Smoke

Aaron

Marcus Vance could smile while he slid a blade between your ribs. It was the only talent of his I respected.

The Capitol Club's private lounge was paneled in mahogany and smelled like cigars, old leather and a hundred years of men deciding things other people would pay for. At two in the morning it held only the two of us, a fire nobody needed and a waiter who had learned to be furniture.

I sat in a wingback chair with a bourbon I hadn't touched and my keys beside it.

Marcus swirled his. He'd traded the tuxedo for a cashmere sweater, the costume of a man who wanted you to believe he'd been relaxing. His eyes were red at the rims. He had not been relaxing.

Elena's text had come in at 1:14. Vance wants you at the Capitol Club. Tonight. I came because refusing would have told him something, and I don't give Marcus Vance anything for free.

"My people tell me you gave my daughter a ride tonight," he said.

"It was raining."

He smiled as if I'd made a joke. I hadn't.

"She's impulsive," he said. "Always has been. I'd consider it a personal favor if you didn't encourage it."

"Is that why I'm here?"

"No." He set down his glass. "You're here because I moved the shipping vote to Friday."

"Three weeks early. After we agreed to table it."

"Politics, Aaron. The environmental lobby is breathing down my neck. I had to give them something."

"Twenty percent on my freight lines isn't a concession," I said. "It's a shakedown. What do you want?"

The smile slipped a fraction. Underneath it was the man I knew, the one who never made a move he couldn't send someone else the bill for.

"Vale Logistics needs a primary contractor for the West Coast ports," he said. "Your lines. Your backing on the merger. Nathan is going to be my son-in-law…"

"Is he?"

"…and family looks after family. Give Vale the contracts, and Friday's vote goes away."

There it was. A bribe so naked it should have been wearing a coat. He'd said it out loud, in a room with a waiter in it, because nobody had ever made him pay for saying anything.

"I don't do business with Nathan Vale," I said.

"Aaron…"

"His books are a mess. I don't prop up failing companies for family reasons."

The doors burst open.

"Ma'am!" A security guard's voice came from the hall. "Ma'am, you can't…"

She came through them like weather.

Raven Vance.

She was soaked through. The champagne silk from the Vale party had gone dark and torn at the hem, and her boots left wet prints on a rug older than both of us. Her hair was plastered to her face. There was soot on her cheekbones, soot on her throat, soot ground into her hands. I could smell the smoke on her from across the room.

And she was wearing my jacket.

It hung off her shoulders, streaked black, rain dripping from the cuffs. The right-hand pocket sagged, pulling the wool out of shape with the dead, specific weight that only one thing in the world has.

A 9mm. In my jacket.

Fascinating.

But it was her eyes that held me. Gray and burning, as if something had been lit behind them and nobody had come to put it out.

I leaned back in my chair, crossed one leg over the other and watched.

Marcus was on his feet. "Raven?" Embarrassment first. Then anger. He glanced at me, then at her. "What in God's name… Look at you. How did you even get past the front desk?"

She didn't answer. She walked straight to him and stopped a few feet away, and her right hand drifted, very casually, toward the sagging pocket.

The waiter found somewhere else to be.

"Where is he?" she said.

She didn't yell. That was what made the room go cold.

Marcus smoothed his sweater. "Where is who? Sweetheart, you're interrupting a meeting."

"Don't." Her voice cracked like ice on a lake. "Jace's garage burned to the ground tonight. Someone poured gasoline across the office door. He's gone. His truck is still at the curb, his phone goes straight to voicemail, and nobody knows where he is."

"A fire?" Marcus pressed a hand to his chest. "That's terrible. Truly." He shook his head. "Those old buildings on Ninth. The wiring down there must be a disaster."

Raven went very still.

So did I.

Eight days ago, I had sat behind a hedge on Greystone Heights with my window cracked two inches. I had heard him say old wiring then, too.

He wasn't denying anything. He was telling her, in front of me. He wanted me to hear it.

"It wasn't the wiring," Raven said. "You know it wasn't. Your SUVs followed me all night. You threatened him to my face. Tell me where he is."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Marcus sat back down, crossed his legs and reached for his drink. "I've spent the last three hours cleaning up after you humiliated this family and the Vales on every phone in the state. I haven't given your little mechanic a single thought."

I watched him. His pulse was steady above his collar. His hands didn't shake. He was a superb liar; I'd sat across enough tables from him to know that.

But his right hand went to his left cuff and turned the cufflink. Once.

He was lying. I just couldn't tell yet which part was the lie.

Raven stood there for ten long seconds. I watched her try every door in her head and find every one of them locked. Screaming wouldn't work. The gun wouldn't work. Her father held every card on the table, and he was perfectly happy to let her watch him hold them.

Then something in her changed.

The fire went out of her eyes. What came in behind it was worse. Flat, cold, completely calm.

She took one step closer to her father.

"You think I'm still the girl who walked out with a duffel bag," she said quietly. "I'm not. I know where you keep things, Dad. The Cayman accounts. The permits you signed for the Vales. Every envelope Briggs ever carried out of your office." She paused. "And I know what was in the lake-house safe."

Marcus's hand went to his cufflink again.

"If Jace has so much as a bruise on him," she said, "I will burn down everything you own. And unlike you, I won't need gasoline."

For a moment, nobody breathed.

Then Marcus laughed. It was fake, yet confident. "Destroy me." He shook his head, amused now. "With what, sweetheart? Your tips?"

She didn't move.

"You park cars, Raven. You're nineteen days late on a room over a laundromat." His eyes flicked to the jacket, then to me, then back to her. "Go home. Take a shower. And give Mr. Allison back his jacket."

She didn't answer him.

Her left hand had slipped into the other pocket of my jacket. Whatever she was holding in it. Then she turned and walked out.

She passed my chair without a glance. The wet hem of her dress brushed my shoe.

The doors swung shut behind her, and the room went back to smelling like cigars and old money.

"Theatrics," Marcus said as he crossed to the sideboard and poured himself another bourbon he didn't need. "None of this changes anything," he said, with his back to me. "Vale gets your West Coast lines, or the tax passes Friday. Twenty percent, Aaron. On every container you own."

I finally drank mine. One swallow. It had gone warm.

Then I stood and buttoned my jacket.

"You overplayed your hand," I said.

He turned around, smiling. The red rims of his eyes ruined it. "I'm holding every card at this table."

"Then play them." I set down the empty glass. "I don't leave survivors."

I was halfway to the door when he spoke again. "Aaron."

I stopped.

"Stay away from my daughter."

I didn't answer.

The Capitol Club kept its members' cars two levels under the street. White light. Fresh paint. Somewhere overhead, rain hammered the entrance ramp.

I reached into my pocket for my keys.

Empty.

The other pocket. Empty. The inside pocket, which was pointless, because I already knew.

Across the garage, my headlights flashed twice. The locks chirped.

Someond was letting me into my own car.

I opened the driver's door, and smoke rolled out to meet me.

Tobacco.

She was curled up in the passenger seat in my jacket, soot running down her jaw, a cigarette between two blackened fingers.

The glove box hung open. My pack sat on her knee with the cellophane torn off.

Eleven years, that seal had held.

She had broken it before I finished my bourbon.

I held out my hand. "The keys."