t easy, her job. She wasn’t doing it out of any good passion. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to let Klein jerk her around, not on my watch, not on the Lady’s paycheck. I ground my teeth. If Junior hadn’t heard—or if he was the kind of ne’er-do-well who didn’t want to rock the boat in case it affected his paycheck—then it was possible nothing irreparable had happened. Just possible. But it had been a close call, too close a call. I reached into the back seat of my car, pulled out a flask full of whiskey I’d stashed for an emergency. Ellen flinched, her eyes darker than I’d ever seen them in her very pale face. Afraid, like I might throw the flask at her.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t waste booze.” I turned in my seat so that our knees were almost touching. I leaned forward and held out the flask until she took it. “It’ll make you feel better.”

As I watched Ellen take long, deep swigs from my flask, I realized I didn’t need Lou there to tell me the thing I was now sure of: I’d let Ellen go too long. She’d lost herself, she’d lost sight of the end goal, and now I was going to lose something, too. Except that wasn’t the way I ever played this game. I didn’t lose, not anymore.

Six months before, I might’ve convinced myself to go to Lou, admit to her and the Lady that I’d fucked up and we needed to find a new girl. That either the mark would take a lot longer than we expected or the case was dead, too compromised. Let Ellen off the hook. But now there was nineteen grand on the line and not only my debt this time, but the money for the police, too. That mattered to all of us, Lou and Jackal and me. To our little blackmail family, such as it was. And it wasn’t an option when I’d found such an easy out, poetic justice practically, to fix it.

No. I couldn’t let up on her now.