Thigh High by Christina Dodd Page B

seemed to take her seriously. “I work on it three times a week, but I was in my twenties when I started lessons. I was too old to have developed the necessary speed.”
    She didn’t understand his pigheaded insistence about not going to the hospital, but then, she never understood this stiff-upper-lip stuff. “You are such a guy.” She lifted her phone, and when he would have caught her hand again, she glared. “I’m calling in a favor with the cab company. They’ll figure out a way to come and get us.”
    He lifted his brows. “Where are we going?”
    â€œI’m taking you to my house.”
    Â 
    You are a dumb shit, boy.
    Russell Whipple ran, aiming his steps for the spots without hailstones.
    You couldn’t hit your butt with both hands.
    The breath seared his lungs. Sweat dribbled from under his hat and the scarf over his face.
    Stop whimpering, boy, and take your lickings.
    His hand throbbed from that kick. He knew plenty about broken bones, and nothing was broken, but God damn, who knew that big bastard could jump like that? And that bitch—she’d hit him hard enough with that hailstone to cut his head.
    You clumsy little shit, you can’t do anything right.
    He took a chance and glanced behind him.
    He was alone. Well, except for a couple of tourists wandering along, looking lost, and a busboy smoking at the back door of a restaurant.
    Panting, Russell leaned against the wall, pulled off the hat, used the scarf to wipe the sweat off his face, and made himself relive the scene.
    It had started when he caught a glimpse of Jeremiah MacNaught.
    He hadn’t believed it. He thought for a moment that he’d been concentrating on him so hard, his mind had conjured him up. But there he was, walking along, head and shoulders above the tourists. Then the crowd had parted, and Russell saw who held him by the hand.
    Ionessa Dahl.
    Mugging them had been a whim, a whim brought on by too much work and too little sleep. He hadn’t planned it.
    You little shit, you’re a screwup.
    But his revenge on Mac was perfectly designed. He’d spent months putting everything in place, and the fact that Mac was in town…. Well, one more plan had to be implemented.
    Because the way Russell saw it, Mac had to die.
    This time, he would stay dead.

Nine
    If Mac had planned it, it couldn’t have worked out better. He was stepping out of a cab at the Dahl House, assisted by Ionessa Dahl herself.
    He let her pay the driver, then slip her arm around his back and help him up the front walk.
    He appraised the house as he walked. No wonder the thing was on the National Registry. It looked like the old mansions in Philadelphia, the kind he’d visited while earning his way through college.
    The wraparound front porch was six feet off the ground, the steps leading up to it broad and worn. The house, handsome, brick, with all the trim painted white, rose two stories with an attic above that. Yet the paint was peeling, and even from here he could see rot on the exposed wood.
    Still, this was Southern grandeur at its most attractive. “Nice place,” he said in deliberate understatement.
    She laughed, a brief gurgle of surprised amusement. “We like it.”
    â€œWe?”
    â€œMy aunts and I.”
    â€œSo you have family.” In his experience, family was nothing to brag about.
    But her smile crooked up fondly. “My great-aunts Hestia and Calista. When my parents were killed, they took me in.”
    â€œThat’s a good deed.” One, in his experience, she’d had to pay for, over and over again.
    â€œThey’re good people, born and raised in the city. Everyone knows them. Everyone loves them. The Dahl Girls and the Dahl House are legend in New Orleans.” She scanned the outside as if looking for something, then let out a sigh of relief. “At least it didn’t hail here.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œThe roof