Jasmine.

Taylor flipped open her cell and scrolled for the number to Castle Salon and Day Spa.

Twenty-Three

“Taylor Jackson, it has been too long!”

“Hi, Jasmine.” Taylor greeted her friend with a smile, was enveloped in a lilac-scented hug and left in a dark room to strip. She did, then nestled herself under a luxuriously soft sheet, lying on her stomach, face haloed in a round sheepskin pillow with a hole in the middle. Her nose poked out, which left her feeling exposed and vulnerable. Something in the air, the cacophony of floral scents mingling with cocoa butter and antiseptic that marked the murky interior of the spa, made her feel like she was hallucinating. Like her name, Jasmine Allôns was dusky and exotic. The woman bled sensuality, as if she were in a constant state of karmic sexuality—a living, breathing kama sutra pose. She made Taylor feel frumpy and prudish, things she certainly wasn’t. At least they were the same height. Taylor liked being able to look in Jasmine’s sloe eyes while she lied.

Now, Taylor, she chided herself. Jasmine didn’t need to lie any more.

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Taylor was one of the few people who knew that Jasmine Allôns used to be called Jazz and spent her days and nights sliding up and down a silver pole for a living. Underage when she went to work for an unscrupulous club owner, Jazz became a headliner almost immediately. Taylor had busted Jasmine for solicitation when she was fifteen, turning her hard-earned dance lessons into a profit in the back seat of her car. Not a story that was terribly unknown in Nashville. Jasmine’s tale just had a different genesis.

Jasmine’s parents were immigrants who’d lost their downtown store in a racist firebombing. A block of businesses and their home went up in the conflagration too—they lived above their 2nd Avenue poster store—

leaving them homeless and a vulnerable target of derision and hate. Jasmine’s Iranian mother had a degree in molecular biology from the American University in Baghdad, her Iraqi father was a former nuclear physicist who sought and received asylum during the first Iraq war in the early nineties. Which qualified them to open a poster store and drive a cab through the streets of Nashville, respectively. They were both taking the necessary classes to become American citizens when they lost the store. It was the last straw for an impressionable teenage girl who’d been uprooted time and again over the course of her tender years.

Jasmine had always been too radical for her parents’

taste. She hated that her parents weren’t allowed to follow their academic pursuits in their new country. She fought with them constantly. She forsook their surname and adopted Allôns; her new American friends accepted the name at face value, simply believ- Judas Kiss 229

ing Jasmine when she claimed she was French. Foreign was foreign in the south, especially for people of European origin. Unless marked heavily by discernible accent or specific, predisposed-for-recognition features like head scarves for Muslims, not too many locals had the international experience to argue a nationality declaration.

When the store was gone and her family’s future uncertain, Jasmine had lashed out, ultimately committing the cardinal sin. She fell in love with a white boy. She left her parents to deal with their newfound problems and ran away with her brand-new boyfriend. Of course, like her parents warned, the young man turned her on to things she shouldn’t have had access to—sex and drugs, mostly. It was an age-old story, a cliché of teenage want and wantonness. She became addicted to crack, started listening when her boyfriend said she could make some money to buy more drugs if she plied her wares on the street. Too smart to become a whore, she’d gotten an “interview” at a strip club, lied about her age and her drug problem, and was hired on as a featured dancer at the Deja Vu on Demonbreun Street. She shook what God gave her five nights a week and one weekend matinee mere blocks from her parents’ gutted life.

Jasmine’s quick and slippery slope ended when Taylor caught her blowing both a crack pipe and a patrol officer who knew better on his lunch break in the parking lot behind Deja Vu.

There was something about Jasmine’s eyes that haunted Taylor. She’d ended up vouching for the girl when it came time for her sentencing, managed to get her supervised probation. She helped Jasmine get back 230

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into school, got her a job washing dishes at a restaurant, and watched the girl get off the drugs. Applauded her when she graduated college with a degree in kinesiology. Jasmine was her success story. She didn’t have many.

Jazz used to make three thousand dollars a night bending herself around the stage in Lucite platform sandals. Now, Jasmine cost one hundred fifty dollars an hour as a massage therapist. She did Taylor for free. And she had her slender finger on a spiderweb of silk back into her old life. Taylor knew Jasmine did very quiet volunteer work with girls she identified with, tried to get them out of the life, show them a better way. Jasmine’s parents, newly accepted as citizens, had a new home and a new vocation too, operating an offthe-books halfway house for the girls Jasmine thought would be receptive to a new life.

Taylor didn’t go to Jasmine for information often. She respected the changes the younger girl had made to her life, that she never played herself off as a victim. Taylor wasn’t fond of people who wouldn’t take responsibility for their actions. Jasmine did, and didn’t apologize for the mistakes she made.

On the verge of sleep and drowsy with memories, Taylor didn’t hear Jasmine come into the room. She jumped slightly when Jasmine ran her hand down her naked back, adjusting to being touched by a woman. There was nothing sexual in the grazing, just a masseuse getting in tune with her client’s rhythm, but it always took Taylor a moment to relax. Jasmine knew this, didn’t rush it. When Taylor’s shoulders slumped and her buttocks unclenched, Jasmine started in on the trapezoid muscles, digging her Judas Kiss

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thumb pads deep into Taylor’s stiff neck. She sighed. God, that felt good.

After about fifteen minutes, Jasmine finally asked,

“So?”

Taylor didn’t insult her by pretending she was just there for a rubdown. “I need some information.”

“What kind of information?”

“Your kind. I’m looking for a couple of girls. They showed up in a video at a crime scene. Homemade, good quality stuff.”

“Sex or just strip?”

“Sex. Bisexual group sex as well as hetero. They didn’t exactly seem like they were doing it against their will. But they’re young. Couldn’t be more than eighteen, maybe younger.”

“You gonna bust them?” Ah, Jasmine, always the protector.

“No. Just talk. I need to get some answers, see if they know the brains behind the operation. I’ve got a suspect who’s going to go to trial for murder, and I’m not sure he did it.”

There was silence for a few moments, then Jasmine said, “Flip.” She raised one edge of the sheet and Taylor, groaning, scootched over onto her back. Once she was settled, Jasmine silently started working on her right hip flexor, kneading the muscle into submission. Taylor waited. Jasmine knew something already. Even in the dark, waves of intensity came off her body, as readable as smoke signals.

They didn’t speak again until Jasmine got seated at the head of the table, stuck both hands under Taylor’s shoulder blades and started sliding her fingers into the muscles along the back of Taylor’s neck.

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“This is about Todd Wolff, isn’t it?”

Taylor nearly jumped off the table, and Jasmine laughed. “Relax. I think I can help. For what it’s worth, as far as I know, he’s harmless.”