“Marcus said a woman is in charged. Her name is Maria.” I frowned as I went over the details of my meeting with her. “She’s the one that hired me to kill Song.”
“Why did you take his case?” Mavis asked. She knew I was picky when it came to hits.
“He was a sex slave trader.”
She didn’t respond and I knew from the way her shoulders stiffened she was thinking about her friend.
“It looks like she’s into a lot of different things.”
“Then we need to find this Maria and get her to tell us where Laura is and why she is trying to kill Tessa. And me.” Ava’s voice was firm.
Mavis hit another pothole and Ava’s tiny little hands felt more like hot irons as they pushed against me.
“Oy, pay attention, woman!” I growled.
“Sorry,” Ava winced.
“I didn’t mean you.” I looked at her and tried to smile. It probably wasn’t as comforting as I had intended because her face blanched.
“It’s not my damn fault there are potholes on this road.” Mavis growled from the front seat. “Take it up with Parliament.”
“I’ll send a letter with my taxes.” I closed my eyes and breathed deep through my nose.
Mavis barked a loud laugh. “Right.”
“We should take you to a hospital.” Ava pressed her hand against my shoulder. “You’re losing a lot of blood.”
“No hospitals.” I opened my eyes and looked at Ava. “Besides, it’s not that bad. Mavis can fix me up.”
“Aren’t you lucky?” Mavis asked.
“But you need medicine, and to be checked out.” Ava shook her head.
“I’m fine.” I touched her cheek. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had been worried about me. It was…nice and a bit frustrating, but in a good way. “This is an easy fix.”
She narrowed her eyes and sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. I hated seeing her so upset, but I’d known this was a possible outcome going in there. It could have gone much worse, to be honest. However, we weren’t going to get any answers without some risks. And I wasn’t willing to let Ava pay the dues.
“No one has followed us. I’m taking us to a house.” Mavis turned down a small road. “Can you walk?”
I curled my lip. “I was shot in the shoulder, not my foot. Of course I can walk.”
“Good, because you’re too big to carry.” Mavis slammed the car into park in a tiny spot behind a building. The other buildings were so close I wondered how I was going to open the door wide enough to get out.
My fingers slipped on the door handle and Ava reached over me to push it open before hurrying out of her side.
“Are you okay?” Mavis asked quietly. She turned in her seat and let her eyes roam over my bloody shirt. I knew she was asking while Ava couldn’t hear on purpose.
“Bloody hurts, but I’ll live.” I kept my voice calm. No jokes. She needed to know where I was, because we were in trouble. Marcus would send men out looking for us and by now he would know that Mavis had helped us.
“Good.”
My door opened and Ava stood there with her hands out like she was going to help me stand. Part of me wanted to laugh, the other part of me felt weird and gooey. That had to be the blood loss. Her cool hands wrapped around my uninjured arm and she looped it over her shoulders. My eyebrows rose and I felt the twitch of my lips.
Mavis was watching us with an amused expression that she quickly schooled into one of boredom when Ava looked her way.
“Where are we going?” Ava asked.
“This way.” Mavis turned around and climbed a short set of stairs.
“Lean on me if you need to.” Ava placed a hand on my stomach as she urged me forward.
“You know, I’ve been shot before.” I smiled down at her as she tried to push me up the stairs. I wanted her to understand that I was really going to be okay.
“Yeah, but this time it was for me.” Her eyes welled up and I reached to catch a tear with my thumb. Her cheek was puffy under my fingers and I wished I could go back and beat all of those guys again.
I didn’t know what to say, so it was best if I kept my mouth shut. Seeing the gun pointed in her direction had sent fire like panic through my veins. I had acted on instinct, not worried about anything but getting her out of harm’s way. When we hit the ground I had been more worried about checking on her than concerned with my shoulder.
“Are you two going to stand there all night?” Mavis stuck her head out the door. “If you pass out, I’m not hauling your sorry carcass in here.”
Ava sighed and pulled me the rest of the way up the stairs. It was an older building, riddled with hallways and tiny rooms. Mavis was at a small kitchen table going through a bag of medical supplies. I took a seat next to her and pulled off my jumper and shirt. The wound wasn’t pretty, but would be easy to clean up and stitch. I could do it myself, but it would be easier if someone else did the sewing. Thankfully, Mavis was a pro.
“What can I do to help?” Ava looked pale.
“Do you have any medical training?” Mavis looked up at her.
“No.” She shook her head. “But I can get stuff. Or boil water. I don’t know. What the fuck do you do for a gunshot wound?”
I was relieved to hear her cursing. It meant she wasn’t going into shock. At least I thought it meant she wasn’t going into shock. I didn’t exactly have a lot of medical training myself. I just stepped over bodies on my way out.
“Sure, boil some water.” Mavis twisted my arm, making me grimace. “I could use a cup of tea.”
“Tea?” Ava stood there looking at Mavis with a strange expression. “Bloody Brits and their tea.” She muttered as she turned around and rummaged through the cabinets.
Mavis went to work on my arm, squirting cool liquid over the wound, before giving me a numbing shot. I let my mind wander, trying to not focus on what the woman was doing to my arm. Ava provided a good distraction as she moved around the kitchen muttering to herself. She was favoring her left leg, but not enough that most people would notice.
“Where the hell do you keep the cups?” She looked over her shoulder at Mavis before quickly turning away.
“How would I know?” Mavis didn’t look up. She was threading her needle and getting ready to stitch.
“It’s your house.” Ava said it so calmly I knew she was forcing the words through her teeth.
“No it isn’t.” Mavis replied.
“What do you mean it isn’t your house?” I watched Ava turn around and look at us.
“I mean, I don’t own it. Don’t live here. Don’t stay here.” Mavis looked over at Ava in exasperation. “I’m kind of busy, if you haven’t noticed.”
“But—you knew there was a first aid kit.” Ava twisted the rag in her hand. “Whose house is it?”
“An old man that now lives in assisted living. I knew there would be medical supplies here, because he’s been sick for a long time.” Mavis started stitching, her attention on the wound, her words an afterthought. “I saw him being helped in here by nurses one day and then out in an ambulance another day.”
“There might not have been a medical kit here.” Ava frowned before turning around to search for cups and I let myself be distracted by the view of her ass as she bent over. “That was a big gamble. What would you have done if there hadn’t been anything?”
“Made do.” Mavis stuck one end of the thread in her mouth as she tied off one knot. “Here, come over here and try one.”
Ava set a cup of tea next to me and one next to Mavis. I saw the liquid splash over the rim as her hand shook. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. After a second she moved closer to me and peered down at the wound.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Cleaning out the foreign debris.” Mavis squinted at my arm. “I missed some earlier.”
“That’s just great.” I felt my eyebrows draw together.
“Shut up.” Mavis snapped at me before t
urning to Ava. “Here, when you’re stitching someone, you want to use the smallest needle possible.”
Ava took the needle with shaking fingers.
“Maybe you should just let Mavis so this.” I watched the needle with apprehension.
“I trust you, you trust me.” Her hand stilled and she glared at me.
“Fine.” I let out a slow breath. Her fingers were cold on my arm as Mavis coached her through where to place the stitch and how to tie the knot before cutting the thread. If I wasn’t mistaken, they were using a thin fishing line.
“Move over a little bit to the right.”
“Here?” Ava touched a spot below the wound.
“That’s good.” Mavis nodded.
I closed my eyes as they worked, making no sound when Ava pulled the stitch a little too tight. When it was completely closed Ava bandaged the area with gauze and white tape. Her hands had been steady as she’d stitched my wound, but they were shaking again now that she was finished.
“Are you okay?” I asked her quietly.
“What?” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “Sure I am. Why wouldn’t I be? It’s not like people don’t get shot every day; or break into houses to use medical equipment. Totally normal. All of this.” She took a sip of her tea. “Every bit of it.”
“It really is for me. Thanks, Mavis.” I rolled my shoulder when Mavis finished dressing the wound. Grabbing my bloody clothes I got up and put them in the trash bin. If I took the trash out before we left then no one would even check to see if there was a bloody shirt inside.
“I know.” Sighing she turned around and poured the rest of the tea in the sink.
“Not good?”
“No matter how much I try, I just don’t like it. Tea should be sweet and cold.” She smiled sadly.
“I tried sweet tea once in New Orleans. It was like drinking a cake through a straw.” I wrinkled my nose. She laughed and the tension between my shoulders loosened a little.
Mavis was cleaning up the mess quietly, her expression blank. I knew from experience that a blank expression was a bad sign. She was worried.
“Are we safe here tonight?” I asked her.
“Should be.” She shrugged. “I was careful, but you never know.”
“Okay. We recoup and strategize.” I headed out of the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Ava asked.
“To find a new shirt.” I offered her a weak smile.
“You’re going to steal an old man’s clothes?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Would you rather me run around naked?” My smile grew. “I could do that.”
Red filled her cheeks and her eyes darted toward Mavis before coming back to me. She waved her hand in the direction of the stairs. “Do what you have to do.”
I chuckled as I turned a corner and took the stairs slowly. At the top I leaned against the wall and took a deep breath. I’d lost more blood than I realized if walking up the stairs winded me. Looking around I saw the door that led to the bathroom slightly ajar. Pushing through I turned on the sink and splashed water on my face.
Blood was smeared along my jaw so I used a wash cloth from the shelf to scrub it away. There was a small cut that would heal pretty quickly. I rinsed the rag carefully before cleaning off the sink and throwing it in the trash. There were two other doors on this floor and one led into a small bedroom.
I checked the bureau and pulled out a white shirt. It smelled a bit like mothballs but it was better than nothing. It was tight but didn’t pull at the bandage which was good.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and let my head fall back.
Marcus.
My brother had tried to kill me. Not just ordered someone to kill me, but was going to pull the trigger himself. I in turn and pinged him with a throwing knife. Then again, considering our family, I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
He’d run his hands over Ava because he knew that I wouldn’t like it. He was selling hostages to people. He had been using me until I wasn’t necessary.
It wasn’t that it surprised me that he would do it. It surprised me that it hurt.
A soft knock on the door made me open my eyes.
“Owen?” I could see Ava’s bright blue eyes through the crack in the door.
“Come in.”
“You okay?” She closed the door behind her and put her hands behind her back like a kid told not to touch things in a store.
“I’m fine.”
She took a couple of steps to close the distance between us. With a slow hand she reached out and touched my jaw. “What happened here?”
I fought my desire to close my eyes as she touched me. “It’s a little fuzzy.”
“Can I do anything to help?” Her words were quiet. I looked up to see the concern etched on her face. Concern for me.
“Sit with me?” The words exited my mouth before I could rethink them. It was fucking weak, but I wanted to have her near me.
She didn’t say anything, just sat down next to me. Our arms brushed against each other and she played with the hem of her shirt. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. It was nice to know that she wasn’t going to try to hurt me. To use me for something. Wasn’t that how I should have felt about my brother? About my mother?
“Marcus is a year older than me.” The words were hard to say. For so long I’d kept every little detail about my life locked away in a vault. It felt weird to even say Marcus’ name out loud. “He was always the brain, the schemer. I thought he knew everything.”
Her hand moved and she threaded her fingers through mine, but didn’t say anything.
“It was just us and our mum. She was a whore.” I wasn’t trying to make her upset, but I’d promised to tell her the truth. “We didn’t see her often and when we did we wished that we hadn’t. She wasn’t horrible. She didn’t beat us and we had food, but she always looked close to death. Like she had given up her will to live.”
Her fingers tightened on mine, but I just felt hollow as I explained my life to her.
“By the time I was seventeen I’d followed in Marcus’s footsteps and was running with a bunch of thugs. Underground fights, that sort of thing. I didn’t visit my mother often. I barely came home. When I did, it was to give her some of my prize money. I had a pocket full of cash that day I found her on the front porch. She was unconscious. Her face was beaten so badly I wasn’t sure if it was her at first. It was… bad.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“She was hemorrhaging from her kidney. It was touch and go for a while.” I shrugged. “The police came, but there wasn’t much to report. They said it could have been a john, not her pimp, so without her testimony there wasn’t much they could do.”
“That’s bullshit.”
I snorted. “Yeah.”
“Did they ever find out who did it?” Anger laced her words. Anger for my dead mother, a prostitute she had never met.
“No. They didn’t.” I closed my mouth at that point. I wasn’t a saint. I wasn’t an avenging angel like Mrs. Abernathy thought. I was just a murderer.
“But you did.” Her words were calm.
“Her pimp came to the hospital and wanted to know when she was going back to work.” I looked at her so that she would understand I had no regrets about what I’d done. “He said she’d been late with her money. Called her names and threatened Marcus. I would have killed him there if a nurse hadn’t come in.”
Tears glistened on her cheek, but if I stopped now I’d never finish the story.
“He laughed as he left. When they told us there was nothing else they could do for my mum and pulled the plug, I went straight to his place.”
“Didn’t he have bodyguards or something?”
“One of them managed to shoot me in my thigh.”
“What happened? How did you get away?”
“I killed them all.”
She swallowed.
“There were five.” An image of the room flashed through my mind, the thick
stink of smoke, and dreary lighting. “They’d been counting their take for the day. I remember some of the women grabbing stacks of bills off the table before they ran out.”
“Did the police find you?”
“Marcus did. I was sitting at the table, staring at the blood. He tried to get me to leave, but I wouldn’t move. Probably shock.” I shrugged. “When he realized I’d been shot, he called Edgar to help get me out of there. I don’t think I said anything until they started shoving money in their pockets. Marcus told me we had to run and we’d need the money.”
“There are a lot of people out there that would have done the exact same thing, Owen.” She turned toward me so that her legs pressed against mine. “I’m not sure I wouldn’t have killed him after watching my mom die.”
“I didn’t just kill him, Ava. I killed all of them.” Her eyes met my stare without flinching. “I enjoyed killing them, felt satisfaction when they were dead. I knew they wouldn’t be able to kill those other women the way they had my mum. All of that adrenaline had added up to five dead bodies, but it hadn’t brought my mother back.”
Ava looked down at our joined hands before tracing the line of words tattooed on my arm.
“Find what you love and let it kill you.” Her fingers were cool against my skin. “Who said that?”
“Charles Bukowski.” I looked at my arm. “I was young and thought it made sense, given what I do.”
“But not anymore?” Her bright eyes met mine.
“The meaning changed as I grew older.” I shrugged, unsure I could explain how I felt.
“What does it mean to you now?”
“Not what I thought it did yesterday.”
MAVIS WAS TAPPING her spoon on the table and I was debating if I was fast enough to snatch it out of her hand. I had a feeling I wasn’t and that she’d end up killing me with it instead. My head was throbbing and the bag of ice I was holding to my cheek didn’t seem to be helping at all. As the adrenaline left my system, I realized I hurt pretty much everywhere.
“Can you please stop?” I looked pointedly at the spoon.
“Sorry.” Mavis sat the spoon down and returned her gaze to the clock above the kitchen sink. Within seconds her foot took up the same rhythm against the table leg.
The Accidental Assassin (Assassins #1) Page 15