“Tell me,” Charlie orders.
“We need a gun. Jacobs sent Marco.”
Chapter 20
They buy a black 1911, one that Charlie picks for practicality and force. The pawn shop owner watches them warily when she starts rattling off facts about stopping power and the bullet caliber, scoffing when he tried to steer them toward a shitty, little, pink thing.
She feels better, vaguely, having it. She isn’t sure if EJ is right—if Jacobs’ pet assassin is in Memphis—but either way, the added protection is comforting. EJ is pacing the window, watching the street and she’s beginning to wonder where the hell Pax is when he finally returns.
He looks startled to see the girls there, waiting impatiently, and his gaze flicks between them, and then to the bags by the table. His eyes go wide and he shakes his head. “Don’t do this.”
“Pax, I—“
“No. Don’t. For fuck’s sake, Charlie, I just got you back,” he snaps, throwing his briefcase down and stalking into the room. EJ snorts softly from where she’s standing by the window, and Charlie sees the fury in his gaze, so briefly, before he shuts it down and focuses on her. “Why?”
“Because—“” she shakes her head. Shrugs. “Because it’s always going to end this way, Paxton. We aren’t meant for long. If we were, I would have stuck around in college.”
He looks sick and she feels a pang of guilt. Because as much as she wants to make EJ happy—as much as she wants that damn dreary castle in Ireland—once upon a time, she wanted this. Him.
And she broke his heart once.
That should be easy. She’s been breaking hearts since she was a little girl, toying with the boys her age who were too stupid to realize what she was doing.
But Pax was always different. Maybe because he was the one who didn’t hate her for it, when she walked away from him and his diamond and promise of a happy boring life.
Maybe because, after all this time, he still doesn’t. He still thinks she can be the girl he has in his head. A sweet girl who loves him as much as he loves her.
“Charlie,” EJ says, her voice low and tight. Charlie closes her eyes and Pax jerks away from her, stalking toward the girl waiting by the windows.
“This is your fucking fault. Why the hell are you even here? Why the fuck are you here? You were never part of her life. You didn’t give a shit about her. So why the hell are you here now?” He’s furious, almost unhinged, and it’s wrong—so horribly fucking wrong—that it turns her on, to see this side of him. To see him towering over EJ and shouting her down.
“Pax,” she snaps.
“I’m here,” EJ says, coldly, “because when the shit hit the fan, and her world fell down around her, I was the one she called. Not you. Not any of the pretty boys she fucked. Me. So tuck your dick away, Paxton, and get the fuck out of my face. She’s mine.”
It happens fast. So fast. Pax hits EJ, hard enough that it snaps her head around and Charlie watches. Her head slams into the glass, and the world splinters into crystalline fractures as she crumples. And then the gun in in her hand, and she’s aiming it. Pax is backing up and everything fades. There’s a curious distance, a kind of calm blanket that settles over her that makes the world fall away and all she can see is him. EJ. And the cracked glass.
“Shit,” he whispers, and he turns.
She gives him a moment—just long enough to see her, for his eyes to go wide and afraid.
And then she pulls the trigger.
Chapter 21
It was stupid. To taunt him. So fucking stupid. That’s what she thinks when something stings her face, and she hears someone screaming her name, a hoarse voice as her body shakes.
“Jesus fuck, Charlie, leave me alone,” she groans and Charlie shrieks, relief apparent in her voice as she hugs EJ. The world is spinning dizzily, and she wants an Oxy and her bed, and why the fuck is her ass wet?
“We gotta go,” Charlie is muttering. She tugs her again, and EJ shakes her off. “Why the fuck are we in a hurry? Where the hell did the asshole go?”
That had been unexpected. She’d been irrationally angry, that this little shit thought he had some kind of claim on Charlie because of some stupid history. Fuck that. Fuck him. Charlie was so much better than that, it was infuriating.
She’d taunted him, knowing damn well that it was stupid, but she’d never expected this. Never expected him to hit her.
She’d never been hit by a man. Not even working with the addicts and creeps that Jacobs occasionally exposed her to—Jacobs would never have tolerated it.
“EJ, get up,” Charlie says shrilly.
The pure panic in her voice pull EJ off the floor and onto her feet. She notices the glass first, splintered and cracked. Makes sense why her head hurts, if she hit it hard enough to do that kind of damage.
The distorted reflection makes her freeze, and she looks down. Blood. So much blood.
“Charlie,” she says, and her voice comes out high and funny. Kind of choked.
“We gotta go, babe. Come on,” Charlie coaxes and EJ finally understands.
There’s a body—it looks like a still breathing, but who knew how long that would last—on the ground. And—“Oh, shit, we’re gonna run into cops.”
“No one’s come yet,” Charlie counters, her voice slightly hysterical. “Now come on.”
They make it halfway to the door when it pushes open, and EJ has a heartbeat to wonder where the fuck her purse is, and then she forces herself to straighten.
“Marco,” she whispers.
He smirks at her. “Hello, lil sis.”
Charlie is shaking at her side, and he flicks a look over her, then to Pax on the ground by the window and she has a moment of worry. Will he kill Pax?
“What happened?”
“He hit me.” EJ says numbly. She sees the anger in Marco’s eyes and manages to scrape together a low laugh. “Really, Marc? You’re here to kill me and you care if some random asshole slaps me around a little?”
“You aren’t his to slap around, Ella. And you know how much I don’t like for people to fuck with Jacobs’ things.”
She scoffs. “Why you’re here, right?”
He inclines his head, a slow assent and she huffs. “What are the orders?”
Marco watches her for a moment, gauging her, and she shifts, gritting her teeth to keep from wincing as pain shoots through her. “I deserve that much.”
“You stole from the boss, Ella. You don’t deserve shit.”
She shrugs and he sighs. “Bring you in. As untouched as possible. The bastard’s always had a soft spot when it comes to you.”
EJ laughs, and shakes her head. “No, he doesn’t. Not even close to it.”
“Anyone else, he’d have killed days ago.”
“How did you find us?” Charlie asks, her voice shrill and afraid.
“Credit card. Stupid move—was that you? A local bar?”
Disbelief sinks in her belly, and Charlie twists to stare at EJ, furious. “You used a fucking credit card? Why the hell were you buying your own drinks?”
“Is that really what we need to focus on right now?” EJ snaps back.
“Considering it’s why we’re here right now, I’d say yeah. Let’s focus on how you could do something so stupid.”
“I was pissed and horny and the bartender was hot. I had to buy drinks to get her attention,” EJ says, exasperated, and Charlie stops abruptly, her eyes wide and startled.
Marco laughs. “Was she straight?”
EJ shrugs and he laughs again. Shakes his head and looks at Charlie. “It was her favorite game, when she came to visit with the boss. She loved to seduce the straight girls and send them home to their boring little boyfriends.”
Charlie stares at them both, disbelieving. “I can’t believe this shit,” she mutters finally.
“What? That I’m bi?”
“No, idiot. That we’re taking a fucking trip down memory lane with the asshole who came here to shoot us.”
Marco looks affronted, “There’s no need to be insulting,” he says.
Charlie flips him the bird, and he sighs. “Are you going to behave?” he asks, looking at EJ. She shrugs and his eyes narrow. “The boss didn’t say anything about her. So. Behave or I’ll deliver a dead body with you. Agreed?”
Fury flares hot and blinding but she shoves it down. Because he’s holding all the cards. “Fine,” she snaps.
“Fuck this,” Charlie mutters, and she lifts that gun from where it was tucked into her pants, aiming and firing in one smooth move. Marc grunts and she adjusts her feet, a tiny pucker of concentration turning her lips, and fires again.
He drops, hard, and she shoves the gun into her purse, grabs his and hands it to EJ.
EJ stands still and shocked as Charlie strips Marco of his ID and phone, all his cash, before doing the same to Pax. She shoves all of it into Pax’s briefcase, grabs the keys off the counter and dials on Pax’s phone.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Hello? There’s been two gunshots. Two people are injured.”
“Where are you, ma’am? Is everyone still alive? How—“
Charlie drops the phone on Pax, whose breathing is shallow and choppy, his face a sick, waxy color that would be more disturbing if EJ could work up the energy to care.
Big if.
“Let’s go,” Charlie says, looking at EJ. “The cops will be here soon.”
EJ nods wordlessly, and follows her out of the loft, out of the warehouse and onto the street.
It swallows them up as the cop cars come screaming up, and she ducks her head.
Guilt, working through her, even though no one looks at her. No one looks at either of them as they walk to the parking garage. They’re just two beautiful girls, utterly harmless and easily overlooked, remarkable only because they are beautiful and alone.
In the car, EJ slides into the passenger seat. Her purse is sitting on the floorboard, and she lets out a shaky breath when her hand closes over the thumb drive.
Still there.
Charlie takes the wheel and turns on music to drown out conversation as she pulls out of the lot and onto the busy street, being cordoned off by police as an ambulance screams up.
They slip away in the chaos. By the time the cops have Pax in an ambulance, speeding toward Regional Medical and figuring their odds of saving him, the girls are on their way out of the city, the Mississippi looming before them. Charlie hands EJ the phone she lifted from Marco, and she stares at it.
There’s only one message.
Do you have her?
For a long time, she stares at it, until the words blur and mix together, and she can’t breathe through the fury and the panic.
“What are you going to do?” Charlie asks, breaking the silence and the flurry of her thoughts, grounding her.
Charlie, who shocked the hell out of her when she shot not one, but two men, and never even blinked. Never once fell apart.
Fucking Charlie.
She smiles, and types out a quick message.
He’s at Regional. Better do damage control.
She hits send and then rolls down the window, and tosses it out as they leave Memphis behind.
*
They stop, after hours of driving, outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. It's a tiny, dumpy, little town that doesn't make a blip on the map, which is why Charlie likes it. It reminds her, vaguely, of the backwoods city her grandaddy used to take her to, when she was young enough that no one was obsessed with what kind of wife she would make and being the perfect little lady. EJ is sleeping, curled against the door, her mouth open just a little. She looks innocent and sweet.
Charlie snorts. EJ hasn't been innocent or sweet since she was a little girl in a Dallas park. And maybe that is why she is so drawn to the girl. Because she can't remember a time when she was either.
It should bother her more, that she shot Pax and Marco. That she's here instead of in her home in Charleston, with Tre in his office, busy ruling the world while she made a seating arrangement chart with her maid of honor, some girl in her sorority that she hated a little less than the others.
She has, suddenly, an absurd urge to hear her father's voice. She hasn't thought about him much since she left in the middle of the night, but she misses him. And Hayes. They were overbearing and misguided, but they were her overbearing and misguided, and that counted for something.
"Where are we?" EJ asks, her voice sleepy and hoarse.
"Outside Little Rock. I'm gonna go get us a room. Stay put," Charlie says.
"I'll go. Fake IDs." EJ says, yawning and pulling herself upright. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and rummages through her bag before she comes up with a small pink wallet, something she grabbed at a drugstore in Baton Rouge. She fluffs her hair and climbs out of the car, leaving Charlie alone with her thoughts and silence.
She'd seen the shock on EJ's face. It's the part of everything that she hasn't allowed herself to think about too much--that she had seen the shock and flash of fear—and something else—on EJ's face when she pulled the trigger.
When Marco had crumpled and she hadn't.
It's different from Tre. That had been desperate, something she hadn't thought about. Something that was almost an accident, even though it wasn't, not quite. This was--the same. But different. She'd been furious. And even though it wasn't given any thought--it was fueled by that anger. By the sheer fury that Pax would hit EJ, and the protective rage that came from seeing her best friend crumpled like a doll with cut strings.
And from the helpless anger and fear that came when Marco coldly proposed killing her.
When she stood over Tre's body, it had been in shock and disbelief. But this--this isn't shock. It's more a resigned acceptance. Like this is where everything was pointed, from the moment she stood in a pool of blood and called EJ, to the moment she lifted that pawn shop gun and pulled the trigger—there was never any other option.
The door slams, and it yanks her out of her musings, to stare with wide eyes at EJ. "Room 212. It's around back—I asked to be off the highway."
Charlie nods, and puts the car in reverse, easing backwards before following the cracked asphalt around the back of the rickety hotel.
“I think I watched a TruCrime show once set in a place like this,” EJ says conversationally.
Charlie laughs, startled and parks the car by the stairs leading to the second floor. “Sweetheart, I’m pretty sure we are a TruCrime show.”
“Touche,” EJ murmurs, and they both push out of the Nova into the muggy Arkansas night.
The hotel room is just as dismal and depressing as the exterior promised, and Charlie is half convinced that she saw a cockroach scurry behind the AC unit when she hit the lights, but she forces the thought out of her head as she tosses her bags on the king sized bed and drops down with a heavy sigh. All of the day’s tension slams into her so suddenly she feels dizzy and she is barely aware of EJ closing the door and pulling the curtains. She hears the TV click on and blinks at it sleepily, her eyes unfocused.
“Do you want to change?” EJ asks, quietly, and she remembers, suddenly, the little tidbit Marco had divulged.
EJ likes women. That kiss on the dance floor in NOLA makes more sense, and confuses her even more, and she’s pretty sure that’s not what this particular question is about. She stands and kicks out of her jeans, shrugs off her bra and pulls on a t-shirt. EJ has the blankets pulled down, and she crawls into bed without asking anything or saying anything. Without looking at her. She listens, her eyes closed against the light from the TV and the bathroom, listening as EJ washes her face, and brushes her teeth. Undresses and then crawls into bed. She hesitates there, a few feet of space between them and Charlie shifts to her back and blinks at her.
“Don’t be an idiot, EJ,” she says, clearly and simply.
Relief flashes across EJ’s face, and she slides closer, wrapping an arm around Charlie’s waist and burrowing her face against the other girl’s
neck. And the tension, the tight knot of worry, finally eases. With her best friend pressed against her, in a hotel room she’s pretty sure will give her a communicable disease, with the news droning in her ear about a shooting that she knows more about than she should, she finally closes her eyes and allows herself to relax.
And when she’s almost asleep, when she’s drifting on the edge of awake and dreams, and everything feels deliciously distant and foggy, she feels the velvet soft touch of lips against the nape of her neck, and EJ’s voice, whispering against her skin, “Thank you, Charlie.”
She smiles, and lets sleep claim her.
*
When EJ wakes up, it’s because she’s hot, and the droning noise on the TV has turned from the low, steady news anchors to some ridiculous game show with people dressed in garish costumes vying for a mystery prize. She frowns at it, through a tangle of Charlie’s hair. Pushes up on an elbow and peers at the clock before she flops onto her back with a groan. The noise and motion wakes Charlie who rolls to face EJ. “Time is it?”
“Time to check out, if we’re leaving.”
Charlie peeks an eye open and studies her. “Should we?”
That’s the question. What to do now.
“I know you don’t like the place, but it’s safe and off Jacobs radar. I think we should stay for another night. Get our feet under us and decide what the next step should be.”
Charlie makes a face, still sleepy and adorable. “Do we have to do it in such a shit hole?”
EJ laughs, “That is what keeps us off the radar, babe. Jacobs would never expect me to slum it. Because he never would. So staying at No Name Hellhole—it’s the safest place we can be.”
“Except I’m pretty sure I’ll need to be treated for head lice,” Charlie grumps, scooting up the bed. EJ watches her pull her hair up into a sleek ponytail, trying her damndest not to be distracted by the tits in her face.
“Don’t be such a pampered princess, Charlie.” She says with a slight grin. Charlie narrows her eyes, and EJ rolls away from her and sits up. “I’ll go down and get the room for another night. Then we’ll get some food and talk about what we need to do next.”
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