It’s all making me consider my chest more readily than I was doing in Canada. It still hurts, still feels like it’s missing something. It is. Her. Freaky. I chuckle at the thought of her voice saying that. Freaks. We’re all freaks. Me especially apparently. I might be, but when I’m compared to the likes of Franco Greene, I’m nothing more than elite wealth and privilege. There isn’t any criminal cartel connection with me, nor is there any underbelly of violent streets and aggression. Other than the ones I misspent my youth on anyway. These people will be rough around the edges.
Like my Alice, I suppose.
Perhaps if I hadn’t been so distracted by my little Alice in the first place I would have made the connection with Temple and this family. It wouldn’t have stopped me allowing him to be in my home, but it would have made me more cautious of him. Background checks would have been made rather than trusting men who seemed allegiant to me. I would have watched more closely, paid more attention to what might have infected my space. And, annoyingly, I have to admit that perhaps my pills have played their part in making me lax about judgement. I’m not now. I appear to be more clear headed than I can remember being for years. Sharper. Less tolerant of anything that dares defy me. Maybe Gray’s interference was warrantable for that.
“Sir, we’re fifteen minutes off landing,” Timmins says.
I nod and keep staring at Damien, letting my eyes meander the bruises and cuts on his skin my team gave him. He deserves more in reality, but, at the moment, I’m trying to contain my animosity for when I find her. Until then, the man I’m staring at will suffer the fear of what could come rather than what will.
I look out the window after a few more minutes and contemplate what is going to happen next, wringing my still shaking hands to stop them. Franco doesn’t know I’m coming. No one knows anything other than the team on the ground already in Dallas and these pilots flying me here. Even I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m not sure she’s there with him either. It’s the distance between us and my lack of pills. Maybe she can feel me coming, though. I like that thought. I’d like to think she still thinks of me all over her, chasing her, protecting her from wolves and storms.
I stand and kick Damien in the ribs, watch as he tumbles over and groans. “I should thank you really. I might never have understood if you hadn’t been so fucking conniving.” He groans more and rolls onto his other side, probably trying to avoid the pain, so I kick him again for good measure and pick up a bottle of vodka. “Any other woman and I might, might, have let you get away with it, but not this one Damien. She wasn’t yours to touch. I hadn’t finished with her.”
He tries saying something behind his tape, mumbles about something. I’m interested enough that I rip the cover from his mouth. He sucks in rapid breaths, gulps for air, and then starts running his mouth about not touching her. He never touched her. He just told Temple where she was.
“Why?” I snarl. No response. I pour a shot and down it, refilling straight after. “Why would you put yourself at risk by defying me?” He shakes his head, looks at the floor. Hiding something. It makes me consider his interactions in the dungeons, who he’s played with, who he might be protecting. Nothing. He plays with everything.
The side of my shoe flips his head over so heavily he lands on his back and flails around. “I want an answer. You’ll probably die if I don’t get one.” He’s still gagging and coughing, enough so that I help him carry on a little more by picking up his head and staring into his eyes. “Talk Damien, before you can’t talk anymore.”
He doesn’t. Tragic.
His head gets slammed down to the floor repeatedly, my hand in his hair full of hate and rage and every other fucking emotion that has nowhere else to vent. He slurs and starts giving up, blood and spittle falling from his mouth. “Faith,” eventually falls out of him. I frown, loosening my hold a little. “Saw her.” He coughs as I let go of him, rolls onto his front so he can keep trying to get a breath. “Saw her kill her.”
“And?”
He tries pulling himself to the side of the cabin, away from me. So I sit and listen for more, giving him some space to get the fucking truth out of his mouth. “Temple was there, too. Said he wanted her,” he says, heaving himself to a wall to pull upright. “After he’d done with her he’d bring her to you. I didn’t know why, or care, I owed him, and we were looking for you to tell you and you weren’t anywhere.” More coughing. More blood and spittle. I turn away, sneering, and pump my fists to stop the shake that keeps fucking happening. “She killed your fucking wife, Malachi. I didn’t think you’d give a damn what happened to her.” I do.
“More.”
“You might not have cared about her, but I did.”
“Who? Faith?”
He looks at the floor, tries brushing his own blood off his shirt. “Yes. We were…We’d been-”
A laugh tumbles out of me, silencing him. “You meant nothing to her, Damien. You do know that, don’t you? No one did. Certainly not you.” He tries frowning at me, probably annoyed with my dismissal of his feelings, or hers. Doesn’t matter now anyway. I’m only amusing myself, or trying to get rid of the real possibility that I might never see my Alice again. The thought is both frustrating and chilling because to not finish this, not find where we were heading, is beyond my realms of rationale.
I pick up my drink again and contemplate my actions some more. I should have left quicker, should have listened to my chest rather than continue fighting it. Gray said as much, and I knew anyway regardless of attempting to push the thought of her away. She means something to me. Connection. Feeling. A sense of peace in a world of noise and chaos.
What did I want, she asked me. What was I missing?
Her.
Reality.
Honesty.
The plane steadily glides into the airport, and I watch Damien roll to balance himself on one of the seats from the floor until we eventually pull to a stop. A few more moments of getting into the private hangers and the door is opened by one of the flight crew. I walk out, buttoning my suit jacket, and wait for the two of my team to arrive in front of me.
“We can’t find her.”
Not the answer I was hoping for.
“What do you mean you can’t find her? You’ve had hours to find her. What the fuck am I paying you for?”
“We know where the plane is. We found that just outside Wichita Falls, but she wasn’t in it. No one was in it.”
I stare, pissed that this is becoming harder than I anticipated. Things do as I ask, or they fall as I expect. In fact, life usually moves in the way I choose to manoeuvre it regardless of games and sport. For once, I’m behind the curve, and the feeling, along with this fucking ache in my chest and these shaking hands is beginning to grate on me.
