Page 7 of Madam Temptress
He keeps going. “I also lied about why those other guys must’ve been in your house. They weren’t there by chance, mama. They were there for the same reason I was.”
I lean back into the plush leather seat as a sinking feeling settles in my stomach. I cross my arms over my chest. “I don’t get it. What the fuck does that mean?”
“The job I was doing for Mount—it was stealing something fromyour house. That’s why they were there too. We were all there for the same reason.”
A car honks from behind us, and Moses finally turns onto the next street as I work through what he just told me.
“Mount sent themtoo?”
“No. No.” Moses shakes his head as he guides the car into traffic. “I was there to get what they were looking for, so they couldn’t.”
“What the hell could’ve been in the house that was even worth stealing? And how the hell did I not know it was there?” I ask, staring at his profile as he navigates the road.
“A hard drive.”
“What?” I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to make sense of all this. “A fucking hard drive? Where? Whose?”
Moses shrugs. “It was stashed in one of the girls’ rooms on the third floor by a client. He used to leave shit there as a safe place to hide it. She didn’t know. No one knew. At least, until he got drunk at a bar and started telling a guy how smart he was for hiding it there, and the information made it back to Mount.”
“And how the fuck did you get tangled up in it?” I ask, not understanding how a gangster from Biloxi took a job from the king of New Orleans to steal something from my house.
He slows at a stop light behind a line of cars and looks over at me. “I was looking for a way out of the life. I told you, I knew if I stayed in it, I’d be dead by thirty. I needed a big score to set myself up for something new.”
The pieces start to come together. “So you went to Mount and asked him for a job?” I still didn’t see why that would be an issue for me.
“Not exactly,” Moses says when the light turns green. As he accelerates, he glances over at me. “I pulled a job in New Orleans. A big job. I thought I’d be able to swing it without Mount finding out, because I wasn’t going to cut him in and pay the toll for working in his town.”
“Oh,” I whisper, comprehension dawning.
Moses nods as he checks the rearview. “Yeah,oh.”
“We got a tail?” I ask, looking to the side mirror out of instinct.
“No. Just checking. We’re clean so far.”
“So, then what happened? How did you not get dead immediately? Mount doesn’t exactly give out second chances very often.” I know this because I felt like I’d escaped judgment day when he handed me one.
“He gave me a week to pay him what I owed—ten times the toll—and I didn’t have that kind of cash on hand. I had to pull another job to get it, but that job went sideways. Someone else jacked the cargo and sold it. I was gonna be fucked. That’s when I got another call from Mount. It was the night Katrina was rolling in.”
“Wanting his money?”
Moses huffs. “No, it was like he knew I didn’t have it and couldn’t get it. He had a deal for me instead. Told me if I could get what he needed, he wouldn’t make an example out of me.”
“Ah,” I say as things start to fit together. “So that’s where the hard drive in my house came in.”
“Yeah. And then Katrina hit, and none of us expected her to be such a bitch. But it was also the perfect distraction,” he says, looking over at me again as we make another turn, taking the long way back to his place. “Because I figured the house would be empty. I just didn’t count on someone else being there to try to get what I was after.”
My stomach drops, and for my peace of mind, I have to ask again. “You’re sure Mount didn’t send them too?”
“Yeah, I asked. But the guy who was drunk and sharing his fucking secrets at the bar wasn’t quiet, and whoever overheard didn’t keep the information to themselves. Mount knew, and someone else did too. You know what happened after that.”
I’m quiet for several blocks as Moses takes a handful of side streets. When we finally pull into the garage at his house and the door closes behind us, I turn in my seat to study him.
“And you’ve been keeping this shit to yourself all this time because ... why?”
Moses’s throat works as he swallows. “I wasn’t exactly in a position to share much information back then. I think part of me liked the idea you thought I was some kind of hero, even though I was anything but. Iwantedto be that guy for you. I didn’t want you to know I was just as bad as those other bastards who broke in.”
He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “How the fuck could I tell you after what you’d been through? I couldn’t take the chance that you would’ve kicked my ass out. You would’ve been left unprotected. What if someone else had come looking for it, not knowing I already had it?”
