Conor Thames 2

by R. J. Lewis

  The boys laughed as they followed behind Conor, moving in the direction of the bushes.

  “You should be looking at the girls in class and not the teacher, Conor,” Dom joked. “You’ll never have a chance with Miss Hadfield.”

  “Not now,” Conor laughed. “But one day I might.”

  Max wasn’t behind the bushes along the house.

  Like Conor had predicted, he was probably hiding behind the rusted car.

  “I’m getting hungry,” Jem complained.

  “I earned a tenner raking my neighbour’s yard the last few mornings,” Dom said.

  “We’ll get some hot chips for lunch?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  Not paying them mind, Conor waded into the long grass and rounded the derelict red car on the lawn. It’d been stripped and abandoned, just the metal rotted shell of it left behind. Ducking his head inside, Conor scanned the car, feeling a pleasant spike shoot through him.

  Grinning, he looked at Jem and Dom over his shoulder, “He isn’t here.”

  “You’ve checked everywhere obvious.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jem looked down at his feet as Dom’s mouth fell open. “Where is he then?”

  “I don’t know, but it looks like our boy is finally playing the game.”

  Chapter Six

  Thames

  When Locke slid back into the car, he didn’t look surprised to find Conor in the backseat. He swiftly backed out of Charlotte’s driveway, glancing at Thames in the rear view with a blank expression.

  “Are we playing Hide and Seek, Thames? Like the good old days.”

  Thames sat relaxed in the back, looking out the window at Charlotte’s home. It was an impressive looking suburban house. The gardens were manicured, the grass done, the leaves of the tree in the centre of the front yard changing colours and flaking off the branches into a pretty yellow and orange pile.

  Parked down the street so it was just in view, he had sat in the SUV and stared at the house for hours, watching the lights go on and off. He felt her pacing from where he sat. He’d seen her standing on the porch, staring out, searching for him.

  He wanted to go to her, but he physically couldn’t do it.

  Then he saw Locke arrive, and now he was filled with too many questions.

  “Was that club yours?” he asked, ignoring Locke’s chilling question.

  “Yes,” Locke answered, another glance at the rear-view.

  “And Charlotte –”

  “Charlotte’s my accountant.”

  Okay, well, Thames figured she was something to that effect. She had run out of the club, her office clothing immediately quieting Thames’ fear. While it was a relief, it still didn’t ease him entirely.

  “Why is she working for you?” Thames questioned.

  “I made sure she was taken care of,” Locke icily retorted, tensing his jaw. “Don’t thank me or anything, Thames.”

  “No offense, Locke, but I trust you as far as I can throw you.”

  That response strangely pleased Locke. His lips spread in a soft smile. “Fair enough.”

  “Why is she working for you?”

  “She needed the money.”

  “There was currency buried in the basement.”

  “Stolen right before the fire.”

  Thames pressed his lips together tightly. Still staring out, he wasn’t taking in the beautiful suburban landscape as Locke drove. All he saw was his house up in flames, and his chest went tight. To think someone could do that. To think someone had dared fucking cross him.

  Locke remained cool, adding, “Dave sent threatening letters to Charlotte.”

  “Before the fire?”

  “Long before the fire. No evidence to suggest he did it. The timeline didn’t work, and I couldn’t do anything about it. Plus, Dave disappeared off the face of the earth. No one knows where he is.”

  “Even Reid?”

  “Reid’s not saying a word. All I know is that gold disappeared, and Reid was suddenly chop shopping all over the place. He’s got Blackwater under his thumb since your absence. Who would have guessed it?”

  Thames didn’t care for Reid, or for Blackwater for that matter. He frowned, trying to understand why in the fuck Dave would want to cross him over like that. It was one thing to take over territory because business was business and if there was a gap in the market, then sure, it was all his; but it was entirely another thing to get so personal you’d torch a house to the ground.

  “You think he was pissed I killed Billy?” he wondered.

  “Of course he was pissed,” Locke replied.

  “Enough to burn my old man’s home down?”

  “No, he needed the coin. Otherwise he would have retaliated sooner.”

  Thames swallowed another flare of anger. “Were they in the house when it happened?”

  “Hardly. Jem had dropped them off just before the house went up in flames. He saw the smoke and went running in there, cradling Penny out. The place was skilfully torched, went down so fast they couldn’t grab anything. Couldn’t track the bullion after. My guess is it was melted down into new bricks.”

  “Everything burned?”

  “Everything.”

  All that renovating and hard work. The custom bedroom he had made just for Charlotte, then Penny’s room. His old man’s office. The boxes of memories from his childhood he’d tucked away in the basement. Gone. All of it.

  “Where did she go?” he asked.

  “She stayed at your mom’s place for a while, but…Ember lost her job again and her rental again and also needed to crash there. It got too tight.”

  “Ember must have been devastated losing the house. She was always there, fixing shit up for me.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Did my mother tell Charlotte and Penny to go?”

  “No, Charlotte made that call. You know the way she is, not wanting to be in anybody’s way. It worked out okay, she’d started working for me at the firm. She made it work. She’s always been strong at adjusting.”

  Tapping the glass now, Thames silently fumed. He was too busy surviving in that shithole, not realizing the nightmare that existed beyond the walls. He looked to the front where Locke sat, curiously watching the guy. Unlike Jem, Locke appeared preserved. So totally unchanged, it was odd as fuck to consider eight years had lapsed and he was still so much the same.

  He thought of Charlotte working for him while knowing his sick little fetishes. Though, he couldn’t blame Locke entirely for his fucked upness. There were worse people out there, and they’d abused Locke in ways that altered him whole.

  Charlotte was so beautiful standing there, feet from where he stood in the darkness just outside the club. So close, he could have whispered her name and she’d have heard it. He’d taken off just as she started using her phone.

  He couldn’t bear to hear her voice.

  He’d hardly managed getting away, ignoring the mad impulse to scoop her off her feet and hold her.

  God, if he could just hold her…

  “You didn’t touch her, did you?” he found himself demanding. He couldn’t resist himself. Locke had an ability to woo women in without any kind of effort. It didn’t matter he was so intimidating. There was just something disgustingly appealing about the man.

  “No,” Locke answered. If bothered by the question, he didn’t let it show in the slightest. And that was the other thing with Locke. You couldn’t know if he was telling the fucking truth.

  Locke’s morality had abandoned him after he’d emerged from that hole all those years ago.

  He was a spider now.

  Lies were nothing to him.

  Thames’ curiosity went up another notch. “What does Charlotte do for you exactly?”

  Locke didn’t skip a beat. “Keeps my businesses in balance, primarily my law firm and the club. That’s where she is most days.”

  Thames studied him for a while. “Why Charlotte?”

  “Why not Charlotte?�
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  “You could have a team of people keeping your books balanced.”

  “Charlotte had nothing growing up. Her dad was an alcoholic before he died. Did you know she witnessed his car crash?”

  “Yeah, I know about it.”

  “He had a bunch of mental issues himself, wasn’t medicated and wound up self-destructing. They had little money, and her mother was a sadistic piece of work that gave her less than nothing. As a result, Charlotte’s got some weird habits. Not sure you’ve ever noticed, but she hoards her money in cash. She sets them up in neat little piles and pays her bills at the same time and day of every month. Her entire environment is structured in a neat and orderly way, and don’t get me started on her obsession over numbers. She’s never fucked up once since I employed her. It’s hard not to admire that kind of tenacity.”

  He was sceptical. “You hired her because she’s OCD?”

  “I wanted to help her.”

  Thames responded dryly, “I never took you to be so generous.”

  A cool smile spread on Locke’s lips. “I tried my hand at altruism. I spent time at the bottom of the barrel, scoping out the lay of the land.”

  “What for?”

  “I wanted to see what people were like.”

  “What was your verdict?”

  His smile went flat. “They’re the exact same.” And before Thames could respond, he added, “Except Charlotte. She’s not like them. She’s not like everyone else.”

  Thames breathed slow, wistfully picturing her face. “No, she isn’t.”

  “I saw it from the start. You did too.”

  “Why do you think I scooped her up so fast?”

  “She deserved better.”

  If his comment was supposed to piss Thames off, it didn’t work. Thames viciously smirked at his childhood friend. “You think you’d have done better?”

  Locke shrugged one shoulder. “I think everything happened the way it was supposed to.”

  “Me locked up.”

  “Billy in the ground,” he corrected, another glance in the rear-view. “He was too dangerous. You did the right thing.”

  Thames felt the pressure behind his eyes again, though nothing happened. He stared back at Locke, biting back, “At the expense of losing everything.”

  Locke was indifferent. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”

  “Am I?” His voice dropped; the question directed more at himself. Was he here, really? Because he didn’t feel like himself. He felt like a stranger in his own town.

  Coming to a sudden stop, Locke put the car in park and sat back, levelling Thames with a final look. “You need rest, Thames.”

  Looking out, Thames took in the motel they’d pulled into. “I have somewhere to be tonight.”

  “You can’t make it back to the city. You’ll be in a car wreck in a matter of hours with no valid licence, and I’m not looking to bail you out again anytime soon. You need rest.”

  He eyed Locke. “How’d you know I was in the city?”

  Locke evaded the question. “The same way I knew you had arrived at my club. I got eyes everywhere, Thames. While you spent your days surviving max, I spent mine grinding.”

  “Still did nothing for your soul, did it, Max?”

  Locke glanced ahead now, appearing distant. “Were you able to keep yours in lock up, Conor?”

  First name basis now. This was serious.

  Thames understood perfectly. Locke lost his soul in the hole, and he’d been without it for almost two decades. Was Thames staring at his future self?

  The thought unnerved him.

  “I borrowed a car,” he finally said, steering the conversation to safer grounds.

  Locke nodded. “I’ll have it here by tomorrow morning.”

  “I assume I got a room already.”

  “Room 112.”

  “Key?”

  “At the front desk.”

  Thames smirked. This fucker knew he’d be in his car from the start.

  Thames retrieved the car key from his pocket. Locke already had his hand open for it when he looked up. He passed it to him and Conor turned to go.

  Opening the door, he departed with, “Could have put me in a nicer place, you cheap fuck.”

  He caught Locke’s smirk as he stepped out and slammed the door shut. It was misty, the streets were wet after an evening of light rain. He turned in the direction of the motel office when he heard the car window rolling down. It was almost too dark to see the inside of the car, but the dashboard lights were enough to make out Locke’s face.

  “She waited for you, Conor,” he abruptly declared, sombrely. The sentence was so random, so out of leftfield, Thames was knocked speechless. “Just so you know, she never moved on.”

  He felt his chest swell. His throat was almost too thick to swallow. Locke rolled the window up and reversed out of the parking lot. Thames watched the car disappear down the street, his tired legs rooted to the ground.

  It was so cold he could see his breaths cloud around him. He walked to the edge of the parking lot and stared down the empty streets. It must have been close to two in the morning now. He was so wrecked, so tired, his bones stiffened from the cold.

  She waited for you, Conor.

  There it was, another crack in his wall. A deep jagged line, cutting through the apathy. He had tried to let her go all this time and failed so spectacularly. The rage that coursed through his heart at the idea of her moving on was suppressed so deep inside him, buried in layers of apathy and indifference. It was the only way to survive all those years in lock-up.

  And now, barely twenty-four hours out of prison, he was coming undone.

  Because that was the power of Charlotte Miles. She gripped him then, she gripped him now; he was tethered to her like time was just an outside force with no influence on their love.

  He looked over his shoulder at the motel, glowing with the promise of warmth, of rest, of a temporary sanctuary. Then he looked back at the streets, swallowed up by darkness and the unknown.

  Which way was he gravitating towards?

  What unidentified emotion was giving him that pull in the obscure direction?

  Letting out a long breath, Thames moved, taking measured stiff steps into that great unknown.

  Into the darkness.

  Chapter Seven

  Charlotte

  It was three in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep. I felt every second of every minute of every hour. I tossed and I turned, and I stared out the window into the dark night. The skies were cloudy, the rain had picked up again, gently pattering on the windowpane.

  Every part of me ached to see him.

  There was no escaping the great pull I felt. Constantly the pulse of it forced me out of bed and in the direction of the window. I stared out, forehead pressed against the glass, wondering if he was closer than I could see.

  Closing my eyes, I tried to feel him. He felt tangible to me now. For so long, he was out of reach, and now it just felt surreal to know he was here.

  You wait so long, and then the time comes, and it isn’t anything like you thought it would be.

  Energy pulled me away from the window. Unfocused, I grabbed my grey cardigan off the dresser and threw it on over my pyjamas. Utterly exhausted, I trailed down the staircase and to the front door.

  When I opened it, a gust of chilly air hit me. I shivered as I dug my feet into my slippers and stepped out onto the porch, shutting the door behind me. I didn’t turn the porch lights on. I stayed hidden in the dark, searching for any sign of life.

  I wondered where he was. I nearly cried thinking he might be cold and alone. Or maybe he was warm somewhere. Maybe he was lying in bed, trying to accept his new surroundings.

  I wished he would have come to me.

  I gulped back a wave of sorrow as I stepped off the porch and walked the small cobblestone path through the front yard. The leaves crunched under my feet and the wind whipped overhead, carrying the leaves across the lawn and onto the road. />
  I followed the leaves off the property and stood outside my house, arms crossed, looking in both directions. The quiet made me forlorn. I glanced back at the house, at Penny’s window. Sound asleep, that girl never twitched, and I wished I had her appetite for sleep.

  Endless nights such as these were a torment.

  And today…today felt like it was never going to end. And I didn’t want it to. I didn’t want to sleep knowing he was out here. Somewhere.

  Was he thinking of me right now? Was he too looking up at the night stars, getting lost in them, remembering what we were?

  I felt such fierce fear right then thinking he might not be. Thinking maybe…maybe he was done with me. Maybe he had let me go. Maybe those years pining were for nothing.

  I looked up, closing my eyes to the gentle raindrops hiding my tears. The wind grew more vicious, so loud in my ears, I couldn’t hear myself breathe. My hair fell all around me, still wet from the shower. I shook, opening my eyes finally to see a break in the sky. Clouds dispersed; a small pocket of stars shone right when I needed it. They twinkled, tiny bright dots amongst the murk, like a beacon of hope for the lost.

  I felt strangely at peace right then.

  I felt like he was here.

  Like he was pining for me, and my fears were unfounded.

  I could feel him.

  I swear, I could…

  “Charlotte.”

  His hushed voice hit me so suddenly, I stilled as a chill ran down my spine.

  My body became unresponsive.

  The shock was so great, I had to will my body to move.

  It took so long to get a breath in. I turned around slowly… following the voice.

  I knew I’d find him there, but I was still unprepared.

  He was distant from me. A good six feet. He stood still, like he’d been standing there for a while, watching me. It took me a long moment to accept that he was in front of me, this giant man, taller than I remembered, bigger than he used to be. Different and the same all at once, Conor looked wrecked. He was saturated, exhausted, like he’d been walking in the cold for hours.

  He stared at me, his soaked face wrought with anguish. His skin looked ghostly white. If he was pained by the cold, he didn’t show it. He was so drenched, his t-shirt was plastered to his upper body; every line, muscle, indent was so visible, it was like he was wearing nothing at all. He stared at me, into me, the longing in his eyes apparent. I watched the pain in his expression. Watched the look I prayed every night to see again creep into his features. The look that made my knees weak. The look that said he revered me still.