by Elle Aycart
He gave her a very insulting once-over. Then he looked at the kids. “My business is with them. Yo, XL,” he called out. “Take your sidekicks and let’s get out of here. We have business to deal with. You owe me.”
Ash and Monti looked at XL, who was immobile. So that was Tito, the motherfucker who had beaten the crap out of XL. No fucking way. She knew these guys. They would swallow the kids alive. Destroy any chance of a future for them.
She put herself between the three teenagers and the gang members. “Over my dead body,” she said to Tito. “They’ve been court-ordered to be here. You have an issue with that, you file a complaint. Now leave.”
The intruders laughed. “Look, the Smurfette knows how to talk,” Tito said, his tone dripping with contempt. “Go back to the kiddie pool before you hurt yourself.”
He took a step forward. She felt someone grabbing her from behind, and suddenly XL was in front of her. Ash and Monti were by his side. “Leave her alone,” XL said. “We don’t owe you anything. We’re square.”
“A piece of shit like you will never be square with us. Your only value is stripping cars. You’re good at that. Stick to it.”
While Tito talked, Julian approached from the right to stand with the boys, a baseball bat in hand. Rico came out of the office with another baseball bat and her Winchester shotgun. She nodded at him. She couldn’t see if the intruders were packing, but she was pretty sure they were. The bats weren’t going to do much.
At her signal, Rico threw the shotgun to her. She caught it with one hand, jerked it sharply upward, loading it, and shifted in front of XL, pointing the shotgun at Tito.
Tito’s smile wavered slightly. His men became serious.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Rico was standing at her left, Julian at her right, keeping XL and the others behind them.
“This is my place,” she said, as steadily as humanly possible, locking her legs so they wouldn’t buckle. If they were packing, they had many more weapons than she did, but she needed the bluff to come across as credible. “I’ve already asked you to vacate the premises. You refused. You threatened my employees. Leave now. I won’t be able to shoot you all, but at this distance, I swear to you,” she continued, her eyes fixed on Tito, “your head will be blown to pieces before I go down.”
One of the gangsters on Tito’s right lifted his sunglasses above the bandanna he was wearing and directed his attention toward her. “Wait. I know the Smurfette.” He took a step forward, and she pointed the barrel at him. He lifted his hands and stopped. “You were that sorry-assed junkie, what, seven, eight years ago? Always looking to score some smack. Even high as a kite, you could strip a car in record time. The way you used, I thought you’d be dead by now.”
“Funny,” she answered, “I thought the same about you. And it was ten years ago, douchebag.”
“Now that I look at you, I’ve seen you around these past few months too, but I didn’t recognize you. You’re way more fuckable now than when you were a junkie. You dealing instead of using? Or are you cutting in on our spare parts business?” He looked around. “Nice chop shop you got here.”
“Neither,” she muttered, pointing the shotgun again at Tito. “Last warning. This is private property. I want you out. Next time you set foot in here, I’ll shoot first.”
“Do as she says,” a male voice ordered.
She’d been concentrating so hard on Tito and his goons that she hadn’t noticed two men who’d approached from behind the intruders. They were Adrian and Mike, probably coming to pick up the kids for self-defense training. Thank God, because her legs really were about to buckle.
Mike walked around one side of the group. Adrian flanked the other until he made it to Tito.
“Long time no see,” Adrian said, standing between him and Rachel.
Tito nodded. “You made a call to your old buddies at the Boston PD last time we spoke with XL, right? They’ve been coming down hard on us.”
“You mean when you beat XL? Yes, I did ask my buddies to shake shit around. See what breaks loose. What? Do you have a problem with it?”
“XL knows what’s good for him; he’ll listen to us.”
“Not going back, man,” XL said, walking forward. Adrian stopped him.
“XL, Ash, Monti, and everyone in this garage is off limits,” Adrian said. “Anything happens to a single one of them and I’ll rain hell on you. I’ll make it my life’s mission to destroy you. Are we clear?”
Tito smiled and lifted his hand, signaling his men to leave.
Nobody moved until the intruders left. Rachel had lowered her weapon, mainly because her muscle mass didn’t allow for her to hold it up for a very long time without her arms trembling.
Adrian turned to her and took the shotgun away. “You all right?” he asked, checking her front and then turning her around to make sure.
“I’m fine. A bit shaken,” she lied. She was so high on adrenaline it was a miracle she wasn’t shaking. That could have turned so ugly.
After checking she was unharmed, Adrian unloaded the weapon and left it on a counter. Then he grabbed her by her forearms. “Did you know them? What the fuck was that son of a bitch talking about?”
He’d heard everything she’d said to that asshole.
Everybody was quiet and looking at them.
“Let’s go talk somewhere else, okay?”
She’d rather go home, take a shower, and soothe her nerves so she could speak calmly about it, but he grabbed her wrist and dragged her to the break room. Once there, he crossed his arms over his chest and braced his legs apart. “Talk.”
Fine. She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. “Yes, I used to be a junkie always looking to score. I started getting in trouble during my late teens. Petty theft, vandalism, shit like that. Then came the bad influences. Skipping school. Staying out all night.” Her mother had been too busy with her own shit to pay any attention, and her little brother had been too small and under Rachel’s care, which added to the stress and the need for cash. “It escalated from blunts to pills and from there to worse. I wasn’t a selective drug addict; I was more an equal opportunity one. Smack, coke, crack. Anything I could get my hands on. Anything to space out and numb the pain and the void inside. Except for turning tricks, I did all sorts of shit to pay my habit. Stealing cars and stripping them was my specialty.”
The silence between them was so heavy, so loaded, it rang in her ears like a damn fire alarm.
“So what that motherfucker said was true,” Adrian said, his stare hard and cold. “About you being a junkie and stripping cars for parts.”
She looked him in the eye. “Yes, but—”
“When the fuck were you going to tell me?”
His tone rubbed her the wrong way. She wasn’t on trial, was she? Oh, wait. She was. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment.”
“What about when I told you about my brother?” he roared. “Didn’t it occur to you to tell me then?”
Sure, because he’d looked so receptive during those moments. She ignored his question and continued. “I overdosed twice. The last time, my heart stopped and I was dead for some minutes. I was twenty-three, so I checked myself into rehab. After several months of being clean, I moved to Alden to be with Wilma. It’s all in the past. I’ve been drug-free ever since.”
“You lied to me,” he accused her.
“No, I didn’t. I… omitted certain details?”
If glares could kill, she would have dropped dead on the spot. “Omitted? You knew how I felt about junkies, and you hid your past from me. If it’s in the past, which I doubt very much. What about your regular trips to Boston? You go to score? Are you using again?” He grabbed her and lifted her sleeves, checking for marks. “Is that why you don’t want anyone with you when you go?”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She wrenched her arm away. “Of course not. My trips to Boston have nothing to do with using or dealing drugs.”
“Sure,” he sc
offed.
She put her chin up. Enough of cowering and trying to apologize. It was falling on deaf ears anyway. “Are you calling me a liar, Adrian?”
“Never seen a junkie who wasn’t a liar, sweetheart. And never seen a junkie who could stop being one for any significant amount of time. Much less when they keep their past hidden. Tell me, what about the business of stolen parts that asshole spoke about? Are you into that now? Is that why he’s seen you around? Am I going to find inconsistencies once I start checking your books? After all, maintaining a drug habit is expensive.”
That did it. Before she could refrain, she’d slapped him across the face as hard as she could. “So that’s what you think? Thanks for clarifying it for me. Whatever I do in Boston is my fucking business, and I don’t have to give you any explanation, asshole. Now get the fuck out of here. I don’t want to see you ever again.”
“For once we agree.”
He opened the door and slammed it so hard on his way out, the glass cracked and splintered into a thousand cobwebs.
Chapter Twelve
Adrian needed his damn foot to be in good enough shape to go train at the gym, and he needed that outlet soon, before he exploded. He surveilled his workstation. Pristine. Nothing out of place, nothing left to do. Not even on his deputies’ tables or the dispatcher’s.
“Please go home, Chief,” Holly said. He was getting on everybody’s nerves, he knew, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Taking into consideration that half the town wasn’t on speaking terms with him, he ought to preserve the few friends he had left.
Adrian stood up with a grunt and nodded. Her sigh of relief was probably heard outside the office.
He didn’t know where to go or what to do with himself. He couldn’t go to the garage. Well, he could, but no one would talk to him there. Now that he was in such a foul mood, he should go check on his grandfather—for once, visiting the old man couldn’t make matters worse.
He bought some groceries and drove there. As luck would have it, Horatio was napping, and the nurse opened the door for him. After restocking the kitchen cupboards, he peeked through the bedroom doorway at the old man, a pang of guilt and sadness surprising the hell out of him. Horatio looked so old and so frail.
Some sound must have woken his granddad, because he opened his eyes. “Ace? Is that you?” he asked, disoriented, a childish smile spreading on his wrinkled face.
Ace. That’s what his grandfather used to call Adrian’s dad. And what he called Adrian before the booze transformed him into a hateful motherfucker.
Suddenly Adrian felt sorry for him. He shook his head and closed the door. For fuck’s sake, he was losing his damn mind. He needed to get to the gym and work out until he couldn’t move anymore, much less think.
“I’m going to leave now,” he said to the nurse. “Is he okay?”
“He’s been disoriented more often these days.”
Fantastic. Onset of dementia.
Adrian had been wrong; visiting his granddad could and did make matters worse. It made him feel like a jerk for holding on to a grudge for dear life. Shouldn’t he be the bigger man and at least try to let go? It might not have been easy for his grandfather to find himself alone and in charge of two unruly kids.
He stopped dead in his tracks. What the fuck? That was it. Today he was scheduling a time for the doc. He needed to regain full mobility. In the meantime, he was going to use his doorway chin-up bar and do pull-ups until he dropped dead, if need be.
On his way home, he stopped by Wilma’s. He thought he’d be safe, that Rachel would be at the garage. He should have known better. The low rumble of a V2 motorcycle reached him from afar. Josh was parking his Harley in front of the house. Rachel, wearing a dress and sporting a big smile, came out to greet him and took the helmet he handed her. She put it on and, waving at the OGs, jumped on behind him and they sped away—to Boston, probably, to do whatever the fuck wasn’t Adrian’s business.
He shut his eyes and clutched the steering wheel, forcing himself not to follow them. And fine them for everything under the sun. Arrest them if he could get away with it. Instead, he took a deep breath and slowly opened his eyes. Forget pull-ups. He was going home and working his way through a six-pack or two.
When he got there, he saw XL, Ash, and Monti on the couch. “Hi, guys.” The second they noticed him, Ash and Monti got up and left. Right. It’d been several days since any one of his thugs had talked to him. It looked like he’d lost the kids in the divorce.
After a short detour to the fridge, Adrian sat beside XL and finished half his beer in one chug. “You still giving me the silent treatment?” XL muttered something inaudible under his breath. “Come on, kiddo,” he begged. He had the same shitty feeling as when he used to piss Jade off and end up in the doghouse. Only now he was in a kennel, because everyone was giving him the cold shoulder.
“You’re a fucking hypocrite, I said,” XL repeated, this time louder.
Miracle of miracles. The punk could talk. “XL…”
“You always run your mouth about how we should change our lives around. About how it all depends on us and how hard we work at it. And now you can’t forgive something that’s in her past?”
“I see you heard our conversation.”
XL lifted his hands, looking aggravated. “What conversation, man? You did nothing but yell.”
So that was a yes. He’d figured that much. No wonder even her employees were giving him attitude. “To be fair, she yelled too,” Adrian mumbled. “You don’t understand—”
“You don’t understand. There were seven of those motherfuckers. Seven, and all of them were packing, I’m sure. I tried to stop her, but she stood in front of me twice in order to protect me. A barely five-foot-tall woman, empty-handed at first, then pointing a shotgun at Tito’s head, threatening to waste him if he dared try to take me away.” Adrian winced at this recollection of events. Jesus, she’d been reckless. “No one in my life, and I mean absolutely no one, has done something like that for me. Risked that much against such bad odds without expecting anything in return. And you insult her the way you did?”
Adrian lowered his gaze, peeling the bottle label. Granted, it hadn’t been one of his finer moments. He’d been scared shitless for her, then stunned, and then mad. The array of emotions had come crashing down as soon as the danger passed. He’d been jacked up on adrenaline and unable to choose his words more rationally. “I understand you have a ginormous hero crush on her at the moment, but she did lie to me.”
“Fuck you,” XL cursed. “She omitted certain things about her past, but who doesn’t? Oh yeah, I forgot, kids from picture-perfect families. Half of Alden, I bet.” He cocked his head, looking at him as if Adrian were a piece of shit. “After all your preaching about starting over, about not letting the past tie us down or define us—that doesn’t apply to her too?”
“Junkies are complicated,” Adrian muttered, running his hand through his hair. He still had problems believing she was one. How the fuck had he missed the signs: the lying, the sneaking around. Always busy, always secretive.
He’d spent years carrying Narcan around to make sure he could save Ricky from himself, never sleeping through the night, jumping every time the phone rang.
He’d loved working in the narcotics division and going after the big guys. Destroying drug distribution rings. Dealing directly with the junkies, though, fucked him up. They were victims and perpetrators at the same time. He hated that. He couldn’t stand that ambiguity. He’d rather live in black and white, thank you. Gray killed him.
“She’s not a junkie,” XL stated, taking Adrian out of his thoughts.
“We don’t know that.” He’d pulled up her rap sheet and his legs had buckled. It was impressive. Ricky’s had paled in comparison. Rachel’s list of arrests covered several states, the crimes always drug- and car-related.
“We know,” XL insisted. “She caught us about to light a joint on one of our breaks and read us the riot act.�
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“Fuck, XL, what were you thinking? Drug possession revokes your parole. If the judge hears about it, the deal is off. For all of you.”
“She didn’t report us. And no, she didn’t confiscate the joint to smoke it herself later. She destroyed it in front of us, stepping on it and spreading it all over the lawn. She told us next time we would be done with her and her garage. Ash tried to play the whole shit down and she smacked him on the head. She’s not using. And she’s not dealing with stolen spare parts, either.”
That last one he’d figured out for himself. He’d said it in the heat of the moment. Still, it didn’t invalidate his other points. She hadn’t offered any valid explanation about all her sneaking around in Boston, aside from claiming it wasn’t his business. Ha! As if he hadn’t ever heard that excuse before from Ricky. “Stay out of my business” had been his brother’s mantra, for fuck’s sake.
There was a very long pause before XL spoke again. “So you’re done with her? Is that what you’re saying?”
“She’s on a date with Josh.” The way she’d been smiling, she wasn’t in mourning.
XL frowned. “I don’t think it’s a date. They were headed to Boston for some business. She needed his help with something. She’s been down these past few days. You hurt her.”
Adrian forced himself to pretend he didn’t give a fuck. “Everyone makes his or her own bed.”
“Bullshit, man. You’re not only a hypocrite, you’re an asshole too. I’m out of here.” He grabbed his jacket and split, leaving Adrian fuming and rattled and worried about XL on top of everything else.
“Fuck my life,” he muttered, taking the keys and heading out himself.
The kid was his responsibility, damn it. He was just days away from turning eighteen.
Adrian didn’t bother calling anyone from XL’s crew; they wouldn’t pick up. Sara, maybe? Nah, same there. He should have put a tracking app on XL’s phone like Rachel had done to Wilma’s.