5

5

BARELY A FEW MINUTES later, a knock comes at the door. Mary Sue and I both straighten ourselves up, and then I head to the door.

“Gene?” I say in my sultriest voice as I crack open the door. Standing in the hall is a man in his late-forties to early-fifties. Thin, wiry frame complimented by wire-rimmed glasses. Hair gone completely grey. Not unhandsome, per se, but not Harrison Ford, either.

“Yes—Jessa? May I come in?” he asks—even if Zeke hadn’t already told me as much, I can tell from the confidence in his voice that he is no stranger to the courtesan profession and this is most definitely not his first rodeo. It will, however, be his last.

“Of course, sugar,” I respond, putting on a façade of seduction whilst I internally shrivel up in disgust.

I undo the door latch, and step aside so he can enter. A look of confusion spreads across his face when he sees Mary Sue—Ming—sitting on the bed.

“What’s going on?” He asks, his voice betraying his concerns of being conned.

“She’s in training,” I respond, placing a hand calmingly on his chest. “You get two for the price of one.”

“Me ruv you rong time,” Mary Sue ‘helpfully’ adds to the conversation.

I strain a couple facial muscles resisting the urge to roll my eyes. Then, acting as if Mary Sue had not said anything at all, I ask, “That’s not a problem is it?”

For a moment—a brief moment, mind you—suspicion lingers in his face, no doubt fearing he is about to be up-priced or caught in a police sting, but after looking back and forth between myself and Mary Sue a few times, his male-ness wins out over his suspicion and he replies, “No, no. No problem at all.”

Pig.

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out an unmarked envelope, and ‘discreetly’ places it on the desk by the door. I nod at Mary Sue, who gets up and takes the envelope into the restroom to count Senator Keeley’s ‘donation.’

While she counts, I lead the senator toward the bed and help him relieve himself of his jacket, which I drape over the desk chair. He sits on the edge of the bed and I sit behind him, rubbing his shoulders, and ask, “So, what brings to you the City of Angels, handsome?”

“Oh . . . just in on business,” he replies.

For a politician, he sure is a crappy liar, so it’s probably just as well Mary Sue and I will be relieving him of his responsibilities shortly.

Mary Sue steps out of the bathroom and I give her an inquiring glance, to which she only nods in response. “Looks like we’re good to go, sweetie,” I say, as I slide out from behind him and let Mary Sue take my place, rubbing his neck, as I climb onto his lap, straddling him as I begin to kiss him—trying not to gag as he shoves his tongue practically down my throat. I distract myself by keeping my purse—and the knife within—in the sideline of my vision, just within my reach on the nightstand.

Mary Sue starts to kiss his neck, and the next thing I notice is his hand sliding up my thigh, under my dress. Every muscle in my body tenses with utter disgust, and then . . .

I honestly can’t tell you what happened. I must have blacked out or something, because next thing I know I’m standing over the senator, breathing heavily, knife in hand, and absolutely drenched in his blood.

Mary Sue is still sitting on the bed behind the senator, her jaw hanging open slightly. “You could’ve at least let me have some of the fun,” she says, though the tremor in her voice betrays the sarcastic quip really was just to cover up the fact that I have startled her—and I can tell you Mary Sue, despite her ditzy nature, is not easily startled.

I look down at the blood-soaked senator and suddenly realize he’s not quite dead—yet. Blood bubbles out of the corner of his mouth as he sputters out his dying breaths.

Suddenly, his eyes glaze over—but it is not the glaze of death . . . no, this is something . . . different. Trust me, I’ve seen the ‘glaze of death’ enough times to be able to recognize it.

There is still consciousness in his eyes—probably more consciousness than there had been moments before—but now there’s something of a distant, crazed glint to his glare. More intent, more focused. If I believed in Voodoo magic, the combination of this horrifying glare and his bloody visage would make me think he’d turned into a zombie.

“Sarah . . . ” the senator rasps in an unearthly voice, sending an ice-cold chill into every bone in my body, “Nick . . . says . . . hi . . . ”

And then, he is dead.

***

Mary Sue and I say no words—we both know what needs to be done. Mary Sue leaves to go buy me a new dress, as the one I am currently wearing is forever ruined with blood stains, and we’d like to be able to leave the motel and return to headquarters without being arrested.

While she is out, I retreat to the bathroom, peel off the bloody dress, and step into the shower. I turn up the water as hot as I can stand, but it does nothing to erase the chill that has penetrated every marrow of my body—and the senator’s last words play an endless loop in my mind.

“Sarah . . . Nick . . . says . . . hi . . . ”

With each repetition of the haunting loop, a fresh shiver of chills travels through my body.

I stay in the shower until the draining puddle of water at my feet no longer shows even the faintest hint of red, then turn the water off and step out into the frigid air of the bathroom. I wrap myself in a towel and crumple into a ball in a corner of the restroom—every nerve in my body trembling.

But I don’t cry. I haven’t cried in nearly fifteen years.

I stay that way for I don’t know how long. Fifteen, thirty minutes. Hell, it could be an hour for all I know.

I’m snapped back to reality by the sound of the motel room door opening, signaling Mary Sue’s return. There is a knock on the bathroom door, and then it opens a crack, just enough for Mary Sue’s hand to slip through, holding a brand new dress (one much more comfortable and less skimp than the one tainted with the ex-senator’s blood).

I force myself to pull together, pick myself up off the floor, and cross the bathroom to take the proffered dress. Mary Sue’s hand disappears, the door closes, and I pull the dress over my head. I look at myself in the mirror, and a stranger looks back at me—though not just because of my altered appearance.

The dress Mary Sue picked out is a flowery sundress—normally this would be way too girly for my tastes, but right now I couldn’t care less about anything like that. All I want is to get out of this motel room and away from that fucking senator’s corpse as soon as possible.

I wrap the blood-soaked dress in a towel and step out of the bathroom to find Mary Sue is already set to leave, both of our purses in hand. She opens up my purse for me to drop the towel with the ruined dress inside, and as I do so I see she had already retrieved the knife and put it inside the purse, as well.

We don’t bother wiping down the room for fingerprints—one of the perks of being a T.H.E.M. agent is your fingerprints are automatically expunged from any and all police records.

We leave the room in silence and head out of the hotel lobby—the clerk probably confused by my change of wardrobe, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about that right now. It isn’t until we are on the highway, headed back towards headquarters, that Mary Sue breaks the awkward silence and says, “What the fuck just happened?”

“Fucked if I know,” I respond dryly. The severity of the situation is marked by the fact that Mary Sue does not offer her usual response of, “Then you better find out.”

Instead, all she says is, “So, what do we do now?”

“Only one thing to do,” I respond.

I pull out my phone and text Zeke, “Job is done. We need to speak. NOW. Face-to-face. It’s about Nick.”

Barely seconds have passed before I get an aggravating one-word response: “Fine.”