“Get back in your car and lock it,” he said. “And this time stay there.”
“What does it matter if it’s locked?” I said. “That’s not going to stop a bullet.”
“No,” he said. “But if there’s someone else out here and he shoots you, it will make it harder for him to get at your body and cut your neck.”
I gulped. I got in the car and locked the door.
* * *
Griffin pounded on the window of the driver’s side of the car. I was sitting on the passenger’s side because my blood was all over the other side. I reached over and unlocked the door. He opened it, yanking a plaid blanket off his shoulder. He arranged it over the seat.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked.
“The car I took,” he said. “It was in the trunk. I grabbed it because I didn’t feel like sitting in blood. We’ll clean your car up properly later.” He sat down on the blanket.
“You think of everything, don’t you?” I said. The blood on my shirt was stiffening. Everything felt surreal. I could hardly believe that this had all happened. My life hadn’t been normal since I woke up after that car accident, but with every passing day, it got weirder and weirder. And Griffin didn’t help matters. He made things extremely weird.
He shrugged, starting the car. “I do my best.” He pulled out of the parking lot.
“You’re going the wrong way,” I said.
“I know that,” he said. “I can’t be sure that Matt was alone. Someone else might be following us as well. I’m going to drive off course a bit. If we have another tail, I’ll lose it.”
“So, you knew that guy? The one you just killed?” I felt a little sick at the thought of it.
“We were both Operation Wraith,” said Griffin. “Doesn’t mean we were friends.”
I twitched. “Does that make it easier? The fact he wasn’t a friend?”
He didn’t answer.
I stared straight ahead. The narrow road disappeared beneath the car. I watched the white line.
“They trained us to disconnect,” Griffin said suddenly.
I looked away from the road, at his perfect profile. His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“They taught us how to turn off our emotions,” he continued. “When your life is in danger, you can’t afford things like guilt or sentiment. You have to be sharp. You can’t let anything else get in your way.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “You planned for me to get shot, didn’t you?”
“I knew it was the best way to draw out the Op Wraith agent,” he said. “I knew it wouldn’t hurt you. If you’d been in the car, it would have gone a lot smoother. As it was, I was almost too late.”
“Sorry,” I said. And then I started to laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“Just the fact that I’m apologizing to a guy who got me shot. That’s kind of funny.”
“You’re fine.”
It was as though he’d turned off. The way he had at the party earlier. He’d shut down, become stone. It was as though he was two different people. My laughter grew more bitter. “I don’t think I’m fine.”
“Sure you are.”
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t think so. My father’s dead. I’m being chased by the men who killed them. I’m being protected by a guy who has no problem getting me shot, who’s able to turn off his guilt whenever he wants. I’m not fine.”
There was another long silence. I heard him draw several breaths, as if he was getting ready to say something. Then he would let them out, not saying a thing.
“I would never let anything happen to you,” he said, finally. “I need you to believe that. Do you believe it?”
“Why should I?” I said. “I don’t mean anything to you.”
“I promised your father,” said Griffin. “I owe him. He helped me get out of Operation Wraith, and I hated it there. You have no idea what that place was like.”
“Worse than prison?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Worse than prison, because in prison, you knew why you were getting fucked with. Everyone’s motives were clear. But in Op Wraith, they wanted to use me. They wanted to change me into someone else. Strip away who I was so that I could be a killing machine for them. They didn’t only teach us how to fight and how to fire guns. There was this psychologist we had to go to. She’d break us down, find out all our secrets, all the things we were ashamed of, everything that made us tick. And she used all that information to control us.”
“It sounds horrible,” I said.
“I came in there with memories,” he said. “People who hurt me. Op Wraith taught me how to turn any target into an old bully. So that when I took down the man they told me to take down, it felt personally satisfying every time. Like I got to kill that bastard over and over.” His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “I fight that. If I have to kill, I want to feel like I’m killing the person I’m actually killing, for the reasons I have to.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I felt for Griffin. Not for the first time, I thought that his life had been needlessly difficult. I wished there was a way I could sooth him, make things better for him. But I had no idea what to do. I put my hand on his arm.
“Don’t.” His voice cracked.
“You killed just now because of me,” I said softly. “I know that. I know I can’t ever repay that. Thank you, Griffin.”
“You don’t gotta say things like that.” He pulled his arm out of my reach.
“I’m not saying it because I have to.” I leaned back in my seat. “All of this was my fault. I threw a tantrum, and I put myself in danger. All so I could get this.” I took the bag of coke out of my pocket.
It was stained in my blood. I found myself wondering if I could wash it off somehow. If the drug would still be good.
“I have a problem,” I said.
“The coke?” he said. “Yeah. You could say that.”
“I think I need help,” I said. “I don’t want to live like this anymore. If you’re going to keep saving my life, I want to have a life that’s worth saving.”
“That mean you’re going to stop fighting me on everything?”
For a guy who was feeling all uncomfortable with my gratitude, he sure bounced back quickly. But he was right, I did make things harder for him. And I was realizing that only made things harder for myself. “I promise I’ll stop fighting. I’ll wear boring brown clothes to class. I’ll come straight home. I won’t go to bars. And I’ll do my best to stop using cocaine. I want to be officially done. Go to Narcotics Anonymous meetings or something.”
“Okay,” he said. “I know some people it’s worked wonders for. Let’s lie low for a little bit, and we’ll figure out where the closest meeting is.”
* * *
I fell asleep in the car before we got back to Thomas. Griffin took us on a winding, roundabout course all over the area, apparently so that if there was anyone besides Matt there, they wouldn’t be able to follow us home.
Even so, once we were back in my apartment, we had to be careful. From the phone call they’d traced in Cumberland, they’d figured out the general area where I was. Griffin didn’t think that they’d narrowed it down too much, not if they only knew that I’d been buying drugs in Morgantown. But it was always better to be cautious, according to Griffin. So, we didn’t leave the house for two days. He said that if they knew where we were, they’d strike during that time, and if nothing happened, I could go back to class.
We spent that two days getting everything out of the apartment that had anything to do with cocaine.
Luckily, blow is not one of those drugs that requires a whole lot of accoutrements to use, so it wasn’t like getting rid of my whole life. But it wasn’t easy either. I did have two cute little coke spoons I’d gotten in Boston. They had to be thrown away. And I found lots of tiny bags stashed around the house. They were my emergency stashes, and I’d put them there a long time ago. They were there for the times when you get to the end of a bag,
and you’re like, “Damn, I wish I had more coke. Just another hit or two.” I had made it so I always had another hit. Somewhere.
It took forever to find all of them.
Griffin helped. He wasn’t angry or anything, and he didn’t make fun. He just helped me clean things up. And when I reminded him, he helped me look for a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.
The closest place was Grafton. They had meetings on Thursdays at 7:30 at the Blueville Church of God.
We went.
The meeting was in a room they used for Sunday School or something. It had one of those felt boards up on the wall, with little pictures of felt Jesus and Mary and a whale. Maybe the Jesus was actually Jonas. Or whatever the guy’s name was who got swallowed by the whale.
There was a table in the middle with chairs. When I came in, only two people were sitting in them. They were two ladies in their forties or fifties. I wasn’t sure how old they were. They were both wearing too much makeup and clothes that were too tight for them. They smiled at me when I came in. One of them was missing teeth.
Okay. Wow.
So, when I moved to West Virginia, I have to admit I was a little worried because I’d heard stories about what this place was like. I thought it might be like Deliverance or whatever. But then I got settled in and everyone was normal. They were just regular people like me. They didn’t even have really strong accents. I figured it was bad press.
I was about to find out that, um, for stereotypes to exist, there has to be some truth to them.
There weren’t very many people at the meeting. Maybe five of us, not counting Griffin who stood at the back of the room and didn’t talk to anyone. The two women dominated the meeting, chatting in thick redneck drawls about how they were tempted to do crystal meth (of all things) while chewing tobacco.
I’m not kidding. Those two women both had little spittoon cups, and they shot thick streams of brown saliva out of their mouths every few minutes.
I’d never seen a real person chewing tobacco before.
I knew I shouldn’t judge. They seemed like very nice ladies, and I was glad that they had made a decision to clean up their lives and stop doing drugs. It was great. But... I had to admit, I didn’t feel like I had much in common with them. I wasn’t in such dire straits that the only way we could pay for food for my kids was for my husband to cook up meth and sell it. My teeth weren’t rotting out of my head.
I was fine. Okay, maybe I had a little problem with blow. But it wasn’t ruining my life or anything.
When they asked me if I wanted to say anything, I shook my head.
There were two other people there, both around my age, a girl and a guy. They were holding hands. The girl had dyed her hair bright cherry red. Both she and the guy had a lot of piercings in their faces. Nose, lips, eyebrows. When she spoke up, I saw the glint of something metal on her tongue.
“I’m Stacey,” she said, and she had a voice like bubblegum. It clashed with her appearance. “And I’m an addict. I’ve got six months sober.” She beamed, looking like a punk Cabbage Patch Doll.
The guy next to her shook his head.
“He does too,” she said. “He’s just shy.”
After the meeting, I wandered out of the church, feeling a little dazed. Stacey and her boyfriend were right in front of me. The minute they hit fresh air, they both lit up cigarettes.
Griffin and I had to walk through a cloud of their smoke to get to our car.
“Hey,” said Stacey, “I’ve seen you before on campus.”
“Me?” I said. Like there was anyone else around.
“You go to school with me, don’t you?” she said. “You live in Thomas, like we do.” She pointed at her boyfriend.
I felt Griffin go rigid behind me. They recognized me? What did that mean? I backed up so that I was almost touching him. “Maybe.”
“I thought so,” she said. “I remembered your boyfriend. I see you guys walking all over campus together. He’s so sweet. He only has eyes for you.”
“Oh,” I said, laughing. “Griffin’s not my—”
“I’m her bodyguard,” said Griffin.
Stacey raised her eyebrows. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, cool,” she said. “You know, Jack was going to be a bodyguard.” She slung an arm around her boyfriend. “But he found out you have to work with the police sometimes.”
“Yeah, not cool,” said Jack.
They seemed harmless. But were they?
“I’m trying to start a chapter of NA on campus,” said Stacey. “But no one except me and Jack ever show up. If you come, it would save us all a drive.” She grinned.
* * *
“Mmm,” said Stacey, her head thrown back in ecstasy. We were sitting inside The Purple Fiddle. Her, me, Jack, and Griffin. We’d just had our second NA meeting all together on campus. It had gone pretty well. Better than talking with the meth heads in Grafton. “I love tofu.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe you just said that.” I looked at Griffin. “That’s totally gross, isn’t it?”
“I’m not a big fan of tofu,” he admitted.
“You ever eaten it?” said Jack.
“Yes,” I said. “My ex-boyfriend, who was a vegetarian, made me eat it once. It was horrible.”
“Well, who cooked it?” said Stacey. “Was it him?”
“Yeah,” I said. “So?”
“So, just try this.” She shoved her half-eaten burger at my face.
I cringed. She wanted me to take a bite of something she’d already eaten. That wasn’t sanitary.
“Go on,” she said. “I don’t have cooties.”
I took a tentative bite and chewed. I hoped I wasn’t ingesting a trillion germs. As I chewed, I realized that what I was eating didn’t taste half bad. “Hey. It’s not awful.”
“Not awful? It’s amazing,” said Stacey. “So good. Jack and I would barely survive here if it wasn’t for The Purple Fiddle. Do you know how hard it is to be vegan around here?”
“You’re vegan, huh?” I asked.
She smiled. “Yeah. Six months now.”
“Isn’t that the amount of time you’ve been sober?” I said.
She nodded. “Yup. Jack and I gave up meat, eggs, milk, and blow all at the same time.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Sounds intense.”
“Definitely,” said Stacey.
“I couldn’t do that,” I said. “I mean, I think that would be too hard.”
“Yeah, well, we were going to quit smoking too,” said Jack, “but we decided it would be too much to handle.”
“We’re going to quit eventually,” said Stacey.
“You guys want to be healthy, I guess,” I said.
“It’s more than that,” said Stacey. “I mean, while I was doing drugs and stuff, I really just wanted to stand out, you know? My dad left when I was a kid, and I guess I was looking for attention somewhere. I wanted people to see me, and always notice me.” She tugged on her hair. “That’s why, you know, I do stuff like this.”
I smiled. “I get that. I know what you’re talking about.”
“When you’re all fucked up,” she said, “you’re free, right? You don’t have anything holding you back. You can be as loud or as noticeable as you want.”
“Yeah,” I said. Wow. Stacey and I might have more in common than I had ever thought.
“So, when I quit, I didn’t want to lose that. I was afraid of being nobody. Like if I wasn’t the crazy party chick with weird hair and piercings, then who would I be, you know? But I decided that instead of using my appearance to validate myself, I’d used it for good. So, now I’m the crazy chick who’s vocal about being sober and making better food choices and all of that.”
I surveyed her. She was actually really together, in her own strange way. I liked her. “I think that’s cool.”
“Plus, being vegan is like effortless weight loss.” She gestured at me with her sandwich. “Not that you need to lose w
eight or anything.”
I took a bite of my jalapeño turkey wrap. “Well, every girl wants to lose weight.”
“I know, right?” she said, taking a drink of her soda. She inclined her head. “And all guys universally hate it when girls start talking about that.”
Griffin and Jack both seemed really interested in their food.
“They’re a lot alike, Griffin and Jack,” said Stacey.
I set down my wrap. “How do you figure?” They didn’t look very similar to me. Jack was skinny and pierced. He had long, blue hair. Griffin was the complete opposite of Jack.
“They’re both quiet,” she said. “They both keep things to themselves, especially bad things. They don’t open up about their pain to just anyone.”
That was true, I guessed, as far as it went.
Stacey sucked on her straw. “Jack hates cops, for instance. Hates ‘em. Won’t tell me why.”
“They just bug me,” said Jack, eating a French fry.
“Something happened,” she said. “He’ll tell me eventually.” She stole one of his fries.
“Hey,” he said. “You got a plate full of your own.”
“I know, but yours just look crispier than mine,” said Stacey.
“You know,” said Griffin. “I think Jack and Leigh got crispier fries.” He took one off my plate and popped it in his mouth.
I glared at him. “I get one of yours, then.”
“So, when are you two going to admit that you’re totally smitten with each other?” said Stacey.
Griffin choked on the fry.
* * *
“Look,” said Griffin as we walked up the stairs to my apartment. “What she said, it’s not... It’s important to me that you’re safe, but not because of anything... you know, like that.”
I opened the door to the apartment. “Believe me, I know that. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I mean, she doesn’t even know us. We just met her. She strikes me as the kind of person who says whatever floats to the top of her mind anyway.”
He laughed, closing the door after me. “Yeah, she sure does talk, doesn’t she?”
Slow Burn: A Bad Boy Romance (Assassins Book 1) Page 7