Free Scorching Desire by Mari Carr

Damon—but Tasha stumbled from the force of the blow and fell off the platform into Marco’s arms.
    “I’ve got you,” he whispered.
    “Put me with Jennie,” Tasha demanded. “Then stay with Damon. The limo is at The Bean.”
    Marco had only a moment to take in the fact that Tasha didn’t seem shocked or frightened, meaning the slap was planned. He guided her to where Jennie knelt. Tasha let out a loud sob then curled against the other woman. Jennie was blinking rapidly but wrapped her arms around Tasha.
    Marco turned back to Damon, who’d folded his arms across his chest and was staring out at the crowd. As Demario and a bouncer rushed up to the stage, yelling at Damon, Marco looked over his shoulder to see that Tasha and Jennie were gone.
    *****
    Tasha took the needle from Jennie’s arm. Bending the tip back she wrapped it in a paper towel and put it in the trash.
    As soon as they’d gotten away from the crowd, Tasha had asked Jennie for something to help with the pain. The woman’s eyes had lit up and she’d pulled out a bottle.
    Tasha took the bottle from the mirror, which was lying on the seat of a chair. A powdery white residue from the crushed pills remained.
    Diamorphine .
    Shaking her head, Tasha wiped the bottle with a paper towel to clear her fingerprints and then put it back. Diamorphine was prescription heroin, and far more dangerous than the street grade stuff, which wasn’t pure. Though these were pills that she could have swallowed, Jennie had crushed, cooked and injected the drug—the mark of a hardcore addict.
    Propping her up, Tasha looked around the small office where they were hiding. Jennie had warned her they shouldn’t be in here, but the way she wedged the door closed and set up the mirror on the chair said that Jennie had done this plenty of times before.
    Tasha went to the computer and opened the bookkeeping software. After only a few minutes she found them—weekly entries of $5,000 each that had started a month ago. They were marked as private event—Guinevere, and the payment type was listed as check.
    Check? Not cash?
    Tasha frowned, clicking through until she found the bank-generated scan of the check. It was handwritten. The account name was Trinity and the memo line said, Hello, Harrison.
    Tasha closed her eyes. This was as bad as it could be.
    She opened a ghost email server and pasted and attached the things she wanted into a draft email, then closed it without sending and deleted the browser history. Looking down at Jennie, she picked up the phone and dialed.
    “Nine, one, one, what’s your emergency?” the calm voice of the operator hummed through the landline.
    “Hi, I’m at this club on Taylor St. and there’s this girl here who was trying to sell me some pills she said were heroin, and I just found her in the office and I think she’s dead.” Tasha let out a little sob. “She’s on the floor and I can’t tell.”
    “Ma’am, can you check if she’s breathing?”
    “Wait, yeah, she’s…oh my God.” Tasha slammed down the phone. She wiped everything free of her fingerprints, opened the office door and followed the hall to an emergency exit. Someone had left a coat hanging on the corner of the lockers near the back door. Bundling herself into it, she got out before anyone saw her.
    A block away she heard the wail of fire trucks and ambulances headed for the club.
    Glad for the coat, Tasha gathered up the dangling leash and tucked it into her bra strap as she walked toward Sculpture Park and The Cloud Gate, the massive modern art piece locals called The Bean.
    *****
    “I can’t believe I did that.” Damon sat on a bench in the dark garden, head in his hands. “I hit her. I’ve never hit a woman before. I don’t hit women. That’s not who I am.”
    “I thought you respected her expertise and were going to do what she said?” Marco was lounging against a tree. The limo idled in a red zone, and they could have waited more comfortably in there, but by