by W Winters
“He came to me, wanting something I couldn’t offer. He decided to rat, I decided to skip the judicial system and deliver his sentence to save some financial burdens. How’s that sound? Reasonable, Mr. Cross? Besides, I already knew where Romano was. That’s not the information Joey was giving me. Romano’s in protective custody.”
The way he says my name makes my skin crawl. He ignores the silent snarl and continues talking, grabbing the back of a simple metal chair, letting it drag across the floor with a shrill sound.
“What’s more important is that the indictment was dropped.” He leaves the chair in front of Seth, then grabs another. There’s a stack of them, and he delivers one to each of us before taking a seat himself.
Seth hesitates, so I sit down first. Both of us, across from Walsh. All of us holding our guns, but settled in our laps.
“Dropped?” I question, feeling my curiosity, my disbelief even, show on my face.
“It’s confidential.”
“So he gave something up?” Seth surmises and Walsh shrugs but wears a slight grin. “Fucking rat.”
“Jail or death. He didn’t have many options, did he?” Walsh comments.
“He made a mistake coming back,” Seth responds and then sits back in his seat when I give him a look.
“What’s the other thing?” I ask Walsh, squaring my shoulders and moving away from the subject of Romano. “You said you had two things to say. The first is that you have Romano’s whereabouts. What’s the second? I’m guessing it’s these recordings you say you have? Negotiation and blackmail in the same conversation?”
Walsh tosses a small notebook into my lap. It’s small and something easily tucked away, like something that would fit inside of a wallet. “The hotel Romano’s been placed in and his room number. He’s got three police offers posted next door. If they hear banging around and screaming, they’ve been told to let it happen.”
“And you’re fine with that?” I question, feeling my shoulders tighten. “It’s got ‘setup’ written all over it.”
“I’m not letting Romano walk away. He’s the reason Marcus came back here.” Walsh leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees so he’s closer to me as he tells us, “I want him dead but it can’t be on our hands. Too many people are involved. Take him. I’ve read the files on Aria Talvery. I saw what happened with your brother.”
“You saw what happened to Tyler?” I question him, not understanding how he knew.
“Tyler?” he responds with a shake of his head. “Carter. Carter is with Aria, unless I’m mistaken.” It’s silent for a long moment.
“What happened with Tyler?” he asks when the quiet air lingers for too long.
“Nothing of your concern.” I shift my weight in my chair as Walsh leans back further. “I want Romano for an entirely different reason.”
“Then take him. I’m giving him to you, both to start off with a good rapport.”
“Seconds before blackmailing us?” Seth interrupts him and Officer Walsh shrugs. “Both to have a good rapport. And to show Marcus I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
“Marcus came back… here? For Romano?” I question, thinking back nearly a decade ago when I first learned about the bogeyman that is Marcus. “How long have you been after him?”
“Six years now,” Officer Walsh tells me and it doesn’t add up. Marcus never left. Marcus couldn’t have been in New York fucking with Walsh while keeping up his reputation down here and pulling strings. The cogs turn slowly as I assess Walsh, wondering where it went wrong, needing to know what piece is missing.
The reality of what Walsh is willing to do in order to get to Marcus coming into focus.
Seth readjusts in the seat, shifting his gun from hand to hand and then he stands, pushing the metal chair back as he does and stating, “I’d rather stand if you two don’t mind.”
I don’t move my gaze from Walsh, who merely watches.
His pale blue eyes raise to mine and then to Seth’s as he says, “My only request is that you don’t kill him at the hotel. Make it look like he took off and skipped town. Do that and he’s yours.”
“In exchange for?” I wait for the other shoe to drop. Seth stands still to my left. His wrists are crossed in front of him and one hand still holds the gun.
“What do you think I want?” he asks lowly.
He’s slow to pull a recorder out of his pocket, and with the click of a button, Seth’s voice is heard and then the sound of something creaking. I recognize it immediately.
“Who’s this fuck?” he asks and I answer, “Hal. The second he wakes up, bring him to the cellar.”
“You have questions for him?” Seth asks.
“No. No questions.”
Officer Walsh stops the recording, although the visual memory of opening the trunk and showing Seth in the parking lot behind The Red Room continues playing out in my mind.
“What was bugged?” I ask Walsh, running my thumb along the rim of the barrel. Motherfucker. Anger courses through me uncontained inside, although I don’t let it show.
“I’m guessing a gift from Marcus?” Walsh speculates with a glimmer in his eye. “The recording has enough evidence for me to piece together how you got hold of Mr. Hal Brooks, that he was alive when you took him… and what you did to him after.”
“What exactly are you implying?” A trace of anger can be heard in the hiss of my question.
“That you’re fucked… unless you’ve got information for me. It was in his clothes and found on Mr. Brooks body.”
It sinks in slowly. Marcus bugged Hal. He set me up. Between Marcus, Walsh and Romano, the list of men to kill keeps getting longer.
“What information are you looking for?” I ask, looking him dead in the eyes.
Walsh merely stands, glancing at the dead man on the floor and the dark pool of red that’s staining his face as he looks off to the front double doors in the distance.
“I’ll contact you when I have specifics.” With that he stands, leaving me to calculate every possible way we can kill him. He’s a man hell-bent on vengeance and willing to burn everything that lies between him and it.
As the two of us stand up slowly, watching his hands and how he places the gun back in his holster, Walsh adds, “Go tonight for Romano. Tomorrow the teams change. I mean it when I say I intend to have a good rapport with you two.”
Turning his back to us, he places the chair he’d taken on top of the stack. “Unless you want to help me clean up, I think you’d better getting going.”
The metal of the gun is warm when I slip it behind my back in the holster, taking in everything I can about Officer Cody Walsh. It’s silent, save for the, “Until next time,” Walsh gives us on our way out.
Neither of us speaks until we’re far enough out in the distance.
Still seething, we both climb into the car and listen to the thunk of the doors closing as the sound of crickets off in the distance fades to silence.
“We’re screwed if he mails the recordings or hands them out to the fucking FBI.” Seth says the fucking obvious, tapping his foot in the car.
We should have incinerated him. That dead fuck and all the evidence along with it. Instead, I had to freak the fuck out over shit that happened years ago.
Seth keeps up with the tapping. Tap, tap, tapping as my frustration grows.
“Knock it the fuck off.”
“I’m thinking,” he retorts and then lets out a “fuck” and punches the side of the door.
“Feel better?” I ask him when he lifts his fist to examine his hand.
“Much,” he answers dryly.
The keys jingle in the ignition as the engine turns over, humming to life. Seth rolls his window down, breathing in the cold air until he comes up with a solution
“I’ll find out where the info is and get rid of it then get rid of him,” he speaks.
“That easy?”
“If we put him in the cellar, yeah. That easy.”
“You t
hink he’ll tell us where it is?” I glance at him and let out an uneasy exhale, shaking my head as the wind blows by. “I don’t think he will. I think he’d die before quitting.”
“Then how?”
“Declan has to find something.”
“Declan’s looking into something?”
“I asked him to look into something before I know whether or not it’s a dead end. I don’t know yet; it may be useless.”
He’s reluctant to nod, but he does. “And what about Romano?”
“Go tonight and take three men with you. Two for lookouts.” The order comes out as easy as the plan should be. “If he’s in their custody, he’s unarmed and it should be in and out.”
“We’ll hit him with chloroform. Keep it quiet.”
“Just make sure you take out any cameras first. And stay silent, wear masks. Don’t trust it not to be recorded.”
“Got it. Want me to send a report to Carter first?” he asks and I stare off to the right side as the car comes to a stop. Just happens to be the graveyard. “No, I can do it. I’ll tell him.”
I’ll tell my brother just how badly I’ve fucked up. With all of this.
Then I’ll deal with Bethany.
And then Romano.
Bethany
My eyes feel so dry but I can’t keep them closed. Every time they shut, I see Jenny, in the hands of a villain. She’s out there and I’m lying in a comfortable bed, protected and doing nothing.
The thin slit of light from the hallway that lays across the bedroom floor and hits the dresser widens as a soft creak fills the quiet room. Jase’s footsteps are cautious and muted.
“You don’t have to be quiet,” I let him know although I have to clear my throat after. It’s raw and in need of a hot cup of tea. A luxury I can afford, as I’m not missing and presumed dead.
“You’re not sleeping?”
“How could I?” I answer Jase with the question as he walks to the bed and lowers himself to sit by my side, making the mattress dip where my legs lay.
He tells me, “I didn’t expect you in here.”
For a moment, I reconsider every thought that brought me back to his bedroom and ask, “Do you want me to leave?” If he does, I will. If he doesn’t, I’ll stay. Simply because I want to be here. I still want to be next to him when I do fall asleep. I want him to hold me, but I’m too prideful to ask. More than that, I’m ashamed that after all the lies, I still feel like I need him.
His answer is quick. “Never.”
“I don’t want to give you an ultimatum.” I spit out the words that I’ve been saying over and over in my head the last hour or so. “I hate them and I think they’re awful.”
Jase is deadly silent, listening to what I have to say. I can feel his eyes on me although I don’t look up at him. Resting his head on my thigh that’s covered by the blanket, he waits for me to continue.
“It hurts to even say it. I can’t deal with lies. I don’t want to be a woman who lets a man lie to her.”
“I won’t.”
“I don’t know that I believe you.” Finally looking into his eyes, I suck in a deep inhale to calm my words. “I can’t stay if I find out you’ve lied to me about something. I can’t be with you if that’s all there is between us.”
“There’s nothing else and there will never be anything else.”
My mother used to warn us about ‘always’ and ‘nevers.’ Especially about the people who speak them with certainty.
With the window cracked, a gust of cool air blows in trailing along my skin and with it, the ends of my hair tickle down my bare arm as I prop myself up. “You sound so sure.”
“I am.” His hard jaw seems sharper in the faint light with the shadows from the moon. There’s an intensity that swirls in his eyes, but it seems different now. Not so much riddled with fear as it is with loss and regret.
Or maybe it’s a reflection of myself, maybe it’s just what I want to see. He may be certain, but I’m not so sure of anything anymore.
I can only nod, and lie back down. Back to his bed although I’m on my side and I intend to sleep all night with my back to him. I’ll do it every night until the hurt goes away. That deep pain that’s settled into my chest like fucking cancer.
“Is there anything else I can…” Jase pauses and I hear him readjust as the bed jostles.
“Anything else you can say or do?” I finish the question for him, my eyes open and staring straight ahead at nothing in particular.
“Is there?” he asks when I don’t answer the question I raised.
“We just move on, don’t we?” I tell him, feeling that pain spread like a web, tiny and sticking to everything inside of me as it spins. “That’s what happens.”
“Why do you sound so defeated?”
“Because it hurts, it all hurts and I don’t know how to fix it other than to believe you. Even that hurts right now.”
The mattress groans as he leans forward, rubbing my back as I lie there, refusing to give in to anger. “What matters is that Jenny’s alive.” My bottom lip trembles and my throat goes tight as I ask, “You’re going to save her, right? You’re going to bring her home?”
“I’m doing everything I can,” Jase whispers as he lies down next to me although he’s not under the covers. He pulls me in closer to him and as much as I’d love to shove him away for everything he’s done, I need to be held by this man for the very same reasons.
“When we were little, she was my hero,” I admit to Jase, still staring ahead at the blank wall that’s been a photo album to me all night, flicking through memory after memory. “I was thinking about the time when I’d just reached high school and how she helped me with my English homework. She loved poetry. She was so good at it.”
It sounds like Jase is going to say something, but instead he stays quiet. He kisses me on my shoulder though, through the sleepshirt and then on my jaw by my ear. The kind of kiss where I’m forced to close my eyes. When he lays my arm in the dip at my side and then rests his forearm in front of me, I twine my fingers with his.
His touch means more to me right now than I think he’ll ever know.
The second I part my lips to thank him, he speaks first. “Tell me more about her.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. She was my big sister, the one who looked out for me, helping me with everything… until it all went wrong.”
“What went wrong?”
“Our mom did. That’s when everything changed.” The hollowness in my chest seems to grow thinking about it all, so I stay quiet. The silence doesn’t stretch for long.
“Do you still hate me?”
For lying about my sister while I was mourning her?
For lying about scaring me into staying with you?
For lying about the debt and taking advantage of me?
The questions line themselves up in my head, but stay unspoken.
“No,” I answer him. “I hate what you did, but I don’t hate you.”
“Why do I feel like things aren’t okay?” he questions and that gets a reaction from me. Fighting the covers with my legs, I turn around to face him, propping myself up with my elbow and feeling the comforter fall down my shoulder.
“Because I’m still upset,” I say and frustration comes out in my tone. “What would you have me do, Jase?” The exasperated question escapes easily from my lips. “I don’t know if you’ve lied about something else… or if you will.”
“There are no other lies.” Anger colors his statement and reflects in his gaze.
“I don’t believe you.” There’s no emotion in my words, only facts. “There are only so many times you can lie to a person. Only so many. But what am I really going to do? That’s why I’m hurt. I don’t want to leave you.” Fuck, saying the words makes me feel weak, down to my core. I don’t want to leave him. Not just for my sister’s sake, either. “I feel pathetic.” I practically spit the word out.
“Do you forgive me?”
“You said
you were sorry.” That’s all I can say.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him.
“It does.”
“I forgave you without you even apologizing. It’s about trusting you and trusting myself after falling for you. The trust isn’t there anymore,” I admit.
“I can give you reasons to trust me--”
“Time will,” I cut him off. “Even when I hate you, you’re still what I need. You don’t understand how much I feel that I need you.”
“I do. I know what that’s like,” he confides in me and I feel like it’s the truth. Why else would he want me here? Why else would a man like him deal with me, in this state, right now?
When I don’t respond, he asks me, “How can I make it right?”
“You can start with finding Jenny and bringing her home.”
“I can’t guarantee--” he starts to say, but I don’t want to hear it.
“I finally let go… I let go and she was still out there.” My voice cracks. If I had kept looking, if I’d kept asking around and demanding answers… Maybe she would be home now.
“I can’t make that promise to you, Bethany.”
Letting go of the regret, I focus on what we can do now when I tell him, “I know you can’t promise, but I wish you could.”
Instead of lying down like I think he’s going to do, he sits up and walks his way around the bed to stand in front of me. “I have to go,” he tells me and I nod into the pillow, keeping my hands down on the bed, although I question if I should reach up and wrap them around his neck to pull him down for a kiss. Is it so bad that I want to be kissed when I’m hurting? Even if it’s by the one who caused the pain?
“Where are you going?” I ask him, not hiding the surprise or the slight worry in my cadence as I glance at the clock. “It’s late.” I say the excuse as I sit up and wrap my arms around myself.
I expect him to hesitate, to lie or to give some vague response. “I’m going to kill the man who murdered my brother,” he answers and my heart lurches inside of me. All the pain I’ve been going through and turmoil, he may have had a hand in it, but I forgot he suffers through it too.