help people instead of turning into what our genes and our childhoods had in store for us. It was fate that out of all the people in the entire world, you chose Liam Black to target for a job.”
“Or maybe it was sheer stupidity.”
She ignores me. “And it was fate that he let you go not once, but twice.”
I crinkle my brow in confusion. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“You influenced him.”
She lets it sink in for a moment before continuing. “He didn’t hurt you. He wasn’t even angry about what you’d done. He followed you, and made smoldery bedroom eyes at you, and gave you his word you’d be safe with him, and kept his word by not using you in one of the million different ways a man like him could use a woman.”
This time her pause is longer. “Imagine if our mothers could’ve had any influence over our fathers. Imagine how much different so many people’s lives might have been.”
“Question: what have you been smoking?”
“Nothing.”
“Really? Because it sounds like you’re suggesting I should attempt to have some kind of influence over Killian Black’s evil empire.”
“I am. Wait—who’s Killian?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers and close my eyes. “Smoldery isn’t a word.”
Max’s voice drips sarcasm. “Oh, look, another random change of subject. Could it be because you don’t want to explain to the smarter of your two best friends that you’re hiding something about the hot criminal you keep pretending not to like?”
“I don’t like him,” I say between clenched teeth.
“Sure. And I’m Brad Pitt.”
“Nice to meet you, Brad. You’re so much more irritating in person.”
“I’m going to say something now. You’re not gonna like it.”
“Keeping in line with the general theme of the conversation.”
“If you can influence him to stop him from doing something bad, even one thing, you have an obligation to do it.”
I open my eyes and stare at the wall. “You’re right. I didn’t like it.”
We sit in tense silence for a while, unbroken only by the distant sounds of traffic drifting up from the street below. Then, trying to sound reasonable, Max says, “I’m not suggesting you should sleep with him.”
“Good, because my vagina is all out of the magic pixie dust that makes bad men do good things.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
“Oh, for god’s sake. Moving on. Have you seen anything on the news about the gunfight? I’ve been passed out since this morning.”
“Gunfight? What gunfight?”
“The one I was in after I left you guys at the Poison Pen.”
Silence.
“The one where like ten dead bodies were littering Birchland Avenue?”
“I’ve read two papers front to back today, I’ve watched the news, and I’ve been on the internet. There’s been nothing about a gunfight.”
Is he that powerful that he can keep a massacre off the news? I don’t think my father could even manage that.
“Hello? Anybody home?”
“Still here. Just thinking.”
“I know. I can smell the struggle. So this gunfight you were in. Spill.”
“Um. Some guys tried to kill us. Me. Well, I’m not exactly sure which one of us they were after, but Ki—Liam said he thought it was me. He said they were enemies of my father, which I didn’t think to clarify what exactly he meant by that because at the time he was carrying me. Which. You know. Is disorienting.”
In Max’s pause, I feel her astonishment. “Are you saying he knows who you are?”
“He does.”
Her voice rises to a shout. “And he still let you go?”
I see her point. I was the golden egg dropped onto his lap, a prize opportunity for him to stick it to a rival mob king, and he didn’t take it.
Why?
I chew my lip, unsure how to respond.
She takes pity on me and goes in another direction. “How did he find out who you are?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say. But he’s got an uncanny ability to do stuff like that. I think he might have friends in high places. Like government type high places. He said he ran a background check on me. He knew all kinds of weird stuff, like how I hadn’t been serious with someone in years.”
“That wouldn’t show up on a regular background check.”
“I know, that’s what I’m saying. And guess how he found us after we left the warehouse.”
“How?”
“He hacked an air force satellite.”
After a moment of thinking, Max says, “If he knew someone high level in the government, he wouldn’t have had to go to the trouble of hacking a satellite to find us. He