by McLean, Jay
“Physically?”
“No,” I’m quick to respond. “He would never.”
“Listen, Bailey,” he starts, his tone soft.
I can’t help but smile at him. The good cop, bad cop cliché is real when it comes to him and Perceval, but knowing their stories, I understand why, especially with this case.
“I’m not sure I need to know the history between you and this DeLuca guy, and if it’s something you want to keep to yourself, that’s fine. But I need to know that you’re going to be safe when he’s around. Physically and otherwise. Do you get what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“You understand what it is we’re doing here, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I say again, louder this time.
“And you understand how important this is, especially to Perceval.”
My gaze lowers. “I know.”
“It’s just… you’ve been through so much already, and if this—your past with DeLuca or your future with this Parker guy, or whatever it is that’s going to happen—if you think it’s going to be too much to handle and you need to tap out, I completely understand.”
“Tap out?” I ask, my head tilted as I look him in the eyes.
“If you need to back out,” he offers with a smile, “I’ll find another way.”
“I want to be part of this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I tell him, lifting my chin in defiance. “I want to help take them down. All of them.”
14
NATE
“I’m fine,” I say for the fifth time while Ashton’s arms squeeze tighter around me.
“I was worried,” she mutters—her words muffled by my chest. She hasn’t let go of me since I walked into the salon. I’d wanted it to be a simple phone call, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. Not for her. So now I’m here. Physically, at least. But my mind—my mind is still trapped in that office with Bailey’s words ringing in my ear. “I’m no one,” she’d said. “Especially to him.” Of all the bullshit lies I was born to be burdened with, that’s the biggest one of them all.
Ashton rears back but doesn’t release me. “So, what did they want?”
And that’s a question I’m still trying to figure out. “I don’t know,” I say through a sigh, stepping back to give us distance. Her gaze drops, and I know I’ve hurt her again, but if she knew what was on my mind, she’d be grateful I’ve put an end to this charade. “I just came by to let you know I’m good, but…”
Her eyes are on mine again, unblinking. “But what?”
“But… I have to go.”
“Again?”
“Look…” I run a hand through my hair, tug at the ends. “We’re in the middle of something right now, and I don’t quite know what it is yet. So, I’m going to be in and out a lot and… that’s really all I know for now. But I’ll be back tonight.”
She tugs at my shirt. “Lo prometti?”
I crack a smile. “Lo prometto.”
* * *
“What do we know?” I ask Tiny.
When I finally made it back to the house, I walked in on the girl sitting on the couch, Tiny standing over her. Literally. He didn’t move, not even when I asked him what was up.
He said, so simply, “I didn’t let her out of my sight, Boss.”
I’ve seen many sides to Tiny in the years we’ve been living in each other’s pockets. When we were working together, he was impenetrable. A force so fierce he couldn’t be broken. His job was to protect me, and he made sure everyone was aware of that. But when it was just the two of us—when we sat back after a hard day’s work with a beer in our hands, I saw signs of the real Tiny or a version of him that he’d likely be if our lives didn’t revolve around danger almost twenty-four-seven. But even in those moments, he was always alert. Always looking at the door, always watching my back to make sure that I’d come out of every situation alive, even if he didn’t. And our plan, the plan, was proof that he’d give up his life for me. For my family. For our honor.
The one thing I’d never seen from Tiny was guilt. Even after he’d taken someone’s life, there was nothing there but that vigilant mask. Now though, I see it, and a crack forms in my armor. “Why does she look so scared?” I ask, jerking my head toward the girl as we stand in the kitchen, far enough that she can’t hear us but close enough that I can still watch her. “Did you make a move on her?” I try to joke.
He rolls his eyes, his shoulders relaxing slightly. “No,” he answers, looking back at her. “You think I should?”
“And scare her more?”
Shaking his head, he takes a step closer, his voice quiet. “She says some guys brought her here.”
“What guys?”
He shrugs. “She doesn’t know their names. They just told her to collect the packages without showing her face, and then they’d come back for her. She wasn’t to leave until they gave her the word. They never came back, so…”
“So… what?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “That’s all she’s willing to tell me, nothing about her life before that. She kind of just… shuts down.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s not helping us any.”
“I tried everything, Boss—”
“I know, it’s—”
“But she gets these eyes.”
“Eyes?” I ask incredulously.
“You know, like, scared lady eyes.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You know, like—like Bailey when we first—”
I clear my throat, stop him there. “I saw her today.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“And I meant it yesterday as much as I mean it today.”
“You saw her today too?”
I nod.
“Where?”
My lips thin to a line.
Tiny shakes his head. “Where the hell have you been? Is Ashton—”
“She’s fine,” I cut in, focus on the unmoving random girl. “She called because some FBI agent was waiting at the salon to see me.”
“Feds?” he almost shouts. “The fucking feds are up in our shit now?”
My eyes snap to his. “Keep your fucking voice down.”
“DEA?”
“No, I don’t know. But they have Bailey.”
“What?”
I nod.
“Did you talk to her?”
“No.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, try to ease the tension building there. “She talked to me, though.”
“What did she say?” he asks.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Boss…”
“Let’s just get through one thing at a time.” I have every intention of filling him in on everything that’s happened today, but not now. Not yet. “Does she have a name?”
Tiny stares at me, waiting, but I refuse to back down, refuse to let my thoughts go back there. “I’m sure she does,” he finally concedes. “She’s just not willing to tell me yet.”
I focus on the unknown girl sitting in the living room of what’s technically my house. “You think she’s going to run?”
“I don’t know.” He huffs out a breath. “But I have no fucking clue what to do with her. You got any ideas?”
I trail my eyes back to him and quirk an eyebrow.
His head moves from side to side, his glare disbelieving. “Not again.”
15
NATE
I call Ashton on the drive home and tell her that I’ll be back in time for dinner and that Tiny’s coming. With a date. She laughs at this, and I contain mine while Tiny glares at the car speaker her laughter is coming from. When enough time passes and I tell her that I’m not kidding—or any form of it—she pulls herself together. “I’ll set the table for four.”
Then I tell Tiny, without revealing too much to our new friend in the back seat, that Ashton’s had a rough day and that we need to pretend—for one night—that everything’s fine. That we�
�re not currently drowning in the clusterfuck we’d somehow created. He reluctantly agrees. I turn to the girl-with-no-name. “You got it?”
She gives me a two-finger salute. “Yes, Boss.”
Tiny chuckles. “She’s kind of a smartass.”
* * *
If Ashton’s suspicious of the stranger sitting opposite her at the dinner table, she doesn’t let it show. And if she’s pretending—like we are—that she’s not at all worried about the events of the day, she’s doing a damn good job of it. So is Dana—a name the girl offered, which I’m sure is as fake as Ashton’s nails, the ones currently digging into my bicep as she laughs at the story being told about how Tiny and Dana met. At a bar, apparently, where Tiny knocked her off her feet as he was leaving and she was entering. Knocked the wind right out of her, she says, to which he replies that he literally took her breath away the moment she saw him.
If this isn’t proof that we live in a world where telling lies is easier than speaking truths—where we can accept anything that’s being fed to us as long as it fits within our perfect agendas and cookie-cutter beliefs—then I don’t know what is.
“She couldn’t keep her hands off me,” Tiny says through a chuckle.
The corners of my lips tick.
“I punched you,” Dana snorts, bringing her glass of wine to her lips.
Next to me, Ashton spits out her wine, then, red-faced with laughter, wipes at her mouth. “You punched him?” she shouts.
“It was a love tap,” Tiny chirps. “Barely felt it.”
Urged on by whiskey and wine, the conversation continues freely, openly. Ashton laughs to the point of tears—and this is what I wanted for her—to give her this moment before everything ends.
I haven’t forgotten my conversation with Tiny at the cemetery.
It’s time.
And this might be the last chance we get to do this before…
Before I set the timer on the ticking bomb.
Sit on it.
Wait for it to explode.
And Ashton?
Ashton has her own agenda.
Her own beliefs.
Her own bomb.
And her own ending.
My phone rings, a private number, and I get up and move to the hallway to answer it. “Hello?”
“Nate…”
I’d never heard her voice through a phone before, but I recognize it right away. Would never mistake it. Could never forget it.
“It’s um… it’s—”
“I know who it is.” I lean back against the wall to keep me standing. “Are… are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
We’re all fine.
And we’re all fucking liars.
“How’d you get my number?”
“They’re Federal agents; they have their ways.”
I swallow my nerves. “Right.”
“Do you um… do you think we could meet up?”
I stand taller, my heart racing. “Right now?” Silence passes, and I grip the phone tighter. “Bailey?”
“No,” she finally responds. “Tomorrow?”
I’m quick to answer. “Where?”
“I’ll text you the address.”
“Okay.”
“And Nate?”
“Yeah?”
“Bring Tiny.” She hangs up before I get a chance to reply, and then I just stand there, staring at the phone, wishing it could somehow teleport me to her or maybe go back in time to the first night. The night I’d found her, bloodied and bruised, and swear, I’d do it all differently. I’d change the paths of our futures and find a way to set her free and keep her safe and still… keep her.
“Nate?” I glance up to see Ashton at the end of the hallway, her gaze switching between my face and my phone. “That was her, wasn’t it?”
No more lies.
No more secrets.
“Yes.”
16
NATE
Of the four apartments in the complex, two are furnished. One is ours. One is Tiny’s. He doesn’t live there; he just stays there on the nights when he needs to. Last night, he needed to. So did “Dana.”
Ashton offered to help her settle in one of the bedrooms there so that Tiny and I could talk. I clued him in on everything that happened earlier, about Lester Perceval waiting at the salon and then taking me to his office. I told him about how much they know about me, about us, and everything we’ve been doing and include that, according to them, that’s not what they’re here for. I leave out what Bailey said to me, as well as the fact that I kind of sort of maybe punched him.
Whatever.
The text with the address came through just before my head hit the pillow and exhaustion took over every inch of my body, and now…now we’re in the car while Tiny looks up the directions to a random address in a suburb I’d never even heard of.
Ashton’s with “Dana” in our apartment to make sure she doesn’t run, but considering Ashton walked into the living room this morning, took one look at Dana, then proceeded to load her Glock 42, I doubt Dana will be trying much of anything.
Obviously, I told Ashton everything I knew, which wasn’t much, but enough to settle her worries.
Like I said, no more secrets.
No more lies.
And since I’m on a kick with telling truths, I tell Tiny one more: “I wish I knew what the fuck it is we’re about to walk into.”
* * *
The address Bailey provided is a modest house in the suburbs with absolutely no significance. “Are you sure this is it?” Tiny asks.
I double-check the address. “Yeah, that’s what she said.” I release a breath before adding, “Are you ready for this?”
He shakes his head. “Are we ever truly ready for the unknown?”
A slight chuckle bursts from my lungs. “All right, H.P Lovecraft.”
“Harry Potter loves who?”
“No,” I say, sitting taller and facing him. “H.P Lovecraft. He wrote ‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is the fear of the unknown.’”
Tiny stares at me, continues shaking his head.
“You never heard of it?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.
“Nate, I barely passed elementary school, and you’re out here quoting shit like Dead Poets Society.” He raises a fist. “Carpe diem!”
I smile at my best friend. My brother. “But you didn’t get held back a year because you struggled with the smarts, did you…”
His eyes widen.
“You don’t think I read every file I could find on you before asking you to come on board?”
“You didn’t…” he whispers, low and slow.
I laugh now, my chest warming with it. Such a contrast in emotions. “When I get really down, I imagine a ten-year-old you—”
“Don’t!”
“—sitting in that sandpit…”
“Don’t say it!”
I can barely get the words out through my withheld laughter. “…sculpting giant cock and balls and perky titties.”
He covers his face, his shoulders shaking with his chuckle. “You motherfucker.”
We lose it then, a fit of laughter that echoes through the confines of the car, and we forget for a moment who we are and what we’re doing here. We laugh so hard, we can barely breathe, and I ignore the fact that when this is over, when it ends… he’ll be nothing more than a memory—another hole in my heart. I’ve stopped laughing now, and so has he. Melancholy fills the void between us, and I push down the knot in my throat. “You ever wonder what your life would be like if you hadn’t met me?”
“Nah,” he says, shrugging. “I wouldn’t have lived a life worthy of anything if you didn’t come along.”
Sometimes I question if I pay him to lie to me.
* * *
Agent Neilson—the younger of the two feds—is the one to greet us, and I introduce him to Tiny, who gives a curt nod in return. “She’s out back,” he informs
us once the door’s closed behind us. We start to make our way there before he stops us in the kitchen, saying to our backs, “I need to pat you down, take your weapons.”
I turn to him, my eyebrow quirked.
He shrugs. “Sorry.”
With a sigh, I remove my pistol from the holster, place it on the table. Tiny does the same. Neilson crosses his arms. “All of them.” Tiny looks to me for guidance, and I nod. Five minutes later, and feeling only slightly violated, we finally make it out the back door. I don’t make it far. One step. Maybe two. And then it’s impossible to move. Impossible to breathe. Bailey’s sitting at a small patio table with Perceval opposite her. Between them is a chessboard, mid-game, and Bailey’s chewing her bottom lip, her focus on the pieces in front of her. She raises her hand, starts to move a pawn but pauses, looks up at Perceval in question. She drops her hand, goes for the knight instead, and whatever look Perceval gives her has her smiling the same smile I see whenever I close my eyes.
A hand lands on my shoulder. “Perceval was right,” Neilson states.
Without taking my eyes off Bailey, I ask, “About what?”
“About the way you look at her.”
Perceval turns to us now, then back to Bailey. She nods at whatever he asks her and lowers her head. She starts moving the pieces again—back to their starting positions—while Perceval gets up and makes his way over to us. “Be nice,” he warns.
“Fuck you.”
Tiny shoves me forward, starts guiding me the rest of the way.
“I mean it, DeLuca!” Perceval shouts after me.
“Fuck you twice, you motherfu—!”
Bailey looks up, halting my words. Her eyes are the brightest I’ve ever seen them, and I realize now I’d never seen her out in the daylight. Against the sun, her eyes are pools of honey.
Bailey looks first at Tiny, then at me. Not at my eyes, not even my face. Lower. At my chest. “Do you play?” she asks, motioning to the board. She won’t look at me.