Schooled in Revenge by Jesse Lasky

his next shot.
    Another day, another dollar.
    Cain tapped the bar. The young bartender, slicing limes with a wicked blade, put down his knife and gave Cain another generous pour of Lagavulin. He was returning the bottle to its place behind the bar when the sound of a phone ringing cut through the silence.
    Everyone paused, all eyes on Cain. At Tavern Red, a ringing phone in the middle of the afternoon could only mean two things: a job gone wrong or a job coming in.
    Cain swallowed the liquor in his glass and removed his phone from the pocket of his perfectly tailored Italian suit.
    “Hello?”
    “I expect to see you on Saturday. You do know that, don’t you?”
    Cain wasn’t surprised to hear William Reinhardt’s voice on the other end of the line.
    “I told you,” Cain said coldly, “it’s not my scene.”
    “Irrelevant,” Reinhardt retorted. “You’re not invited to dazzle me with your witty repartee.”
    Cain was unmoved. “Tell your buddy the senator that if he wants to talk to me, he has my number. And for him, I’ll consider picking up.”
    “You know Wells doesn’t like to discuss business over the phone. Or through email.”
    “So the guy’s paranoid. The way he got into office, I don’t blame him.”
    Reinhardt’s voice was muffled as he said something to someone on the other end of the phone. When he came back, he lowered his voice. “Wells wants to meet in person. He has located him.”
    Cain laughed with satisfaction.
    “The party is the perfect cover,” Reinhardt says smoothly. “You’ll be just two guests of many, and if you come at ten, everyone will be too drunk off vintage port to remember who was conversing with whom.”
    Cain thought about it. He and Reinhardt had known each other a long time, their relationship mutually beneficial far beyond their imaginations. Their history could either catapult them to further success—or consign them to prison. Cain might not be sitting in a tony vineyard in Napa, but he was smart enough to know that it was better to pacify than to alienate a person like Reinhardt.
    “Tomorrow at ten, huh?” he asked.
    “I’ll see you then.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ava sits, devouring a warm meal at St. Ella’s Women’s Shelter of Carson City, Nevada, about two hundred miles northeast of Napa Valley. The shelter’s low-hanging ceiling and dreary walls reflect the feelings of the women huddled in the tight space. Trapped and full of despair, this is the end of the line.
    Ava, her beauty hidden behind tired eyes, is in a constant state of confused anxiety. She’s been on the streets for almost a year, having sold most of her mother’s and grandmother’s jewelry and clothes to survive, a piece of her heart breaking off each and every time.
    But she was only able to get her hands on so much, and it’s all gone now anyway.
    Ava tries to make the corn bread and thin soup served by the shelter last. She doesn’t want them to ask her to leave. As she takes a scoop of food, she notices a loose thread from her ripped, fingerless glove and attempts to tear it off, but instead of a clean break, the donation bin glove begins to unravel. The sight of it causes an irrational tear to spill onto Ava’s cheek. She takes a deep breath, trying to get it together.
    She just can’t seem to catch a break.
    Just then, a man sits down at her table. He’s rugged, good-looking, and the only person in the run-down building who seems in control. It’s obvious he doesn’t belong there, but then again, neither does Ava, something he lets her know when he speaks a moment later.
    “This isn’t the life you’re supposed to have.” He leans in close to her. “And I know how to help you get it all back.”
    Ava drove like a bat out of hell, hoping she was right. Once she’d recovered from the shock of Jon’s confession, she’d hurried to the car, flipping frantically through her file, looking for anything that might tell her where Jon might go in search of Cain. She’d