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I woke up as the sun rose, opening my eyes to find seagulls wheeling above me.
Two levels of windows, plus an observation deck. The paint was a graying white, and the blue and yellow trim was mostly peeled away. Dull wood, dingy brass, and the smell of dead fish. A riverboat, its shipshape days long past.
There was an echoing pain in my ankles that wouldn’t dull, even though the open wounds were healed. The irony that my mother had chosen my Achilles’ heels wasn’t lost on me.
Carl. She’d shot him. Who else had she hurt to get me here? Where was Dune?
Black, low-heeled boots echoed across the boat deck. Her apple red coat matched the color in her cheeks, and she should’ve painted a sunny picture. But the brightness in her eyes was menacing rather than cheerful.
“Hello, sunshine. Did you sleep well?”
“Bitch.” I flexed my feet and groaned. “They’ll find you.”
“They might. I’m aware of what Lily can do. But Dune’s the one you want, and he’s going to think twice about the river.”
“He’ll handle the water.” And if he couldn’t, his friends could.
“Doesn’t mean he’ll find us. We’re only hitching a ride.” She curled her lip at our dilapidated surroundings. “There’s a speedboat waiting a few miles away. Our next destination involves a lot of open water. It’s difficult to pinpoint a location when you’re always moving.”
I felt my anxiety expand beyond the tightness in my chest and spread to the very corners of the ship, weaving its way through the railings and the wood, catching in the paddles at the stern. There were men on the ship, a crew of them. She’d been planning this.
A man wearing a tailored suit stood behind her. Not part of the crew.
“Oh, where are my manners?” Mom actually clucked. “Let me formally introduce Jack Landers.”
Jack was so pale he was almost transparent. His eyes were dead in his face.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” His overconfident tone suggested that he was used to getting what he wanted, and his slick smile told me the rest. A woman in a dirty yellow coat stepped out from the shadows.
Her nail-bitten fingers worried the buttons—open and closed, open and closed, over and over again. She didn’t look at me, didn’t even acknowledge where she was standing. Her eyes were vacant. Lost. She had to be strung out on something.
Jack ignored her and moved forward, leaning heavily on a cane, the smile growing wider. “I’ve waited a long time to meet you. I look forward to doing business with you.”
“I can’t say the same.” Growing up in New Orleans taught me not to do deals with the devil. It was always a bitch when he came to collect.
Jack studied me. “What have they told you about me, Hallie?”
“You manipulate people to get what you want.” I rolled to a sitting position, wincing when I tried to stand and couldn’t. My ankles weren’t ready, and I felt too vulnerable on the ground. “I’m guessing you’re responsible for whatever’s wrong with her.”
He looked at the woman beside him. “I haven’t done anything she didn’t ask me to do.”
“You steal memories, and she doesn’t look like she can remember her own name.” The woman stared vacantly in the direction of the shore. Flecks of spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth. “Did she ask for that?”
“She asked me to make life better for her, which involved erasing some things she wanted to forget. It took a while, since there were a lot of … situations to work through.” The two of them came closer. Her hair was short and unkempt, and she couldn’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds. “However, erasing you from the memories of your new friends shouldn’t be too difficult. Erasing all of them from your memory might be.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. If being erased resulted in the ruin of the woman standing in front of me, screw my aching ankles. It was time to start running. I tried standing again.
“You think they’re your friends, but they’ll forget you easily. They’re all so malleable.” Jack looked at my mother. “Does Hallie know Lily told us where to find the pendant? On Halloween, when I ‘borrowed’ her from the Hourglass.”
My chest tightened at the thought of Lily doing anything to help Jack or my mother. “What pendant?”
pped caring when two more shots fired, one to the back of each of my ankles.
Pain exploded through my Achilles tendons, and then everything went black.
Dune
Hallie was gone.
