White Hot by Ilona Andrews

Author:Ilona Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-05-31T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

It was six o’clock on Friday evening and I was sitting in our media room in a fifteen-hundred-dollar-a-night dress, holding a tiny evening bag containing my phone, and trying not to move. Arabella had done my makeup. Catalina had rolled my hair into a suitably messy crown on my head and pinned it in place with a black metal hair brooch. My shoes were on. I had gone to the bathroom before I got dressed, I hadn’t eaten anything that would give me gas, and I was probably dehydrated, because Murphy’s Law guaranteed that if I had a drink in my hand, I would spill some of it on my nice dress.

I was ready to go. Grandma Frida and my mom were keeping me company until Augustine showed up.

I had spent the last several hours memorizing names and faces from Augustine’s list and my poor brain buzzed like a beehive. Several of the men in the photographs were blond. I had stared at them for an hour, trying to match their features to the smudged blur I had seen through the rain-speckled window of the Suburban. I failed.

On TV the talking heads speculated about Senator Garza’s murder. The police were still sitting on the details of the investigation and the rabid intensity of the earlier commentary had died down to annoyed declarations that sounded suspiciously like whining. The press so desperately wanted the story, but there was only so much speculation you could come up with, and starved of information, they were ready to admit defeat and move on to more exciting topics.

The pictures of Senator Garza came on the screen again. Young, handsome, politician’s haircut, and probably politician’s smile. He’d been murdered, and somebody had to answer for that.

“Poor family,” Grandma Frida said.

Leon ran into the room. “Neva—”

He stopped and stared at me.

“Yes?”

“Nevada, you’re pretty.” He said it with a sense of wonder, as if he had discovered some alien life-form.

“And normally I’m . . . ?”

“My cousin,” he said, loading a lot of duh into his voice. “There’s a limo outside. Two limos.”

I held out my hand and Leon helped me stand up.

“How do I look?”

“You look good,” Mom assured me.

“Break a leg!” Grandma Frida told me. “Take lots of pictures!”

I stepped out of the media room. Cornelius was waiting for me. He wore a black tuxedo that hugged his body and set off his handsome features. He looked sharp and elegant, a man who belonged in the world of fifteen-thousand-dollar dresses. I felt like a little girl playing dress-up.

Cornelius offered me his arm. I rested my fingers on his forearm and we walked through the hallway to the door.

“This is like going to the prom,” I said.

“I didn’t go to mine,” he said. “Did you?”

“I went to my junior prom. My date’s name was Ronnie. He joined the Marines and was due to ship out two weeks later. He showed up high as a kite and proceeded to cheat on me with weed the entire evening because it was his last chance to let loose.

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