Collateral

by Callie Hart

  I feel like shit. My body’s hating the fact that I’m still demanding more of it, when I should be resting in a hospital bed. The blast was just the icing on the cake. I’m still in pain from being shot, from running, from abusing my body a hundred different ways since I met these people. But it’s my heart that hurts the most. I don’t know how it will ever stop hurting.

  Michael stops after a while. The trees have thinned out into a small glade, which overlooks a brook, carving its way through the mountainside. The ribbon of water throws sparks of light from its surface, gold and white and warm.

  “Here?” Michael says.

  “Here,” Zeth agrees.

  I wish they’d brought three shovels. The men get to work, digging slowly, clearly hating the job. I sit with Lacey, brushing my fingers through her hair. Her body’s started to stiffen. The doctor in me knows it will be well over twenty-four hours before the rigor mortis loosens its grip on her muscles and we’ll be able to move her arms and legs again, so I gently settle her so her hands are resting across her chest, her legs out straight. Michael sees what I’m doing and climbs out of the hole.

  “She always slept on her side. All curled up,” he tells me. “Like this.” For such a lethal man, he moves Lace with so much care and love. When he’s finished, her body is arranged in the fetal position, hands pillowing her head, knees tucked up into her body. She really does look like she’s sleeping. I turn to find Zeth, but I can only see the very top of his head. He’s sunk down, sitting in the hole they’ve half dug, his back to us. I try to stand, to go to him, but Michael takes hold of my hand.

  “Don’t. Just…give him a moment.”

  Michael and I sit with Lacey, listening to the birds singing, and for all the world it sounds like they’re crying. Michael sits with an arm over Lacey’s body, as though he’s protecting her.

  “You loved her, didn’t you?” I ask.

  He smiles down at the girl who was only in his life a short while longer than she was in my own, and breathes in deeply. “Didn’t you?” he whispers. “How could I not?” And he’s right. How could he not?

  Eventually Zeth stands up, reclaims his shovel, and begins to dig again. This time he moves more quickly, with a purpose. I stay with Lacey, because it feels wrong to leave her alone now.

  When Michael and Zeth are done, the sun is almost setting. The sky looks like it’s on fire—like Heaven itself is burning. The men collect Lace, now cold and so very gone, and they carry her between them. The hole they were digging is no longer a hole but a grave.

  I am weak. I am a coward. I am hollow and shameless. I cannot watch them lower her in. I walk down to the brook and I cry, hoping the rushing of the water will drown out the sounds of my tears. Michael comes to get me a little while later. The grave is no longer a grave but a patch of freshly turned earth. “You used to go to church, right?” he asks softly. “We don’t know what to say. Could you…”

  Being asked to say something for Lacey is perhaps even worse than having to watch the dirt cover her pale, delicate skin. But I can’t refuse. The three of us stand together, staring down at the ground, and a wave of terror hits me when I realize I can’t say the words Michael asked me to say. The words my father would speak:

  Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? Now the sting of death is sin: and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmovable: always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

  Ashes to ashes…

  Dust to dust…

  Instead, the words I want to say will be hard to get out, but they are true. True to Lacey. I crouch down beside the freshly turned earth and place my hand palm-down on top of it, as though to lay my hand on the girl’s shoulder one last time. “I’m sorry, Lace,” I choke out. A deep breath. Another. How will I do this? How? I don’t think I can. I’m about to stand up, to shake my head and collapse into tears, but a strong hand lands on my shoulder. Zeth. He drops down into a crouch beside me and wraps his arms around me, pulling me into his side. It’s so wrong that he’s comforting me right now, but he gives me strength. I can do this.

  “I’m ashamed,” I say, doing my best to pull myself together. “I’m ashamed that you gave your life for mine. In many ways, you were the weakest of us all. You suffered through years of abuse at the hands of people who should have cared for you. Your innocence was taken away, when it should have been protected and cherished. You wanted to give up, but we wouldn’t let you, Lacey, because we saw how kind and sweet and loving you were, and we were selfish. You were a light in our lives and we didn’t want to lose that light…because our lives are so much darker now without you in them. Because while you should have been the weakest, you were quite often the strongest, too. You saw each and every one of us for who we were and you loved us for it. You saw everything.” I break off, trapped between laughter and tears, because it’s true. She really did. “You saw the world in a way none of us ever have. You saw it as an outsider, looking in, and I’m so sorry, Lace, because you deserved more than that. You deserved to be loved. To have a husband and children of your own. To not feel like you had to be invisible anymore. You weren’t invisible to us, Lacey. And even though you’re gone, you’re still always going to be with us. We won’t ever forget you, sister. We won’t ever let you go.”

  The sun has gone down by the time I finish speaking.

  Zeth has to carry me back to the car.

  I. Can’t. Think.

  The concierge at The Regency Rooms doesn’t say a word about the blood, mud, sweat and tears we’re covered in as we move silently through the lobby. He looks up—I see him do it—but the guy doesn’t bat an eyelid. He goes back to subtly pretending we’re not even there. This is the kind of discretion you pay dearly for. Not that Zee can’t afford it. I have no idea why I’m thinking about anything as mundane as money right now. We’re all emotionally poor; that’s the only thing that matters.

  Everything just happened so quickly. This morning we were going to a funeral to try and get Lacey back, and now Charlie is dead, and we just got back from Lacey’s funeral. Where’s the sense in that? I left the apartment this morning thinking, absolutely fucking positively, in fact, that we were gonna be coming back with our girl. So fucking sure of it.

  We’ve all been left utterly bereft by what just took place. And I am really fucking worried about Zee. Not once in all the time I’ve known him have I seen the man like this. He’s just…he’s not even there. He hasn’t said a word since we put Lace in the ground. His silence is far more scary than his dark moods, where you know he’ll tear you a new one if you so much as look at him sideways. There’s always fair warning with those. Right now, with this blankness about him, he seems a little unhinged. Like he could go supernova at any second and there will be absolutely no time to run for cover.

  Zee and Sloane go back into their apartment without saying a word. I wonder—I hope for the love of god she can help him through this. I hope he will let her.

  The first thing I see when I open the door to my own apartment is the box of Lucky Charms I picked up last night after I’d dropped Zeth off at the shrink’s place. I just stand in the doorway, staring at the smug Irish bastard on the box, too afraid to blink. Too afraid to move a muscle. Charlie dead. Lacey dead. It’s all too surreal.

  My phone starts ringing. Not the one I had with me this morning. That one blew up in the car. No, this is the spare I left sitting on the kitchen counter. I pick up the box of Lucky Charms and toss it down the waste disposal chute, and then I answer the cell. I don’t look at the caller ID. I don’t care who it is; I just need the distraction so I don’t snap and start trashing the place. “Yeah.”

  “Where have you been, fucker? I’ve been calling you all day.”

  Oh, shit. Rebel. “We were kidnapped. We lost Lacey.”

&
nbsp; “What? Kidnapped? And I already know you lost Lacey. Weren’t you going to get her back?”

  “No, we lost her, lost her. She’s dead.” I can hear my cousin breathing on the other end of the line. Probably can’t think of anything to say. I know I can’t.

  “Was it Charlie?” he eventually asks.

  “No. One of his boys shot her after she…Lacey…Lacey stabbed Charlie in the carotid artery with a fucking fork.”

  Rebel stays silent, taking this in. “That’s fucking badass,” he says softly. This, for Rebel, is an accolade of the highest order. “I’m really sorry, man. I know you cared about her. How’s Zeth taking it?”

  “Not too well.”

  “Oh. How you taking it?”

  “Also not too well.”

  “Fuck. Well I suppose now’s a bad time to tell you that Alexis is in town and she wants to see her sister?”

  Bad time doesn’t even cover it. I shrug out of my torn suit jacket—it smells of smoke and the iron tang of blood. “I would give it a couple of days, man. Sloane’s just as fucked up as we are right now.”

  Rebel sighs. “Okay, fine. We have our deal with Julio tomorrow. I’m supposed to hand over my files to him. Shit’s definitely gonna go down. Can you be there?”

  I scrunch up my face, trying to think of a way of politely telling him to go get fucked. Instead I find myself saying, “If Zee or Sloane don’t need me, I’m your man.”

  “Sure? I don’t want you if your head’s not in the right place.” By in the right place, he means in the killing zone. And I am most definitely there. “Don’t you worry about my head, Rebel. I’ll let you know in the morning if I’m in.” I already know I will be, though. I need to punch something. I need to fight. Zee and I are very similar in that beating the crap out of something generally makes us feel better, but this is more than that. This is an unquenchable need that won’t be satisfied until I’ve caused someone severe bodily harm. It doesn’t matter that I killed Sammy when he came to try and kill me. It doesn’t matter that I killed O’Shannessey, plus those other two guys who showed up out of nowhere. I’m still wound with fury. I’m going to have to use my bare hands in order to release it. I’m going to have to rain carnage down onto the heads of those who pose a threat to us, because I can’t go through this again. Fuck knows what would happen if Sloane died. It doesn’t even bear thinking about. There would be no way of stopping Zee. He would murder everyone he could get his hands on whether they were involved or not, and he wouldn’t care if he got sent down for it. It would be worth it for him. Hell, he would have done the same for Lacey had I not have already killed O’Shannessey before the boss realized what was happening.

  I will never, never forget the look on his face when he saw Lacey fall.

  I hang up the phone, wondering if Julio Perez is going to die tomorrow, too.

  ******

  I’m so lost. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. Ever since we arrived back at the apartment, Zeth’s been sitting in an armchair, staring out the window that overlooks the city, and I haven’t been able to get a word out of him. Not that I’ve tried to. I know he needs to be alone; I can tell that just by the edge to the atmosphere in the room, but I don’t know if I should leave. I could go and sleep in Michael’s apartment, but I somehow don’t know if that’s a good idea either. I think…I think something terrible will happen if I leave him alone.

  I decide to stay. I can handle the tension in the room. I can handle it, because I love this man and abandoning him now, even if it’s what he thinks he wants, is the wrong thing to do.

  I sit on the vast leather couch across the other side of the room, just listening to the silence. How would Pippa deal with this situation? How would my dad? Pip’s trained in grief counseling, and my father has an abundant supply of compassion that always serves him well when trying to comfort others. He just always knows the right thing to say.

  The answer to my worrying and wondering comes in the most surprising of forms. Ernie. The Schnauzer’s claws make soft clicking sounds as he appears from one of the back bedrooms. His huge brown eyes travel over me briefly as he approaches us, but it’s not me he heads for. He heads straight for Zeth. The dog pushes his small body between Zeth’s legs and then he bumps Zeth’s hands with his wet nose.

  It doesn’t look like Zeth even knows Ernie’s there. He just lets the dog rest his head on his leg, which seems to please Ernie immensely. He huffs out a shallow breath and shuffles in closer, so he’s as close as he can physically get without actually climbing up into Zeth’s lap. After a while, Zeth starts absently stroking the tips of his fingers against Ernie’s head, and the dog goes to sleep.

  Eventually I fall asleep, too. It’s not the physical stress that’s exhausted me. It’s the crying, like I’ve cried out my entire energy reserve for a year and now my body is demanding rest. My dreams are quick and dark, and mercifully empty.

  In the morning, I wake up in bed, stripped down to my underwear. The sheets are almost black from the filth that’s rubbed off my body. I find Zeth in exactly the same position he was in when I passed out on the sofa, Ernie now curled up at his feet. He must have moved at some point though, since I sure as hell didn’t put myself to bed, and he also looks like he’s had a shower at some point.

  “Zeth?”

  He’s awake. He glances over his shoulder, and I see the briefly unguarded pain in his bleary eyes. “Hey,” he whispers. “You should sleep some more.” The sun is just rising over the city, though the cloud cover casts a cold light over everything, making it blue and gray and sad.

  “Have you slept at all?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t need to.”

  “Zeth, you absolutely need to sleep.”

  “I don’t need to sleep. I need to move.” He stands quickly, rubbing his hands over his face. I notice despite his irritated tone that he’s careful not to disturb Ernie as he steps over him and paces across the room.

  “Do you want breakfast?” I ask softly.

  Zeth shakes his head. “I’m okay. Really. I just need to…” He never finishes that sentence. He looks down at the floor, eyes seemingly fixed on some irrelevant point on the tile as his brain races. I wrap my arms around my body. Zeth looks up at me and his hard expression fades. He closes the gap between us and folds his arms around my body.

  “I’ll be back soon.” Placing a careful kiss against my forehead, he gives me a tight squeeze and then lets me go. I watch as he collects his leather jacket and a set of keys off the kitchen counter, and then he leaves the apartment. The door clicks quietly closed behind him.

  ******

  Michael comes by an hour later wearing black leather gloves and what looks like running gear. I’ve never seen him wearing gym stuff, though it’s obvious he works out from the sheer size of his arms alone.

  “I took him to a fighting gym. We both needed to smash the hell out of something, and that seemed like the safest bet,” he tells me. “He wanted to stay. I said I’d go help Rebel with Julio now, but if you want me to stay here with you, then all you need to do is say the word.”

  I don’t want him to stay. To be honest, all I want to do is curl up on the couch and try and work out this whole mess we’re in, but I have to be pragmatic. “Am I in danger if I’m here alone?”

  Michael shakes his head. “Charlie’s gone. None of his boys are stupid enough to bother us now. They have no reason to. There’s a power vacuum now. The gangs of Seattle are going to be far more concerned over who’ll be filling that vacuum than over Zeth and the rest of us.”

  That makes perfect sense, even if a part of me is still on edge. “Okay, fine. Then I’ll be okay here. I won’t go anywhere.”

  Michael leaves, and then it’s just Ernie and me. I spend my morning replaying the moment where Charlie said he wanted O’Shannessey to kill me, and Lacey lunging at him with that fork. I’ve imagined it from every angle, wondering if I could have helped her, if I could have stopped her before she acted. The conclusio
n I’ve come to is, no, I couldn’t. She’d said it herself. Lacey had made the decision to kill Charlie long before she accomplished the task. She’d already tried it once before. She would have tried it again, one way or another.

  It’s almost midday when there’s a knock at the apartment door. When I peer through the spyhole, my heart thundering away in my chest—was Michael wrong? Is it one of Charlie’s men?—I don’t have the energy to be surprised or upset or anything whatsoever.

  The sight of Pippa standing out in the hallway, looking very anxious, is just another straw balanced precariously on the camel’s back. I open the door and she rushes in, throwing her arms around me. “Oh, god, Sloane, I am so sorry. Seriously. Zeth texted me; he told me what happened. He said you might need me. Are you okay? Holy…you look like shit, Sloane.”

  Out of all of this, the one thing that sticks with me is what she said about Zeth. “He texted you?”

  She looks perplexed for a moment, delicate frown lines forming between her eyebrows. “Yeah. He sent me a very rude message about being a good fucking friend for once. When I asked why, he said…he said because his sister had died, and you needed someone.” She looks down at her hands. “I’m so sorry, Sloane. I just can’t believe it.”