The doorbell rang, rousing Brinley from her sleep on the couch. She opened the door—“Mom?”—and thought for a moment she was hallucinating from the stress she was under, but her mother smiled and opened her arms. The familiarity of it came close to making her cry. “Oh my God, thank you for never listening to me.”
“You’re not mad?” Wilma tightened her hold and kissed her temple.
“Are you kidding? I’m so glad you’re here. I feel like I’m either crazy or in over my head.” Brinley didn’t let go right away, needing the safety she always associated with her mother. The disorienting feeling of losing everything that was familiar to her as well as the uncertainty of what she was doing had set her adrift.
“Baby, you’re the smartest accountant I know, so I doubt you’re either of those things.” Wilma stared at all the ledgers and open files on her kitchen table and sighed as if in disapproval.
“I’m telling you, Mom, there’s something fishy about all this, and my work partner acts like someone is listening to everything we say. Jarrell and his crazy mother are starting to look better and better.”
“You haven’t talked to Naomi about all that?”
“All she keeps saying is not to ask questions, and she doesn’t appear too anxious to give me any answers about any of this. It’s like she’s truly scared about something, but she won’t say what it is. For now I figure the answers are in there”—she pointed to all the paperwork—“but the numbers keep leaving me with more questions.”
“Okay, how about this.” She took Brinley’s hand and patted it. “You look beat, and nothing makes sense when you’re this tired, so you go to bed and get some sleep. I’ll take a glance at what you have.”
“Trust me, I’d rather spend the rest of the night catching up with you.”
“I would too, but you really do look tired. Take me up on my offer. Back home we worked on stuff together all the time, and no one was the wiser. Besides, I won’t make any changes to your work, and I’ll follow your flow for any reports you need to finish.”
“Are you sure?” Brinley couldn’t think of anything better than her pillow.
“You’re exhausted, honey, and I slept on the plane. Go to bed and let me do what I came for, and that’s to help you.” Brinley didn’t protest being led to her room and getting tucked in. “Get some sleep, and we’ll talk some more in the morning.”
“Thanks, Mom, but come get me if you have any questions. I feel horrible for dumping all this on you right off, but I love you.”
“It’s not dumping it on me if I volunteered, and I love you too. All you need to believe is there are plenty of jobs out there if this one doesn’t work out. You’re good at what you do, and any company would be lucky to have you.” She kissed Brinley’s forehead and combed her hair back.
“I’m sure you’re right, but part of me really wants to know the answer.”
“Let’s see what the hell all this is about, and I can help you decide what the best move is.” Wilma stood and kissed her forehead again. “Get some sleep and it’ll make more sense if you’re not exhausted.”
Five hours later, feeling more rested than she had since her arrival in Vegas, Brinley hugged her mother again. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”
“I’m your mother, and I’ll always know when you need me, but I’m glad I’m here too.” Wilma handed Brinley a cup of coffee and pointed to a chair. “We need to talk about this place you work.”
“What do you think?” Brinley tapped her finger on the ceramic mug in her hand and chewed on her bottom lip.
“The only way any of that makes sense is your bosses are laundering massive amounts of money. It’s the only reasonable explanation for the unpredictable part of gambling that’s become more than predictable in those books.”
“That’s what I thought too, but I didn’t want to overreach by having an overactive imagination. Hell, you see this stuff in movies, but you don’t expect it right in your face.” Brinley sipped her coffee and shook her head. “Maybe this is why Dean asked us for the audit.”
“Honey, you know I don’t want to come out and tell you what to do, but if there’s any truth in those movies, it’s that you shouldn’t take this lightly. No one launders money for a pack of nuns. These are bad people, and you need to get out of there. This isn’t something you can take a chance on.”
“You don’t think I’m in danger, do you?” Brinley shook her head without a lot of enthusiasm. “I actually thought about it briefly, but I’m a nobody. The nobody only gets killed if they’re in the wrong place.”
“Or they see something they shouldn’t. This doesn’t feel right to me.” Wilma placed her hand on the box of files. “Not to knock your skills, but I don’t understand why they put you on this as your first assignment. Internal audits are usually done because you’re trying to find theft—not because you’re rolling in cash. That’s the other thing that makes no sense. As to your other theory, there’s no way in hell your boss doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“Do you have any theories?” Brinley was sure of her skills, but her mother had way more experience.
“I’m sure I’m wrong, but this assignment seems like busywork. It’s like they’re trying to prove something they already know. An audit seems to me like a total waste of time.”
“That’s true too, but quitting now might ruin my chances of getting another job somewhere else. I don’t want to come off as some kind of flake.”
“All you need to do is look for something off the Strip. There’s enough of a variety of industries here for you to find a place without all this going on. Think about Finn. You don’t need to put yourself in danger for a paycheck.”
Brinley stood and put her arms around her. “Thank you, and as always, you’re right. Let me get all that stuff back to them and break the news. I’ll tell them I have a family emergency I have to deal with, and I don’t want to hold them back. The only thing I’ll miss is my friendship with Naomi, but I’ll call her in a week or so and touch base.”
“I love you, and I think you’re making the right choice. We don’t really know any of these people and we can’t guess what their motives are.”
Finn came out of his room and screamed in delight when he saw her. Brinley knew her mom had missed her, but she had a special need to see her grandson, and she couldn’t blame her.
“Hey, cutie,” Wilma said, scooping him up and kissing both his cheeks.
Brinley smiled and fixed a cup of juice for him. “Why don’t you take a nap, and I’ll get him ready. Today’s his first day at the new day care, and I don’t want to lose my spot. Harvard would’ve been easier to get into, and I think it’ll be a place he’ll like when I go back to work. Once I’m done today we’ll come back and take you out to lunch.”
“I’ll take both of you out to lunch, so hurry back.”
“This shouldn’t take long at all.”
* * *
“Do you understand what I’m asking for?” the client asked Reed. It was the second call of the morning to give the final instructions for what they needed done.
Reed hated men who spoke to people as though they were better than anyone around them. She kept her tone even. “I understood you the first time, so send me a picture and address and it’s done.”
“It’ll be in your messages as soon as I hang up.”
Reed held the phone, waiting for the text that would mean a two-hundred-thousand-dollar payday. Why Robert Wallace would spend the cash on someone who was basically a nobody made her curious, but she figured Little Bobby was making an example of whoever this woman was.
Little Bobby’s fixer, Alex, had called the night before, following the directions she’d insisted on when he’d called at the diner, and she recognized his voice from their previous conversations about other jobs, even if Alex had no idea who she was. Robert Wallace had fucked up so many times, he could be her only client if she took every contract. This could be another one of his screwups, and if the woman had stolen from Wallace, she understood punishment, but this was a bit excessive. Whatever the reason, all that mattered was it was Little Bobby’s dime.
Her phone buzzed and she studied the picture of the blond woman. She was beautiful despite the awful employee ID photo, which was a waste, but that had nothing to do with the job that had to be done. The address wasn’t far from where she was. She planned to make the hit look like a car accident.
“Must be my lucky day,” she said as she took a left and headed over a few blocks to the nice apartment complex. “Oscar.” She parked outside the gate.
“Did asshole Alex give you a name, finally?”
“Brinley Myers, and unless I’m wrong, that’s not someone in management over there.”
“Give me a second.” She heard him tapping keys rapidly. “Ms. Myers is driving a navy blue Toyota 4Runner with Louisiana plates. That should be easy to spot even if in an apartment complex.”
The vehicle was easy to spot as it turned right out of the lot, and she didn’t take any precautions as she started following, figuring the woman wasn’t expecting anyone to be doing so. “What’s the story on Myers?” She kept driving but Myers wasn’t headed to the Moroccan, and if she was, she’d picked the strangest possible way to get there.
“I don’t know what she could’ve done that would’ve landed her on our radar,” Oscar said, his voice fading away as if he was distracted by something.
“What’s that mean?” she asked as they made another turn. “And where the hell is she going?” Myers took a few more turns, and the only explanation she could think of for this circuitous route to the casino was that Brinley Myers was new to town and had the directional sense of a confused homing pigeon.
“She’s been at the Moroccan, like, a week and a bit, and she’s only been in town three weeks. What exactly could’ve gone wrong in that amount of time? That doesn’t sound like someone Little Bobby would waste his time, much less money, on.”
“You’re right.” She slowed when Myers made an unexpected turn, and for a second she thought she’d been spotted and Myers was stopping to confront her. “You got anything else?”
“That’s it. Brinley Myers is an accountant who obviously pissed off the wrong people in record time. She should’ve stayed in New Orleans with her—”
“Child,” Reed said when Brinley got out, reached into the back, and carried out a toddler. “Fuck.” That could’ve been her and her own mother a million years ago, if her mother had actually been a responsible adult.
“What, you don’t have a shot?” Oscar asked, and she had no good answer. Caring about any mark wasn’t supposed to happen—not ever. That rule was sacrosanct, but shooting a woman holding her kid…that was out of the question.
“Let me call you back.” She punched the steering wheel hard three times.
All the contracts she’d taken were easy, they’d always been easy. She aimed, she fired, she drove away to get paid. None of those marks clouded her mind or haunted her dreams because none of them mattered. They were, in a way, all like Victor in that they did bad shit for most of their lives, so their deaths shouldn’t have been a shock to them.
This woman, though, was different. She looked innocent, and that Reed had no experience with. Killing an innocent wasn’t in her makeup, and she couldn’t make herself aim and fire. She might’ve been emotionally stunted, but she wasn’t dead inside.
That rash decision had the potential to blow her world to shit. You couldn’t lie, collect the fee, and send the supposedly dead person back to their lives. The truth always came out, somehow.
Brinley Myers glanced back and held her kid tighter when Reed sped across the street, her tires squealing, and slammed to a stop next to her. The way Brinley’s eyes widened when she saw the gun in her hand was expected, but her turning away from her when she raised it was not. It was as if Brinley was protecting her kid from what was about to happen. It was foolish and courageous, but they were in the game now. She parked her car and got out.
“Put him back in his car seat and make it fast. Don’t make me say it again.” She lowered the gun to not attract attention, and watched as Myers did what she asked.
Brinley threw the diaper bag in the back seat and strapped the kid in as she kept glancing back at her. Her expression was one of fear and it was obvious she was trying to figure out what to do.
“If you want, take my purse and go. I don’t have much cash, but you can take my credit cards.”
“Less talking and more buckling.” She got into the driver’s seat and pushed it back to accommodate her legs. “If you don’t want me to leave with the kid, get next to me when you’re done, and it’s no time to get cute. Don’t yell, and hand your cell phone over.”
“Why are you doing this?” Brinley asked when Reed pulled into traffic. The kid was surprisingly quiet in the back, but Reed could hear him kicking the seat rhythmically.
“Shut up and let me think.” She took the streets that would avoid the Strip and started making her way out of town. Maybe by the time they got where they were going, she’d come back to reality and finish the job.
The desert outside Vegas had plenty of mythology to go with it, and a lot of it was on the money. This was a place where you could bury either your secrets or your mistakes, and the elements would erase all trace of them. Once they’d gone about fifteen miles, Reed turned off and drove down one of the county roads until she couldn’t see the highway. The deserted spot had a line of boulders, and from experience Reed knew these areas were only popular with off-roaders.
Reed put the car in park and placed her gun back in her shoulder holster. That didn’t seem to bring down Brinley’s freak factor. “Look—”
“Please, whatever you’re going to do, don’t do it in front of my son. I’ll give you whatever you want if you don’t hurt him.” Brinley’s tears were falling, and her emotions seemed to be in overload as she sucked in breaths between words.
“Mama,” the little boy said, as if he realized how upset his mother was.
“Ms. Myers, not to sound like some cheap hustler, but if I wanted to hurt you, you’d be dead and already lying out there bloating.” The way she put it made Brinley cry harder. “Look,” she said louder, and the kid start crying too. “Oh, fuck me.”
Reed took the keys out of the ignition and got out. She slammed the door, walked to the back of the vehicle, and glanced at the dust that still hadn’t settled on the road.
How any animal or plant lived in this misery was amazing, and the fact that she was out here thinking about fucking minutiae instead of completing her contract meant she was losing her mind. Killing this woman would’ve been easy if Reed didn’t have a mental image of that kid ending up in foster care. Oscar hadn’t mentioned a father, so killing his mother probably meant the kid would be in the same spot she was in, years down the line. If he lived that long.
She went back and started the car again since the few minutes of her being outside had raised the temperature to uncomfortable. “Stop crying,” she said in a gentler tone.
“I’m sorry,” Brinley said, her voice hoarse but her tears still falling.
“What did you do for Robert Wallace?”
“Who?”
Reed clenched her jaw and made a fist. “If you start off lying, this isn’t going to last long, and believe me, you’re really not going to like the ending.”
“I’ve been here less than a month, and I don’t know anyone named Wallace.”
Reed tapped on the steering wheel and exhaled as a way to regain her patience. “He’s the CEO of the Moroccan, and you work there.” She turned slightly to face Brinley, and Brinley plastered her body to the passenger door. The move made her laugh. “You can see why your answer of Who? makes me think you’re full of shit.”
“You can believe me or not, but I really haven’t been in town that long. I do work at the Moroccan, but my boss is Dean Jasper, and I work with Naomi Williams. Robert Wallace might run the place, but he’s never been to accounting, and we’ve never met.” It sounded truthful since it took Brinley forever to get it out through a fresh bout of tears and shuddering breaths.
“Could you stop crying, for fuck’s sake?” She pressed two fingers to her forehead on the spot where a headache was beginning. Hysterical women weren’t part of her norm—ever. Add to that a screaming kid, and Reed had entered the twilight zone.
“Why are you doing this?” Brinley asked, and that got the kid really going with his shrieking.
“Fuck me,” she said softly, not able to think because of the noise. It was time to crash back to reality and get this over with.
“Please,” Brinley said. “At least tell me why.”
“I’m not the answer person, lady, I’m only fulfilling a contract. You must’ve done something, and if you don’t want to admit it, that’s your problem. You can take it to your grave.” She lifted her hand and wrapped her fingers around the butt of her gun.
“Wait!” Brinley opened her door and got out, but didn’t run.
It was the act of a good mother, or what Reed assumed a good mother did. “It’s not personal.” Reed walked to the passenger side and unholstered her gun. “It’s just a job.”
Brinley fell to her knees when she raised the weapon and aimed it at Brinley’s head. She pulled the trigger without any more thought, wanting it over—and then it was.