Dark Truths: Kiss Her Goodbye #2

by Royce, Rebecca

  Warden cleared his throat. “Seating chart done. I sent it to you. You should have it, Kade.”

  “On it.”

  Seating charts? I lifted my head. It was like they were planning a wedding. I’d never given any thought to weddings. I didn’t look at wedding dresses or daydream about walking down the aisle. I’d really wanted a good sex partner. I shifted in my seat. Well, I’d gotten that. Five times over.

  “Derrick texted.” Trace looked up from his phone. “He’s found the group coming after Everly. They’re part of the contingency out of France, actually.”

  Jud made a face. “I never did like those guys. Everything to the letter, everything done the way they did it for four hundred years. My dad used to make me go over there and spend summers so that I could learn to do things the French way.” He shook his head. “I spent those summers drunk. They used to tell my father I’d never amount to anything. I know just who would have sent the shooters, too. I bet it’s the fucking Bissets. I would lay money on it. What does Derrick propose to do?”

  Trace lifted his eyebrows. “I’m not asking him that. Derrick will do what Derrick does and that is that. He’s really good at this murder stuff. Let’s not alter his routine.”

  Judson saluted Trace. “As you say, sir.”

  I rolled my eyes. I really hated it when they swiped at each other verbally. Warden sighed before he whispered in my ear. “Which one of them kills the other first? Want to take a bet?”

  “That’s not funny.” I looked back down at my book.

  “I’m not joking.” He leaned against me. “One of these days one of us is going to kill the other. I’m determined it won’t be me.”

  My stomach clenched, and I set down the book. “You guys can’t do that to each other. You’re all very important. And,” the tears slipping from my eyes surprised me but I did nothing to wipe them away, “I think it would break me if you hurt each other.”

  Warden wiped my tear away. “Don’t ever let us break you. You’re stronger than all of us. I can promise you that I won’t hurt them. I can’t promise they won’t do something. We’re all devoted to you but that doesn’t change how it was between the five of us. I’m not sure anything can. Right now, we’re loyal. This is Alliance stuff. That could change anytime.”

  Great. Now I was going to have to elicit a promise from each of them not to kill each other? Shouldn’t J have been doing this? Wasn’t that what the leader did, keep the group together?

  “Let’s say,” I wiped the wet off my face, “that Trace kills Kade.” It was hard to even say it.

  Warden touched his nose. “I think he’s very seriously contemplated it. That’s hard to tell with Trace because it’s hard to know when he’s telling the truth.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think he lies to me.”

  “Maybe not. He’s perkier when you’re around. But again, hard to tell. Okay, we’re contemplating. Trace kills Kade.”

  I hated this, but I did need to know. I didn’t want to picture a world without Kade in it. His pop culture references, the way he could sit in silence and still feel like he filled the room. I shook my head. “What happens to Trace?”

  “Probably nothing. We don’t do the police, if you haven’t noticed, and even if we did, I’m sure Trace has the cops and the FBI on his payroll. Nothing happens to him.”

  I couldn’t picture Trace in jail. How would he press his clothes? That was actually a really good question. Trace always looked perfectly put together. With all the running around, how did these guys dry clean their stuff so regularly? Or did one of them iron? I didn’t know how to do that.

  I forced my head back to the topic at hand. “What do you do without Kade?”

  Hearing his name, Kade swung around to stare at us. “What?”

  “We’re playing an interesting game of what-if.”

  Kade shook his head. “Do you want another assignment? I’m up to my ears making arrangements here. You could help.”

  Warden held up his hand. “Give me two minutes and I’ll take over the security. I know without Derrick here that is a hole.”

  Kade didn’t respond, his attention already back on his screen. He did have a sexy back of the neck. I shook my head. “Who fills the gap made if he’s dead? Do you just find someone else and temporarily offer them loyalty? Making loyalty temporary negates the point of the loyalty to begin with. Being loyal means you don’t betray, as far as I understand the word.”

  “Loyalty doesn’t have to be blind. It can be tempered by keeping your eyes open. You can give up loyalty if it’s betrayed in some way. Otherwise you’re just a fucking idiot.”

  I supposed he had a point. “The bulk of that question was about the absence of Kade.”

  “We’d bring someone in that can do what he can do.”

  Kade lifted his hand in the air. “No one can do what I do.”

  I grinned. I kind of thought he’d been listening to the whole thing. Behind me, Trace laughed. “Still wouldn’t keep me from killing you and bringing in the second best hacker in the world.”

  “I’m not a hacker. That’s an offensive term.”

  Really? “I hear it all the time.”

  Kade looked over his shoulder and winked at me. “I’m better than a hacker. I’m an artist.”

  Trace leaned forward. “Make no mistake. I’m not killing Kade. I might kill Warden and since he just promised you he wouldn’t kill me, he’s moved to the top of my list.”

  I sighed. “You’re killing me with this, Trace.”

  He kissed my cheek. “Never, beautiful.”

  The plane trembled through the turbulence, and it matched my mood. Life kept jerking me around like the air through this tin can in the sky. “Everyone is replaceable. That’s what you mean, Warden? We’re back to the ant metaphor.”

  Warden put his head on my shoulder. “I would never use the ant to reference anything. I’m sick to death of the ants. You’re not replaceable.” He pressed his nose onto my neck and breathed me in. “I have to go do security.”

  He opened his own computer and started typing. I let him do it and pretended to read again. But my mind couldn’t let this go. If they’d kill each other, and they were all talking about it like this was the most normal thing in the world, then what would happen when I was replaceable. What if I did something that made me less attractive or if I made a wrong move? Was I replaceable then?

  Like loyalty being irreplaceable was something that came with conditions?

  We started to descend, and Judson looked up from what he was doing. “Way too fast.”

  “Agreed.” Kade jumped to his feet and strode toward the cockpit. “Aaron, what’s going on?” He opened the cockpit door. “Shit.”

  My heart was officially in my throat. Shit? I didn’t like that. Not while I was at thirty thousand feet in the air. “What’s going on?”

  Warden tilted his head. “Not sure yet.”

  Trace rose. “Kade?”

  There was a pause. “He’s had a heart attack or something else.”

  I jumped to my feet. Enough of this. I rushed forward. Sure enough, the pilot slumped over his chair. He was dead, but what was even stranger was the foam coming out of his mouth that he’d clearly choked to death on. Was that a heart attack? I didn’t know about these things.

  Trace tugged the man’s head back. “That’s poison. He might have had a heart attack but that’s not all he had.”

  “Did he take it on purpose? Like this is suicide or someone killed him?” Judson asked.

  Kade looked over his shoulder. “We can work that out when we’re not plummeting to the ground. Trace, pull him out of here. I have to fly this plane.”

  My mouth fell open. “Can you fly this?”

  “I can.” Kade nodded. “I hadn’t planned on flying today. But yes, I can. I’ll get us there safely.”

  Trace dragged the body out of the cockpit and Kade took a seat in the pilot’s chair. Was that what it was called? Chair? Or did they have a
nother name for it? I ran my hands over my face. Judson knelt in front of the body.

  “Thoughts?” Trace asked him.

  “Well, Kade called it right. It’s poison. You would know as you’ve administered this in the past. It’s your favorite means of ending a life, right?”

  Trace nodded. “This is what, then? A message to me? Either self-delivered or inflicted on us?”

  I sat. I hadn’t paid any attention to the pilot when we boarded, and yet I’d counted on him to get us from San Diego to Boston without killing us. Now, he was a dead body on the floor in front of me.

  “How could it be anything other than self-inflicted? Unless one of us did it, and I know it wasn’t me.” I stared at the others. “Did one of you?”

  Trace lifted his gaze to mine. “Not one of us would be this stupid. I can assure you, Kade had no interest in flying this plane today, and I have no interest in crashing.”

  “Then this man just… decided to commit suicide by taking poison with all of us on this plane?” I knew I sounded hysterical but dying in a fire filled mess of a crash that destroyed our bodies beyond recognition was not on my agenda ever.

  Judson sighed. “Not necessary. Some of it is slow acting. Put the poison in his coffee. Three hours later here we are.”

  “That would have required someone to know we were leaving. We’d only decided to do so the second I got shot at.”

  Warden still hadn’t gotten out of his chair. If he was freaked out, I couldn’t tell. “She makes a good point. This has Ben all over it. Stop and think about it. The Bissets coming out of nowhere to go after Everly. Now, the pilot suddenly dying. Ben knew we’d take off. If they killed Everly or they didn’t. We take off. What a perfect plan that we walked into like a bunch of amateurs. He didn’t know that Kade could fly. I didn’t know he could. When did you learn to do that?”

  Kade made a non-committal noise. Trace pointed at him. “None of us knew, and he’s clearly not going to enlighten us. We’re supposed to be dead.”

  Judson put his hand on the shoulder of the dead man. I didn’t even know his name. “We need a plan. A better plan than Ben’s. We’re not going to win this playing by rules. We need to outthink Ben. Like we did when he wanted to send the five of us to Atlanta for that year to make him a ton of money for his empire and that was the last thing we wanted. It would have kept me out of medical school, and even Josh wanted me to get through that.”

  “We convinced him it was his idea that we shouldn’t do that work,” Warden added. “That’s what you want to do? Tomorrow? Fool him? I’m not sure even Trace can pull that off with less than a day to go.”

  Trace grinned. “Oh ye of little faith.” He shook his head. “We’d have to work on it. Took us a month to do the last one with Ben. If we want to do this all together, it takes planning. I could work him alone, but I have no way to get him near me. I doubt he’s showing up tomorrow.”

  “You can get him.” I was sure of that much.

  Judson touched the back of my neck, a warm presence in this almost nightmare. “How do you know that?”

  “Because you’re going to use me as bait.”

  If I’d expected them to argue, they didn’t. Instead, Trace lifted his gaze to meet mine, Judson squeezed me lightly, and Warden joined us on the ground. It was Trace who answered me.

  “Tell me more.”

  I scrunched up my knees to my chest. My feet tingled. It was almost like I had too much energy for my body in that moment. “Ben wants me because he’s told me things that he didn’t expect me to be able to live to repeat.”

  “Right.” Judson nodded.

  “Trace, you can get to him. Send a message to someone who can reach him. Surely, you can do that. You’re sick to death of me. The three of you are. Maybe four. Leave Derrick out of it.” I could see this plan as it laid out in front of me. “He’s not going to be believable in not caring about me. Too many people have probably seen the video from the surgery center.”

  If the guys had copies of it, I had to believe others might have it, too.

  “Besides, he’s hunting killers. He won’t be there.” I chewed on my lip. “I’m wrecked from all my ordeals. A puddle on the floor. You’re sick to death of me. You want to give me back.”

  Warden lifted his chin. “Why would we want to discuss this with Ben?”

  “You’re willing to give me back to him in exchange for something you want.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “His seat. You’ll give me back in exchange for his seat. So Warden can have it.”

  Judson let go of me. “This is risky. We’d have to bring you to him. I don’t know if you can handle that.”

  That was a fair statement. Could I? Could I even be in the room with him? The building? I knew that eventually I’d have to be near him to kill him. And I still planned on doing that.

  “I can. If at the end of it, I kill him. But, Trace, you’re going to have to sell it. Tonight. To get him there tomorrow. Do you think you can do that?”

  He lifted his eyebrows slowly. “Can you?”

  “I just said I could.” Had he not been listening?

  “To kill Ben, yes. And watching you take out those assassins, I’m sure you can do it. Could you go along with a show that I put on, making it clear I wanted to be rid of you? Tonight. Could you do that?”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that. “What would I have to do?”

  “You’d have to watch me hate you.”

  I swallowed, hard. “I could do it, Trace. It might devastate me, but I could do it. To get Ben, I’d do it.”

  “Then we can make this happen. For being thrown together, I think we could make this happen.”

  I hoped I didn’t live to regret this.

  Trace stepped away from the body and walked over to his phone. He dialed a number, his eyes on me the whole time. “Hey, it’s Trace. How are things?”

  He rolled his eyes at whatever was said on the other end of the phone, but when he spoke, it was with interest in his voice. “Really? Another baby? Good for you guys. Is Phoebe doing okay?”

  Judson kissed my cheek. “Trace does not like children.”

  “Do you?” I couldn’t see any of them with a child when it came down to it.

  “At some point I have to continue the lineage. I’m going to need to have a child to do that. Even Trace over there.”

  I nodded. “I see.”

  I shouldn’t have been thinking about this right now, but it was impossible not to focus on it. They were all going to have to have children. Didn’t that mean they needed wives? I couldn’t be each of their wives. Where would that leave this? And was there even a future for me in their lives past Ben? We would kill Ben. If Derrick took care of the assassins, were we just done?

  Would I have to pick one of them? I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this, continue with the line thing. Maybe it would be better to simply let it die off.

  “Here’s the thing,” Trace spoke into the phone. “I need to get rid of Everly Marrs. I know it doesn’t make sense. We did a ton to get her back but, fuck, is this woman broken. Every other second she’s going through some sort of emotional crisis. Falling apart. We thought we were getting back our hot piece of ass and instead we have the weeping fucking willow.”

  Goosebumps broke out on my body. Trace turned his back on me. “Uh-huh. Well, Ben made her this way, so he can have her back. Yes, I just said that.” He paused. “No, the others are on board with this, too. I don’t know where Derrick is anyway. He’s disappeared. Maybe he also had enough.” He laughed. “I think Judson would lock her back in the basement himself and throw away the key.”

  Judson tapped his knee to mine. “Not true. And he’s lying, too. You know that, right?”

  I did. And yet it was impossible to not be impressed with how good at this, how natural a liar, Trace proved to be. He’d slipped right into this. Was it all fake or did he actually feel this way?

  Trace who had told me he didn’t want me to love the others more. Was that still
the case? I chewed on my fingernail. I really hoped this worked for how much it was going to suck.

  Chapter 17

  I’d never been so glad to land in my life. I didn’t know what they did with the body. I thought we’d all be going to Judson’s apartment, but instead, the rest of us checked into a hotel in the center of town. How they’d managed to procure this hotel was one of those things I didn’t understand. The lobby was huge, low lit, with rectangles all over the floor. It was fancy and expensive.

  Warden nodded at me. “You’ll be with me.”

  “Oh for the love of all things holy, will you shut the fuck up?” Trace rounded on me and Warden stepped away.

  It took me a minute to realize what was happening. I lowered my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “Fuck me.” He stormed away, getting in the elevator. How did he even know what room was his? We hadn’t checked in.

  Warden rolled his eyes. “She’s mine tonight? Thanks a lot.”

  Kade stared between the two of us and shrugged before he walked away. Warden dragged me to the elevators. All eyes in the lobby were on me.

  I had to sell this. “Please, Warden. I can’t handle this.”

  The elevator opened and Warden dragged me inside, mostly because I dug my heels so he could do so.

  When the doors closed, I looked at Warden. “How was…”

  He shook his head, sharply. “Nope. You’re not going to talk to me after how you carried on in the plane. Keep your mouth shut, woman. I can’t take it anymore.”

  I closed my lips. I guessed we weren’t safe even in the elevator. I covered my face with my hands. It wasn’t hard to act overwhelmed. I really was. It was one thing to talk about this in theory, it was quite another to now be the girl they all wanted rid of.

  I shivered. It was cold in the elevator. Either that or I’d slid back into the basement. We got to the top floor and Warden stormed out into a suite. I looked around. Wow. This place was huge. It took up the whole floor. There was nothing but our room on the floor.