Killer

by Jessica Gadziala

  "Miss. Alvarado, I am Detective Collings. I know you're not feeling so great right about now, but I have a few quick questions about your... mugging earlier today." He said 'mugging' like he knew it was a lie, but nothing about his presence seemed the least bit threatening. Besides, the pain medicine was making me feel nicely numb inside and I didn't really care if he was going to be a jerk.

  "Okay, shoot," I said and a strange smile pulled at his lips.

  "Shoot, huh?" he asked, pressing his lips together as he reached for a pad and pen. The way he said "Shoot" made it sound like he knew exactly what went down that afternoon. I felt myself stiffen, my defenses slipping into place. "So, Miss. Alvarado, can you tell me exactly what happened this afternoon?"

  "I was walking down the street," I started, realizing what I was doing; I was lying to the cops. I didn't do that. I had never been in the position where that was necessary before. But instead of the sinking, swirling sensation I expected to feel, I felt nothing. I was empty. "I'm not familiar with your areas around here, Detective. I had no idea that it wasn't a safe place to be..."

  "Down by Madison?" Collings asked, looking up at me from under his lashes.

  "I guess. I wasn't really paying much attention to the street signs," I lied, remembering how I had been trying to memorize them. "Then, someone was behind me and I ran down this street." That, at least, was true. "But it wasn't a street; it was an alley and there was no way out. I got slammed up against the wall," I said, gesturing toward my head. "Then one of the men choked me." Again, not a lie.

  "And your arms, Miss. Alvarado?" he asked, his keen eyes landing on the gauze wrapping them.

  "The, um, the wall was brick. The... mortar scratched me."

  Collings let out an exhale that sounded a bit like defeat as he scribbled away. "Did you know a man was shot in a building right around the area you were mugged today, Miss. Alvarado?"

  "Wow. How unfortunate, Collings," a female voice that was vaguely familiar said, making a wry smile tug at Collings' lips. I looked over to see the woman from earlier; the one who had got me free and hugged me, whispering things in my ear to try to calm me down. She was gorgeous in her badass kind of way: tall and all hips, legs, boobs, and ass in a pair of army green shorts and a tan tank top. Her long blond hair was tucked slightly behind her ears, her brown eyes on me, giving me a small wink, before looking back at Collings.

  "Lo," he said, shaking his head at her. "You know Miss. Alvarado here?"

  "Oh, me and Amy... we're old pals," she said, moving to stand next to where I was sitting off the side of the bed, and putting an arm around her shoulders.

  "Old pals," he nodded, putting his pad away. "So I guess we are done here, then?"

  Why was he asking her? Wasn't he supposed to be the one in charge or whatever?

  "I think Amelia has been through enough today with those... muggers and all," she said, smiling flatout at the lie that, apparently, they both knew was a lie.

  "I can imagine," he nodded at her.

  "If you have more questions for her, she will be at Hailstorm recouping."

  At this, Collings actually chuckled. "Of course she will. Well," he said, looking over at me again, "you feel better, Miss. Alvarado. I'm sorry about your ordeal," he said, nodding at Lo, then disappearing.

  When the door clicked closed, I couldn't help it. "What the heck was that?" I asked, not even trying to hide my confusion.

  "Collings has been around for a while. He knows how things work around here. He's not crying over some big time H dealer with a hole in his head or his missing minions."

  "Missing?" I asked, jerking slightly as she pulled away. I guess I had figured they would have killed them all.

  "Oh yeah," Lo said, giving me a smile. "Crazy thing. Just up and disappeared like that," she said, snapping her fingers but the wicked smile she had suggested she knew exactly where they were. I had the sneaking suspicion that one or more of them might actually be at this Hailstorm place everyone kept talking about. "So did you get the all-clear?" she asked, meaning to leave.

  "Yeah. I got a prescription and some paperwork on how to deal with a concussion."

  Lo waved a hand. "We have a medical team at Hailstorm. We'll keep an eye on you. No worries."

  "Um, not to sound, um, ungrateful or anything, but why do you think I am going to Hailstorm?"

  "Honey..." she said, giving me a sad smile that said it all. She knew. She knew Johnnie was done with me. She knew I had nowhere to go. She knew I couldn't exactly drive back to Alabama with a concussion and hopped up on pain pills.

  "Right," I said tightly, pushing off the bed and reaching for the paperwork I had mentioned. "Well, I mean... I can stay at a hotel until I'm better. It's nice of you to offer to put me up, but I don't think..."

  "Amelia," she said, her voice a little firm. "I know you really just want to be alone right now. You got knocked around and had the life scared out of you and the guy you have feelings for just trampled all over you. You're dealing with all that, but please, can I say from experience, the absolute worst way to do that is to do it alone. Besides," she went on, "we aren't exactly sure things are all that safe for you yet. Word will get around about Luis' and his men. We need to make sure that whatever blows, blows over your head. Then we can let you get back to your life. We won't stand in the way of that, I promise. If you want to go back to Alabama and..."

  "I am going back to Alabama," I said firmly, lifting my chin a little. "There's nothing for me here. I guess there never really was." I brushed past her, not particularly caring that my tone held a lot more bitter than was smart to express. But, well, she was right. I was going through some stuff. And I, apparently, wasn't allowed to do that alone. I wasn't exactly in the mood to put on a happy face.

  Sensing this, Lo fell into step beside me, leading me outside and toward a black van that I climbed into without complaint, seeing my bag from Johnnie's place on the floor of the passenger seat and having to blink really hard to fight back the tears.

  "Ready?" she asked, turning the van over.

  "Yep," I agreed without thinking.

  But, well, apparently there was no way to really be ready for Hailstorm. Because Hailstorm was like a community all to itself, like a really paranoid, really well guarded survivalist camp. All the buildings were made out of huge shipping containers, a seemingly endless network of them powered by fields of solar panels and wrapped up in a barbed wire fence with what appeared to be guard dogs patrolling the grounds. There was a man at the security booth in front of the gates and some men and women walking around the grounds or even on top of the storage containers.

  Lo waved at the guard in the booth who hit a button and the gate slid open. We drove through, Lo parking off toward the side and hopping off, banging her hand on the hood as she did which I took to mean: come on. I grabbed my bag and climbed out.

  "Leo," she called to one of the men, reaching over and ripping the prescription out of my hands. "Need this filled," she told him and he nodded and moved away. "Alright, let's go get you settled in," she said, giving me a small smile and leading me into the storage container to the front. I found in oh, say about two minutes, that the inside of Hailstorm was a giant maze full of dead-ends and half-empty rooms. We passed through an area with a normal, homey looking kitchen and living room, then through a barracks-style sleeping area, then finally into a room with a door with a glass cut-out. She opened it and let me step inside. "This is the sick room," she told me, gesturing toward the simple white-linen beds lined up. "The rest of us sleep in the barracks when we're here, but I figured you'd want more privacy than that. You'll have this room all to yourself. There's a bathroom back there with a shower. No one will come in here except Mike who might want to get a look at your stitches and make sure you're not getting sick or anything from the concussion and me to bring you food and stuff, though you're welcome to come out and eat with everyone else."

  I moved numbly over toward one of th
e beds, dropping my bag down beside it and sitting down, palms on my thighs.

  "You alright?" Lo asked, leaning against the wall by the door, arms crossing over her chest.

  "No," I said honestly.

  Lo simply nodded. "You will be," she said, turning and leaving me alone.

  She wasn't wrong about me dealing with stuff. Too much had happened too quickly. Ben died. I met Johnnie and learned things I never wanted to know about how Ben treated him. I found illegal drugs in my wall and fled everything comfortable and familiar to me to fall into Johnnie's lap, laying my baggage at his feet for him to pick up. And he did. He did that effortlessly. He did it like it was nothing. Then, I let him in. I let him in in every possible way and he was under my skin. Even then, I could feel him there. Then I got myself kidnapped. Kidnapped! By some crazy drug dealer who couldn't let his obsession with his dead-ex go. I got beat and tied to a wall. I got choked. I watched a man's head explode right in front of me. I got taken to a hospital, got poked and prodded, got questioned by the police, then got taken... somewhat against my will, to some kind of illegal military camp thing.

  On top of all that, I had my heart crushed. There was no denying it; that was what happened when Johnnie walked away from me. He took the heart I had unwittingly handed to him and he gave it back to me, even more bloodied and bruised than how it was when I handed it over in the first place.

  That, well, that was just a freaking lot to deal with.

  And everything hurt. Physically and emotionally, everything felt sore and exposed.

  I sighed, looking down at my clothes with their blood stains. Some of it I knew wasn't mine. Some of it belonged in Luis' skull, but it wasn't in his skull because his skull was busted open. I should have been horrified by that. I should have been disgusted and freaked. But I felt none of that. All I felt was a strange sort of calm. My problems were over. Just like that. One squeeze of a trigger and I was safe again. Johnnie gave me that.

  On a pained groan, I grabbed clothes out of my bag and made my way toward the bathroom Lo had pointed out. I turned on the shower and stripped out of my clothes, unraveling the bandages on my arms. The cuts there weren't that bad and even if they were, I didn't care. I wanted a shower. I wanted to wash that entire day away. So that was exactly what I did. I did this crying. No, not just crying. Big, ugly, snot crying. But I was alone, as promised, and I needed to get it out. Once I did, all evidence was washed down the drain. I got out and got into my jean shorts and a plain white tee and made my way back to my bed where I found a bottle of my pain medicine on the table beside it. I reached for it, shaking one into my palm despite having another four hours until I was due for another dose, throwing it back, and climbing into the bed. It would force me to sleep. If I slept, I would feel better.

  Or, at least, that was what I was hoping.

  --

  I woke up a long time later, so long later that the clawing hunger in my stomach was what eventually broke through the drug-induced numbness of sleep and woke me up. My eyes fluttered open to look at the artificial bar lights on the ceiling. Hailstorm, apparently, had no windows. I imagined that was some kind of safety measure, but it made it impossible to know what time it actually was. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes before I realized I wasn't alone. Don't ask me how I knew, but I knew. It was in the feeling of eyes on me that I swore made the hairs on my arms stand on end. My eyes flew from the ceiling to find four sets of eyes on me.

  One set belonged to Lo, her brown eyes giving nothing away. Another set belonged to a younger woman with dark hair and tattoos, her light blue eyes somehow feeling like they were piercing through me. There was another set of familiar brown eyes on a woman with delicate, perfect doll-like features, the woman from Ben's apartment in Alabama. The last set belonged to a redhead with freckles who seemed softer, more open than the others.

  "What the heck..." I started, shooting up in bed, ignoring the stabbing in my temple at the sudden movement.

  "It's alright," Lo said, holding up a hand. "This is Janie," she said, gesturing to the skinny girl with tattoos. "She's Wolf's woman. And that is Alex, who is..."

  "Breaker's woman," I said, remembering him talking about her. "You and Janie are hackers."

  "Yeah. And I didn't fuck Shooter," Alex told me bluntly. "I know he told you, but I wanted to tell you too. Just so we are all clear."

  I felt myself nod.

  "And I'm Summer," the redhead said, giving me a smile. "I'm..."

  "Cash's brother, Reign's, woman. You didn't know it, but you grew up in a criminal empire," I recalled.

  She gave Lo a look then laughed at me. "Yeah, that'd be me. I see Shooter's been talking."

  "I think he was trying to make me think I could fit in with all of you," I said with a shrug. "Not that it matters anymore."

  "Well, see," Lo said, smiling a little, "that's why we are here."

  "But not before we made a visit to Shoot," Janie said, giving me a smirk. "Just to check."

  "Check what?"

  "Well, see. Yesterday, Lo wouldn't let Shoot be involved with your rescue mission thing," she said, drawing my full attention. "She said he was too hot. He wouldn't have his head on straight. She wasn't wrong and she had some of our guys hold him back."

  "I don't understand. He was the one who..."

  "Made Luis' head explode like a Pinata at a birthday party?" Janie asked with a laugh. "Yeah, that was him. I kinda... helped him get free. See, I knew he was too hot to go in, but there's nothing that can shake his calm when he's got a scope and a trigger. I figured you would be safer with him on that roof, just in case."

  "Disobeying a direct order," Lo said at her, attempting a firm tone, but her lips were twitching. They had a strange mother/daughter or older sister/ younger sister dynamic.

  "Yeah, well, it was a dumb order and you fucking know it," Janie said, shrugging a dainty shoulder. "Anyway, I was pretty sure right then what he was feeling but then him being a dickhead and dumping you at the hospital before you even got patched up? Yeah, that was not cool. So we needed to investigate."

  "Investigate what?"

  "We wanted to see if he was just being an asshole," Alex cut in, "which is not like him," she said in a way that I knew she knew him well. "He might be a lot of things, but he's a good guy and he has never been that big of a fuckhead toward a woman. Actually, he's been nothing but amazing to the women around him, even the ones who key his car or whatever when they realize he's not the settling down type. So this wasn't like him."

  "What they're trying to say," Summer broke in, smiling a little, "in their very roundabout way is... we wanted to see why he left you like that. So we went over to his apartment."

  "And?" I asked, despite knowing I should just tell them to leave it be. It was over. He told me himself.

  "And he was a wreck," Lo said with an inappropriate, huge smile.

  "A wreck?"

  "Yeah, it was fantastic," she added.

  Janie rolled her eyes. "Lo is a hopeless romantic. She gets her jollies off on this kind of thing. Anyway, he was there with Breaker and the rest of our men... staring at the wall all doom and gloom. And, well, you know Shooter. He's not a doom and gloom guy. So we kinda had our answer."

  "What answer? Actually, what was even the question?"

  "The question was 'why did he dump you'," Alex answered.

  "And the answer is because he loves you," Lo said and the words felt like a hit to my solar plexus.

  No.

  Absolutely freaking not.

  I wasn't going to let myself believe that, no matter how much I wanted to.

  I shook my head at them and watched, with a small tug of amusement as all four of their heads started nodding at me at once. "Look, I know you guys are trying to help, but trust me, he doesn't love me."

  "He loves you enough to let you go, Amelia," Summer said in that sing-song voice of hers. "We all have men who love us. And, I know you don't know them that well, b
ut trust me, it's with a sort of fierceness that is borderline brutal. But not one of them was willing to let us go. No matter how dangerous their lifestyle and, trust me, what Breaker and Wolf and Reign have gotten into makes what Shooter's done look like child's play. His life is relatively safe compared to the rest of them because he's so detached from his jobs, doing them from such a distance. But even so, he didn't want to drag you into it. He thinks that highly of you that he wants better for you."

  "Look," Lo said, her voice serious. "I've known a lot of men. I work with them. I employ them. I've chosen bad ones. And I have a good one. Let me tell you, I met Shooter and within minutes, minutes Amy, I knew that he had the potential to love someone like nothing I've ever seen before. He has a huge heart and he's given little pieces of it to us and our men, but there's so much left. I've never seen him so much as offer a chip of it to the women he has dated, but honey, let me tell you... the way he looked last night... he gave what was left to you. Him letting you go, that was his way of showing you how much he loves you. It was a stupid-man thing to do, but he felt it was right. Don't do a stupid-woman thing and let him slip away because of your pride."

  "This is nice and all of you guys," I said, the urge to get up and pace making me feel antsy. It was sweet and all that they came by to try to pep-talk me, but really, they had no idea what they were talking about. "But you don't know much about what has gone on with us. I've only known him like... I don't know... a week or something. You don't fall for someone in a week."

  "Really?" Summer asked, a weird smile on her face. "I was under the impression that love happens when it happens. I'm pretty sure there are no rules for when it has to happen, how long you need to spend with someone before you can claim you love someone."