“Jo.” Lou stepped toward me, putting one hand on my shoulder, cupping the smeary mess I’d made of my face. “You’re my girl who can sell any story. Think for a moment. What’s the story we can sell here? One of the richest men in California is dead, and how? What will his wife say? What will the press say?”

I could feel my mouth starting to tremble. Keep it together, Jo, you fucking crybaby. “He was— Maybe it was a robbery gone bad, a c-carjacking—”

“Jo,” Lou said, stroking my cheek. She cupped my face in her hands, a lover’s move, and whispered, “You said anything. You’d do anything.”

The answer was staring me in the face and I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to see it at all.

I thought of the Lady, with her stupid blue tattoo and so much money she could write a monthly bribe to the police for eight grand. The Lady, who held my life in her hands. And on the other side, Ellen, with too much information and too many reasons to turn over what she knew, the best reasons now. With each blink, I could see a different Ellen—the imprint of her arm in the glow of the TV at the Aldo Nido, then her face streaked with tears and pink feathers in the front seat of my car.

I closed my eyes, let my cheek lean into the curve of Lou’s hand. Remembered Lou’s lips on mine on Olvera Street. The brush of her fingertips as she tucked a cocktail umbrella behind my ear. Lou’s face tipped to mine, telling me she knew I’d do anything for her, she could count on me. Telling me without telling me: we could always count on each other. If no one else, always each other.

And then again, for the last time, the sound of Ellen keening in the car.

The drop from the side of the road wouldn’t be enough to kill someone if this were really an accident. But if you weren’t paying attention. If you had the police in your pocket—or thought you did. I lifted shaking fingers to my brow. I tried to block out Ellen’s face as it had been the day I first met her, that hopeful grin and large dark eyes, so unusual with her coloring.

When I opened my eyes, there was a very real Lou right in front of me, her face so pale I could map each freckle on her face in one glance. Expecting an answer from me.

“You don’t have a gun, do you? No. That’s too obvious. It has to be a plausible accident.”

Lou stood there, watching me, smoking still.

“Put that out,” I said quietly. “We’re already going to have to pick up enough evidence as it is.”