Dark Truths: Kiss Her Goodbye #2

by Royce, Rebecca

  “None of them work on me.” Derrick moaned.

  Trace walked over and put his arm around me. “Come on. Eat. Then we’ll figure out today. We aren’t letting a little hit on your head put a damper on this fantastic day.”

  I let him lead me to the counter where I sat down in front of the plate Judson set out for me.

  “Hey.” Trace nudged me. “What’s wrong?”

  I spooned some eggs into my mouth, chewed, and then swallowed. “Hungry, I guess.”

  “Liar,” he whispered in my ear. “Takes one to know one. Keep your thoughts for yourself, for now. You can tell me later.”

  What was I supposed to say? I had a memory of Ben and now I’m back to wondering what the hell I’m doing here with all of you? What am I doing with my life? How much longer can this go on? I chewed. None of this was helpful right now, and I really didn’t want to make a whole thing about it.

  “It worked?” I asked the room. “You got them?”

  “One by one,” Kade spoke for the first time from where he sat by his computer. “Come see. I’m watching Marcus Petrone’s ex-wife and their kids getting evicted right now.”

  I set down my fork. I didn’t want to eat anymore. Jud pointed at the eggs. “Not good?”

  “Delicious. Thank you.” I smiled at him and made my way over to Kade. “Show me.”

  “The eviction?” He pointed at the screen, and I sat on his lap to watch. I hadn’t asked, I’d just sat, but he didn’t say anything to object, and Kade wasn’t exactly quiet when he was unhappy. He’d tell me to get off.

  On the computer screen a woman packed boxes while two of her kids threw things at each other. Her face was tear stained. I tilted my head. “How did they get evicted so fast? I mean… she owned the house? The bank is repossessing?”

  “Yes. Exactly. Would have been harder if Marcus had paid cash for the house, which he could more than afford to do, but since Carlin left him, he doesn’t take care of them in the same way he used to. She had to ask him to pay the bill every month. As for how did it happen so fast? Well, I just had the program I wrote go in and show that she hadn’t paid the bills in months. Amazing how fast these things can happen.”

  Marcus was an Alliance leader. We’d killed Josh and Henry. We… as if I had, and I really did a play a role in both of them. I killed assassins and Alliance leaders. I evicted and bankrupted Zoey with a y and some woman named Carlin. I did all those things. I participated. Who the fuck was I?

  What was sicker? I didn’t care that I had no remorse of sympathy for these people. I didn’t even mind the lack of my more sensitive emotions because of what their lack meant for others, but rather because of what that meant about how I felt about myself. It was all about me, me, me all the time. Maybe Warden wasn’t the only super narcissist in the room.

  Damn Ben and his nasty tongue.

  I got up. “I don’t suppose I can go run outside?”

  I hadn’t exercised since I’d come back to the real world. Or whatever this version of it proved to be. Was this the real world or was I on some acid trip I needed to wake up from? I still waited for an answer.

  “Anyone going to respond?”

  “Probably not a good idea,” Derrick finally said. “The problem with the hit they took out on you is that we can’t entirely undo it. Some of it is not related to money.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “How so? What did he offer in exchange for killing me? This isn’t feudal times. Do they give away things like castles? Do you?”

  Trace laughed. “I’ve never given away real estate. Have any of you?”

  “How many hits have you put on people, Trace? No. Don’t tell me. That isn’t important right now. What have they offered them?”

  Derrick got to his feet. His face still remained swollen, but his eyes were clear. If I had to guess, he wasn’t taking any pain medication. He could probably drink the bottle of champagne and not risk anything. I was sure Judson knew that, too. He was probably just waiting for Derrick to confess.

  He’d be waiting a long time.

  “He put it out there that you would bring down the Alliance. We doubled the ten million he paid to have you killed with twenty to get Ben and leave you alone. No problem. So anyone in it for the money is gone. They’re looking for Ben now. Or most of them. Some idiot is probably still after you for the ten-mil figuring they can’t find or take Ben.” He shrugged and then winced. “I’m not worried about that. Although every once in a while an idiot can get a bullet in. What I’m concerned about is the faithful. Those men who have too much invested in believing in this organization to risk losing it. They’ll think that they have to do this. They make me very concerned.”

  I sighed. So now I had to deal with what? Alliance zealots? “Okay. Well, you’re going to make this go away? One of you is going to do fix this? Or all of you? Because I am not going to stand inside one of your safe houses and wait for some idiot with a gun to get his turn.”

  Kade pushed back in his chair. “We’ll get it fixed.”

  “Warden.” He had been staring out the window until I called him. He answered my addressing him by raising his eyebrows and sipping his drink. “Do you have a treadmill? I need to do some exercise. I’m hoping it might put off this… whatever this is that is happening.”

  He pointed right. “Two doors that way. It’s a full gym. Don’t overdo. You’ve hardly eaten anything and had a workout with Jud already today.”

  “Hey.” Judson shot him a look. “Don’t.”

  “I’m just being honest. She needs to work back up to stamina. Maybe walk. I don’t want you to make yourself sick or overdo. I don’t really feel like a hospital visit today, do you?”

  I supposed that made sense. “I’ll walk.”

  * * *

  Warden had, of course, been right. Within twenty minutes, I was out of breath and off the treadmill. Just meant I needed to walk every day until I had built back some semblance of fitness. However long it took.

  Judson walked into the room as I was leaving. “Should I take it personally?”

  I wiped at my face with one of the neatly placed towels I assumed Warden put in the room for just this purpose. “What?”

  “One night with me and you’re grumpy. I, by contrast, have exactly the opposite reaction to being with you.”

  I put my hand on his arm. It felt almost wrong to touch him when I was sweaty, considering he’d voiced his issues with being touched. But then he’d told me he wanted easy touches from me. I had to figure this out. “No, it’s not you. I had a memory in the bathroom of something Ben said. It was very bad. And I threw up. It made me shaky, upset. Then… I don’t even know how to explain what I thought next.”

  He put his arm around me. “Let’s start with Ben. What did he say?”

  “Well he said things about all of you. I know they were lies. Why do they get in there like that?”

  He kissed my temple. “Because he’s a sociopath. What Ben wanted from you, what he wanted from all of us, was to buy into his crap. Those of us who wanted out of there sooner rather than later learned to fake it. Even if he was going to kill you, what he wanted was for you to think he was right.”

  I could see that. “What makes a person like that?”

  “I don’t know his history. Maybe he was born that way. I really don’t know. I’m also not a psychiatrist. I’m not… qualified to even speculate. Maybe Derrick knows. He did a huge history on him.”

  Perhaps some time I would ask. “Thing is: learning who he was, in the past it might have made me sympathetic to him. Judson, part of what freaked me out, is that I’m feeling nothing. No sympathy for a divorced woman being put on the street. No ounce of worry for Zoey with a y. All I can focus on is me and how it makes me feel that I’m not feeling anything.”

  “You’re worried he made you like us.”

  I should have known he’d hit the nail on the head. “I’m worried I’m lost.”

  “You’re not.” He pressed our foreheads toge
ther. “You’re still feeling plenty of things for those of us you know. You’re still kind. You’re considerate. You’re… you. That lovely heart that makes me want to hold you all night and take on the world for you. It’s there. If you’re not yet ready to extend that to strangers, then so be it. You tightened your circle.”

  I swallowed. “Do you think it’s that simple?”

  “Nothing about this is simple.”

  I squeezed his hand. “I’m going to go take my third shower of the day.”

  “What did he say about me? That got in your head?” He didn’t let go of my hand.

  I wished I didn’t have to tell him, but I wouldn’t lie. “He said that you could have gotten both me and Alyssa out if you’d wanted to.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Fuck that piece of shit. I’m going to lock him in a basement. I’m going to show him pain like he never imagined.”

  “That’s not really your style.” I tugged on his polo shirt.

  Judson shook his head. “Every one of us is a killer. Even you now. I don’t have other people do my dirty work. Believe me on this if you believe me on nothing else. I loved my sister. She wasn’t perfect. I know what she did. I know what she would have done to Derrick if she’d had the chance.” He looked away for a second and then back at me. “We shared a womb. I could see her for all that she was and still love her. I don’t know if she was capable of love.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. “Wow.”

  “Yeah. It’s hard to say that aloud but there you go. Alyssa was broken. She might have been a better Alliance member than me, but she was a woman. All of that said, I would have burned countries to get her back if I could have.”

  I believed him. With everything that was left of my soul, I did. Maybe I was an idiot, but I didn’t think I was over this. Jud would have saved Alyssa.

  He cupped my cheek. “I already told you that you belonged to me from moment one. Ben doesn’t get to take what’s mine. I would have gotten you out too if it had been within my power to do so a minute earlier than it was.”

  “Thank you. I guessed I needed to hear that.”

  He nodded, once. “You’re hardly back any length of time yet. Your memories aren’t clear. It would be weird for you to be fine.”

  We walked out together back to the group. Derrick must have convinced Judson he could drink or simply taken it without asking permission because he was having the drink. The others were all on the couch. Kade jumped to his feet. “They want to have a cesser le feu.”

  I blinked. “Did you say cease fire in French?”

  Kade nodded but didn’t look up from the computer. “Yes.”

  “I bet they do.” Warden rose. “We destroyed them. Now they want to talk? They do nothing to help us with Ben and now they think they can have a cesser le feu?”

  I held up my hand. “What is a cesser le feu? How does that apply to this?”

  “Just that,” Trace supplied. “They want to speak. They want to stop what we’re doing and speak.”

  “Two of them dead. Ben in hiding. The other two financially ruined. Yes, they want to talk.” Warden sat at the counter.

  This didn’t make any sense to me. “Couldn’t it be a trap? Like they bring you out there to kill you?”

  “It could. But they know we’ll take precautions to prevent that, and they’re at as much of a risk for that as we are.” Warden handed me a bottle of water, which I gladly accepted.

  I grinned at him, and he returned the smile. Maybe the walk and the talk with Judson improved my mood just a touch. “Can you say no?”

  “We could.” Judson let go of my hand before he went to take the glass from Derrick.

  Derrick moved it away from him. “Try it and we’ll both have swollen faces.”

  Oh, the testosterone in this room was running rampant. “I think you should say no.”

  I didn’t know what everyone would have said. I bent to scratch my leg. The odd thing about it was that I could have done that a second earlier or a second later and I’d have been dead. The fact that I leaned away at that second was why I lived to breathe air another moment.

  The bullet that had been aimed at my head whizzed past me, slamming into the picture frame and shattering the landscape and glass while it tore into the wall. I didn’t understand what happened, but Warden shoved me down on the ground, covering me with his body.

  If I’d imagined this situation, I might have pictured shouting but that wasn’t what happened. There was movement but silence.

  “Warden?”

  “Quiet, beautiful.”

  I closed my eyes and shook. I so wasn’t brave.

  Chapter 16

  “He’s down.” Judson’s voice filled the room and above me, Warden moved. He hadn’t let go of me this whole time, and I hadn’t tried to make him. “Kade got him.”

  Warden helped me up. “Not Derrick?”

  “He’s slow, understandably. He’s doing a scan of the whole perimeter to make sure we’re safe. If anyone else is there, he’ll get them. Frankly, the fact that he’s up and moving is impressive. He pointed Kade in the right direction.”

  Kade sauntered into the room. “Nice to see I’ve still got it. I can take someone out, no problem.”

  Trace patted him on the back, coming up from behind him. “It was a nice shot.”

  “Thanks. You okay, Everly?” Kade turned his laser focus on me.

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “Well, physically, yes, because I scratched my leg and Warden has such sharp senses. But no, I just got shot at. I’m not okay.” I really wasn’t and maybe that explained why the next things out of my mouth weren’t spoken but shouted at the top of my voice. “This has to stop. I can’t continue like this. I feel like I’m going through my fucking life just waiting to die and I’m twenty-three years old. I can’t do this.” I may have stomped my foot. Okay, I’d regressed to a place I’d never been. I wasn’t a foot stomper even when it was age appropriate. Either my father or my grandmother would have slapped the crap out of me for doing that.

  “Evs,” Derrick spoke softly. “We’ll fix it.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not certain you can. You can move markets, arrange to have rockets sent to Mars, take lives, run governments, but you can’t make me safe. I’ll just go find a hole and live in it like a paranoid cat woman for the rest of my life until my own cats eat me alive.”

  It wasn’t my finest moment, but to be fair, I had just been shot at through a window.

  “All right.” Warden kissed my forehead again. “So then we can’t let you get any cats. That’s the start. No buying cats for Everly.”

  His words so shocked me that my mouth fell open. That was what he got from my rant? That I shouldn’t buy any cats? It took me far longer than it should have to realize he was kidding. The giggle starting in my throat quickly became a full throttle laugh. Warden put his arms around me, and I could feel when he relaxed just a touch.

  The guys were stressed. They had a huge amount on their plate and a woman they were sleeping with had a price on her head. Even in my own head that sounded like a bad mafia movie.

  “What do we do now?”

  Trace strode over and took me from Warden. “We go to someone else’s house, and we accept the cease fire. We have the meeting. We see what they say and we make this go away for you. Even if we have to give something up.”

  “We won’t have to give anything up. The dude missed,” Derrick headed for the stairs. “And now that I know that there are fools out there really going for this, I am going to be hunting them.”

  Kade scrunched up his face. “Are you up for that?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t say anything else, instead disappearing up the stairs to his room.

  I looked at Trace. “Where is that nurse who should be taking care of him?”

  “Derrick threw him out in the middle of the night with threats of death and dismemberment. He ran, I don’t even think he took his clothes.” Trace sighed. “Derrick is a
bit of a bear.”

  He was, but I liked that about him, and he was gentle with me. In fact, they all were. Whatever Ben had to say about the five of them, they’d been very patient with me.

  “Where are we going? Your house?” I asked Trace.

  He nodded. “We can. Virginia is gorgeous in the fall.”

  “We’re going to Boston,” Judson informed the room. “I have to go back to work. And you’re going to have to do that shortly, too, Trace. Unless you’re quitting your job. The sabbatical can only last so long.” He turned to Kade. “Go spread the word that the meeting is in Boston, Kade. Tomorrow. If they want to meet, it’s in Boston.”

  Kade nodded. “On it.”

  The man ended a life and now here he was acting like everything was perfectly fine. I guessed I had to go pack. And pretend that this wasn’t my new normal. Run for my life. Stop somewhere. Pack. Do it again.

  If this was the way people who ran the world behaved, I really didn’t think it was worth it to run the world.

  Maybe it was better just to be people.

  Was that even possible anymore for me? For any of us? I couldn’t be Alliance, and I certainly wasn’t going to end up dead like Alyssa for trying. What in the hell was I going to do with the rest of my life?

  * * *

  I was having trouble concentrating. I’d decided to read a book. Five of us were on the plane together. Everyone but Derrick because he was now hunting assassins and apparently that meant he was off on his own. I didn’t even know when we’d see him again.

  Everyone was busy, and I was determined to read a book. I needed to do something normal. I’d grabbed several off Warden’s bookshelves, and now I was trying to concentrate on at least one of them. Warden liked spy novels, and I liked them, too. So why didn’t I know what the last thing I read was?

  I forced myself to read the words until I could make sense of them. Next to me, Kade typed on his laptop. Everything was set up. I didn’t know how they were going to find a place to fit such a large crowd the day before, but it must have just been one of those things they could do.