Maybe that wasn’t the first bullet hole this place had seen.
Derrick stood in the doorway of the kitchen watching me, and I raised my eyes to meet his gaze. I nodded at him. He was following me. I was sure of that and even if that might have bothered me in the old days I loved it now. Derrick and his lethal guns and wicked baseball bat could trail me wherever I went.
He was still covered in blood. I didn’t mind it on his clothes, but his skin looked disgusting. “The tabloids would never believe you now. Their golden boy covered in blood.”
His smile was slow. “They’d never believe any of it.”
I grabbed a cloth that hung next to the sink and poured warm water on it. Warden had dabbed my back in the shower, and I did the same now for Derrick. Fortunately, the blood didn’t have to be scrubbed too hard. It washed off rather easily.
His gaze trailed my movements. After a few minutes, he darted out his hand to grab mine. “You didn’t come in the kitchen to clean me up. As much as I appreciate the care, the last thing you need to be doing right now is worrying about me. Why did you walk in here?”
“When was the last time someone worried about you? And don’t worry, I’ve just resolved to look out for myself first. I’m not interested in suddenly becoming anyone’s caregiver. I just don’t like looking at you covered in blood.”
Derrick tilted his head to the side. “You avoided my question. What did you come in here for?”
“To cut my hair.” I dropped the bloody cloth on the counter. I had no idea where the laundry room was and no interest in figuring that out. I was not going to become Constance by default. I might have been the only female here, but that didn’t mean I was going to clean up after the horde in the living room.
Having been reminded of my purpose, I dug through the drawers until I located the scissors. Now I just needed a mirror. This didn’t have to be pretty, but it had to be done. I couldn’t be half cut. It was going to make me feel nuts.
Derrick took them out of my hand. “I’ll do it.”
“This from the man with the man bun. That’s how I thought of you for a long time. Man bun.”
He smirked. “Takes a little know how to keep it from getting too long. I do occasionally trim it. How do you think of me now? Tilt your head. We’ll get this fixed professionally. I’ll just get it my best impression of even.”
My black locks hit the floor around my feet. I stared at them, the color a stark contrast to my white sneakers. I’d bought the sneakers, intending to use them to run, and now I could hardly walk in them. I was weak and it fucking sucked.
There was no two ways about it.
When he finished, he walked past me to grab a broom. Derrick must not have had the same concerns I did about the cleaning because he swept up my hair and threw the locks away but not before he grabbed a piece of it and shoved it in his pocket.
“You can have that as long as you aren’t going to do anything weird with it.”
He blinked, staring at me. “What would be weird?”
“I don’t know. Like making a voodoo doll?”
He shook his head. “Wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to do that. Did you eat?”
“I did but it didn’t stay down.”
His eyes widened. “Did you tell Judson?”
“No.” I pointed to the other room. “He’s a little busy right now.”
“Not for this.”
I followed Derrick from the room but had to stop to grip the wall. Why was I suddenly dizzy? Judson strode toward me.
“Sorry.” I didn’t want to be a burden. What did these guys do with people who became too much for them?
He shook his head. “You couldn’t keep the food down. And now you’re lightheaded.” He’d clearly assessed it correctly. “Too much too soon. Back to bed and we’re going to try some easier food.” He put his hand on my forehead. “You’re still cool. That’s good.”
Trace walked up to me fast. “Kade is getting it all under control. Are you okay?” He put his hand on my back.
“She will be.”
Trace didn’t wait. He picked me up. “Clear everyone out of the living room. They can go down to the basement or home to do whatever. Warden stays. She can’t spend day in and day out in that bed upstairs.”
“It’s not day in and day out.” Judson rolled his eyes. “She’s been here three days.”
Had it been that long? I clearly didn’t remember some of it. Still, Judson walked into the living room and soon after the people who were in there left. Where they went didn’t really concern me. Trace carried me in, laying me down on the couch, and a few seconds later Derrick arrived with a blanket. He was still dressed in his bloody clothing. Why didn’t that bother him?
“Can we talk about how we’re going to hurt Ben?”
Judson shook his head. “We can talk about that when you’re not still semi-delirious. You want revenge? Great. Remember, it’s best served cold. We’ll get there. Concentrate on something else.”
I swallowed. “Like what? How weak I am? How sick I’ve been? How I can’t stand in the shower because it feels like death when the water touches my back? How I starved? Cried? Begged? How my body doesn’t feel like my own right now? Which part of that should I concentrate on?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Maybe let’s just work on getting you fed.”
Warden stood behind Kade, both of them looking at numbers moving over a screen. Kade spoke without looking at us. “Chicken soup.”
“Sounds great,” Trace answered. “Anyone got some?”
Trace placed a hand on top of my head. “I’m going to go buy some chicken soup. I’ll take the boat. I’ll be back in a few hours. We do have bread. Someone make her some of that. I’ll get some other things. We were completely ill prepared. I’m sorry, Everly. I’m going to fix it.”
Warden looked over his shoulder. “We’ve never actually taken care of anyone before.”
Judson groaned. “Speak for yourselves. I’m a doctor.”
Kade spun around in his chair. “Tell us again, Dr. Smythe. We might have forgotten for three seconds.”
I smiled. This felt ridiculously easy right now. The couch was comfy, and I snuggled into the blanket. “What are you doing over there, Kade and Warden?”
“Tracking investments.” Warden answered. “Josh Kralik keeps moving his money. He’s smart. But I’m smarter. I am going to bankrupt him. And when he can’t pay his mercenaries, we’ll send in our own black helicopters and he’ll be dead as a doorknob.”
Derrick nodded. “I volunteer to be on one of those helicopters.”
“I assumed.” Warden nodded. “Have at it, brother.”
Josh Kralik. I knew that name and not just because at one point Kade had told me the names of all the Alliance and they’d burned into my mind. No, it was because Ben had felt perfectly fine talking in front of me since I was going to be dead and not able to tell anyone anything.
He’d spoken of the other members of his Alliance all the fucking time.
When he’d made me sit in a bathtub full of ice so that he could watch me shake, he’d joyfully told me all about Josh and his preoccupation with a woman in Aspen.
“I know where Josh is if that helps.”
They all turned to me, even Trace who had been halfway out of the door. Warden tilted his head. “You do?”
“Sure. Josh has a girlfriend he’s hiding in Aspen. He doesn’t want anyone to know about her, but Ben does because Ben knows everything.” I shivered. “There’s no one he can’t get to, nothing he can’t discover. The ants all belong to him.”
Kade winced and looked down at his feet while Derrick dropped down on the couch next to me, nearly crushing my legs when he did. “That’s a bunch of bullshit. Just so you know. That last part. I don’t know about whether or not he has a girlfriend.”
“He does.” I rubbed at my eyes. “Her name is…” What was it? My teeth chattered so badly in the ice filled tub, and they did it again right now. I put
my hand over my mouth until it stopped. The name flooded into my mind. “Zoey Eastwood. She’s a socialite. Used to live in New York City but after her divorce, her ex-husband basically got New York.” Oh, how Ben had gone on and on. “So she lives in Aspen in some big house, and he goes there all the time, in secret, to fuck her. If you can’t find him, that’s where he is.”
Warden’s grin was huge. “I bet it is in secret, considering he’s married to the daughter of one of the most connected families in Northern France. Her father will eat him alive, council or no council.”
“So maybe you don’t have to bankrupt him.” I yawned again. Weird enough, I actually didn’t mind having Derrick sitting on my legs. “That’s Zoey with a y. Ben made a big thing about that.” I rubbed my arms.
“Maybe I don’t just bankrupt him. Maybe I fuck with her money just to show him that I know. I start with her.”
Warden pushed Kade out of the way and started tapping frantically on the computer. I had just single-handedly wrecked this woman’s life, who probably had no idea who her father was or the guy she was fucking. Maybe she didn’t even know he was married.
Guilt washed over me, but I pushed it away. I was sorry if she suffered some temporary setbacks based on this mess, but fuck, I’d been locked in a basement. If this Josh person wanted to keep Zoey with a y safe, then maybe he should take better care to see to that sociopathic Ben didn’t know about her.
Or maybe I was just rationalizing the fact that I’d helped my own quasi-evil guys screw with a woman they hadn’t even known existed until I’d told them.
Kade walked over to me. “What else did Ben tell you?”
“I don’t know.” I really didn’t. Right in that second, I couldn’t think at all.
“She’s done for a while.” Derrick got off my legs. “I think I’m going to go shower.”
That was the last thing I heard. It was like my brain decided to just shut down. Apparently, sometimes I simply had to sleep, whether I wanted to or not.
* * *
“I’ve got him.”
Warden’s elated voice woke me, and I stretched, feeling achy from not moving for so long.
“You’re going to wake her.” Kade shushed him. “You heard what Judson said. She needs to sleep, and eat, and recover.”
Warden sighed. “Fuck.”
I forced my eyes open. “I’m up.”
“Told you.” Kade walked over to me. “You okay? Need something.”
“I’m sorry, gorgeous.” Warden sighed. “I just finally got him. And I may have shouted. I didn’t mean it.”
I didn’t want to spend the whole day asleep and something smelled like chicken soup cooking, which meant that Trace had to be back. “I’m hungry. I’ll go in the kitchen. I don’t have to stay in here. You can make as much noise as you want in the living room.”
“It didn’t bother us to have you here.” Kade gave me a hand so I could get off the couch steadily. “I liked having you close so I could make sure you were okay.”
That was sweet. “Don’t get me used to you being like this. It’ll tear me apart when one of you says something shitty. I realize right now I’m pretty much dependent on you but feel free to tell me to fuck off or something.”
He smiled fast. “Okay. Fuck off, Everly.”
Then he negated his words by hugging me tight. I hadn’t really been kidding. I wasn’t back very long and maybe it was too soon for me to be thinking about this huge change in all of them but there it was laid out in front of me and I had nothing else to focus on. Kade had held me when I’d wept in the middle of the night, but he was otherwise pretty surly and pissed off all the time. Who was this person? Trace went and got me chicken soup? We’d had some moments in the Caribbean, but then he’d walked away like I meant less than nothing to him.
Warden washing my back? Where was the guy who had dumped me in a mall and just told me to stay there? Judson and the attention to my needs? He had hardly seemed to be able to stand me half the time.
Then there was Derrick. I’d never really understood him to begin with.
I closed my eyes against Kade’s chest. He smelled good, clean, not like he’d ever been locked in a dungeon.
“When you stayed with Ben, did he ever put you in his basement?”
He tapped my chin, and I opened my eyes to look up at him. “Not the basement. But he did once lock me in one of his closets for failure to comply. After that I got more… accommodating. He couldn’t do to us what he did to you, sweetheart. We all had family history in the Alliance and most of us had fathers still alive. They’d have killed him, council or no council. Obviously, you’ve seen our backs. That happens to all of us. But not what he did to you.”
I supposed that made sense. “I have a father. That didn’t matter to him.”
“No, because you’re a woman.” He put his arm around me and walked me to the kitchen. “Hey, Trace,” he called out. “We have a taker for your chicken soup.”
I came to an abrupt stop as we entered the kitchen. There were screens all over it, ones that were usually in the basement, and on them were the video feeds that had been on them the last time I’d seen them. People the Alliance held hostage, with bags over their head as I’d had for so long, were visible for everyone to see.
A thought I’d had many times when I’d been Ben’s hostage flew through my mind. “Did you watch me? When that was me. Did you watch on these screens?”
Trace leaned against the counter. “If we could have done that, we could have traced the feed and found you. We would have killed to have seen you on a screen. No, you were never visible.”
He turned around and poured the chicken soup into a bowl.
My ears rang. “You could trace the feeds of those people right now?”
Kade indicated the kitchen table like he wanted me to sit there. “Yes.”
“Then why don’t you do that?” We’d had this conversation before. It all rushed back to me. Trace would tell me that it wasn’t their job, that we didn’t know what the people had done to deserve to be there, that they got better intel if they just watched and didn’t interfere.
I answered for them without letting them say a word. “Because maybe they didn’t do anything. Because they need rescue. Because… because… because it’s so fucked up that you are watching people enduring hell and you’re not doing anything about it. Is this what you’re going to do when you’re in charge? When you win this war and your group is the group? Are you going to hold women prisoner in basements?”
No one answered me. Instead, Trace set the soup down in front of me and Kade went to the fridge. “Do you want ginger ale or an easy mint tea? Trace bought both at the grocery store.”
I stared at the soup. It really did look delicious. I should have known better than to have outbursts. Ants got nowhere with them, and even if I wasn’t an ant, it wasn’t how I would get these guys to do what I wanted anyway. If I thought those people should be rescued, I was going to have to give The Letters a reason to do it.
My head wasn’t clear. I was sorry to leave the basement people where they were for even another night, but I had to think this through. I needed to be strong. I had to focus on that.
Chapter 5
The next few days seemed to be wash, rinse, repeat. I slept, a lot. I ate easy to digest food, and then slept again. In fact, I wasn’t sure how many days passed but eventually I was able to eat a grilled cheese sandwich and have it stay in my stomach.
Kade tapped on his laptop next to me on the couch. The sound grated on my nerves. “Do you think you could stop that?”
He side eyed me. “No. I’m tracking Zoey. She’s moving out of her house, they’re foreclosing on her, and if my hunch is right then Josh is going to show up any second. No way is he leaving her this hysterical on her own.”
“Okay.” I put my hands on my knees. “But do you have to click-click-click on that keyboard like you’re fucking angry at the computer. I mean, is it at all possible for you to type in a
less… aggravating way?”
He smirked, which made me want to punch him in the face. “I think you might be getting stir crazy, Everly?”
“Ah… you think?” Had anyone anywhere ever been helped by someone pointing that the fuck out?
He sucked in a long breath. “I need to keep doing this. We’re all leaving tomorrow.”
That was another problem. What was going to happen to me? They told me I couldn’t go home, that it wasn’t safe, but the whole crew was going back to their real lives tomorrow, and I had no idea what that meant for me since I was outright being denied a real life.
“Yes, Kade, I’m aware.”
He looked over his shoulder. “Trace, Everly needs a walk.”
“What? I’m not a fucking dog.”
Kade rolled his eyes. “No, right now you’re more like a toddler. You’re not going to piss me off. I’m feeling all kinds of happy about what is happening with Josh. So you can keep saying fuck every other word if you want to, even though that doesn’t sound like you, or you can go for a walk with Trace and maybe work off some of this energy.”
Trace leaned in the doorway. “Go put on your shoes. It’s nice outside.”
I should have just told them to all to go jump in a hot pit of lava, but I did want to go outside. I hadn’t been since I got here. I was sick of the living room, even more over my bedroom, and I needed a shower. But not until I went outside. I had to ask someone to help me with my back. Maybe. Perhaps, it had healed enough now that I could manage the hot water.
I’d have to see.
I stomped up the stairs, grabbed my shoes out of the closet, and by the time I got downstairs, I decided that I could see Kade’s point. I was kind of being a child. I sighed, some of my energy leaving me. What was the matter with me?
Trace took my hand, linking it with his. “We’ll just take a slow walk.”
“Thanks.” I called into the living room. “Sorry, Kade.”
He didn’t answer me, which could mean he didn’t care, wasn’t angry so he didn’t need the apology, or had no intention of forgiving me. Or maybe he was just lost in watching Zoey with a y lose her house. How had they gotten that done so fast? Did the banks just foreclose on houses because Warden told them to?
Dark Truths: Kiss Her Goodbye #2 Page 5
