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A rose pink disc of shadow fell out, showering puffs of glimmering powder onto the vanity and a note dropped out from behind that.
I righted the kit, blew the shadow off the vanity, opened the note.
Male handwriting, almost as illegible as my father's.
If you're what I think you are, you'll know how to use this. Don't be a hero. Get in and get out.
No signature, because he wasn't an idiot. Whoever it was had directed it and it had to be to me. I'd watched Evie unwrap the kit and she'd used the make up she was sending me with to do the tutorial.
The choices were Evie – unlikely and the writing looked like a man's hand. Or Chad. Right. Or Theo. No one else had access. Theo had searched my bag as we arrived at Bevington's house of horrors. He'd had access, he'd had time to write a note, and I'd thought both the timing was odd to finally search a bag put together by the people who sent him, and that there was something wrong about him.
There was – whatever he was, he wasn't a Chad. He might be undercover. He probably was undercover. He'd recognized me but didn't pull me out. I'd have done the same thing. Only once in my career had I encountered someone else undercover and I had to let it go. He wasn't in dire straights, but he could have used help. I didn't help him. I never learned what had happened to him. He hadn't made me, as far as I could tell, but I had nightmares for a year after.
On the back of the note, there was a phone number. My first thought was that was stupid. My second thought was, whatever number Raven knew for Theo, this wasn't it. So maybe not so stupid.
I had no intention of calling him. I couldn't imagine how that wouldn't put everyone at risk. But I could memorize it and destroy the note itself, flushing it down the toilet. The best thing he'd done was supplying me with a weapon. I'd have had the knife when Bevington branded me if I'd thought to do my makeup as required.
At that thought, the pain in my backside sailed up and ignited, bringing tears to my eyes. I started over on the makeup, still thinking. Lettie came out of the bathroom and went back to her own prep, quiet.
If I'd had the knife then, I'd probably have been injured fighting Bevington who had his own knife, but I didn't think I'd have resisted using it.
Or maybe not. Because he'd undressed me before he burned me. I wouldn't have known and he would have found the blade. I'd have had to decide whether to kill him then when I didn't have the proof I needed.
The proof I got after he'd branded me.
Being deep cover was always dangerous. There was always a chance of getting killed. All of law enforcement carried that risk. Undercover more so because no one likes to be made a fool of.
But I'd never been through anything like this. Even my time in the Brotherhood with Jesse, when he broke my cheekbone or at least fractured the fuck out of it, was nothing like this.
And girls and women went through this every day. Without choosing to do it for a job. Without having done anything wrong in their lives to deserve such a fate.
I never went undercover thinking I was going to die. I went undercover knowing there was risk, and knowing I had a job to do.
I was going to do that job. I had the contacts I needed. I'd like the contacts Bevington had somewhere, the people who inherited the girls after he broke them, provided they weren't buried somewhere in the canyon.
Most likely that information would come to light after he was dead.
Because I didn't think that both of us would live through today. But there was Lettie to consider. She hadn't asked for any of this and if I could bring her out alive, I was going to.
I finished putting on the make up and turned to look at Lettie. Surprisingly, she had a hand over her mouth and she was laughing.
"What?"
She looked gorgeous. Her dark skin was lit up with the make up she'd applied, her full mouth glossy and edible, her eyes dramatic. Her fingers weren't touching her lips. She wasn't messing with perfection. She pointed at my own mirror.
I looked back at myself. I looked like a little kid who'd gotten into mom's makeup stash. I mock glared at her in the mirror. "A little more help and a little less mirth?"
"Not sure there's any help for this," she said. "Let's start over."
