The Murder Twins. That's what people called them. Mira is unsettled by the moniker, yet it suits them. She imagines they seem mystical to people who don't know the men and their flaws up close and personal. Even she had been mystified for a while after hearing about their upbringing. Their lives had played out like some sort of television drama; the parents split up, the dad moves to Russia with one son while the mother remains in the United States with the other.
They'd lived vastly different lives and yet to her they are one conflicted being whose most evident personality variants are buried deep in a phyche preoccupied with acquiring wealth by any means necessary, men after her own heart. It pains her to reflect on how she'd spent an eternity with a man she so thoroughly hated when instead she could have been sandwiched between the bodies of Mint and Mandrake Mallard while they were all still sweaty from some take or another. She smiles to herself. She's never considered being sandwiched between them before, but the thought isn't at all unpleasant.
She thinks of them fondly even after what they'd kept from her--and while she'd been angry at first she isn't now. If anything she feels a bit sad though she is not surprised they have kept secrets. She has to come to grips with the fact that she is in love with two liars.
She waits until the slight breeze dies down and puts a cigarette in her mouth, lights it as she considers a no smoking sign nailed to the inside of the red hotel awning above her. Her eyes catch the uneven gait of a man approaching. She remembers Fowler's phone, the names of the men in the text messages that he and Montana had shared. She watches the man for a moment more, and the cigarette falls from her lips as she realizes who it is she's watching. She turns with feigned nonchalance and reenters the hotel. She walks calmly to the elevator and calls the car. She waits. She hears the door to the lobby open. The elevator comes and the doors slide open. She gets on, presses her back against the wall and slowly inches up the fabric of her dress until she can feel the holster and the small gun attached to her thigh. She breathes in and out slowly in an attempt to fend off a panic so sharp it gives her tunnel vision.
After a few painful seconds the doors slide shut. She exhales, hopes that she is imagining things. She all but runs to Mandrake's room and slides the keycard into the reader with shaking hands. She opens the door to find Mint and Mandrake fighting in the kitchen.
"No fucking time for this! Fucking Mace McSwain is here--I think."
"What do you mean, 'you think? Is he or isn't he?" Mint asks, out of breath as he disengages himself from Mandrake's grip. He clicks the safety off of his gun aims it at the door.
