by Tessa Bailey
“Teresa!”
I shout her name, as if it’ll conjure her up. I tried calling her cell on the way here even though I suspected it was useless. Now, I storm through the rooms, stopping in hers when I find the drawers open, her things long gone. The floor seems to rise up around me, sweat forming on my forehead.
No. No, no, no. I just need the morning back. Give me the morning back.
Southpaw jumps up on Teresa’s bed and sniffs it, glancing over at me. As if to say, what did you do, asshole? On the bedside table, there are a couple balled-up tissues. To dry her tears? A sound climbs my throat at the evidence, but I’m distracted when I see a shiny black object peeking out from beneath them. I pounce like a beggar who spies a twenty on the sidewalk, snatching it up.
Her GoPro. She left it.
I start to shove the device into my pocket, but something stops me. Instead, I turn it on and hit play, holding my breath when I see…white, bubbling water on the screen. And Southpaw. It’s the rapid. In the confusion of that day, I forgot Teresa had strapped the camera to his collar to capture what he does on his own in the woods.
“Okay,” says Teresa’s voice, through the camera. “Okay, buddy. It’s fine. Just hang on.”
Instead, she caught them fighting to stay above water in the river.
“Oh, this is bad. This is really, really bad.” Teresa’s voice fills the room, full of terror and—incredibly—humor at the same time. Her words are almost inaudible because of the water rushing in the background, so I turn up the volume and press it to my ear. “You have to stay, like, as long as you can. For him, okay? Because I can’t. He’s not going to want me. Come on. Come on. Where’s the fucking shore?” The humor is beginning to slide from her voice and it’s like I’m reliving the horrific moment I saw her being carried away by the current. “I could love him. Maybe I already do. I could love you, too, even though your giant ass is the reason I’m going to die.”
I’m being flayed wide open where I stand. Hemorrhaging blood all over the carpet. She could love me? Maybe she already does?
Everything comes crashing in at once. Snippets of the last few days. Southpaw protecting Teresa in the hallway of that fleabag motel. Her vulnerability the first time I kissed her, like she wasn’t expecting to feel that fucking free fall. The same one I felt. The exhilaration on her face when she won that arm-wrestling contest. And threw herself into my arms…
Not fake. Was any of the good stuff fake?
I swallow a fist-sized lump, but another one forms in its place. One thing definitely isn’t phony. The danger she’s in. The danger she would have avoided if we’d gone back to New York together. We didn’t, though. She went. She’s gone and I’m still fucking here. While the full magnitude of what she could be walking into cuts me in half, an echo of her past fear plays in the room, like a premonition.
“Will,” she whimpers through the camera. “This is bad.”
“Dammit, Teresa.” I drop the camera and punch a hole through the wall. “Goddammit.”
Today’s nightmarish roller coaster isn’t over, though. When I get to the airport, I’m informed my flight has been pushed back because of bad weather in New York. No amount of bribing or threatening can help me. I’m left with no choice but to climb the walls praying Teresa’s flight is also grounded, somewhere in the airport. But after searching the place top to bottom—and considering the two-hour jump she got on me—that hope fades way too fast.
In the place of that hope, rage springs up like a demon from hell.
So help me God, if she has a single scratch by the time I reach her, nobody will be safe. Nobody.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Teresa
Editing would be key at this stage of my film. As I walk through the same side door of Tommaso’s to meet with Silas Case, there would be flashbacks to the girl who faced the devil with her false bravado firmly intact. Not a single hitch in her stride or glint of fear in her eyes while looking down the end of a gun barrel and accepting orders that would change her forever. On the inside, that girl with the head full of steam was shaking in her high heels.
What a switch, huh? A matter of days later, I’m full of enough determination and go-ahead-and-fuck-with-me-ness to fill a stadium. I’m here to get my brother back and I’ll lie, cheat and steal to do it. On the outside, though. God, on the outside my once impressive façade has crumbled. A glance in my Uber’s rearview mirror on the way from JFK to Staten Island reflected back red-rimmed eyes, the corners of my lips weighted down by invisible grief. My pure, dogged refusal to fail in my mission has not reached the fractured pieces of my heart—and that, that is what’s showing on my face. I don’t have the extra energy to control that.
Will has called me several times. I’m not returning those calls, though. It’s over. I’m not looking back. There’s only tonight and whatever I have to do to get Nicky out safe and alive. I’ll worry about tomorrow when it gets here. Am I worried that this mutilation plaguing my insides might make me less objective when it comes to my own safety?
Yeah. Yeah, I’m a little scared about that, but I’m out of choices.
When I round the corner into the dining room of the restaurant, it’s empty except for Silas, just like last time. He’s smiling at me, an arm draped over the booth of his usual seat. Craggy eyebrows lift at my grim appearance. After taking a paper towel bath, forgoing makeup and changing into my only remaining clean pair of clothes—a jean skirt and a long-sleeved baseball T-shirt—his reaction doesn’t surprise me. I’m a hot mess.
“You look like you could use a drink,” Silas says.
I stop in front of his table. “Where is Nicky?”
He twists a rocks glass full of dark liquid on the table. “Not up for small talk, are we?” His pleasant expression fades, his features hardening, making him appear almost reptilian. “Have you returned my son to New York?”
It’s deadly obvious he already knows the answer. Did White Baseball Cap track me down again and report back, without me knowing he was watching? This morning, I was so careful to leave the hotel through the side exits, ducking down in the backseat of my Uber as we pulled through security and onto the road, but it’s possible our tail watched Will storm off with Southpaw. Alone.
Or did Will simply call Silas and give me up?
Panic flutters in my throat, but I swallow it down. No. He might hate me, but he wouldn’t do something that could get me killed. I have to believe that. “No.” I clear the cobwebs from my throat. “I guess I’m not as charming as you thought.”
“But I thought things were going so well.” A thick silence passes. “You wore your special red dress last night and everything.”
Bile burns my esophagus, but I don’t let him see my utter disgust over the fact that such an intimate moment with Will was tarnished. Even if I didn’t know at the time. What does it matter now anyway? All the moments are tarnished now, aren’t they? Will thought me falling for him was nothing more than an act. “He wasn’t interested past a few days,” I say, shrugging off the sting.
“Nights, you mean.” Smirking, Silas leans back in his seat. One yellowing finger lifts and punches the air in my direction. “He got to you.”
No energy. None to lie. Besides, the man has eyes, and I currently resemble the living dead. “Yeah. He did.”
“If you told him I sent you, you’re dead. You realize that.”
The sudden threat is a hammer to my solar plexus. “If I told him who sent me, you would have heard about it by now. I’m not stupid enough to risk it. He hates you.”
There isn’t so much as a flicker of grief in his expression at the word hates—and that’s when I know Will was right. There’s more to Silas wanting Will back in New York than a father’s concern. “He’d risk your life?”
“Like I said, I was just a few nights to him.” After my lies and the way he left me devastated on my knees, those words are as good as true. But I harden myself against the hurt. I just need to get through this. Just ge
t through tonight. “I’m done talking about him. Tell me another way to get my brother back.”
He tilts his head. “Who said there is another way?”
Don’t freak out. “On the phone, you said I had until Friday or Nicky would be sent out on a job.” I lick my lips and plunge ahead. “Let me take his place.”
His smile is back, but it’s got an edge of incredulity that wasn’t there before. “If you didn’t look like warmed-over shit, I wouldn’t believe my son had really kicked you to the curb. You got brass ones, sweetheart. I’ll give you that.”
“Swell.” Despite my attempts to numb myself, his shot finds its mark. Not that I let it show. “Tell me what I need to do. And then swear to me once it’s done, you’ll let me and my brother leave and never hear from you again.”
“Here’s the thing.” His laugh turns my stomach. “I don’t need you to do shit for me. I don’t need your brother, either. You had a job and you failed. Why should I send a proven fuck-up out to represent me?”
I can’t keep panic from sinking in its claws any longer. “What about…what you said on the phone?”
“Incentive,” he tosses out, scratching the corner of his eye. “You were incentive to get Will back to New York. Your brother’s job was incentive to get you moving faster. You’re a smart girl. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you.”
“So there is no job?”
“There is.” He checks his watch, then returns his attention to me. Several beats pass in silence, before he shrugs. “I guess we’ll tie up this loose end one way or another.” With that ominous statement hanging in the air, he rattles off an address. “That’s the address where your brother is set to be picked up by two of my guys. I’ll tell them to swing by fifteen minutes earlier than planned and take you instead.”
Air inflates my lungs. “I can take his place? One job and we’re out?”
“If you make it through the night.” He appears thoughtful. “It occurs to me that if you’re lying or maybe even oblivious to how my son feels about you, I could be bringing a fucking war down on my head by putting you in danger.”
Snorting, I turn on a heel. “Please. He already forgot my name.”
As soon as I hit the curb outside, a sound curls in my throat.
Please, Will, don’t ever, ever forget my name.
*
Whatever I expected when I took Nicky’s place, this is ten times worse.
Since yesterday, I’ve eaten nothing but roasted airplane peanuts and they jump around in my stomach now, leaving me full of holes. I arrived at the address given to me by Silas and was promptly picked up by two dudes in a sparkling new SUV. They weren’t surprised to see me, but no pleasantries were exchanged, either. I was coming along to be a witness. An act to make me complicit, so when Nicky and I leave New York, we’ll keep our mouths shut, lest we bring charges down on our own heads. The famous one last job trick—there’s a reason for it. Insurance.
Whack. The sound of bone crunching sends me cringing into the wall.
Nausea wells up inside me, the airplane peanuts threatening to climb my throat. We’re in a storage room in the back of a pawn shop. The two men who drove me here have tied the owner to a chair and…I stopped listening after they demanded money and started hitting him, demanding what they’re owed. Or what Silas is owed, rather. The shop owner moans through a bloody mouth and I start to tremble.
“Come here, princess.”
I’ve wrapped myself in a security blanket of fog and I don’t realize they’re speaking to me. But when I’m dragged forward by my elbow, I have no choice but to rejoin my surroundings. The moaning owner is now directly in front of me, pain glazing eyes that implore me to help. I’m paralyzed just imagining the pain he’s in. No one deserves this. No one.
“He knew what would happen. He’s not innocent.” Something cold is pressed into my hands. A gun. Oh God, it’s a gun. “Silas said to make sure you did the honors.”
No. No. It wasn’t enough to have me play a complicit witness. He needs this? My humanity? Just like the strip of flesh he took from my father, he’s doing the same to me. How could I have expected any less? I sway on my feet at a sudden memory of my father, looking haunted in the moonlight when he didn’t know I was watching. If he knew what was being asked of me, what would he say? He’d beg me not to turn out like him. He would do everything to prevent it.
A hand urges my arm up, so I’m pointing the gun. I’m pointing it at an actual human being. It’s him or my brother, isn’t it? But that can’t be the only option. A vision of Will swims into focus, intense and huge and beautiful…and despite what I’ve been telling myself, telling Silas, heat begins to trickle in through the cold I’ve encased myself in all day, out of necessity.
I used to wake up at five in the morning. And now, it’s like I’m making up for every single minute of sleep I’ve missed my entire life. Maybe I was missing sleep because I knew you were out there, baby, and I hadn’t met you yet.
With those words—words spoken with conviction that no longer exists—tumbling in my head…the echo of that love refuses to let me pull the trigger. I never could have, anyway, and lived with myself. Even if it meant breaking Nicky free of this life, this isn’t a cost I can live with. Nor could my brother. “I won’t do it,” I whisper, dropping the gun to my side where it dangles in bloodless fingers. “I can’t.”
“Silas asked us to encourage you.”
I look back over my shoulder at the men, and seeing their eyes for the first time, I’m alarmed by the lack of life in them. “What does that mean?”
A backhand catches me across the face and I stumble sideways, knocking into a metal rack of merchandise. My ass hits the floor a second later, but I’m too dizzy to stand. The throbbing that screams to life along my eye and cheekbone makes me gasp. That wasn’t just a fist—I tasted metal. I take another hard punch to the side of my head and the room shrinks in around me. His fist rises again—
The back door flies open and I whip my head around to find Nicky standing in the frame, his hair in eighty directions.
“Shit, Teresa. No.”
I only have a couple fleeting seconds to take notice of how he’s changed—grown up, turned wearier—since the last time I saw him, before he lifts a gun and points it at the man who slapped me.
“Nicky, don’t—”
But that same man already has his weapon trained on me.
Slowly, Nicky lowers his gun and is immediately cracked across the jaw by the second man, dropping him to his knees, before receiving the second blow. My scream is the last thing I hear before everything goes dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Will
Sometimes it takes the worst fucking day of your life to put things in perspective.
All the money in the world can’t get me to New York on time. I’m not more powerful than the weather and thus, the woman I can no longer deny being gut-sick in love with has a five-hour jump on me. Knowing Teresa, she wouldn’t have wasted any time getting from the airport to Staten Island, so there’s no chance she’s waiting for tomorrow to get herself killed. It’s all happening now. Or it already happened and my life has been reduced to ashes.
I’m in the backseat of a black police SUV, weaving through traffic on the goddamn Verrazano Bridge. Two officers are taping wires to my chest and repeating the same words over and over, but I’m barely aware of their presence. My mind has retreated into an almost trance-like state, forcing me to think painfully clear thoughts to distract me from the reality I could be facing ten minutes from now. Money. It couldn’t help me when I needed it most. It means nothing to me. But that’s not some major revelation. I’ve been driving in the opposite direction of New York and my bank accounts for weeks now, trying to figure out which man I’m meant to be. The man my father built, or the man I was originally.
What I’ve learned today—on my hellishly long flight from Arkansas—is that my father could not have built the man who loves like this. Loves his dog
—who is on the way home in the backseat of another vehicle. And loves a woman like the earth is ending. I am the man I set out to be. The path I took to get here changed, but I didn’t.
He didn’t touch the man on the inside. He didn’t even come close.
More words spoken by Teresa in the dark. Even when I was livid with her for deceiving me, I should have known the parts that mattered hadn’t been an act. There’s no way I could have been changed for the better by something or someone false. No way I could have been this affected. Why didn’t I listen to my instincts? If I lose her, if I let her walk away and get herself killed, it doesn’t matter what kind of man I am. He’ll be ripped clean out of me, leaving nothing but an empty husk behind.
I’ve been confident that my father would one day be held accountable for the lives he’s ruined, including my mother’s. I didn’t expect to be racing the clock, waiting for some sign that he’s got Teresa. Or that he’s…hurt her. But my call to bring in the cops led to them asking me to cooperate. They think there’s less of a chance of Teresa and Nicky—or any officers—being hurt in a crossfire if I go in and negotiate her release.
If it means Teresa walking out of this unharmed, I’ll go to hell and back.
Another NYPD unit is staking out a restaurant called Tommaso’s and Silas’s house, but he hasn’t left the restaurant for an hour—and he’s alone. They assured me Teresa is nowhere to be seen. So where the hell is she? They’re working on finding her brother, Nicky, but apparently he’s so far off the damn grid, even the expert I’ve got working for me can’t even find the beginning of a paper trail.
The tires of the SUV squeal as we floor it through a yellow light. The worst of the storm has passed, but water still sprinkles the windshield of the car, the droplets illuminated by passing headlights. I’m distracted by the memory of Teresa arm wrestling in Texas, when one of the officer’s phone rings.