by Casey Diam
When I got to the condo, there were no signs of her and Calvin.
I hadn’t seen her since she went down to the pool with Lisa last night. On my way to my room, I started to strip out of my work clothes so I could get a workout in before I headed out to the bar.
Two hours later, I returned to find Paige on the couch. She had a towel around her shoulders to catch droplets of water from her wet hair as she read a book.
She looked up. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I bit my bottom lip as the air grew strained between us. “How was your day?”
“Good. How about you?”
I brought my head up in a halfhearted nod. “Good.”
“I talked to Bailey today.”
I thought we’d agreed to wait. I didn’t want her getting further involved in anything that had to do with Alex Connor.
“About what?” I asked, walking to the kitchen to grab a cold bottle of water from the fridge. I could feel the sweat I’d carried from the gym still running down my body.
“Any relatives that I might have. I want to find them. If I was kidnapped from my real parents, I might still have family out there, and I’d like to get to know them.”
Shit. Doesn’t she know by now that Connor leaves no stones unturned?
“What did she say?”
“She’d let me know.”
I gave her a half-nod again before I went to my room. After my shower, I picked up my guitar and headed to my balcony where I played my heart out for the next hour, connecting with my guitar and my love for music. This should have been my life. Music. Singing. It was what I loved, everything I wanted. Instead, the only thing I would be looking at by the time this was all over was serious jail time for all I’d let happen, and for all the things Alex Connor would make me take the fall for, but it didn’t matter. I would still be free. Free of Alex Connor. Free of Brad.
When I opened my room door, the smell of steak attacked my senses and left me drooling.
“So, you learned how to cook?” I asked, walking into the kitchen and peering into the pots on the stove. One had vegetables steaming, and the other had a chunk of steak.
Calvin was brushing the steak so delicately with a shrub of herbs, I wanted to laugh at the sight. But the way it smelled, I knew it was going to taste good.
“That was one time, dude, and I only burned it because of Lisa. Anyway, now that you’re here, what do you think? Should I tell Paige about Amber? She’s been asking me about her since I was apparently a jerk to her again last night at the pool.”
I looked over at the couch to find Paige still seated in the same spot, staring at us.
His question threw me off, and I shrugged, not knowing why he was asking me. “What does that have to do with me?”
Calvin still had no idea what had really gone down that night, and I would rather keep it that way.
“See, no excuses,” Paige said. “Just tell me. Seriously, how bad could it be?”
Calvin turned around, walked to the sink, and deposited a spoon inside. Then he stared at Paige across the room. “It happened years ago. I had a thing for her, and—”
“It was more than a thing. He was in love with Amber,” I informed Paige, grabbing a much-needed beer from the fridge.
“Yeah, whatever. Anyway, she knew how I felt about her, so I thought it was why she’d slept with me at a party one night. Come to find out, I wasn’t the only one she’d slept with that night. I knew this because it was the only fucking thing Ryan could talk about the next day.”
“You mean, Ryan—”
“Yep, our friend Ryan, who also ended up dating her for a while, and I don’t mean now since they’re apparently fucking again.”
“Ouch,” Paige remarked. “Wait, so why aren’t you upset with Ryan, too?”
“It was his first time visiting. He didn’t know I had feelings for her.”
I took a seat on one of the stools at the breakfast bar and spun around to face Paige. “No one else knew Calvin liked her like that. I only knew because he was so pissed off he told me about it.”
“Yeah, well, that’s done, and your little input is only pissing me off, bro.” Calvin scowled, turning to the stove to attend to the steak.
What he didn’t know was that Amber had given me a blow job in the bathroom that same night. It hadn’t been the first time. She called those moments her party favors, but it wasn’t something I talked about, so Calvin had no idea it had been going on at the time. What was even worse was that I had only been taking advantage of those party favors. Amber wanted a relationship with me, but I never liked her that way. So, after that blow job, I’d been a complete dick to her, and not long after, I’d seen her leaving a room with Calvin, which I didn’t give two shits about. My buddy had gotten laid. I’d gotten my dick sucked. Life was good. Until I’d found out how he felt about her. I guessed that was the same reason he never told Ryan he’d slept with Amber that night. Ryan liked her, too.
“So, you hate her now. Got it. Do I have to hate her, too?” Paige asked.
I grinned. “No, you don’t. In fact, Calvin is the only one who hates her.” I had a feeling it was the wrong thing to say because she went quiet for a moment.
“So, you like her?” she asked.
I bit my lip and watched her, needing to figure out where she was going with this, but she looked back to the pages in her book.
“I don’t have a problem with her, and she’s been a good friend to Lisa and the others. I’m not saying she didn’t do something stupid, but maybe she had her reasons.”
“Caleb,” Calvin said.
I closed my eyes. Fuck. The one thing I didn’t want to do was lie to Calvin. So, I prayed he wasn’t decrypting my words.
“Can you get some plates ready? I’m fucking tired of hearing about that girl.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, but when I lifted my head and got off the stool, Paige was watching me. With a slight shake of her head, she closed her book and looked away.
See? She doesn’t know this guy.
I didn’t need a blood test to tell me I had come from a bloodline of Connors. It was all over me—how I thought, how I felt, how I found opportunities in the weak and used them to my advantage. Like persuading Stacy Lenard to do an after-hour blood test on my brother or persuading Paige to live with me because, let’s face it, what other choice did she have? The last thing I needed to do was persuade Bailey to drop this shit with Paige. I was her guy.
All I needed were those blood test results.
Chapter Nine
Paige
Lining up my front sights to my rear sights, I steadied my grip on my subcompact 9mm. As I inhaled a breath, my diaphragm rose before slowly falling with my exhale, and then I fired. A shell popped out to the side, and I paused, letting the gun smoke rise through my nostrils, infiltrating my thoughts. Center mass was getting boring. I lifted my sights higher until it was centered on the target’s head. I fired. I fired again and again and again. And then I breathed.
Better.
Setting the weapon on the stand, I flipped the switch and watched my paper target return exactly how I’d wanted it.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Calvin. He’d been shooting in the lane next to me, but in my mind, I’d been somewhere else entirely. I’d been on the hunt, searching and finding the center of my fucked-up mentality. I shifted my earmuffs down around my neck.
“I knew you carried, but holy shit! How long have you been shooting?”
“Long enough.” I smiled and looked over at his target. “You aren’t too bad yourself.”
He shook his head, and appreciation seeped inside me at his look of admiration.
“Let’s do the outdoor range next time. The guys and I go there. You’d like it.”
A wide smile passed my lips as I refilled my magazine. “Awesome. I can’t wait.” I turned back to my target and started to put my earmuffs back in place but stopped and twisted to face Calvin. “I’m going to need your hel
p with something, but you can’t say anything to Caleb.”
He tilted his head. “I’m intrigued.”
I had known he would be.
We’d been living in the condo for a week, and between working out, the bar, and therapy sessions, we’d been bored out of our minds. Not only that, I’d been dying to go back to my job at the gym even knowing I shouldn’t. I missed being a trainer, and I missed sparring at night with the fighters; it was what had settled me before. Without it, all I could focus on was Alex Connor. He was out there, still walking the streets, training men to do evil things to people, while probably kicking back and laughing at how easily he was getting away with it. My parents were in a grave. My sisters, Reese and Alaina, were in graves. All because of him.
“I need to know where Alex Connor lives,” I said.
Calvin’s lips parted to say something, but he didn’t.
Even though I was pretty sure he knew this, I added, “I’ll find him with or without your help.”
With a frown still set on his face, he nodded, and I went back to shooting, not stopping until all seven of my rounds appeared as one on the paper. But I wasn’t satisfied. And even more unsatisfying was Caleb’s blood test results. Alex Connor was his father. It wouldn’t have been a bad thing, but he’d gone even quieter since then. He’d been avoiding me, which showed me his uncertainty. He’d been consistent before.
He wasn’t the Caleb I knew anymore.
He was Alex Connor’s son, and he was Brad’s brother—not by paper, but by blood. It wasn’t that I didn’t think he cared for me, but he had a real family, and he was in this with them. So, it bothered me, not knowing how far he would go to make sure everyone got what they deserved.
It was simple. I wouldn’t be satisfied until I could stop looking over my shoulder, stop wondering if they would find me again, stop wondering if they knew where I was, stop wondering if they were waiting in the elevator for me each time I returned. I would never get better until Alex Connor and his men were out of the picture for good.
I sighed, looking at the empty boxes that had contained three hundred rounds an hour ago. I looked over at Calvin. “Too much gun smoke. I’m starting to feel like I might be a danger to society.”
He laughed. “Judging from those targets, you are, girl.”
I smiled, wondering how Amber had passed up on Calvin. He was funny, charming, attractive, sincere, and fuzzy...well, that was, as long as Amber wasn’t around. Though, remembering the look on Caleb’s face, I shouldn’t have to wonder why. All it took was one glance to know that he had slept with Amber. That could be a part of the reason why my growing friendship with Lisa was so much easier. Thinking about her warm personality and the silly text messages she’d sent me throughout the day was quieting a deeper longing inside of me. A longing that’d been there since I lost Reese and Alaina.
I gave the man standing at the counter a polite smile as we walked out of the gun range building in town and toward Calvin’s old white Camry parked on the street.
“So, what do you know about Red?” Calvin asked.
“Red?”
“The redhead. Sergeant Bailey?”
“Oh, not much. Why?”
“Just wondering. Anyway, I know exactly where Connor lives. If he still lives there. It’s about a mile from the house I grew up in.”
“Really?”
“Unfortunately, yeah,” he said with a hint of remorse. Pulling on the car door handle, he looked over the roof at me. “I can drive by it, but we can’t go anywhere near that house, Paige. Caleb would fucking lose it. Promise me you won’t.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t making any promises.
It took an hour’s drive for Calvin to reach inside of a suburban neighborhood north of the city. I had been paying attention to everything on our journey here while he talked about his little sister in high school and some boy he was worried about messing with her. He probably thought I was texting, but I was on the map, making a note of the location. I would be back, just probably not with him.
The car slowed.
“Look to your right. It’s that first house on the corner.”
The five-story brick building I looked at had a custom-made garage built into the first floor of the building. None of the other nearby buildings had a garage, not that it stood out on this one since it even had a concrete driveway.
“House? That looks like an apartment building.”
The windows on the entire building were dark, haunted. A sudden chill traveled through my bones as we went by. Like my sisters were here with me, encouraging me. Telling me it might be up to me to let them have peace.
“Trust me, it’s a house,” Calvin reaffirmed.
But I was already getting lost in my own thoughts with Alaina’s or Reese’s scream from that night ringing in my ears.
It’d saved me from going back to the rooms. My sisters were the reason I was alive. And, if I was here and I knew the person responsible for doing that to them, to my whole family, why wouldn’t I do something about it? The cops, the FBI, or whoever was on the case didn’t care enough to put these people away for good. It was in my hands, and I wouldn’t stop until Alex Connor suffered. He needed to feel the pain I’d felt, cry the tears I’d cried, feel the way I’d suffered for five years without anyone to turn to because I hadn’t been able to trust myself to be normal. I hadn’t been able to trust...anyone. Until Caleb.
I turned my head and kept staring at the house now behind us.
“Go back around,” I told Calvin. “I need to see it again.”
❧
I hadn’t felt this productive in a while.
I knew where Alex Connor lived. I’d burned out some aggression at the range, though not enough that I didn’t still want my predator dead.
My predator.
For years, he’d sought out my family and me.
A plan formed as I thought of the perfect way to start Alex Connor’s suffering.
Letters from his victims.
With his address, I could mail a letter to him from each of my family members who he had killed and then a final letter from me. It was going to hurt me to write those letters, but it could be freeing as well. Like the last farewell, only to Alex Connor, and he was going to be so pissed, but it was the perfect beginning to the end for him.
He needed to know that I was no longer the prey. Though that was for another day, because I was about to start my first shift at the underground bar in Quincy. It was close to where we lived, and all it had taken was a little convincing for the manager to take me on as a temporary until the fall semester began in four weeks. He’d even allowed me to start right away.
I still worked some nights at Stilts Bar in downtown Boston, but since I wasn’t working at the gym, I wasn’t making enough to live on. And I hated depending on Caleb to take care of me. It was wrong in so many ways.
Kari was my friendly go-to person and trainer for the day. The few times I’d seen her working in the bar, I’d been a wee bit intimidated. Probably due to the tattoos all over her body. Skulls, blood, guns, and I could see the head of a snake baring its fangs on her neck. Even with the silver piercings above her eyebrows, a nose ring, a lip ring, and a small gauge in each earlobe, she made it work. Not just anyone could pull that look off.
I’d seen her perform once before on the small stage in the back, and she was incredible. I was starting to think this was why Caleb loved this place. It was filled with people who were as talented as he was. Although, in my opinion, Caleb was the best. I must not have been the only one who thought so because as soon as he was on the stage, it was like a spell had been put on the entire bar, and the whole room went quiet.
Something in his voice when he sang reached so far, so deep, it clung to whoever was listening. Most times, I couldn’t shake the feeling for days. The feeling that behind the sexy, sad, raspy voice he sang alternative covers with, there was a boy who was just broken. That might be true, but he fought not to show it. But I knew;
I’d seen it in his eyes, heard it in his words, and felt it in the way he’d kissed me before like nothing else mattered.
It was stupid that I still found my eyes blurring with tears, no matter how many times I’d heard him perform.
Though it hurt more than the first time because I knew he sounded like his uncle, David Sawyer. A natural talent from his mom’s side of the family. A family he never knew yet still shared something so special with.
“You’re crying again,” Lisa said.
“What?” I asked, using the back of my hand to wipe my eye. She stood and pulled me into a hug.
“I’m not crying. I just...”
“It’s fine, but you know”—she placed her hands on my shoulders and looked me square in the eyes—“even though Amber still has the biggest freaking crush on Caleb, I’m rooting for you and him. I’m such a shitty friend for saying it. But he likes you, not her. I’ve tried to pull her away from him over the years, but she’s still stuck on him for some weird reason.”
Instead of telling her how I kind of felt that way about Caleb myself without having known him for that long, I smiled. Then I wondered where Amber was. In fact, the more time I’d been spending with Lisa, the less I’d seen of Amber.
“Oh shiznit! Can I have another drink? I know I’ve had enough, but Kari is kind of staring, and I don’t want to get you fired on your first day. So, take my order.”
I laughed. “Okay.”
As I was walking back to the bar, Miller came out of nowhere and blocked my path. “Are you going to try to pretend you didn’t see me this time?”
I’d been making U-turns all night. A failed attempt at avoiding him, I realized. He was everywhere.
“No, and unfortunately, I can’t unsee you because you’re right here, literally standing in front of me, and I need to work. You’re preventing that from happening.”
He laughed. “I’m only inviting you out this weekend, that’s all.”
