MJ 6B: Case of the Curse Pt 2

This orgasm galloped up on me and slammed into my body as if from the outside. I shouted and shuddered, and suddenly he grabbed me, switched his mouth to the other side, and lifted my slightly, slamming his hips into mine.

It changed the angle and drew my orgasm out and soon he joined me, his whole body tensing as he came inside me, grunting against my skin with feverish kisses.

We collapsed panting together and I held onto him, exhausted, dizzy, and replete. If any doubts were beginning to creep into my head comparing this interlude to past times I'd fucked men involved in my cases (I took a love of bad boys to the extreme) I pushed it out, rolled off to sit on the towel, reaching across the small span to my desk for my cigarettes. I lit two and passed him one, inhaling my own deeply.

"So what do we do now?" He asked softly in a rumbling voice tinged with embarrassment. It was oddly endearing, I was far too jaded to get embarrassed about sex. Emotion was a different story but this had been purely physical, animal in intensity. And damn it, I felt hollow and oddly disappointed in myself.

"We get cleaned up, we order some food, and we do some research. Find out if there is any way to press this fence Dana who's waiting for Ellie to show up day after tomorrow. Find out who Bain hired to coordinate all this shit. At the same time we'll track down this Priestess Georgette and see what she can get us. In short we follow any lead we can but you have to stick close to me. Bain can afford good assassins, but two targets together are harder to get than one."

"And you think you're better than they are?"

I had come close to dying more times than I could count but I was still there, still breathing, still shooting. "Yeah," I said and blew out a large smoke ring. "Oh, yeah."

***

We'd spent the night on the computer and phone, eating mediocre Chinese from a new place across the street, and we'd fucked another time before bed, no blood. I had to admit, without the biting and his desperate need for it...I'd had better, and the desolate feeling returned.

I tried hard not to think of how it felt with Finn. Goddamn good in the physical sense, frustrating intellectually, and yet emotionally...not quite right, but not quite wrong.

I was thinking that, and confronting Finn in a bar, the Purple Rose. The Purple Rose had been a VIP club for the underworld run by my ex-boyfriend (How silly that sounded in my head for a woman my age) and I'd lived this scene a thousand times since one fateful night. The players were there: Harwood the owner, looking slick and almost Italian against the bar talking to Alabaster, a pimp and dealer I'd grown up with who had his pinky toe perched on the bottom of every dirty ladder. Stormy sat in a booth, a porn actress who'd been fucking Finn and with each dream I realized more and more how much we'd looked alike. Dream...the word faded like a distant echo.

Finn and I were arguing, gibberish about sex and love and lust when the shots rang out. A man in profile, always profile, shot Stormy and Harwood and they fell to the ground bleeding out faster than even an arterial hit could.

Alabaster hobbled with unseen wounds over to me and Finn as we could only watch the faceless assassin disappear, laughing with a neutral timbre.

"It's not over, Marly. But it will be soon." Alabaster grinned at me with a gold tooth and then melted into a puddle of pure black on the floor.

I woke screaming and felt a large body next to me on the pull out couch. I fucked people in my home/office, but no one slept over, and my brain was foggy with sleep and whiskey.

I was going for my gun when he woke. "Marly!"

The fog cleared. I hated that dream. Finn and I had been accused of the murders and when Finn had skipped town, skipped out on me, I had faced both accusations in a court room. I had not won or lost, but merely ended those trails with hung juries. At any moment I could face trial again. Figures Finn would enter my life again just when everything blew up now that I had an insane jeweler ginning for me.

"What happened?" Nikolas asked. I sat down with a sigh when a faint tapping at my office door sounded.

"Marly?" A faint voice called from the other side of the door. It was Finn.

"Shhh," I said to Nikolas and began handing him his clothes.

"Marly, I heard you scream, open up." Finn said louder now.

"Give me a minute1" I yelled to the door and searched for Nikolas' pants. "Go into the bathroom and turn on the shower," I said to Nikolas. I passed him everything including his boots and locked him in. I sat on the floor behind my desk, hiding, and lit a cigarette, waiting for him to go on.

The unmistakable sound of a kit being used on my lock sounded, so with a groan I stood and found my gun, clearing it as the frosted-glass door swung open.

Finn was smiling, saw the gun, saw my ripped shirt hanging on my shoulders, saw the bites, and sniffed the air like a dog. Then he snarled. I rolled my eyes and braced for the assault.

"Marly," he growled and took a step closer.

I shot the floor. He jumped and cursed in three languages, truly surprised. The bullet lodged in the floor, ruining a marble tile, but you don't plunk down several thousand on a floor without a few spare tiles in the closet.

"Jesus! The cops will come!"

"It's Saturday morning, the cleaning crew ain't even here yet, so no one heard that. I will shoot you if you don't calm down."

His beautiful blue eyes narrowed. "You could never kill me."

I sighed, not awake enough yet to bluff. "Probably not but an extremity shot is very painful and I may hit some nerves by accident and make you limp for life."

He put his hands down and if looks could kill, I'd be dead. "Is that Nikolas Meyers in your shower?"

"It doesn't matter, perhaps I seduced the delivery boy from Huang Gardens."

He crossed his arms and glared harder, which I had deemed impossible. "Knowing you, I wouldn't doubt it."

Was that a veiled slut insult from a man who'd likely fucked every woman between 18-80 in the country? "Why are you here, Finn?"

"I did some checking. Word on the street is Bain has a bounty out on your Meyers, has two men watching Dana, and a tail on you and me, who works for some PI named Richards. That's who Bain hired to look into us and there's a lot of traffic to the files at Cook County that hold your recent court records."

"Glad you caught up. Yes, that's Meyers in my shower, he's staying here so I can keep an eye on him."

"Looks like more than your eyes. I thought I was the only one you liked biting you." His voice dropped to a sensual purr no mortal woman could resist. I'd been feeling superhuman for a few years and just snorted and lowered the gun.

He was angry but I knew he considered Nikolas an unknown, and I could control Finn with information. He wouldn't do anything rash until he thought he had everything figured out.

I grabbed the tape recorder and pressed play. "Listen to this."

While he heard the conversation I'd recorded I got dressed and relit my cigarette, watching his face darken more and more.

"So you can see we knew everything you did, but not that it was Richards digging up our mutual dirt."

"We're going to have to kill Bain."

I shrugged noncommittally and blew out a puff of smoke. "First we need to find Eleanor and make sure Nikolas is safe."

"Nikolas, is it? And I'm still just Finn to you...Christ I don't even get my full last name, do you even know it?"

That won him my best eye roll. "I know your middle name is Francis, please. This is not about you and me, this is about two innocent, completely fucked-up but innocent people caught up with this crazy bastard. I'm bad, but not as bad as you, Finn! I can't just walk away and let innocent people die."

"So what will you do? You're willing to die for two crazy rich kids trying to run away from home in their mid-twenties?"

"I'm not willing to die for anyone! Not you, not him, not even for my damn principles. I'm willing to live, and I have a helluva lot of mistakes to make up for."

He folded his arms and looked at me as if he could peel away my skin and peer inside. "You mean it. You think I'm abhorrent."

I raised my eyebrow at the word. He had a damn fine mind on him, but like anyone raised in the streets he kept it hidden well. He must truly be irked. "I've lived through your lies, manipulations...I've seen you lure women onto boats to die, and I've seen you shoot people first and ask questions later. Hanging around with you has made me broke, dependent on mobsters, and on trial for murder! How could I think you are anything else!?!"

"And it's left you free, spiffed up your office, and handed you huge million dollar cases. And I have personally saved your delicious ass more times than I can count."

My bones chilled. "Montgomery, Petrov...Bain...it's been you. You're the one who's put me in danger! All these horrible, horrible cases that come along and blow my world up, they're your fault!" I stubbed my cigarette out and crossed my arms. "Get out. Get out of my office, get out of my life, get out Finn!"

He stood and considered, weighing options in his eyes. I was pissed, beyond screaming and name calling, right into the bullet-between-the-eyes kind of rage that won juror sympathy.

"Do you think this will make you happy? Fuck this kid and then find his girlfriend, watch them ride into the sunset together? Does it make you happy fucking a man who doesn't know you? Does he know you like it rough? Does he know you like a thumb in your ass when you're fucked from behind?"

I stormed over and went to slap him. Finn caught my arm and leaned in so close I could smell his aftershave. "That's it, isn't it? You don't want to get involved with me because I know you, Marly. I know the real you. I know everything about you."

"Not everything. Let go."

"No." He tried to stare me down.

"If you really knew me, you'd know why I was so much happier when you lived two thousand miles away!"

His eye ticked and the staring contest resumed.

Into this Nikolas stepped in the room, wet hair slicked back, leather pants hanging open making him look pale and damn near truly vampiric. He looked from Finn and to me like a slow motion tennis match.

Finn's face took on an impassive façade the was new to me and he simply dropped my hand, turned, and left. It happened so quickly I could only blink. Was he gone to his car for a bigger gun? Was he gone to sulk for a couple of days, a couple of months? Or was he truly gone from my life, backtracking those miles to his home in California?

"What just happened there?" Nikolas asked.

"I need to talk to someone and you have to stay here. Order a pizza if you like but watch the window to see them at the buzzer downstairs. The computer's yours, I don't watch TV, and nothing from the liquor cabinet that's on a mahogany shelf. Got it?"

"Where are you going?"

"To talk to someone and buy us some time." I buttoned the shirt and found my pants, then grabbed my coat and my gun, slipped on my sunglasses, and headed out with grim determination.

When the past is confusing, blaze into the future. It was a lesson I knew all too well.

***

Franklin Richards hadn't been a cop like me before becoming a PI; he'd been a skip tracer, a recovery agent, in other words a bounty hunter. I'm sure there were classy ones out there but they were usually men the size of mountains with tattoos and missing teeth, reading and writing skills minimal.

His office was a store front wedged between an alderman's and a laundermat, and the front windows were papered-over with dissected grocery bags. Inside it was storage lockers, computers, gizmos, a safe, and Richards behind his desk wearing a suit with the ease a monkey would wear a suit of armor.

He looked like Telly Savalas on steroids, if Telly had full sleeve and neck tattoos visible under an open collar and rolled up cuffs. He smiled at me with two teeth missing, one replaced with a gold tooth. My mind flashed to alabaster, an extremely thin black man, and the commonality was unsettling.

"Let's cut the crap, Richards, it's not a social visit. Bain hired you to find out what cops couldn't about the Harwood and Michaels cases, and more about me and Michael Finnegan. Why?"

"Marly, so nice to see you. Hard to find a woman who can handle a man's...piece so well."

I sat down and snorted. Since I'd started dressing a bit better, switching to contact lenses and losing the Doc Martens, my debatable equals had been copping an attitude. Apparently for a woman giving half a shit about your appearance lowered your street cred. "If you mean a forty-four then yeah. So what does he want?"

He steepled meaty fingers and braced his elbows on his cheap scarred desk. "Client confidentiality, Marly."

"You know he wants to kill Michael Finnegan, right? All this is leading up to killing Michael Finnegan, his own daughter, her friend, and pinning it all on me. How much is it worth, all our lives, how much is he paying you?"

"I'm just being paid to find information, that's all."

I snorted. "You've had us tailed. Took me ten minutes to lose mine on my way here."

He smiled and it was eerily blank in the eyes. "Little girl, this is all so much easier with you here. How about an interview?"

"What do you know about Bain? I mean, really know?"

"What's it worth to you?" Richards grumbled.

"My life. How much would that information be worth to you?"

"You can't match Bain. He has millions liquidated and that store of his is worth more, black market or not. You could buy me, Marly, if you could afford me, but you can't."

"Well what do you know about Priestess Georgette?" I asked, shifting my purse to hide unsnapping my holster. I pretended to look through it to cover removing my gun and I frowned as I squelched my conscience. I meant it when I said I'd stay alive.

"Who?" he asked, truly puzzled.

I pulled up the gun and before he could move shot him, two in the chest. He was wearing a vest but it wasn't like the movies; getting shot in a vest was like getting kicked by a horse. You went down and stayed down until your lungs started working again, many seconds later.

As my adrenaline pumped I saw it in slow motion. He fell backward and papers and dust flew. I climbed to my feet, gun still hot, and dropped my purse, swinging around. He was getting his gun loose and I fired, two slugs into his head.

I had to jump away from the blowback, and nothing was in my mind more than keeping my shoes clean and getting the hell out of there. He was missing most of his brain and wouldn't be getting up.

It would look like cold blooded murder but he'd reached for his gun first. Holstered to his desk I knew the movement and that's what made me go for mine. Dead or alive I could take the fall, but dead was so much easier. With Ellie, Nikolas, and Finn still alive I could only guess if Richards had planned to ice me for later, or play for a few days. Neither option had any appeal.

I picked up my purse and got down on the ground to make sure nothing had spilled out. His blood was spreading in a dark pool and I sidestepped it when I came up and looked over his desk.

Richards was smart enough to know that he was setting up murders, and smart enough not to put anything on a computer. I found the files I wanted on his desk and grabbed his cell phone with my gloved hands and pulled out the battery so GPS would not be active.

I ran out the back door and hit a brick wall.

"Marly, it's me!" I looked up and found Nikolas staring at me, slightly in shock.

Sirens were already sounding in the distance, unusually fast for CPD, and I shoved my gun back in the holster.

"Come on, we have to get out of here!"

We ran down the alley to Ashland and when we hit the river I tossed my gun into it. My car was parked near the Green Dolphin, a giant bar, and into its dumpsters I tossed the phone before shoving Nikolas into my car.

"What the hell were you doing there!?!"

"Someone tried to break in and your phone was off, so I checked your last Google search. The maps led me there, what the fuck did you do!?!"

"I killed a man! Okay, I killed Bain's assassin. I just bought us some time!" I jerked the wheel though I didn't know where I was going. I only wanted to get away from west Lincoln Park and get somewhere familiar.

"You got cops on our asses!"

He was hysterical and I debated slapping him, but maneuvering a boat in Chicago traffic made it damn near impossible.

"They won't come looking for us, I know what I am doing!"

"That was murder!"

"That was business!" I glanced at him and he was giving me a repulsed look, one I knew too well. One I'd worn around Finn too many times. Maybe Mr. Finnegan and I were not so different, after all.

"He pulled his gun first. I'm being set up to take the fall in all this and it's better if I'm dead. I decided not to go out quietly, and I am trying to keep you and your girlfriend alive, Nikolas! I am trying to keep me and Finn alive too! You want my protection? Then shut up, help me, or get out of my way!"

He sat back sullen, letting a pregnant pause bloom. I hated those, but I hated useless chatter even more.

My brain was working fast. "Priestess Georgette, memorized her address by any chance?"

"Yes," he ground out.

"Then lead the way."

***

We found her in Humboldt Park. Sometimes referred to Little Puerto Rico it was not the kind of neighborhood you hung out in after dark. Drugs, guns, prostitution, it all happened here in daylight or night. I'd grown up a little further south but in a similar neighborhood and felt quite at home.

Still, on North Avenue one could see a neighborhood trying. Her address was two floors above a photography studio right off Western Ave. We parked on a side street and I pulled a new gun from my trunk, offering Nikolas one he eschewed.

"We won't need it, she's not like that. I met her a few times at parties, she's chill."

"People keep telling me things like that, and they're always wrong. And they usually end up dead."

He raised a brow and smoothed his fair hair back, tangled from drying in the cool fall wind.

"So you do know her. Interesting you forgot to mention that. You'll do the introductions, I trust?"

He nodded and wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Nikolas, if it gets rough in there...don't interfere."

I slammed the trunk shut before he could answer and we walked silently back to her door. He pushed the buzzer and a soft, deep, feminine voice asked who it was. All he had to do was say his name and the buzzer sounded, making me curious.

He'd said he didn't know her...what was young Nikolas hiding?

We had to climb up what felt like infinite stairs in a narrow hallway, no good for escape I noted, and the top floor door swung open.

The woman waiting was in her late fifties, slim, short, with a white-blonde bob that looked convincingly natural. She wore a black slip, the kind that was right out of the forties and belonged under a dress, and over that a soft white shawl with fringe I could tell was quality. She wore no makeup but false eyelashes and a pentagram on a red satin ribbon around her neck.

"Nikolas...I see you brought muscle."

"I am flattered you remember me," he cooed to her like she was Elizabeth Taylor and he an aspiring gigolo.

We crested the stairs and she offered her hand, he bent far, far down and kissed the back, and rose again turning to me for introductions.

"Marly Jackson," I said without pre-emption and offered my hand for a shake.

She eyes it questioningly. "You are the one in the papers? The woman who killed her lover and her other lover's woman?"

"That's what they say."

I pushed past them both into the loft. Black walls, polished wood floors, an open floor plan much like Nikolas' place only much, much larger. The furniture was black and white leather, clear glass, steel, imbuing no warmth over the shaggy white rugs.