Page 80 of Hounded

The waiter came by to deliver a plate of French fries topped with so many pickled jalapenos they burned my nose at range.

Sully unrolled her bundle of flatware and took a fork to stab into the mix. She pulled it out piled with fries, bacon crumbles, and drippy nacho cheese, and offered it to me.

“Maybe just hangry?” she suggested.

I shook my head, not knowing where or how to explain that I’d made a problem worse and muddied already murky waters. Part of me blamed Sully, though I tried not to. She’d wanted to help, and her intentions were good. That could be said of so few people in my life.

“I didn’t want him there tonight, Sully.” I began. “I had work to do, and Indy… got in the way.”

Sully loaded her fork with a bite so big she nearly had to unhinge her jaw to fit it in. She covered her mouth with her hand to mask the sight but not the sound of her words garbling past a wad of unchewed food. “What do you mean ‘work’?”

“Joss Foster is a job for me,” I replied. “His soul isoverdue.”

She gulped down the fries, and her brown eyes widened. “You’re gonna kill him?”

The jukebox that had been playing chose that moment to pause between tracks, and I checked for eavesdroppers. An elderly man sat at the counter bar, and a homeless woman was draped, unconscious, over her two-person table a few feet away. Neither of them appeared to be interested in us.

Sully continued in a hushed tone. “But that means… Oh, this is…” Shock contorted her face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t think it would go over well,” I explained. “You seemed pretty into the guy.”

“Yes, but I’m more intoyou,” she said, then clarified, “In a totally platonic way.”

“Even if I made you an accessory to murder?”

Sully huffed a breath and dug into her mountain of fries once more. “I might hold that one against you,” she replied. “I don’t need that kind of press.”

The vagrant either dozing or drunk on the table across the way gave a snort and jolted upright. She never fully roused, only listed to one side then the other before lying face down beside a stack of half-eaten pancakes.

“Did you get that one the other day?” Sully chased her next bite of fries with the last of her coffee. “The cop?”

The waiter returned with the coffee carafe. He refilled Sully’s mug, then added a courtesy splash to my full one.

After he left, Sully blurted, “Wait. If you’re killing Joss, I need to buy a couple of his pieces pronto. They’re about to be worth twice as much.”

The speed with which she went from stunned to scheming made me snort. “Sounds like the art equivalent of insider trading,” I said.

She stabbed her fork at me. “I only have a few legitimate skills, Loren. Fortune telling and palm readings don’t pay the bills, but I have art. I get this.”

“Buy whatever you want,” I said, “but do it fast because that’s where I’m headed next. After you tell me where he’s staying.”

Sully tilted her head, and the spoons in her hair glinted silver. “Whatever happened to not making me an accessory?”

I grimaced. “I could sniff him out on my own, but it would take all night, and I’m tired.”

“I bet you are.” She winked. “I bet Indy wore your ass out.”

Aggravation made my skin itch, and I shifted in my seat. “Can we focus, please?”

“Leave me to my imaginings, then,” Sully said with a dreamy sort of sigh. “Gives me something to think about later.”

Her cavalier attitude about what had turned into a miserable night prompted me to scowl. I looked away, watching a redheaded boy plug the nearby jukebox with quarters.

“Loren…” Sully’s voice carried a hint of rebuke. “You’re pouting, and I don’t believe for a second it’s because you’re going to murder my guest artist. What gives?”

It was difficult to detail my encounter with Indy, how it started so well and ended so badly, and how I’d overreacted to something done in ignorance. Of course,Indy had crossed lines before. In a dozen lifetimes, it would have been impossible not to. But tonight’s failure was ultimately more mine than his.Ispoiled our intimate moment by playing hard to get when I did, desperately, want to be caught.

“It’s Indy,” I said.

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