leave a voicemail for Fin and Max on a number designated for emergencies only.
Then, dead tired, I drop facedown onto the king-sized bed and go to sleep. I don’t dream. I don’t move. I fall off a cliff into grateful oblivion.
When I wake, the sun is setting in a spectacular golden light show over the Charles River. I take a shower, order a steak and a bottle of red wine from room service, and get dressed again in the same clothes I’ve been wearing from before I broke into the Irish mob king’s diaper warehouse and my whole world was turned upside down.
When the hotel phone on the desk rings, I answer with the name I checked in under. “Katniss Everdeen speaking.”
“It’s me.”
Sighing in relief, I sink into the desk chair and take a big swig of the wine. “Max. Thank god. Are you guys okay?”
“We’re fine. How was the date?”
“Ha ha.”
“I’m only asking because you sounded so hot and bothered in your message. We figured you and the crazy beautiful evil gangster got down to more than canoodling.”
“Why don’t you sound the least bit concerned that I could be dead right now?”
“You picked up the phone, dummy. Clearly, you’re not dead.”
“You know what I’m saying. He could’ve killed me!”
“Listen. When a man looks at a woman the way Liam Black looked at you, the only thing she’s in danger of is a punctured lung from his raging boner.”
Dear god. The inhumanity. I say drily, “Thanks for your prayers, Mother Teresa.”
“Tell the truth. He likes you.”
I chug the wine angrily.
Meanwhile, Max is laughing. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. He doesn’t want to hurt you, he wants to play footsie with you under the table with his giant feet. Which reminds me, did you get a look at the size of those puppies? I noticed them in the bar. The things are enormous. If all his body parts are that large, he probably could kill you with his boner.”
“This isn’t funny, Max. He could have done very bad things to me.”
“But he didn’t. You’re safe. Not only did he keep his word he wouldn’t harm you, he let you go…again.” She pauses. “What do you think that means?”
“That he likes playing games.”
“Maybe. Or maybe that he’s got a soul under all that smoking hot badassery.”
I snort. “A soul? Let’s not get carried away. He is who he is, after all.”
Except he told me to call him by a different name than the one everyone else calls him, and he’s done the opposite of everything I’ve expected him to do up to this point, so I really have no idea who he is at all. Or what he is, except a notorious gangster.
“I didn’t say who, lass. I said what.”
Whatever the hell he meant by that is just one more question to add to the growing pile.
Max says, “So when are you seeing him again?”
I reach into my pocket and run my finger along the edge of his little white card. “Hopefully, never. Change of subject: you ditched your burner phones, right?”
“Yes, we got rid of the burner phones.”
“Good. And you’re at your alternate safe spots? You weren’t followed? No one knows where to find you?”
Max answers with exaggerated patience. “That is correct, Sister Neurosis of the Immaculate Order of High Anxiety.”
“You act like I’m being unreasonable.”
After a weighted pause, Max says, “Did it ever occur to you that all this stuff we do to try to make amends for being who we are is a total waste of time? That if we really wanted to make a difference in the world, all it would take would be for each of us to put a bullet in our fathers’ brains?”
I blink in surprise. “Wow. The conversation has taken a dark turn.”
Her voice grows hard. “We could save countless lives by doing that, Jules. We could end so much suffering. But instead, we’re playing at being these underdog heroes who do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Or the right thing for the wrong reasons, I don’t fucking know.”
“Max—”
“My dad is one of the worst drug traffickers in the northern hemisphere. Fin’s dad sells weapons to whichever global anarchist or authoritarian hungry for power who’ll pay the most. Yours makes Michael Corleone look like a crybaby.”
I listen to her breathe hard for a moment before saying, “What’s your point?”
“When the three of us met at school when we were thirteen, that was fate. It was fate that we made a pact to