The Bourbon Thief(99)

A cramp struck her like a fist in her lower back, nearly felling her. She clung to Levi. Sweat beaded on her forehead. She was hot, so hot, burning hot, scalding hot.

“Tamara?” Levi looked her up and down.

“Can you put me in the river?” She had to cool down and the river was right there. Right there... She would boil to death if he didn’t put her in the water. She thought that was what she said, but she couldn’t make out her own words.

“Jesus, Tamara, you’re bleeding.” Levi’s hands were all over, holding her up, searching her face.

The heat was between her legs now. A line of red coming out of her and staining her legs. Levi’s eyes were black with panic and fear. That wasn’t good. How much was she bleeding?

Did gods bleed?

She was off her feet and in his arms. They were running away, the fire far behind them. She could see the smoke rising into the sky, creating night clouds that blocked out the stars. She’d done that, hidden the sky away. Only a god could do that.

Drink up, she called to her angels. And the angels came and drank. But they were greedy beasts and came after her, too. Their wings closed in around her. They always said the Maddoxes had bourbon in their blood.

That night the angels drank their fill.





35

Paris

Before tonight, the only thing in the world more important to Cooper McQueen than a good bourbon was a beautiful woman. He had the woman. He had the bourbon. What he wanted more than anything now was the truth.

“So what happened?” McQueen asked, meeting Paris’s eyes for the first time in an hour.

“The newspapers described it as a ‘river of fire,’” Paris said. She sat like a lady, like a duchess. Back straight, ankles crossed, hands in her lap. She turned her head and looked into the empty fireplace. “Flaming whiskey poured out like lava. There’s nothing quite like a whiskey fire. It doesn’t just burn. It consumes everything. And the smell...” She paused and laughed. “Well, they say the firemen couldn’t get near the warehouse for the sweet sickening scent of it. All they could do was form a perimeter around it to contain the fire. Even six hundred feet away they could feel the heat of it. A hundred and fifty firemen from four or five counties couldn’t handle the immolation. They say even their helmets melted from the heat. The warehouse collapsed and the burning rubble ignited the next building over. And the next. Domino effect. The operation was old. The buildings were mostly wood. Tamara’s grandfather’s obsession with tradition doomed his legacy. They should have torn down those old wooden buildings decades earlier and replaced them with brick and steel. Nothing doing. On the entire property there was only one fire hydrant. There was nothing anyone could do. They let it burn itself out. By morning there was nothing left.”

McQueen cleared his throat. Something in it didn’t want to let him speak.

“And Tamara?” he asked. “What about her?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to know what happened to her.”

“Do you really?” Paris asked. She seemed suspicious and amused, as if she didn’t believe he had it in him to care about the girl who’d brought down Red Thread. “No one was charged with arson, if you were wondering. Any evidence of arson—which it had been, of course—the fire destroyed it all. Can’t take fingerprints off a pile of ash. To this day people talk about the fire and what might have started it. Some people thought it was Tamara’s mother doing it out of revenge against her daughter for stealing the company from her. Or a disgruntled employee. Or lightning. That does happen. Lightning from the heavens. Bolt from the blue. You know what they finally classified the fire as?”

“What?”

“An act of God.”

“You won’t tell me about Tamara?”

“I’ve told you enough about Tamara. You don’t get any more of her.”

A sort of fury overcame McQueen. For hours he’d been taunted and teased by this woman. She’d shown up in his bar and had offered him a golden box and had dangled the key in front of him all night long. Even now the key was in the lock. Why wouldn’t she turn it?

But his anger was displaced and he knew it. Paris was in front of him. It was easy to take his anger out on her. He sympathized with Levi’s fury that George Maddox was already dead and buried. McQueen would have enjoyed ripping that heart out, too.

“Levi was her brother,” McQueen finally said.

“He was her husband first, like she said.”

“He was her brother first.”

“If I told you right now my name was Karen or Susan, how would you think of me a month from now? A year?”

“As Paris.”

“She saw him as her husband first. So he was her husband. It’s like goslings imprinting on the first thing they see. She saw her husband. He was her husband. Those threads were tangled long before her birth. We won’t untangle them tonight.”

“My daughter is seventeen,” McQueen said after a long pause.

“Where is she?”

“Her mother’s. Emma and I went on a trip to LA over the summer to visit a college she wanted to see. She took a big stuffed dog with her on the plane to use as a pillow. She’s still a little girl. I’m trying to imagine her getting married. She’d be back home again in a week.”