Page 59 of Bourbon & Blood

“We don’ think on people like that,” Hex agreed. “We just tryin’ to make it clear that the people we dealin’ with,do.”

She looked from Hex’s face to mine and her keen mind picked up on exactly what I wanted to hide.

“You don’t think she’s alive, do you?” she asked. She sounded deflated, glum.

“Probably not,” Cypress said, and I coulda cursed him.

Alina’s face crumbled, and she demanded, “Why not?”

“Men like Bashaw, they don’ let anything get in their way or ‘cause ‘em problems on their climb to the top,” Hex explained.

Alina covered her face with her hands and shook her head. She took several deep breaths and absolutelyrefusedto fall apart, which I was proud of her for that.

“You’re trying to tell me you think my best friend’s father, herown father,had her murdered? And for…” She gestured with her hands emphatically as though trying to dredge the words she was looking for out of the very swamp beneath us. “For what? Political aspirations? That’s nuts! That stuff doesn’t happen in real life!” she protested. “How did you even reach such a wild conclusion?” she finished, her tone demanding as she wrestled with denial and tried valiantly to reject the notion that I think in her heart she knew… Her friend was a goner and she wasn’t coming back.

Hex sighed and I could tell he hated to be the one to break it to her. “We called in a favor, a connection to somebody inside Nawlin’s finest,” he said. My first thought was Hope, Cutter’s girl from out there in Florida.

“Now, our contact reached out within the department and asked a couple questions about the status of your missing person’s report… an’ they did a little pokin’ around in the system. They say they ain’t find one.”

She sank into the tired recliner in my living room, her hands folding into her lap and asked, “Didn’t find one?” Her voice sounded like she was far away. Her thoughts must be goin’ a mile a minute, and I pushed off the counter and headed in her direction.

“But I made one,” she said, and she sounded like she was in disbelief. “Went down to the police stationseveral timesandeverything.”

Hex nodded, and I put my hand on her shoulder to lend her some strength. She sounded hurt, like a child finding out for the first time that the Easter bunny wasn’t real when they still wholeheartedly believed in it.

“I think that’s enough for now,” I said. “Any leads on who she was meetin’ that night?”

Hex and Cy shook their heads almost in unison.

“Boys are still chasin’ down the minutiae,” Hex said. “This is just the big picture that makes the most sense, given what we know.”

She looked bleak and nodded weakly. Her heart hurt, and I vowed right then and there, I would avenge that hurt a thousand times over. Her friend was dead. I was damn certain of that. Keeping her alive when politics and politicians were involved? Nah, too risky. No way they’d leave her alive to talk.

“You supposed to work tonight?” I asked my little Alina softly. She looked up at me, her hair draping over where I had my hand on the back of her neck.

“Yeah, I get split days off,” she said. “Next night off is in two days.”

I nodded. “I’ll take you home then so you can get ready.”

“Okay, what happens now though? You aren’t giving up on her already, are you?”

“No, cher. We don’t give up. That’s not how we work,” Hex said kindly and Cypress nodded.

“Okay,” she said and the coffee maker gurgled in the subsequent weighted silence.

I gave the back of her neck a gentle squeeze and she looked up at me.

“A bargain is a bargain. I ain’t quit until you have the answers you need. They might not be omething’ you wanna hear, but I’m gon’ find ‘em,” I promised her. She nodded, her eyes a little wide, and I thought to myself, no matter what the answer, someone was gonna burn for puttin’ her through it like they was.

* * *

I tookAlina home after coffee and some breakfast; the boys giving her an education on some of the club life, like how it wasn’t alright to ask a man how he got his name. Shit like that when she’d asked ‘em. Hex and Cypress were good sports about it, but we gave her warnin’ that it wasn’t okay to ask just anyone. That usually, you wait long enough, the story would come out on its own.

She’d blushed furious when Cypress flexed his neck when she asked about his.

“That’s somean,” she’d said, outraged on his behalf, and Hex and Cy had laughed.

“That’s what happens when you hang around a pack of assholes,” Cy’d said.

---