When Arizona was done, she pressed a key and the Horsemen’s files were purged from their system. Then the hard drives were written over with hexadecimal code that was nothing but gibberish. When the Policía Federal Argentina finally broke the codes and went to the seventeenth floor, the computers would be paperweights. From the seventeenth floor to Las Violetas to Ciudad Evita, Policía Federal Argentina and los bomberos had work to do.
My job was done.
For a second I had a flash of Señorita Raven and Foxy Brown.
I told myself that I had done the right thing.
I went to the back of the plane to go to the bathroom. I washed my face like I was trying to scrub away my personal horrors, my PTSD. When I came out, Sierra was waiting at the door. I went to move by her, but she blocked my path. She gave me eye contact. The stoic, silent siren gazed at me the same way she had a few days ago, like rabid lust chained to a stake, growling, struggling to get free, but under her control.
She kissed me, put her tongue inside my mouth, pushed her breasts against my chest. Then she sighed and walked away, her bowed legs doing a slow sashay by her big sister. That soft exhale was the only sound I’d ever heard her make.
Arizona’s back had been to us when that sexual harassment had gone down.
Days ago, I had gone to rescue Sierra when she was wounded in Argentina. I had transported her to Scamz’s yacht. Maybe that was her version of a thank-you kiss. Or maybe because I had refused to put her down years ago when Arizona had sent me to Holland.
The stoic brown-skinned Filipina had surprised me.
I had stood up to Scamz, and Scamz had pulled a gun on me, and without a gun in hand, I had made that bitch back down. He was dead. Maybe in her eyes he had died a king, but I had been a warrior. And even a king never rose from his throne to battle a warrior.
She knew I had pulled the sword from the stone.
Maybe she wanted to be my reward. Many queens became enamored of warriors and wanted to be pleased by what they saw as a real man.
Princesses did the same, and some were more cutthroat than queens.
They knew kings had power but were weak men.
Without warriors there would be no kings.
Without warriors, there would be no presidents, no emperors.
I sat near Arizona, let the chair recline back, and closed my eyes. Sierra came back in our section, sat across from us sipping a chocolate martini. Her energy ran through me, made me open and close my hands. I smelled her fragrance and the subtle scent of the chocolate in her drink. Felt her lust without opening my eyes. She smelled so good my toes curled. She smelled like bad news dancing with trouble.
She changed the channel on the flat-screen, began watching Breaking Bad.
Arizona snapped, “Who the fuck told you to change the channel?”
Sierra threw the remote at Arizona.
From oil and vinegar to oil and water.
Arizona shot her sister a look. “Pick it up.”
Sierra picked up the remote, put the television back on CNN and the news about the world financial crisis. She then took her drink and walked away, her ass moving like it was screaming and cursing, but she was back in less than a minute, fresh drink in her hand. She put the urn in the seat next to her and sat next to her brother, legs crossed, calm, stoic.
She blamed Arizona for their brother’s death. Soon they would be in another civil war that rivaled the war between the noble families in Westeros.
As Coltrane played, I sat between sisters with the scents of angels and demons, con women who had tried to kill each other once upon a time. And who might do the same again.
Friends close.
Enemies closer.
And family closer than close.
What the assassin called Hawks had said stayed on my mind.
She had proof that there were more falsehoods from Catherine.
Thelma still existed. She was hidden in plain sight.
Then, as Sierra had done, only for a different reason, I sighed softly.
I said, “Do you know what a moment is?”
Arizona looked at me like I was a fool. “A moment is a moment.”
“A moment is a medieval unit of time and equals ninety seconds. Back in the Middle Ages when they used sundials, they measured time in moments. So an hour had forty moments instead of sixty minutes.”
“Why are you telling me that bullshit?”
“So I can get my mind off death and killing. For a moment.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“Not really. Just needed to put something else in my head.”
My trigger finger moved back and forth, hiccupping.
Sierra stared at me. She sipped her drink and stared.
Man or money, she wasn’t afraid to steal from a con woman.
Again I saw what Scamz the elder and his son had seen in Sierra. I understood why they took thirty pieces of silver.
Arizona saw her sister looking at me; she jumped up and slapped her, cursed her out in Tagalog, then in English told her younger sister if she ever crossed her again she’d end up back in Amsterdam doing live sex shows.