Текст книги "Walk Through Fire"

Автор книги: Kristen Ashley

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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

He took his face out of my neck and turned me in his arms.

When he got me face to face, I wrapped mine around him.

“Yeah?”

“You said six point five visits for Zadie.” I grinned up at him. “It only took four.”

“Five,” he returned.

He was counting too.

But he was wrong.

“Four,” I returned.

“Five, babe. She was still holdin’ back over dinner with Deb.”

This was true.

Which meant he was right.

Therefore, I muttered, “Whatever.”

He gave me a squeeze not to give me a squeeze, because he’d begun laughing.

It wasn’t unadulterated mirth. He was being quiet because we had two sleeping girls in the house.

But it was still open, genuine, and amazing.

And further, we had two sleeping girls in our house.

I stood in his arms, in the kitchen, watching my man laugh quietly.

The road to that moment sucked big-time.

Having that moment, just that one, Logan and me holding each other in our kitchen, him laughing and happy, two girls who’d had a good day with their dad and his woman sleeping in our house, that road was worth it.

So I gave him a squeeze and I did it to give him a squeeze.

He focused on me, still chuckling.

I was not chuckling.

I wasn’t even smiling.

And when Logan caught that, his amusement died.

“Baby?” he whispered.

“Sometimes I felt consumed, like I didn’t exist, gone,” I whispered back. “Every day it was just going through the motions.”

He dipped his face close to mine and his repeated, “Baby?” was rougher.

It was also confused.

I didn’t explain outright, even as I did.

“But it was worth it. Every step was worth it. Even if all I ever get from it was this one moment with you.”

“Millie.”

That was abrasive.

He got me.

I gave him the rest anyway.

“I’d do it again for another moment like this. And again for a moment like I had over French toast with you and your babies. And again and again and again, for each night I get to sleep with you. No joke, Snook’ums. No lie. I’d do it every day it was so worth it to walk through fire for you.”

He didn’t call me baby. He didn’t call my name.

He kissed me.

Not a touch. Not a peck. Not light.

Hot and hard and so, so wet.

I ended it, breaking the connection to slide my lips to his ear because I wasn’t done.

“I love you, Logan Judd,” I whispered there. “I never stopped loving you. Thank you for making it worth it.”

He groaned, grasped on to my hair, and turned my head so he could kiss me again.

It was as good as the one before and then some.

Yes.

Absolutely yes.

Consumed by the flames for twenty years, every second was totally worth it.

*  *  *

“Zadie?” I called, then stutter-stepped on my way down the hall because Chief, chased by Poem, ran under my feet.

There was no answer.

I looked into the living room and saw nothing, which I wouldn’t, since I’d left her on the couch.

Perhaps she’d gone out back with her dad and sister.

It was the next morning. The workmen hadn’t come early. By the time they arrived, we were all up but Logan had gotten up before everyone and he’d gone out to get LaMar’s donuts.

So we were all sugared up too.

When the men arrived, Logan went out back to go over the project with them and oversee the work.

Cleo, daddy’s girl, had gone with him.

Zadie, possibly sugar crashing on the couch in front of some program, probably not wanting to move because Poem had fallen asleep curled into the curve of her little body, had elected to stay in the house with me.

I didn’t suspect she wanted to be with me but instead with Poem as her giving me a shot meant her not avoiding the kittens anymore.

I also suspected that even though this weekend was going great, she didn’t need me up in her face all the time, continuing to try to win her.

She needed to get to a normal with me, her dad, her sister in our house.

So I’d decided to give her some alone time and left her and Poem to hit the shower and get ready to face the day.

It was totally a half-hair-air-dried day. We didn’t have the girls much longer so even if I needed to give them normal, I also wasn’t real fired up they’d be gone the next day. It was awesome to have them around because they were awesome (even Zadie), they filled up the house, and made it feel homey and Logan loved having his girls with him. So I wanted more of all that before it went away, which meant I wasn’t wasting time spending eons on my hair.

I still had to roll out the top.

However, between blasts of the hair dryer to the roller brush, I’d heard the doorbell ring. So I’d quit my preparations to find out who was at the door (with Chaos back in my life, it could be anyone—I was still thinking it was Dot, Alan, and the kids, just so they could checking up on me knowing the girls were there for their first weekend).

When I’d walked by the front door, no one was in the window.

And now Zadie wasn’t answering.

I hit the living room, going to the back of the couch and looking over it.

Poem, obviously, had woken up and decided to play with her brother.

Zadie also had clearly decided to do something else because she wasn’t on the couch.

“Zadie?” I called again, looking toward the kitchen to look out the window of the back door even though I couldn’t see all the way to the end of my property from there.

She didn’t answer.

She must have gone out to check on progress with her dad and sister.

My body moved that way but, for some reason, my head turned the other.

When it did and I saw what I saw through the sheers, I froze, as did all the blood in my veins.

Then, my feet bare, I ran, right through the living room to the hall, the foyer, and out the front door.

Once out the door, I kept running, straight to the two good-looking, well-dressed Hispanic men who were talking to Zadie on the sidewalk.

Benito Valenzuela’s henchmen. The one that held a gun to me and one of the men who stood behind him when he sat in my cuddle chair.

“Zadie!” I snapped.

She turned to me as the men’s eyes came to me.

“Daddy’s friends are here,” she informed me. “I told them he was out back.”

“Get in the house,” I ordered, making it to her and pushing in with my body, at the same time pushing her back and putting myself between her and the men.

“Lookin’ for you,” one of the men said. “Thought we found better. Now we got both.”

Oh God.

I took a step back, feeling Zadie’s body forced to move back with me.

I kept my eyes to the men as I demanded, “Go, Zadie. Run and get your father.”

One of the men made a move toward me. “Now, hang on—”

I pushed back farther even as I whirled and bent to Logan’s girl. “Go! Now! Run and get your father!”

“They’re Daddy’s friends,” she retorted, not bratty, looking confused. “They told me—”

I got in her face.

“Run!” I shrieked.

When I did, her body jerked perhaps due to my tone but also because one man wrapped his fingers around my elbow and yanked me away from her as the other one made his move... toward Zadie.

“Go!” I screeched, swinging my body still in the other’s hold toward the guy who was moving to Zadie.

She turned and ran.

The other man started to run after her.

I wrenched free and threw myself at him. I managed to take him off trajectory of Zadie, scuttling him to the side.

He wrapped his arms around me and tossed me at the other guy with such force, I flew at him, unable to stop myself.

Far away, I could hear the noises of the trucks working out back.

Still struggling against my captor, I screamed, “Logan!”

“We’ll take her,” the man holding me stated.

The guy I feared would go after Zadie turned to him. “Benito said—”

“We got her. We’ll take her,” the guy I was fighting declared.

“Logan!” I shrieked.

“Shut her the fuck up,” the one coming back our way ordered.

A hand came over my mouth.

I tried to bite it but he felt my intention and moved it away and then right back even as he pulled me toward the curb.

“Let me go!” I demanded, the words muffled. I was swinging my body viciously this way and that, hoping for the desired result.

“Benito told us—”

“To force it,” the guy with me finished for him. “We’re forcin’ it.”

The other guy looked at us a beat before he said, “ ’Spose she’ll work.”

Really?

Broad daylight?

Even if Logan couldn’t hear me over the trucks out back, where were my neighbors?

“Move your hand, muchacho,” the guy advancing ordered.

The hand was moved.

I sucked in air in order to scream.

I didn’t get it out when his arm shot back and slammed forward, connecting with my temple, and I was out cold.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Like Any Good Old Lady Should

High

“DADDY, THEY SAID you were friends.”

“Quiet, Zadie.”

“But they said they knew you.”

“Quiet!”

His words were a roar and he saw his baby jump in fear.

He fucking hated that.

But he and his girls had just gotten back inside from going out front, where Zadie told him two men had Millie.

When he finally sprinted to her front drive, a neighbor was standing in their yard looking down the road. Catching sight of High and his girls, that neighbor yelled that he’d seen someone shove Millie, who appeared unconscious, into an SUV.

Then he’d asked, “You want me to call the police?”

It was the stupidest fucking question High had ever heard in his life. The man had watched his unconscious neighbor shoved into an SUV. Of course he should call the fucking cops.

High didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He had zero control.

He’d just stalked into the house, his girls following, and pulled out his phone.

Commence him scaring the shit out of his baby.

But he couldn’t think about that because he heard, “Yo,” in his ear.

“Valenzuela sent some guys,” he told Tack, his voice low, rough, and tight. “I was out back with Cleo. They got Zadie out of the house at the front. Millie saw it, went out to protect her. Zadie ran and the neighbors just informed me they saw Millie, unconscious, hauled away in an SUV.”

“On it,” Tack stated urgently.

High turned his back to the girls and started to prowl down the hall, saying quietly, “Oh no. Fuck no. You get Tyra here or some fuckin’ old lady, I don’t care who, to look after my girls. They got Millie. I’m on this.”

“That’s what they want, High,” Tack told him.

“Yeah. And that’s what they’re gettin’,” High returned.

“Brother—”

“Get... an... old... lady... here.”

“You ride out with us,” Tack declared.

“I ride out in five minutes. You don’t get an old lady here, I’m droppin’ the girls at Deb’s and I’m on it.”

“Copy that, High.”

High disconnected and stalked back into the living room.

His did this with his brain not functioning.

I’d do it every day it was so worth it to walk through fire for you.

He knew what she meant and it wasn’t having him back in her home, in her bed, in her arms.

It was having him back, having his daughters asleep in her guestroom, giving him a day like he had that day. Giving him everything he’d ever wanted.

He stopped in the living room, not able to look at the two beautiful daughters his woman sacrificed years to give to him. Instead, he dropped his head and lifted his hand to curl it around the back of his neck, shutting his eyes tight at pleasure that could now turn to pain if anything happened to her at hearing her words rattling his brain.

Valenzuela was a lunatic. Valenzuela was getting impatient.

And Valenzuela was not stupid.

High was the weak link. Pushed, High was probably the last brother of Chaos who would lose it, fuck everything and do anything, anything, to rescue his woman.

And when that was done, get his vengeance.

But it was more.

The motherfucker had lured his baby girl out of the house.

Fuck yeah.

High was the weak link.

Rescue.

Then vengeance.

“She didn’t mean anything.”

Cleo’s trembling words had High righting his head and dropping his hand to focus on his girls in Millie’s armchair, holding on to each other, Zadie with her face pressed into her sister’s chest, her body shaking with silent tears.

“She didn’t, Daddy,” Cleo kept on. “She told me last night when we were in bed that she thought Millie was cool. She wasn’t being bad. She was just being...” Her face and her voice said she knew the rest was lame. “Maybe not too smart.”

A stifled sob came from Zadie, which meant High’s legs moved him to their chair.

Cleo watched him do it, holding on to her sister. Zadie sensed him doing it and burrowed deeper into Cleo.

She was scared of her old man.

He hated that too.

Oh yeah.

Vengeance.

He crouched down in front of them.

“Look at me, Zade.”

It took her a beat but she did, doing it just twisting her neck a little so she could peek at him still pressed to her sister’s chest.

“We’ll talk ’bout you talkin’ to men you don’t know later, baby. Though that’s a lesson I think you already learned today and I know you didn’t mean to do anything bad. This isn’t on you, Zadie. What happened isn’t your fault. But right now what’s important is that I need you to tell me about the men who took Millie.”

She drew in a broken breath and High fought clenching his teeth because it felt like it took her a week to draw it in.

Then she stuttered, “I was... I was m-mean to her.”

Fuck.

“You got over that, Zade,” he reminded her. “This isn’t about that. That’s done. Now you gotta tell me about those men.”

“I didn’t know, they... they were b-bad men. Never, Daddy, never would I be that mean, going out so Millie would come out after me. She’s... Millie, she’s... I did. I did tell Clee-Clee she was cool. And I’ve been mean to her. I did bad things. I scared her about Chief. But now I like her. She’s nice. She has a super nice house. She has cute kitties she lets us play with. But even if I didn’t like her, I’d never be that mean.”

“Zade,” he said, forcing his voice to soft and lifting a hand to lay it on her back. “I know you didn’t mean anything. You’re not in trouble. But I gotta know about those men.”

“Y-you yelled at me,” she whispered.

His voice was firm, and with his patience slipping he couldn’t smooth the edge when he stated, “Zadie, this is not about you. There are gonna be times in your life, a lot of them, when it’s not about you. You gotta get used to that and do it now, darlin’, ’cause this is one of those times. A big one. Now you dig deep like I know you can and tell me about those men.”

“They... they were Mexican,” she said.

He was right.

Valenzuela.

“Older? Younger?” he asked.

“Younger than you,” she answered.

Valenzuela was close to his age.

That meant soldiers.

“Dressed nice?” he went on.

She nodded.

“The color of their SUV, you remember?” he pushed.

“B-black,” she said.

“Did you see the kind of SUV they were in?”

She shook her head.

“What’d they say to you?” he kept at his girl.

“Just that... that...” She pressed her lips together and when High was near to losing complete hold on his patience, she continued talking. “They were friends of yours and they had something in their car for you. A present. A surprise. Something special. They asked me to come get it and bring it to you. I know it was stupid,” she whispered the last, sounding beaten. “But I... I...” She shoved into her sister. “This is a nice neighborhood. Millie has a really pretty house. They seemed nice.” She took another broken breath. “I didn’t think they were bad.”

She just didn’t think. She knew better. Even High had drilled the don’t talk to strangers shit into her head since she could cogitate.

Then again, a ten-year-old shouldn’t have to know what kind of bad could knock on the door in any neighborhood.

“Is Millie... ?” Cleo started, and got her old man’s attention, paused, then pushed on. “Did Millie do something bad?”

Only the kind he gave her.

But this shit should never touch his girls. Any of them. He should never be in the position to field questions that would lead to the kind of answers he’d have to give.

That was on Valenzuela too.

“No,” he told his big girl. “Millie’s good to the core.”

“So why—?” Cleo began.

“That’s not for now, Cleo,” High stated, straightening.

“Is she... ?” That was Zadie and he looked to his baby who was pulling away from her sister, looking up at her dad. “Do you think she’s gonna be okay?”

He knew she’d better be.

“She’s gonna be fine,” he told her.

Her lip trembled.

His phone rang.

He stepped away from them, looking at it. When he saw the caller, he took the call.

“Where are we?” he asked as greeting.

“Keely’s headed over,” Tack told him. “Brothers are rendezvousing at the Compound. Mitch and Slim have been informed.”

High stopped at the side of Millie’s couch. “Keely?”

“She’s closest to you,” Tack explained. “She should be there in a few.”

The girls had met Keely only a couple of times. They barely knew her. More, after she lost Black, pulling her into Chaos mess was not cool.

He’d prefer Tyra, Lanie, Tab, Elvira.

He’d have to take Keely because he had to get out of there. He was holding it together but only because his girls were watching. Inside, it felt like he was about to come out of his skin.

“He’s not gonna do shit to her, brother,” Tack assured him.

High wanted that to be true.

But Valenzuela was ready to roll. He was bringing it. He was forcing it so Chaos would shove it back.

Which meant anything could happen.

Millie

I sat curled into myself on the bed in a motel room that wasn’t all that nice but it wasn’t shabby either.

I did this and I didn’t take my eyes off Benito Valenzuela, who was standing at the door with his henchmen.

Another man who was even scarier than Valenzuela was standing in the corner, surveying the entirety of the scene (in other words, keeping his eye on me as well as the action at the door) even as a woman walked my way.

She got my attention when she sat on the edge of the bed.

She was a hooker.

It wasn’t like she was wearing Julia Roberts’s stretchy outfit and thigh-high boots from Pretty Woman but still, she was seriously made up and her clothes were revealing and it wasn’t even noon on a Sunday, so I didn’t think it was jumping to conclusions to guess her occupation.

“Got some ice from the machine outside,” she said quietly, offering me a wet, bulky towel. “You should put that on your eye, shug.”

She was right.

I took the ice and put it to my eye.

Then I turned the one eye I could still see out of toward Valenzuela just as I heard him whisper, “. . . do with you after this colossal fuckup.”

“You said force it, jefe,” the one who grabbed me replied.

“I meant scare her, not fucking kidnap her,” Valenzuela bit back.

“Still, think this’ll force it, Benito,” the one who hit me said. “Chaos ain’t gonna let this stand.”

I felt something and tore my eyes from the conversation at the door to look at the woman seated on the bed in a not-too-shabby motel with me.

“They aren’t, are they?” she whispered, and she didn’t sound happy.

In fact, she sounded absolutely, one hundred percent freaked out.

Considering I was that, and more, I didn’t need her freaking out with me.

“I’m right,” she said when I didn’t respond, and she was still whispering. “You’re an old lady. They’re gonna ride.”

They were gonna ride.

And I needed them to ride. I needed Logan to come and get me, and to do that safely, for him and me, he needed his brothers.

I still was terrified of what Chaos riding meant.

I didn’t answer her, partially because I didn’t want to think about it but mostly because I sensed movement so I looked toward the door.

Apparently, even whispering, our conversation had gotten the attention of Valenzuela.

Great.

He came my way, stopped by the bed, cast a split-second glance at the hooker, and she vacated her place, scurrying on her platform heels straight to the door.

I didn’t take that as a good sign.

Even so, I kept my eye to Valenzuela, my position on the bed and the ice to my swelling face.

“Which one decided to take you?” he asked after the door closed on my unusual Florence Nightingale.

I pressed my lips together.

Then I pressed into the headboard when he snapped right before my eyes, leaned toward me, his face twisted with rage, his eyes burning with it, and he thundered, “Which one took you?”

Oh my God.

He was totally crazy.

“Th-that one,” I answered, lifting my hand to point at the one who’d held me.

Valenzuela leaned back. “He hit you too?”

I shook my head.

“So Pedro took you, Carlos hit you,” he stated, all evidence of his fury gone, this was uttered matter-of-factly.

God, he’d been freaking me out but that about-face scared the absolute crap out of me.

Thus, even if it seemed he didn’t intend to hurt me further—in fact, he was pissed way the hell off I’d been taken and hurt at all—I felt it prudent not to relax quite yet because this guy was clearly fucking loco.

I would have no idea how right I was.

I would also have no idea that I shouldn’t confirm his statement even if I didn’t know which was which, Carlos and Pedro.

I shouldn’t have even spoken.

But I did both.

“Yes,” I said.

And right then, right there, he twisted his torso, doing this nodding to the other man in the room.

I looked that way just as the guy reached into his suit jacket and came out with a gun.

Before I could even brace or open my mouth to scream, he lifted it. I heard two strange, loud zings followed instantly by far less welcome sounds at the same time my eyes jerked toward the door. I saw blood and brains spatter against walls and Pedro and Carlos sink to the carpet.

I dropped the ice and shuffled frantically back on the bed, shocked I could move because it felt like my body had frozen right to the bone, terrified at the same time that, because of this, it felt my limbs would crack right off. My brain saturated with images of carnage, I couldn’t gauge where I was going and fell off the side of the bed.

I scrambled to my feet as Valenzuela turned back to me. Mind in turmoil, my only thoughts were escape and the chilling knowledge that there wasn’t one.

“Stop moving. I won’t hurt you,” he ordered.

I kept moving, making preparations in order to take flight.

He reached into his suit jacket, pulled out his own gun, and lifted it my way.

“Stop... fucking... moving.”

Automatically, I stopped moving.

He turned his head and dipped his chin at the only other live person in the room.

I stared, shock beginning to overcome me, my body starting to tremble as the guy coolly dipped his chin as well and sauntered to and out the door, closing it behind him.

“You’re at the Mile Hi Motel in room two sixteen,” Valenzuela stated, and my eyes darted back to him. “You call your biker, you tell them where to find you, you tell them that’s for them.” He swung his gun toward the two dead bodies on the floor, then back to me. “You tell them I did not order what happened today. You tell them Carlos and Pedro acted alone. You tell them I was not happy about this and saw to their punishment.”

Punishment?

That was his brand of punishment?

I stared at him, suddenly realizing that I was not only trembling from hair to toenails, my chest was rising and falling with shallow breaths and my fingers felt like they’d been asleep but were coming awake, tingling in a way that skimmed the edge of pain.

But what I saw as I stared at his face was not fear.

He wasn’t scared of Chaos’s retribution for the mistake made by his men that day and taking care of it so they wouldn’t lose their minds.

It was something else.

And right then, I went from scared out of my brain to terrified down to my bones.

“You should leave town,” I blurted.

He dropped the gun, which was a relief, but he also smiled a creepy smile, which wasn’t.

“Thank you for the advice, but I think I’ll stay,” he replied.

Regardless of the fact that he didn’t want my very good advice to penetrate—seeing as I was witness to his minion’s double homicide and an old lady to a member of a band of brothers who took family and the protection of it really fucking seriously, so I knew what I was talking about—I kept going.

“You don’t touch old ladies.”

“I didn’t.”

That was the truth.

“Your men lured Lo... I mean, High’s daughter to their car,” I shared.

His mouth got tight.

He didn’t know that.

My body got tight too. Or tighter.

Then his mouth relaxed. “Another fail,” he stated. “And as you can see, they won’t do anything like that again.”

Another truth. A big one.

I kept my eyes off the slaughter sharing a room with me so I could keep hold on my mind.

“I mean no offense. I’m sure you know this,” I began. “But you don’t mean anything to me. Still, this plays out like I know it will, people I care about will be forced to do things they don’t wish to do. They’re good men. But this won’t stand.” I carefully indicated the floor beneath my feet. “They won’t let it and you shouldn’t underestimate them. There’s no way you can win.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

I stared at him.

He believed that.

Totally.

A chill crept over my skin and I kept trying.

“You won’t win, Valenzuela. Seriously, believe me. I’ve known them a long time. United, the brotherhood can’t be defeated.”

“Many brotherhoods felt the same and continued to do so until they fell.”

I stared into his eyes and I read everything there.

He wasn’t going to give up. He wasn’t going to go away. He wasn’t going to stop. He was weak, with men misinterpreting his orders, facing a woman who could guarantee his time in prison when he was caught and I testified that he’d ordered the murders of two men.

He still wasn’t going to stop.

Not until it was over however that came about.

There was something scarily wrong about that. He was a man with every chip in the pot holding weak cards in his hand.

But he was acting like he had an ace up his sleeve.

“You need to be careful,” I whispered.

“Ah, Millie, your concern in touching. But don’t you worry. I’m being very careful.”

“No,” I returned. “What I mean is, you hurt him, you hurt High, you hurt any of them, I’ll hurt you.”

He found that amusing, so much so it was incredibly insulting.

While smiling big, he tipped his head to the side. “You’re threatening me while I hold a gun?”

“Wrong again,” I told him, shaking my head. “It’s insane but I’m trying to save your life. Seriously, you should get out of town.”

“I will not fall to Chaos,” he said with utter confidence.

“If you don’t leave and you also don’t fall to Chaos, you’ll still fall.”

“Chaos gash comes after me after I bring that Club low, that’s business I’ll be forced to take care of too.”

Gash.

He’d said that word before.

It wasn’t nice.

It also pissed me off.

I straightened my spine and squared my shoulders, sharing, “There’ll be only one storm mightier than the one your men unleashed today. You don’t mess with an old lady. You definitely don’t mess with an old lady’s man.”

He was still amused. “After I claim all of Denver, that’ll be an interesting challenge.”

He might hold the ace.

But his cards were still weak.

“I see your weakness,” I told him.

That amused him too. Greatly.

He lifted his brows over dancing eyes.

“I have a weakness?” he asked in disbelief.

“You don’t think gash have brains,” I shared.

“You’re not difficult to look at, Millie, but you aren’t being very smart, where you are, how you are, speaking to me the way you are.”

“You don’t think gash have brains,” I repeated. “So you can’t know we have them and we also have hearts. And if you don’t know any of that, you also don’t know we hold a mean grudge.”

“I know this,” he said in a way that made my skin tighten all over my body. “I ordered the dispatch of two of my soldiers. I did it with a witness. I did it knowing Chaos has gone pussy, taking their twat asses to the cops. So I know you’ll share with Mitch Lawson and Brock Lucas. And I don’t fucking care.”

That was crazy.

My voice was rising high when I asked, “You believe you’re untouchable?”

“I believe I get Chaos out of the way, I’ll be running Denver. And if I have to put down Chaos, along with Lawson, Lucas, and Delgado to do it, then that’ll get done.”

Delgado?

Hawk Delgado?

Elvira’s boss?

What did he have to do with all this?

I didn’t ask that.

I remarked, “So you’re gonna leave me alive.”

He tipped his head to the side and asked, “What did you see?”

He knew what I saw since it happened five minutes ago and I didn’t think it was smart to remind him that I saw it but I had a feeling he had an agenda and that agenda was not further harming me, so I said, “You told your man to shoot them and he did.”

“I wasn’t anywhere near here and that man doesn’t exist.”

Both were wrong but I had a feeling he could make it so they were right.

He kept speaking.

“In fact, later today, there will be a man who will come forward, confessing to these killings. He’ll have the gun used. And he’ll share all about how he did this in retribution for what was done to you.”

I stared at him some more.

I’d heard about things like that. Saw it on TV. A bad guy paying someone to take the fall, maybe promising to take care of his family, doing it huge to make it worth the sacrifice.

“Anyway, Millie,” he carried on. “A win isn’t really a win unless there are losers left standing.”

“So you’re gonna leave me alive,” I repeated.

“Yes,” he confirmed.

Okay, I was more than a little done.

“Could you do that about now?” I requested.

He grinned before he creeped me way the fuck out by saying, “You know, I think I actually like you.”

“I’m totally showering for three hours when I get home,” I muttered.

He burst out laughing.

I didn’t move a muscle.

He stopped laughing, lifted his gun, and I remained immobile, my eyes locked to his weapon as he wagged it at me.

“Yes, I like you. I get Judd. Those two uppity bitches who’re leading Allen and Kincaid around by their cocks, I don’t get. But you might be fun.”

I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t think of what to say.

Though I thought perhaps I should keep him talking. I figured the more he played with me, the longer he was hanging around, I knew Logan, Chaos, and more than likely Chaos’s cop buddies were tearing Denver apart looking for me, so they might find us. If he wanted to be standing around having a conversation when they did, it wasn’t me who was going to stop him.

Though I wished I hadn’t dropped the ice. My eye was hurting like a bitch.

“No comeback?” he prompted.

“My eye kinda hurts and this conversation is definitely getting boring,” I replied.

“Then I’ll leave you,” he said.

I tried not to look excited as I contradictorily tried to think of ways to get him to stay and do that without moving him to murder me.