“You might as well write the check to Elena,” Bennett said. “She claims to have a nose for this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing is that?” I asked, not quite able to keep the edge out of my voice. “Knowing a criminal when I see one?”

The waitress arrived with his drink and gave him the same treatment she had given Barbaro. Bennett shoved his sunglasses back on his head and gave her his undivided attention, but there was a coldness in his eyes that made my skin crawl.

“Elena was a police detective,” he said, as the woman walked away, with his eyes on her ass.

“Are you surprised I would know that?” he asked, turning to look at me.

“I’m surprised you would bother to,” I said flatly. “Am I supposed to be flattered?”

Brody set his cigar down and stared at me. “A detective? What kind of a detective? Homicide?”

“Narcotics.”

“Oh, no,” Bennett said, without emotion. “I’ve broken your cover.”

“I don’t need a cover. I don’t have anything to hide,” I said. “Besides, I’m not in that line of work anymore.”

“Then why are you here?” he asked pointedly.

“I was invited for my charming company and witty repartee. Why are you here? Besides soaking your liver in vodka for the third night in a row-that I know of.”

From the corner of my eye I could see Barbaro looking unhappy or angry or both.

“I’m surprised you didn’t go into sex-crimes investigation,” Bennett remarked. “Rabid as you are on the subject.”

Barbaro leaned toward him, raising both hands in front of him.

“Enough,” he said quietly. “None of us came here to have a bad time. Enough.”

“I didn’t start it,” Bennett said, petulant.

“No. You’re never responsible for anything,” I returned. “You pass gas and it’s someone else’s fault.”

“Jesus Christ,” Brody said. “The two of you sound like you’re married.”

I looked away from Bennett, pulling in a slow deep breath, trying to rein myself in. I am and always have been my own worst enemy. I should have kept my cool with him. I should have at least pretended not to be affected by him. But my emotions regarding Bennett Walker had been held inside me like a festering abscess for a very long time. The person who said time heals all wounds didn’t know jack shit.

“No,” I said to Brody, trying to force the half smile. “I narrowly managed to escape that fate.

“I should be going,” I said, sliding out of my chair. “After all, I’m not a member of the club, am I?”

If any of them caught the double entendre, they didn’t let on. I had taken a couple of steps toward the door before Brody spoke.

“Don’t leave on his account,” he said, gesturing toward Bennett with his cigar.

“It’s okay, Jim,” Bennett said. “It’s not the first time Elena’s run away.”

I wanted to slap him. I wanted to choke him the way he had choked Maria Nevin twenty years past. The fury that seared through me was fierce. He wasn’t more than two feet away. It took everything I had to keep my hands at my sides.

“Do you really want to do that, Bennett?” I asked quietly. “Do you really want to push me? You, of all people, should know better. You, of all people, should know I don’t give a rat’s ass what other people think of me or of anything I do.

“You want to be back in the news?” I asked. “You want to have the Maria Nevin case dug up and spread out for the media to feed on all over again? Because if you push me, I guarantee that’s what will happen. You can put your family through that. You can have reporters camped on the doorstep of your house, following your wife everywhere she goes, hounding her-”

“Leave her out of this.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Bennett,” I said, my voice low and vibrating with rage. “I don’t have anything to lose.”

I turned and walked out.

Chapter 24

Outside, night had fallen. It was chilly enough to want a jacket. I didn’t have one, but my residual anger was more than enough to heat me from my core outward.

What the hell would I do now? How could I take what had just transpired and turn it to my advantage? Had I just bought myself a ticket out of the inner circle, or would Jim Brody be the kind of man who kept his friends close and his enemies closer?

I was an ex-cop. I had an ax to grind with Bennett Walker, one of Brody’s chosen few. I had just threatened to make trouble for him.

Nothing that had happened was a surprise, I told myself. Of course Bennett would show up. These were his friends. Of course they would all find out I had been a detective.

My guess-my gamble-was that Brody would want me where he could see me and try to influence me. And I suspected he would use Barbaro to do it.

“Elena.”

Bingo. I turned. He was still in his polo shirt and white breeches, saddle-tan boots to his knees. He looked every bit as sexy when he was serious as he did with the bright rakish grin. Maybe more so.

“I was just thinking damage control might be your assignment,” I said.

He pretended not to know what I meant.

“Your patron sent you.”

“No one sent me,” he said, irritated. “I am not a servant. I don’t want to see you upset. I don’t want our evening to be ruined by this… this bitterness between you and Bennett.”

“That’s a tall order. You’re talking about anger that’s been contained and aged like single-malt scotch in a barrel for twenty years.”

“His behavior…” he said, searching for what he wanted to convey to me. “He was not a gentleman. I apologize for that.”

“Why should you apologize? Besides, I was hardly a lady,” I confessed.

He raked a hand back through the thick, wavy mane. He should have been on the cover of a romance novel.

“I’m sorry, Juan,” I said. “I don’t know it for a fact, but I suspect I come from a long line of bitter, vindictive women.”

“What purpose does that serve?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What purpose does it serve to hold that anger? What good does it do?”

“He beat and raped a woman,” I said impatiently. “Someone should be angry about that.”

“The woman you say he raped.”

“I say? I say it because it’s true.”

“And what does your anger do about it? Does it punish Bennett? Does he lie awake nights feeling the weight of your rage against him?”

Of course he didn’t. If my anger had been able to bear down on Bennett Walker, he would have been crushed to death by it long ago.

“Hatred is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die of it.”

“Thank you, Father Barbaro,” I said sarcastically. “Save the rest of your homily for someone who cares. It’s easy for you to say let bygones be bygones. You weren’t there. You never saw what he did to that girl.”

Or to this one, I thought, but I would never say that.

“You are not punishing him, Elena. You punish yourself.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to go down that road, not even in my own mind. And I certainly had no intention of forgiving Bennett Walker for his sins. Why would I? Why would anyone? Why should anyone?

Barbaro touched my shoulder. “I don’t want to see you upset, Elena, over something you cannot change.”

“But those are the very things to be upset about, Juan,” I said. “You want me to absolve him because that’s just easier? The system failed. Oh, well. Nothing I can do about it, so I might as well pretend he never brutalized a woman while he was engaged to marry me, then expected me to commit perjury for him.

“I don’t get that,” I said. “I don’t get how you can think that’s okay. It’s not okay.”

He looked away and sighed.

“If you can’t see that, what am I supposed to think about you?” I asked. “You just turn a blind eye to anything you find unpleasant? Did you turn a blind eye the night Irina was murdered? Someone got carried away, the girl is dead, so sorry, but there’s nothing to do about it now. Might as well party on.”