Leci’s mouth fell open slowly and she stared at him in disbelief as she realised what he was getting at.
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
He responded with a shake of the head.
‘I don’t like it any more than you do, baby, but it might be our best shot, you said yourself they probably won’t even remember you.’
She wasn’t sure whether to be angry, hurt or pleased. Angry that he was willing to put her in a dangerous situation, hurt that he clearly considered her as someone who could easily be mistaken for a hooker, or pleased that he trusted her with the responsibility. She thought about it a little while and decided to go for indignant.
‘So, let me get this straight, we can’t split up to look for them because I can’t take care of myself, but it’s ok for me to lure them back here alone when they’ve been promised a free ride? Wouldn’t it just be easier for me to torch ‘em when we find ‘em?’
‘You know it wouldn’t. You do that and right away the Officials know you’re still alive. When you do it you need to leave nothing at all, no evidence to show how they died, because if there’s the slightest sign that they got burned then the whole thing was for nothing, and you’re back to being top of the most wanted list. We leave nothing at all then people are just gonna think they left town. It’s safer for us, people leave town all the time, no one will care, no one will even notice.’
Leci frowned.
He was right and she knew it but that didn’t mean she had to like his plan.
Besides, if she were doing things her own way she’d have chosen to get them somewhere far away, out in the middle of the desert maybe, anywhere really that was away from other people. Someplace no one would hear them scream...
She didn’t want it to end quickly for them, killing them instantly seemed somehow merciful, too kind in comparison to the pain they had put her through. She wanted to make them suffer, wanted to hurt them badly, hear their screams and their pleas. She wanted them to beg her for their lives the way she had begged for Xavian’s.
She didn’t complain about having this stolen from her because she knew it had always been an unlikely scenario anyway. Even if she did ever find these men she’d never manage to get them somewhere so secluded that she could take her time with them, do exactly what she wanted.
Still, there were other ways she could make them suffer, and she’d make damn sure she did the best job she could.
‘Where will you be?’ She asked him.
‘The second you see anyone you recognise I’ll come up here. I’ll be waiting. You won’t be alone with them, baby, I won’t let them hurt you.’ He smiled reassuringly and pulled her gently into his arms, touching his lips to hers softly, tenderly, kissing her lovingly despite the pain it must be causing him with his injured lip.
She couldn’t help but feel her doubts melt away.
She teetered close to the edge of admitting to herself that she may have stronger feelings for him than she had been willing to allow herself, almost opened her mouth and told him she loved him, but didn’t, was too afraid that by saying those words she would be cursing him, damning him.
Besides, she didn’t know if it was true or not and she didn’t want to lie to him; he was in love with her, he had been painfully honest about that and she knew he was being truthful.
He had waited patiently for four years, just for the chance to be close to her, he had risked, and lost, everything trying to free her. She knew that some large part of that was brought about by his guilt at having been the one who had put her there in the first place, but she didn’t think that made the sentiment any less genuine.
He had come after her when she had run away, he wasn’t willing to lose her, wasn’t going to let her slip through his fingers.
Knowing that gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. He told her he would protect her and she believed him. What made it mean more to her was that Xavian had looked out for her through duty, a sense of family, taking care of his kid sister. Amato was indebted to her in no way, not really, you could maybe argue that he owed her four years of her life but she wasn’t picky enough to hold that against him. He was free to stand up and leave her to her own devices any time he wanted. The fact that he clearly had no intention of doing that was what told her that this was real, and she wanted to be able to return that, wanted to be able to give him what he needed from her.
She had been naive enough to think that sleeping with him would satisfy him, that he had been fooling himself about his feelings or, more likely, that he had been trying to fool her in an effort to get what he wanted. She knew many men thought they needed to do that, assure a woman he loved her before she’d let him touch her; Leci had never held any credence to the notion of love, so it had never bothered her. She preferred not to hear those words.
She felt a little ashamed now for thinking Amato had been playing those kind of games with her; it almost seemed to depreciate from the intensity of the whole thing, from the realness of it. She hadn’t meant to taint his love by expecting the worst of him, it was just what she had come to expect.
She could feel herself falling into some deep pit, one that she was very afraid of. If she let go of the sides, stopped clinging onto what was holding her back, she would find herself plummeting through the unknown darkness and she was terrified that when she hit the bottom she’d end up broken. If she let herself fall in love with Amato, would she get hurt?
There was a small, niggling voice inside of her that kept asking ‘So what? What if you do get hurt? Did it ever occur to you that what comes in between might be worth it, might just be the best thing that ever happened to you in your whole life? Why are you so afraid of giving yourself the chance to be happy?’ She pushed it away, couldn’t quiet it for good, but chose to ignore it for now.
It was what he wanted from her, she just wasn’t prepared to give it to him just yet, there was no point dwelling on it, might aswell just enjoy what they had for now. The sex was amazing; ugly, nasty, rough, brutal even, but amazing and contrasted starkly to his ability to be so tender, gentle, loving, considerate, the rest of the time. She wasn’t going to turn down such a good thing just because she couldn’t get her head around her own feelings.
‘Alright, fine.’ She conceded. ‘But if anything goes wrong I’m totally blaming you. Ok?’
He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘Nothing will go wrong, I promise.’
‘Famous last words’ Leci muttered and sprang away with a squeal as he reached down and spanked her ass playfully.
Chapter 36
Amato pulled something out of his pocket, Leci strained to see what it was.
The small box was tattered, filthy, and held together, just about, by a rubber band. It may have had pictures on it at one point but it didn’t anymore, it was too faded. Through holes she could see colours though, red and white, through the layer of dirt of course.
He peeled open the end of the box and shook a deck of playing cards into his hand. Leci’s eyes widened. She hadn’t seen one of those in a long time.
‘Where’d you get those?’ She asked.
‘Found ‘em stashed away at the cabin. Used to play quite a bit, it’s a good way of passing the time when you’re on a quiet shift.’
He shuffled them expertly, Leci was duly impressed. She didn’t remember much about cards, Xavian had played a lot but they had never interested her, not when she had easier ways of earning a living.
‘You know how to play Poker?’ He looked up at her. Leci shook her head.
‘Nope. Xavian tried teaching me a couple of times but I wasn’t all that good at learning it.’ That was only half true.
If she had set her mind to it, she could’ve picked up the game quickly, Leci wasn’t smart but she wasn’t stupid either and it was a simple enough concept.
‘I’ll teach you.’ He dealt out cards to her, Leci glanced around the bar. They had checked the place out, wandered around the town, she had kept her eyes peeled for any sign of the men, but as
time passed and she saw nothing her hopes of finding them fell. She had really expected he would be right about this, had almost known they would find them here. Some weird feeling in her bones, she couldn’t explain it.
She realised now that she had been kidding herself, eager for the whole thing to be over and done with, to find peace, to lay the ghost of her brother to rest and be able to get on with her own life; now that there seemed to be a chance she might have one waiting for her. The plan, years ago, when she had begun her search, had always been that if she had found them and managed to survive the confrontation, which in itself was highly unlikely, she would have ended her own life soon after, her purpose found, her job done, there was nothing left.
Except... now there was, and the whole thing had stopped being a suicide mission. There was real hope for success but more importantly, there was the prospect of happiness afterwards.
Maybe.
If she let there be.
Shut up!
Damn that voice!
But yeah... the longer they had walked around and found nothing, checked out both bars and found no sign of their prey; the more she had come to realise that the odds just weren’t in their favour.
Five years had passed.
The men could be anywhere by now, hell, they could already be dead for all she knew.
Finally, after scouring the town, they had returned to the inn where their room was. Amato had suggested it would perhaps be better to wait downstairs for any appearance, and Leci, doubting it would happen, had seen no reason to disagree. They had settled themselves at a table in the far corner, one that gave them a good view of both the entrance, and of the stairway leading up to the rented rooms. From their position they could see pretty much the entire bar. It was a good vantage point; if their targets walked in, they’d be seen.
Leci still wore the cap pulled down, covering her hair and shading most of her face. She was worried about being recognised, but maybe she was just giving herself a bit too much credit there? The only really memorable thing about her was the fact that she could start fires out of thin air, other than that she was a nobody and looked pretty much the same as every other girl who passed through the place.
As the afternoon wore on, and the place grew gradually darker, the creeping shadows adding to the already seedy atmosphere, Leci picked up the game. Amato was a good teacher, he was patient with her and though she suspected he might be letting her win a lot of the time, she discovered that she quite enjoyed it and could even understand the addictive way Xavian had played.
She sort of lost track of paying attention to what was going on around them, every now and then she would lift her head and scan the place but she didn’t give it any more than a cursory glance, since she didn’t expect to see what she was looking for.
When they had arrived here it had been fairly empty, only one or two of the tables had been occupied, and a row of drunkards lined the bar. Gradually the place had filled and had grown noisier as people came to drown their sorrows, or fought over cards, or coins, or women, or weapons. One fight had broken out so far, but nobody had been killed, some guy had wandered away with a broken nose, blood running down his chin, and missing his boots, but other than that, there wasn’t really anything exciting going on.
Amato had been drinking whiskey steadily through the course of the afternoon but he didn’t seem affected by it, Leci had wanted to keep her wits about her and had chosen to stay sober. The bartender looked over at them occasionally but other than that they didn’t seem to have drawn any attention to themselves. When you combined drink with tempers that already ran at a permanent low, and men who were always out to prove that they were tougher than everyone else, sometimes all you had to do was get caught looking at the wrong person to find yourself drawn into a fight. Most of the time it was safer to keep to yourself, mind your own business. The majority of brawls that broke out in places like this would usually end with little more than a lot of blood and maybe a few broken bones. Some hurt pride of course, but you get so much testosterone in a small, alcohol fuelled environment and that was pretty much a given. Sometimes things would turn bad, weapons would be brought out, knives or guns. If you were smart you knew to get out of there as fast as you could when that happened. If you decided to stick around and watch the fun, there was always a chance you’d end up being a part of the entertainment.
With no real law in place to govern behaviour it was left, in these instances, to the business owners themselves to take the matter into their own hands, if they chose to do so. More than once Leci had seen a barkeep break up a fight with his own gun, downing whoever was a part of it in a warning to others that he wished to keep a peaceful establishment. Kind of ironic, really.
Amato swept the cards back into his hand, shuffled them but didn’t deal again, instead he packed them back away into the box and tucked them in his pocket, looking around the place slowly before switching his gaze to Leci.
‘No sign of them?’ He asked.
She shook her head, turning her attention back to the crowded room and scanning it slowly. She opened her mouth to reply and then froze.
She blinked, staring at the man.
He was stood, leaning against the bar, sideways on and talking to some other guy who had his back to Leci. He was about regular height, a little shorter than Amato. His hair was longer now, it had been cut short before, but now it was pulled into a small ponytail at the back of his head. He hadn’t had a beard back then either, now it covered the bottom half of his face.
It didn’t hide his eyes though, they were far too familiar for her to be mistaken. She had stared into them, hating him, wishing for the strength to kill him. They were burned into her memory.
Leci heard a strange noise and it took her a moment to realise that she was making low, frightened mewling sounds. Her hands, resting in her lap, were clenched tightly into small fists, her fingernails digging painfully into her palms, her knuckles were white from the strain.
Amato followed her gaze and watched the man for a few seconds then looked to the one he was speaking to, the one with his back to them. Leci wasn’t good enough to know from the hunched shape alone whether or not he was another of her attackers.
‘Is that them?’ He asked, reaching a hand across to her beneath the table, finding and grasping one of hers, gently unclenching her fingers and stroking them softly, comfortingly.
‘I... I don’t know...’ She replied, having a little trouble getting the words out.
‘He is, definitely. I dunno about the other guy... I’d need to see his face.’ As she spoke the man turned slightly and raised a hand, waving at somebody else. She shook her head. He wasn’t one of them.
‘No, only the guy with the beard so far.’
They watched as he picked up a mug of ale from the bar top, patted the seated man on the back in a friendly way and then made his way into the crowd. Leci lost him as he entered the closely packed mob, panicked at the thought of finding him only to have him slip away and she stood quickly. Amato grabbed a hold of her hand and tugged her back down before she got a chance to see anything.
‘Easy there, princess. He’s not going anywhere. Now... listen to me... Leci...?’
‘Hm?’ She had been craning her neck to try and see, try and get a glimpse of him again and she hadn’t heard a word of what Amato had said.
She looked back at him questioningly.
‘You ok?’
She took a deep breath and then nodded. ‘I think so.’
Amato smiled at her.
‘Of course you are, you’re my girl, you’ll do just fine.’
For the first time it didn’t really bother her when he called her that, it actually felt sort of nice and she smiled back at him, allowing his calm and composure to infect her, ease her. If she lost it now she could kiss goodbye to her dreams of vengeance, she was smart enough to know that this was probably the only chance she would ever get. If things went wrong and the men were alerted to her interest in t
hem she would never find any of them ever again.
It was now or never.
‘Ok, listen to me. You’re going to stand up, nice and casual, and walk on over there, you with me?’
She nodded and he carried on.
‘When you see him, you get close enough to see if the others are with him, then you come straight back to me, alright?’
Leci nodded again.
‘Do you think they’ll all be together?’ She asked.
‘Yeah. I’m pretty sure of it. They’ve done some nasty shit together, rape, murder, God only knows what else. Assholes like that, they stick together, like a pack or something, for their own protection too, if one decides to go against the group they’d turn on him all together. It’s kinda like security, if one goes down, they all go down.’
Leci tilted her head slightly. She sort of understood what he was saying, hoped he was right. If they weren’t all together it might be a lot harder to find the missing pieces of the puzzle. It would be a whole lot simpler to just get things over and done with all in one place, one night, and go back to living the rest of her life.
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze beneath the table and then let go. Leci stood, smiled nervously at him and he winked back.
‘Stay casual, baby, don’t draw any attention.’
And then she slipped into the crowd and was gone.
Chapter 37
Amato strained to see her but couldn’t, so he waited, his impatience growing, for her to return.
He knew that she was afraid and was trying to deal with that fear as best she could, he knew that she was relying a lot on him for strength and he knew that he needed to keep letting her see that he could hold up enough for the both of them. He was trying very hard to ignore his worries that something might go wrong, he didn’t want her to see that he had doubts or concerns, because then that would cause her to fret and become anxious, more so than she already was.
He had to give her credit, that the ploy to throw the Officials off their scent had been a pretty good one, but he still figured they’d be best keeping a low profile for a little while, at least a couple of months of seclusion.
The Condemned Page 25