“Sounds like you’ve been watching too many episodes of SOA,” she said with a laugh. Truth was Travis had treated her like a queen this last week and she couldn’t imagine him ever treating her badly, but then again, maybe that was because this was only an interlude for him. Either way, she didn’t want to dwell on this or talk about him with Rolley.

“Do you know he’s Lorna’s son?” Rolley asked, surprising her.

Billie frowned, not sure where he was going with this. “Yes, I found out the other day.” She lowered her voice. “I spoke to Lorna about him after she came to deliver some paintings, and things got a little heated between them.”

“Geez.” Rolley looked genuinely concerned; he was good friends with Lorna’s partner. “Is she okay? Maybe I should go talk to her.”

Before Billie could say anything more, he turned and charged back out of the gallery. She couldn’t help letting out a breath of relief. Dealing with a happy-go-lucky Rolley had always been fun. He’d been a good friend since she’d settled in the French Quarter, but she didn’t like his irate, jealous streak when he had no claim over her at all.

For the rest of the afternoon, Billie tried to focus on her art and on the enthusiastic tourists that strolled into the gallery for a look-see and more often than not ended up walking out with a special New Orleans keepsake. That’s what she loved about the gallery she’d established. Although there were some expensive works of art, she also held plenty of pieces that were affordable for the average tourist. She wanted people to be able to take home a small piece of New Orleans, something that wasn’t tacky plastic from a cheap tourist shop like one across the street.

Still, although she loved her work, she couldn’t help the happy bubble that formed inside her as she finally shut up shop for the day. It was midweek, so the gallery didn’t stay open late, which meant maybe she had time to whip up something special for dinner. She’d always enjoyed cooking, but she liked it so much more now that someone appreciated her efforts. Not only did Travis know how to compliment a woman in the kitchen, he also happily helped with the dishes and made sure he continued to show his appreciation much, much later. Her insides heated at the thought as she stepped into the house.

Baxter ran to greet her, leaping up at her legs and trying to lick her knees. She laughed and bent down to scoop him up. “Nice effort, little guy. Maybe I’d actually believe you still cared if you’d bothered to come out and sit with me for more than five minutes today.”

As she walked through to the kitchen—Travis’s makeshift office area—Baxter licked her nose as if trying to make up for ignoring her. She laughed again and put the dog down, expecting Travis to get up when he saw her, to come over and yank her against him, to kiss her till she went boneless, as was becoming his nightly habit. But Travis stayed in his seat, his eyes glued on his computer screen. There was a furrow between his eyebrows that looked like it had been there a while. She started to cross over to him, planning to offer a shoulder massage, when he banged his fist on the kitchen table. Frustration was etched all over his face.

“Bad day at the office?” she asked.

He glanced up at her as if he hadn’t until that moment heard her come in, then ran a hand through his hair and attempted a smile. “I’m just tired of getting nowhere.” He sighed and glanced back at the screen. “Maybe we need to take to the streets instead; maybe it’s not—” His words stopped abruptly and his mouth dropped open as he leaned closer to the computer screen. “Holy fuck. How did I miss this?”

“What?” She hurried across the room to stand behind him and look at the screen, which seemed to display some bank statements.

“This.” He breathed the word as he touched his index finger to the screen.

Billie followed his finger to a line that showed a significant amount of money transferred from one account to another. “Laundry?” she read the transaction description aloud. “Must have been a heck load of dirty socks.”

“Dirty laundry,” Travis breathed. “One day after Priest was murdered.”

Billie swallowed as goose bumps littered her skin, but they weren’t the kind of shivers she usually got around Travis. “You think someone was paid to kill him? A contract killing?”

“Looks that way.”

Billie peered at the name at the top of the statement. “Who is Brendan Lee Tuckett?”

“He goes by the name of Blade. You met him at Café Du Monde. I knew it. I just knew this hit had Ministry written all over it.” Travis frowned. “It looks like he paid someone to murder Priest, which I’ll admit is odd. Why the fuck didn’t he just slit his throat himself?”

“And why would he have wanted him dead?” Billie asked, trying not to focus on the visuals. Funny, she no longer felt like cooking and, with all this to digest, she guessed Travis might not be hungry yet either.

He chuckled. “The Ministry has always wanted to move into the Quarter, into Deacons territory. The question is why did they wait so long? Why now? There’s a lot about this that doesn’t fucking make any sense.”

“But it’s the evidence you were looking for?” She gulped, realizing that if this Blade guy had killed Priest, then Ajax, Travis and Co. would enact their revenge and once they were done, there’d be nothing keeping Travis here anymore. Her knees quivered and she pulled out a chair to sit down. It was too soon. Despite knowing this time was coming, she wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet. Not by a long shot. Suddenly the fact that Travis’s departure might also mean the demise of her business meant nothing alongside the thought of losing him.

“It’s a start,” he said, sounding distracted.

“What will you do now?”

“I’m going to try and follow this trail a little more, check out a few things, and then I’m going to take it to Ajax.”

—

Once Travis found that first little nugget of evidence, it didn’t take him long to confirm. The money had come from one of Blade’s personal accounts rather than a Ministry account, which was why he’d almost missed it. It was a mammoth amount of cash—the type only exchanged in drug deals, contract killings or the like—and he guessed the recipient was also a member of the Ministry. There was a remote possibility this could be a freaky coincidence, that Blade had done some other dodgy deal around the same time Priest died, but something in Travis’s gut told him that wasn’t the case.

Anger curled tightly in his stomach at the thought of Blade, of the motherfucking Ministry, taking Priest’s life, making it look like he’d had a road accident. Although he’d thought he didn’t want to get his hands dirty again, he wasn’t sure he was ready to hand over this information to Ajax and Blue and simply walk away. So much for living life on the straight and narrow, so much for believing in legal justice—right now he wanted to be at the front line when his brothers confronted the Ministry president. His fists curled in anticipation. After what felt like hours sitting in this same position, Travis pushed back his seat and stood.

At the sound of his chair scraping on the floor, Billie looked up from where she’d been sketching on her pad across the other side of the table. “You going out?”

He nodded and grabbed his cut from the back of the seat. “I’m going to see Ajax and Blue.”

“At The Priory?”

“Yep.”

“Can I come with you?”

He paused halfway to the door, surprised by her question. “I didn’t think The Priory was your kind of place.”

Billie cocked her head to one side and hit him with a “really?” look. “And most people would say you’re not my kinda guy, but I think we’ve proved the opposites attract theory by now, don’t you?”

Travis deliberated only a moment. Ajax wouldn’t like him bringing an outsider into their club business, but Travis didn’t give a fuck. He wanted to have Billie with him as much as he could during the time they had left. “Okay, let’s go.”