Fatal Beauty (7 page)

Part 2:

 
The Descent

Las Vegas Police
Department. Interrogation Room B.

Detective Blackmon:
What can you tell
me about Paxton
Blaincot
?

Charlotte Brooks:
I told you I wasn’t talking
until you tell me where the fuck EJ is.

Blackmon:
You aren’t helping yourself
by refusing to answer our questions, ma’am.

Brooks:
(laughing)
You
think I give a shit?

Blackmon:
You want information on
your EJ? You
gotta
work with me. Tell me about
Blaincot
. I’ll tell you what we know.

Brooks:
You don’t know--. Oh my
god. You don’t have EJ. She isn’t here.

(Silence)

Brooks:
Fine. You want me to talk.
Tell me what you want to know.

Blackmon:
Um.
Blaincot
.
Tell me about Paxton
Blaincot
.

Brooks:
You want to know about
Pax
? (Laughing). Can I get a coffee?
Pax
—you
know he had nothing to do with any of this, right?

Blackmon:
I know that
Blaincot
was the first time you surfaced after going
missing from your father’s home. I know that he was a college boyfriend.

Brooks:
No. He was a friend. A
study buddy. I fucked him once, when I was fighting with Tre, and he had a
stupid crush. But he was nothing.

Blackmon:
(quietly)
The
guy was in love with you and you treated him like trash.
And you say he was nothing.

Brooks:
Do you want to judge me,
call me a bitch and a horrible person? Or do you want to know what fucking
happened?

Blackmon:
Why did you go to Paxton,
if you didn’t care about him?

Brooks:
We had nowhere else to go.

Blackmon:
We?

Brooks:
We. EJ and me. (
sighs
) Bitch. You want the truth, Detective? I was scared.
But EJ? She was pissed. And it was her idea.

Chapter 14

EJ is sitting on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the
courtyard. She’s got her feet in it, and her skirt is pulled up and around her thighs.
A guard, one of the usually invisible security Jacobs stations around the
mansion—is standing under the trees, clearly watching her.

Charlie gives him a disgusted, furious stare as she approaches and
he fades back into the trees. She perches on the edge of the fountain, her feet
braced against the pebble driveway, and bumps into EJ with one shoulder.

“What do we do?” she asks.

“We listen to him. Jacobs is holding the strings on this one. We
don’t get to make demands. Anthony might have helped us get rid of Tre. He
might even play mind games and indulge my need to break away from the stupid
shit my mother wants. But at the end of the day, he’ll look after himself. And
that means when he says we go home, we go and that’s the end of it. We’re done.”

She can feel the tension in her friend, can feel the arguments
gathering in her, and she shakes her head. “Don’t. Just. We pack. We go home.
You forget me and find a good boy who will make you want to shoot yourself a
little less than the others. I get high every weekend and put off the ring and
pre-
numps
for a few more months before Mom locks me
down. And we forget this ever happened.”

“I don’t want to,” Charlie says, petulant.

EJ laughs, loud and bitter, the noise ringing off the trees.
Stands in the fountain and let’s her skirt all, hanging around her knees in
schoolgirl pleats. “What the actual fuck does that have to do with anything?”

She steps out of the fountain, and starts toward the house.

“I’m leaving,” she hears. And freezes. Fear sliding down her spine
like a cold touch.

She twists to look at the other girl. Charlie is still sitting,
her long legs bare in tiny ripped jean shorts and a white tank top the billows
in the lazy eddies of hot air.

She’s squinting at EJ, her signature sunglasses forgotten on that
kitchen table. But her expression is deadly serious and EJ can’t help the
incredulous laugh that spills up and over.

“Are you insane? What makes you think you
can?”

Fear flicks across her face, and then her lips tighten. “He isn’t
holding us here. And I’m not going to do something I hate for the rest of my
life.” Her gaze turns mocking. “I didn’t think you were so much of a timid
bitch that you would.”

She stands and stalks past EJ, into the house. EJ stands there for
a long moment, staring after her friend in shock.

Charlie just called her a timid bitch. What the hell was
happening.
Jacobs coming out of the house snaps her from her
daze and she jerks into motion, taking a few stumbling feet to the wide steps
leading up the porch.

“I have to go.” He says, shoving his hands into his pockets and
eyeing her with dark eyes. A tiny smile turns his lips. “I’m sorry. I was
hoping to spend a little time inside you before you left, but it can’t be
helped.”

The words are spinning around her, and she feels dizzy, vaguely.
None of this is real.

He’s still talking, something about her flight, and the
flunkie
who will take them to the airport. His hands are on
her, and he tilts her chin up, brushing a kiss over her lips.

“I’ll miss you, Ellie. Make sure Mama sends me updates in the
family Christmas card,” he says, and she gasps, tears burning in her eyes.
She’s furious, that he has reduced her to this, and that he’s doing this at
all.

“Tell herself, you selfish bastard,” she chokes out. Anger flares
in his gaze for a moment, his grip bruising for a heartbeat, before he smiles
and kisses her again.

And then he’s gone, and she’s left standing on the empty driveway
while Marco, his favorite enforcer, drives them away in a black SUV.

He’s leaving. Trusting that she would be a good girl and do
exactly what he said.

“Fuck you, Anthony.” She murmurs. “And
your
fucking Christmas cards.”

*

Charlie is in her bedroom, shoving clothes back into her bags, when
EJ leans into the room. “Ten minutes. We’re leaving in ten minutes. Hurry the
fuck up.”

Then she’s gone and Charlie blinks at the empty doorway, wondering
vaguely if she had imagined her friend standing there, if she imagined the fury
that was simmering in EJ’s eyes.

A door slams, hard enough that she jumps and downstairs,
Ziva
curses.

A grin spreads across her face, and she picks up the pace.

She hadn’t imagined a damned thing.

It takes exactly seven minutes for her to finish packing and then
she’s in EJ’s rooms. Shit is strewn around the room, designer clothes, papers
and makeup. EJ’s shaking, scrambling to gather everything, and Charlie hands
her a Xanax without thinking. “Calm down and tell me what the hell you need me
to do.”

EJ swallows it and bounces on the tips of her toes. “I need you to
pack. There are a couple things I need to get. Can you do that while I pack,
and then we’ll get out of
here.
”

Charlie nods, and EJ leans in, kissing her cheek lightning fast
before she darts out of the bedroom.

Nerves make her hands shake as she slips into Jacobs’ room. Not
because she’s never been here, or even because she’s afraid of being caught.
His men know where she is—they’ve just been trained to observe and report back.

Jacobs would never tolerate one of them touching her.

She finds his guns exactly where she knew they’d be—in his closet,
behind the shoe boxes on the third shelf.

“You never learned,” she murmurs, grabbing two
Glocks
and as much ammo as she can shove into the duffle she steals from his closet.

He has an office downstairs—the library with
it’s
oversized desk where he would meet with
associates while she lounged by the pool or sat on his lap, depending on the
day and her mood.

But she knows him. He forgets, too often. She knows him just as
well as he knows her, and that’s better than anyone. She smiles to herself when
slips behind the desk in his bedroom, rummaging in the drawers.

Jacobs always kept a stash of cash on the property, and a few sets
of fake IDs. Once upon a time, he’d made her a set, when she first started
moving product for him. It’s how he got her out of the country to travel with
him, before—

She shuts that line of thought down, and grabs the IDs, the cash
and his stack of business cards. Shoves it all into the duffle and grabs one
last thing from the desk before she’s striding back to her room.

Charlie has everything packed, and she’s pacing, eyeing the front
of the house.

“They won’t let us leave.” She says, worried. “It’s not like when
we went to the Quarter.”

EJ shrugs and tosses the duffle on top of her suitcase, gathering
everything in one place.

“They can’t stop us. He didn’t give them the orders to detain us.”

“How do you know?”

EJ smiles, and it is all angry bitch. “Because the bastard underestimates
me. He would never expect me to do something he said not to.” She holds up the
keys she snatched from Jacobs’ desk, and smirks. “And he’d never expect me to
steal his motherfucking car.”

Chapter 15

The trick, it turns out, is not getting past Jacobs’ security
team. They watch silently from the corners of the yard, but none of them will
do anything to stop them.

The trick is
Ziva
.

“She’s going to see us,” Charlie hisses.

“Well, of course she is,” EJ snaps. That’s the point. That she sees
you.”

It made sense, in her room.
Ziva
hated
them. And she would call Jacobs. More than anything, they needed to make sure
that didn’t happen. EJ was under no illusions about how angry Jacobs would be
when he found out what she’d—they’d—done.

“We need her phone,” EJ says again, and Charlie sighs. Plasters a
fake smile on her face and says, too brightly, “I’m going to kill you for this
shit, EJ.”

And then she bounces into the kitchen, chattering about her
sunglasses and wine. The table is untouched. Their lunch, the wine, the
sunglasses—even the corkscrew—are still exactly where they had left them, and
Ziva
is at the sink, peeling potatoes. She looks at
Charlie, pure loathing on her face while Charlie chatters and shoves her
sunglasses up and into her hair, pushing it away from her face.

And so she doesn’t see EJ slip in the side kitchen door, through
the tiny, airless hall that the wait staff uses when Jacobs entertains. She
doesn’t see EJ at all, until it’s too late, and the gun is swinging down,
butt
first, and slams into her temple.

Ziva
shrieks, and Charlie
curses, jerking forward as the housekeeper thrashes around, attempting to stay
on her feet. She grabs the woman’s head and brings it down, quick and hard
against the counter.

Ziva
drops like a sack of
rocks, and they stare at her for a moment. Hot guilt turns her stomach, and
just for a second, EJ is afraid she’s going to be sick. But then she swallows,
and sees that
Ziva
is breathing, slow and heavy, a
bruise already blooming on her cheek, and some of the tension eases out of her.

“Get the phone, EJ,” Charlie says quietly.

It’s one of his burners. There’s a house line, of course, but his
line, the way they all used to contact Jacobs when he left the property or the
city, was this. She reaches down, snatching it from where
Ziva
has it wedged in the back pocket of her jeans.

“Good,” Charlie says softly. “Now, let’s go.”

It’s easy, after that. They grab their bags from the hallway, and
toss them into the trunk of the Nova. EJ slides behind the wheel as Charlie
slumps in the passenger seat. They can both feel the attention of the security
behind them, but neither acknowledge it. Neither of them even speak as EJ turns
the engine over and backs out.

And then they’re gone, dust rising behind the car to obscure the
mansion. They drive in silence for a long time, adrenaline making Charlie
jittery while EJ taps her fingers impatiently against the steering wheel.

“Where are we going?” Charlie asks, after maybe thirty minutes.

“We need to find somewhere safe we can lay low for a while.” EJ
says. “Maybe stash the car for a few days.
It’s
stupid
obvious.”

“Then why did we take it?”

A savage smile turns EJ’s lips, and she glances at Charlie.
“Because it’s mine. Even if he were the type to go to the cops, he couldn’t
report the thing stolen because it’s been in my name for the past decade.”

Charlie whistles. “You weren’t joking about your history with him
being complicated, were you?”

EJ shrugs, and Charlie reaches for her bag. Her computer is
sitting inside. “I have a friend who lives near here. We can go there.”

“Who is it?”

A tiny smirk tilts her lips, “Paxton
Blaincot
.”
 

EJ gives her a quick searching look, but Charlie is scanning her
computer, and she makes a soft noise of success. “
Pax
was a guy I went to school. He had a pretty epic thing for me. We stayed in
touch after graduation.”

“Bet Tre loved that?”

Charlie makes a low noncommittal noise in her throat and EJ
smirks. Exactly what she thought. “The point,” Charlie says, sharply, “is that
he’s a friend and he’s local, and he would never turn me away.”

“Are you really that good in bed?” EJ asks dryly and Charlie
laughs, a low sexy noise.

“Wouldn’t you love to know,” she says, dialing the number and
grinning.

It goes to voicemail and she leaves a quick message for him,
glancing at the clock when she hangs up. “Head towards Baton Rouge,” she says,
sinking deeper into the seat of the car and tilting her head back. She lets her
eyes close, and the adrenaline that’s been keeping her moving, keeping her from
running home to beg her father to fix all of it, finally begins to ebb.

“What if he doesn’t want to help, or if he doesn’t call you back?”
EJ says.

“Well. A desperate girl would show up at his office in the morning,”
Charlie says, thinking about the many times she’s been followed to work. She
shudders, “But I’ve never been that desperate and I’m still not.”

“We’ll figure it out when we get there, if we need to,” EJ says
and hits the blinker, turning the car to the west and out of the city.

And when the phone rings, twenty minutes later, neither of them
mentions how relieved they are. Charlie talks to him, pouring on the sweet
innocence and southern charm so thick EJ wants to gag a little. She waits
quietly, driving in silence while Charlie does what she’s so damn good at, and
Charlie scribbles an address that she passes to EJ before she manages to say
her goodbyes and hang up.