The Rules for Breaking (17 page)

Ethan squats down, getting in Tyler’s face. “Tell me his plan or I will beat you until you’re unconscious.”

Tyler spits out a mouthful of blood on the ground next to me. “Just like what he said. Mateo is after us. He’s using you as bait. He plans on killing him. He’s going to kill the head of the cartel who ordered the hit, Vega. He’s going to take over. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Just let me catch my breath.”

“How does he plan on doing that?” I ask.

Tyler shrugs. “I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me everything.”

Ethan, Teeny, and I stand there forever, all of us trying to absorb what Tyler said. And then I remember what Thomas said to me in the woods,
This is not about you, or really ever has been. You just found yourself in the middle of a very dangerous power struggle.

Ethan moves back and Tyler inches back up until he’s standing.

“Keep talking,” Ethan says.

Tyler looks at me when he finally speaks. “I didn’t know what was going on when he asked me to get close to you in Florida. I didn’t know anything…about his profession. Once I figured it out, I made him promise not to fulfill the contract. I never ask him for anything, but I asked for this.”

I move in closer to Ethan. The night air is cool but I’m freezing inside. I keep thinking this is a horrible dream and I will soon wake up.

And then it dawns on me. Tyler is the person who made Thomas promise not to kill us. Tyler is the reason I’m alive right now.

“When he got back from Arizona, he gave me your journal. Said you obviously liked me more than we both thought you did based on what you’d written about me. He thought I would want to keep it, but I really wanted you to have it back. I could tell how important it was to you.”

I feel sick.

“So I went to Natchitoches and followed you and waited for the right moment to give it back. But I didn’t think it through. I didn’t think you would tell the feds. When Thomas found out through his sources that they had the journal and were going to test it for prints, he knew they would find mine and he wanted to get the journal back before that. That’s why he broke into your house. Finding me would lead to him.”

“This is so screwed up,” Teeny says and for a second I want to laugh. This
is
so screwed up.

Ethan still doesn’t look convinced. “But how did his boss find out about all of this?”

“That agent put it through the system that there was an informant ready to flip and tell everything about Thomas. You don’t get to be in Vega’s position without having your own sources. He heard this and cut Thomas loose immediately and found a replacement. There is a line of guys waiting to take his spot.”

“What are you doing with him to begin with? Why does he trust you?” I ask Tyler.

Tyler is quiet a moment before whispering, “I’m his brother.”

Holy shit.

“Why did he bring us here, to New Orleans?” Ethan asks after he somewhat recovers.

“He keeps places all along the southern U.S. border. Gives him somewhere to regroup when he comes in and out of the country. This one just happened to be the closest one we could get to. It was the perfect hiding place,” Tyler says. “In a quiet part of the Quarter. No one messed with it.”

And this reminds me of the crowd outside. “Why are all these people here?” I ask.

Tyler lets out a nervous laugh. “They’re here for you.” Maybe he’s just glad there’s something wrong that he didn’t cause.

“Me? All I did was open my window. I don’t know why those people started taking pictures of me.”

“All those carriages are from the same tour company. I checked their site when I saw people out there. Some woman on a haunted tour last night took a picture of Ursuline. After looking back at her pictures this afternoon, she noticed one of the images had a girl hanging out of a top-floor window of Ursuline, waving her arms around. She sent her picture and story to the haunted tour company and they posted the story and picture on their site. Told everyone to come back at dusk to see if there would be another ‘sighting.
’
”

“And those people are here to see a girl hang her head out of a window?” Ethan asks.

Tyler rolls his eyes and says, “She stuck her head out and stirred up the rumor. Every other building in this area is supposedly haunted or has some dark rumor attached to it, but no one ever sees anything weird on those tours—until last night. There will be two beliefs floating around with the locals about that picture—it’s fake or it’s part of the three-hundred-year-old rumor associated with Ursuline.”

“What rumor?” Ethan and I ask at the same time.

“The Casket Girls,” Tyler answers. “For the last couple hundred years, one of the biggest superstitions in the Quarter is that the third floor of the Ursuline Convent is where the vampires live, and that tour company is going crazy with what they call ‘proof.
’
”

“What?” we all ask at the same time.

Tyler shakes his head, “Not here. It’s a long story and it’s not safe standing around here with Mateo so close. Come with me. I can take you somewhere safe.”

“We’re leaving, just the three of us. You can sit here and piss yourself for all I care.”

“You have no idea what you’re up against,” Tyler says.

“You’re probably right, but at least we’ll be in control of what happens to us.” Ethan says. Then he knocks him out cold.

Rules for disappearing
by Witness Protection prisoner #18A7R04M:

Always have a backup plan….

New rule by Anna Boyd:

Forget the backup plan—just make sure you have
a
plan. Even if it sucks.

are people everywhere. By the time we stop running, we’re several blocks away from the alley where we left Tyler hidden behind one of the Dumpsters. As much as I hate him right now, I don’t want Mateo to find him. I take a quick look at the street sign—Toulouse and Dauphine—although that means absolutely nothing to me. We stand in the middle of the sidewalk and try to take it all in.

Ethan is still furious—with Tyler, with Thomas, and probably with me for not telling him the truth when I could have. And he’s favoring his left side, so I’m guessing he’s in a lot of pain, too.

Another wave of guilt washes over me for getting him involved with this.

“We need to keep moving,” he bites out.

There is a huge group of girls heading toward us and they seem to be holding up this one girl in the middle. She’s hammered drunk, stumbling with each step, and wearing a strapless black minidress and a wedding veil. And it’s no regular veil—this one has condoms attached to it. Lots and lots of condoms.

“What kind of necklace is that girl wearing?” Teeny asks.

The group gets a little closer and I can make out a replica of a guy’s private parts.

We push Teeny along and I walk behind her, trying to block her view of the roving bachelorette party behind us and totally ignore her question.

By the time we hit Bourbon Street, there’s no hiding the craziness of the French Quarter from Teeny. Every other business is a strip club and some of the girls who work there, wearing very little, call to customers from open doorways. And if that wasn’t enough, most of the windows to these businesses are papered with pictures of what goes on inside.

But the music is incredible. Every door has a different sound pouring out: jazz, rock, country, and blues. It’s hard not to stop and stare and try to take it all in.

I hear little gasps from Teeny as her eyes soak up every single thing on this street—good and bad. We’ve slowed down to try to blend in with the crowd as they flow down the street.

So this is Bourbon Street.

“Ethan, what’s the plan? Where’re we going?”

“I don’t know,” he grits out through clenched teeth. “I’m looking for somewhere we can sit and figure this out.”

The next block still has an abundance of strip clubs, but there are a few more bars and restaurants. Ethan ducks into an open doorway, Teeny and I right behind him. It’s a small restaurant, really just a wide hallway with a bar on one side and a row of booths on the other.

The place looks like a dive but the smells are incredible. We pass trays of boiled crawfish with corn and potatoes and it’s like swimming through a sea of seasonings.

We slide into the only empty booth in the back.

“What are we gonna do?” I ask. “We don’t have any money.”

Ethan looks at me for the first time and it breaks my heart. I can see the disappointment in his eyes. “I know. I know. I just need to sit for a minute and think,” he answers back.

“Can we call Dad?” Teeny asks.

I take a deep breath and tell her about the video Thomas left behind.

Her eyes well up with tears but they don’t spill over. I couldn’t be more proud of how she’s handling all of this.

An older woman walks up to the table and just looks at us, no greeting, nothing.

“We’re waiting on some people. Can you give us a minute?” Ethan asks.

She glances at the bar. “A few minutes then you gotta order or get lost.”

Teeny tugs on my sleeve and whispers, “Do you think they’ll give us some water for free?”

“Can my little sister have a glass of water while we wait?” I ask the waitress.

Her mouth puckers and a million little lines form around her lips. “Y’all in trouble?”

We all shake our heads, probably a little too enthusiastically.

“No, trouble. We just need a minute and a glass of water. Please.” Charm oozes from Ethan and just like that, the waitress is gone. Seconds later, she’s balancing a tray with three waters and a basket with a hot loaf of buttered bread. I hope the drool running from my mouth isn’t obvious.

“Thank you so much,” Teeny says as she breaks off a huge chunk and shoves it in her mouth.

“That’s on the house. But you got about five minutes before Sam notices you ain’t ordered nothing. Better get moving ’fore then.”

The bread is gone within seconds and the hunger I was only vaguely aware of earlier is screaming its presence now. Even with that huge amount of food in our room, I had no appetite while we were there.

“Do we have anything we can hock? We need money. We’ve got to get off the street,” Ethan says.

I look at my hands; no watch, no rings, nothing.

Teeny’s head drops a little as she digs something out of her front pocket. She opens her hand to show what’s inside.

The pocket watch from the box in the wall.

I put my arm around her. “Will you be okay giving up the watch? Hopefully we can get enough for a room somewhere for tonight. Otherwise, we’ve got nowhere to go.”

Teeny hands it to me and nods. “Yeah, it’s fine. It doesn’t work anyway.”

From across the table, Ethan lifts it out of my hand to get a better look at it. “What’s it made out of?”

I shrug. “Not sure. It’s pretty tarnished. Probably silver.”

“What the hell are we going to do?” Ethan asks, rubbing a hand over his face.

I shrug, feeling hopeless. “Thomas warned me if we called the cops, he would know. He was wearing that police uniform and I really believe him even though I’d love nothing more than to dial 911 right now.”

“I don’t think we can trust Agent Williams, either,” Ethan says. “We still don’t know exactly what reason Thomas had Noah.”

Ethan’s right. I’ve never felt so powerless.

I look at Ethan and say, “Maybe we can figure out somewhere to take Teeny. To get her away from this.”

Teeny’s head pops up. “If I can’t be with Dad, I’m staying with you. I don’t trust anybody else. And don’t talk about me like I’m not sitting right here.”

Ethan looks at me a moment, his expression weird. “Tell me everything you know about the brother.”

“I met him when I was Avery Preston in Florida. We started hanging out, a little at first then more regularly.”

“Is that a different way to say y’all were dating?” he asks.

“Are you mad?” I ask back.

He drops back against the booth hard enough to make the table vibrate. He’s shaking his head before he starts talking. “Why would I be mad that you had a boyfriend
before
I ever met you? I’m mad you weren’t straight with me the minute you found out he was under that mask. Why did you make it out like he was just some random guy you knew? It’s not like this isn’t a big deal, Anna.”

He’s right and I feel terrible. Worse than terrible.

“You were so hurt and frustrated when I got to your room. And look at how you reacted when you found out that we had dated! You nearly beat him to death. I didn’t want to give Thomas any reason to get rid of you. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

He spins his empty water glass on the table. “And to think it’s his fault we’re here. He was there, at the party. He knocked into our chair so hard you almost fell out.” He looks up at me and asks, “You didn’t see him there?”

I hold my hands up in front of me and say, “No! I swear. I didn’t see him.” I scoot out of the booth and then back in on his side. I move as close as I can to him and I’m relieved when he doesn’t back away. My arms go around him but he doesn’t hold me back.

I turn my head toward his ear and whisper, “And the reason I never mentioned him to you before is because he never entered my mind. I liked Tyler. At the time, it was nice to try to be a normal girl with a normal boyfriend. But I never loved him like I love you.”

Ethan closes his eyes, tightly and says, “I just thought we were done with the lies. I understand you couldn’t tell me everything while y’all were in the program, but we’re past that now. We will not get through this if we can’t trust each other.”

“You can trust me.” I can’t lose him over this.

“We’ll talk about this later. We need to find a place to stay for tonight.”

On the way out, Ethan pulls the waitress aside and talks to her quickly, then he ushers us out of the restaurant.

“She said there’s a pawnshop not far from here. Let’s go.”

We walk back the way we came, getting off Bourbon and heading down Orleans Street. It’s still crowded but significantly less so.

Ethan pulls Teeny close. “Scan the crowd. Mateo won’t stand around Ursuline long. Look for the cross tattoos on his neck.”

Ethan starts for a side street but Teeny grabs his arm, pulling him back. “Look what that guy’s handing out!”

Both Ethan and I look in the direction she’s pointing. There’s a guy wearing a T-shirt with the same logo that was on the side of the carriage.

Teeny runs toward him before we can stop her.

She takes a flyer from a guy named Jimbo, according to his name tag, and it’s the same picture Tyler showed me on his phone.

“Tours every hour. Ten bucks a head,” Jimbo says.

“What is a Casket Girl?” Teeny asks.

We don’t have time for this. I try to pull Teeny away but she won’t budge.

Ethan leans in close and whispers to me, “If we’re going to try to sell that watch, we should at least know something about it.”

Jimbo’s face lights up since it sounds like we may be interested in the tour. “They were orphan girls from France. Early on, this place was crawling with men. Not many girls, or at least the ones you’d want to take for a wife. Those girls got here and they had all their stuff in these little casket-shaped trunks. The nuns over at Ursuline locked ’em up tight, ya know, to preserve their virginal qualities.”

He grins big. Obviously he enjoys retelling this story. “Pretty bad times for those poor girls. Most of them got sick on the way here—skin and bones they were, white as damn ghosts. Some even had a raging case of tuberculosis. Rumors started flying ’round pretty quick. It was the coughin’ up blood that made people think they were vampires. Said they smuggled vampires into the Quarter in those trunks of theirs. Most of ’em died. It’s said that the nuns locked those casket-shaped trunks in the third-floor attic and the upstairs windows were nailed shut with eight thousand screws blessed by the pope himself.”

Then Jimbo laughs and leans in close. “And if you go on one of our tours, there’s a real good chance you’ll see one of them leaving through an open window.”

Teeny is fully engrossed with his story and it’s hard to pull her away. Jimbo calls after us, dropping the price of the tour but we ignore him.

The flashing pawnshop sign is half a block ahead and we pick up the pace. My mind races as my eyes dart from person to person. Every time I see a tattoo, my heart drops, but thankfully none of them are what Tyler described. We have wasted too much time out on the street.

Ethan walks inside and it’s empty. It’s not a big area, just a square-shaped space big enough for a handful of people and a counter on the back wall protected by iron bars and thick Plexiglas.

We walk to the small opening at the counter and Ethan presses the call button. A loud buzzer echoes through the room and a really short man appears on the other side of the bars. His head barely makes it over the counter and he’s got one of those awful greasy comb-overs. And his teeth are disgusting, yellowed and broken around the edges. I feel dirty just looking at him.

“Whatcha got?”

Teeny takes forever but finally turns the pocket watch over to me. She may understand that she needs to give up the watch, but she really doesn’t want to. I slide it through the metal tray to the other side.

He holds it up and inspects it closely then opens the latch and studies the inside.

“What’s the story on this?” he asks. “Looks like crap, but it’s old.” He spins the knob on top. “It got a story?”

“It belonged to one of the Casket Girls,” Ethan says.