“Right,” I said flatly. “But did you think about what this will do to her?”
“She’ll be alright.”
“So fucking sure of yourself,” I mumbled but I knew he understood me. “How exactly are you going to get her in the car?”
“Tranq her then put her in the trunk. It has to look real.”
“No,” I said with a growl. “You are not going to tranquilize her.” Though I wasn’t all that thrilled about the trunk part either. But I understood that it had to look believable and I hoped he wouldn’t leave her there long.
“Well, that’s going to make this more difficult then.”
“This is really the best thing you can come up with?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “Then what?”
“I’ll bring her to you. Do you think you can get to the cabin on your own?”
“You do realize that I was shot, cut the hell up by going through a glass door, and fell off a balcony, right?”
“You sound like you’re whining.”
“Yeah, I’ll get there,” I said sucking it up. I wasn’t sure how the hell I was going to do it but I had at least a few more hours to figure it out. Or so I hoped.
“I’ll switch cars at some point after I get out of the city,” he told me. “I’ll explain everything to her then.”
“Just better hope that she doesn’t pop that emergency latch in the trunk and run on your ass.”
“She won’t. I’ve already cut it.”
“I have no words for you,” I told him and couldn’t seem to keep my head from shaking even though I knew he couldn't see it.
“I know what I’m doing.”
“I know you do and that’s what worries me.”
“I could just walk away. Let you handle this on your own,” he said and I knew he was just baiting me.
“There’s no way you could do that. You have to see a job through once you start it.” That was the thing about knowing him so well, I could easily call him on his bullshit. “Do me a favor, don’t leave her in the trunk the whole time. Figure something else out.”
“Fine,” he said like he’d already thought of something. “So I’ll see you in a couple of days then?”
“Don’t fuck it up,” I said and hung up.
I didn’t like it but it looked like I had no choice but to go with it. I hoped she didn’t hate me after this. That was just something I would have to deal with later.
I started to wonder if my obsession with finding her had turned toxic. If I really thought about it, I knew the answer to that. It had gone that way years ago. Ever since the moment I started searching for her. Ever since I walked into that gun range looking for a way to work through my aggression and frustration. Ever since I let the old man talk me into my first job. It was all leading to where I was now. Which was maybe not someplace good. All those alleys I’d searched. All those missing person reports I combed through. All those kids I did my best to save. Hell, even Nadya became a piece of this fucked up puzzle all because of the girl I couldn’t save when I was sixteen.
Was I a monster? Sure, when I walked down that dark alley that night I’d been looking for Little Jessie, even knowing that I wouldn’t find her there, I hadn’t planned on taking anyone out with me. But when I saw what that scared girl was about to do and the fact that she would have been right around Jessica’s age, it flipped something inside of me. I couldn’t walk away without trying to save her. But did I really save her? I took her off the streets only to turn her into a killer. I didn’t know what I had to offer, so I showed Nadya the only thing I knew. How to shoot. How to go undetected. How to kill a man and not have it come back on you.
It was wrong. It didn’t matter that I saw some kind of disconnect with her. That I recognized something inside her that I saw in myself. That she could end a life and not be affected by it like normal people. Was I the bad guy because I prayed on that? I supposed in a way I was.
Then again… if her life hadn’t taken that turn she would have never met the one man that could reach her heart. And she wouldn’t have had the skills to fight by his side and help save the club he loved so much.
So was this the way it was all supposed to work out?
Clearly, I’d never really get the answers that I wanted. Life wasn’t like that.
