Page 33 of Bourbon & Blood

“I wanted you to remember me,” I said.

“Well, I don’t,” she said curtly, and she turned her head, tears brimming on her lower lashes.

“Don’t do that,” I said quickly.

“Do what?” she demanded.

“Cry.”

“Well, it’s kind of hard not to!” she snapped. “So, are you the reason? Is this some kind of threat?” she demanded.

I scowled hard at that.Someone was threatening her?Or she thought someone would? I wanted to know why, on that; but first things first…

“The reason what?” I demanded.

“The reason she’s missing?” she shot back stubbornly.

Again, my eyebrows rose, this time from my scowl into an expression of wondering, as in –just what the hell was she talking about?

When I didn’t say anything, her shoulders slumped.

“My roommate, my best friend… she’s been missing a while now and no one will do anything. I’m scared,” she said and her expression was glum, bordering on desperate. If it was one thing I learned from Baby Ruth, it was that in desperation, there was opportunity.

“I ain’t got anything to do with your friend goin’ missing,” I told her and she looked back up at me.

“I don’t remember anything from that night,” she confessed. “The last thing I remember was leaving here, then waking up at home.”

“That’s a good thing,” I told her. “You don’t want to remember.”

She frowned, troubled, and looked up at me.

“You were in our apartment?” she asked.

“I was,” I confessed. “Your friend wasn’t.”

“Shit,” she swore softly. I couldn’t hear it, but I definitely saw it and the feeling behind it on her expressive face.

“The police won’t help me,” she said, and she shook her head. “I’ve tried so many times, but they just won’t take me seriously.”

“Fuck the police,” I answered, and then I leveled her with my gaze, throwing the offer right on out there. “I could find her.”

She raised her chin, defiance in her eyes that muted and disappeared altogether as she caught that I was dead fucking serious.

“Everything has its price, though, little Alina,” I warned her.

“How much money would you want?” she asked.

I shook my head slowly.

“Not money,” I answered.

“No? Then what?” she asked, and I seized the opportunity it presented.

“You.”

Her eyes widened in shock.

“What?” she asked.

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