Surviving Ice

And the person who did it—that psycho Mario—will probably get away with it.

My teeth have been gritted for two hours, my answers clipped as I listened to that buzz that brought with it no serenity, no joy. All it did was remind me about the last moments of Ned’s life, when I couldn’t do anything but cower in the back room.

“Okay, Ivy.” He pulls his wallet out and pulls out a stack of bills. I don’t want to know how he earns his money. I really don’t care right now. “And here. You let me know if you need any help with anything else around here. It’s a lot for one person to handle on their own.” He hands me a business card: BOBBY AND BROTHERS TOWING AND AUTOMOTIVE.

“Thanks.” I chew on the inside of my mouth as guilt chews on my insides, watching him lumber out the door. Because, once again, I’ve been a complete asshole to someone who doesn’t really deserve it. “Hey, you’d tell me if you heard anything more about what happened to Ned, right?”

He turns to meet my eyes, an exaggerated frown turning his mouth down. “Nothin’ on our end.”

“ ’Kay. See ya.”

I clean and pack everything up into my case as I do after every shift, wondering if Sebastian will still come by tomorrow. I’m hoping that he does, because I’m desperate to shake the unease I felt today. I need his canvas in order to do that. Maybe working on him will somehow be different.

I’m wired. There’s no way I’m falling asleep anytime soon, and I can’t just sit around in Ned’s house with his ghost, so when my phone buzzes with a text from Fez, I jump on the chance to do my next favorite thing to inking skin.

Inking walls.

I have plenty of options. The owner of a building over on Forty-second and East Twelfth—who is coincidentally the owner of the sub shop down the street from Black Rabbit—has offered to pay me to paint a mural on his wall as part of the antigraffiti movement. Or, there’s an already colorful cube van parked off Lombard that draws in artists like three-year-olds to a bowl of gumballs. Heck, I could even vandalize the inside of Black Rabbit, seeing as it’s all being painted over on Friday.

But it’s eleven at night and I don’t feel like going the legal, good girl route. That’s why I’m in the bowels of San Francisco—inside one of the many abandoned buildings in the Mission District—with a box of spray paint and my portable speaker. Two things, aside from my tattoo case, that I never go anywhere without. I really shouldn’t be doing this. Ned warned me that the city has upped the punishment for vandalism to a misdemeanor. And I feel like I’ve outgrown that period of time when charges might pass as cool and excusable. At twenty-five, I’d just be a giant loser.

But it’s quiet inside this remote and derelict office building and the windows are all boarded up. Frankly, I should be more concerned about the junkies and homeless that will no doubt filter through here than the cops. That’s why I don’t come to places like this alone.

“Ivy, tunes?” Weazy, a twenty-nine-year-old Mexican with a well-known passion for depicting jungle scenes, to the point that his work is almost as good as a fingerprint, sets up one of his battery-powered lights. We have four in total. Enough to light up one corner of this building while leaving many others dark and accessible to any creepers who may want to hide. And they do.

That should bother me but most of them are harmless, I’m in a group, and . . . fuck it. Ned’s dead, Ian’s gone, the few good friends I have are nowhere around, and I’ve never been the kind of girl to cry on someone’s shoulder. This is the best way I have to work through my grief.

I crank the volume and my pocket-sized cube speaker pumps out a deep, rhythmic song. “It’s my playlist tonight, just in case you were wondering.” I hang out with these guys once every couple of weeks. They’re pretty cool. Other than Fez, none of them hit on me. I’m pretty sure Weazy is convinced I’m a lesbian. Whatever makes them leave me alone.

“As long as it’s slammin’, I’m down!” Fez hollers, swinging around the chain that connects his wallet to his jeans, his cargo pants staying on his scrawny hips by the grace of a belt.

“Seriously, Fez. Stop talking.” I can’t listen to that all night. If it wasn’t dangerous to put earplugs in around here, I would.

He waves his middle finger at me in response, but he takes no offense. He’s used to being told to shut up by Ned, every time he came in to deliver a pizza.

The ball in the bottom of the can rattles with my shake, as I size up the wall before me. It’s already been marred by taggers. Talentless fools with a can of paint. Nothing I can’t cover, though, and I will, even if it takes me all night.

“Who wants?” A guy I only know as Joker waves a bottle of Don Q in the air, his beady eyes settling on me first.

“Rum. Gross. Not me.”

The others flock to it, but I pull out my flask of whiskey instead, taking a small swig of it before I climb to the top of the three-step ladder. Not too much. Just enough to ease the tension out of my limbs.

With a spray can in my hand, I’m already feeling better.

TEN

SEBASTIAN

I have an obsession with time that I can’t readily cater to here, in my dark, dusty corner of this dump, the stench of urine and vomit permeating the stale air. Any flicker of light from my phone or my watch will go noticed, if not by the group of four graffiti artists in my line of sight, then by the many crackheads and vagrants that hide out like rats in rafters.

Watching with interest. Or, perhaps, for opportunity.

I’m really no different.

The last time I checked, it was two in the morning. Hours must have passed since, but Ivy doesn’t seem ready to leave yet. She must be a nocturnal creature, like me.

Ivy.

I’m no longer thinking of her generically. She’s no longer simply “the girl” in my thoughts.

Worse, I gave her my real name. Why the fuck did I give her my real name? I never do that and yet, in a split-second decision, I convinced myself that I wanted to. That it was harmless, because she’s not guilty of anything, and I’m not going to hurt her.

At least, I don’t want to hurt her.

I do need her to trust me, though. I found nothing of any interest in the dead shop owner’s files. No property holdings, no safety-deposit boxes, nothing. Which means I have no choice but to get my answers out of her, one way or another.

Either Ivy’s a fantastic liar or she doesn’t know a thing about this videotape, or her uncle’s blackmail attempt. She’s just a twenty-five-year-old tattoo artist with a prickly exterior, who lost her father figure and is trying to move on.

It will take creativity now, to question her about the existence of this videotape without her realizing it. To find out where her uncle may have hidden it. It will take time. I guess it’s good that I’ve had this grim reaper tattoo in mind for the better part of five years.

The day I received my official discharge letter from the U.S. Navy, Bentley pulled up next to my parents’ San Francisco house where I was staying and told me to get in the car. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, or what he would be proposing. He had left the navy a year prior, and took his skills, his reputation, and his family money, and founded Alliance. It was still very much in its infancy stage then, but he had big ideas and even bigger connections, which were already landing him major security contracts in Afghanistan, the exact place we had been battling suicide attacks and ambushes while we toured together.