“I heard my mother screaming. And the fire roaring all around me. It was like music. I was convinced I was made of it, and that it wouldn’t hurt me if I just stepped into it. So I did. Only the firemen who weren’t doing jack fucking shit to help my family because the flames were too intense to breach? They pulled me back. They took away the music. Now the only way I get any piece is when my Zippo sings to me again.”
I swear to Christ, the more I get to know people, the more I like my fuckin’ dog.
He’s lying. He knows who killed them. I do too. Crazy wants Ryzhanov’s right-hand man, Lagransky, and Prez needs his head checked for agreeing that Crazy should tag along on this job. And this excuse about not bein’ able to spare anyone else is wearin’ real goddamned thin. That bitch of Kick’s better be fuckin’ worth it.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ. I need a goddamned therapist after listening to the shit you boys go on with,” I say, playin’ along. That little cocksucker’s gonna screw me royally if he moves from this van.
“You asked.” He shrugs, and points to the limo. “They’re turning.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I say, and take the same exit. I ease on the brakes, because there are only two cars separating us now, and the maniac riding my arse is giving me the fucking shits. Tailgaters make me fuckin’ twitchy.
Twenty minutes later, the limo pulls up to a ritzy whiskey bar owned by Ryzhanov, and we continue driving through Mosman. The houses are huge and have big wrought-iron gates. Nice to look at, but not much help in really keeping people out. Especially not people like me.
We pull to a stop outside a house next to the Cold King’s mansion. Crazy and I don our special blue caps, and I roll the window down and press the buzzer for the intercom, declaring that I have a package for the Robertsons. People really need to stop putting their family name on the front gate of their fucking house. The gate opens, and I give the security guard posted outside the Russian’s residence a salute and drive on through, pulling up in the circular drive in front of the house.
The gates close and I get out in my navy blue and red Fast Send uniform and pull an empty cardboard box from the front seat. I even shaved for the occasion.
We’re not hitting the Russians; we’d need a lot more firepower than me and the geriatric fire bug for that. We’re only gaining access to the Robertsons’ property so I can plant a couple of cameras and survey the Russians’ backyard. We’ll only hit a joint once we know we can get in and get out and that there are several escape routes as a last resort.
“Stay here,” I say to the crazy fucker occupying my front seat.
His dark eyes narrow. “Where the fuck do you think I’m gonna go? Have tea with the Joneses?”
“Just making sure you’re not gonna light someone’s house on fire so you can ‘hear the music’ again,” I say with air quotes, and take the package from the seat between us. I pull the cap lower on my head and angle my face towards the ground, so any outdoor security cameras won’t make a positive ID as I walk to the front door, press the bell and wait.
The maid had answered the door, ready and waiting to take my package. She was a sweet young thing, had that Catholic virgin quality about her, and she’d blushed to the roots of her hair when I’d told her I had a big one for her. She’d still been biting her lip when I’d reached in my back pocket, pulled out the foul-smelling rag and covered her face with it. She’d gone out like a light, and I’d gently eased her down on the marble floor. I’d searched the house and found only an ancient-looking woman sipping tea in the yard by the pool. She’d been just as easy to take care of.
Chlorophyll. The friendly sedative aiding killers and psychopaths since 1814.
But you never know how long someone will be out on that shit, so I’d worked quickly setting up three tiny cameras under the eaves of the upstairs bedrooms, all of them overlooking Ryzhanov’s property.
When I reach the front door, the maid is still laid out on the marble where I left her. I carefully step over her sleeping form and jump into the van, only Crazy’s not here.
“Jesus fuck!” I’m going to strangle that little cocksucker the second I find him. I open my door when a movement in the rear-view mirror catches my attention. I glance up and freeze as something sharp and cold jabs me in the neck. I swing my elbow back, attempting to hit the fucker in the face, but the interior of the van swims and my eyelids grow heavy as I fight the drug coursing through my veins.
“I don’t like it when people touch my things,” a man says from the back of the van. The voice is unfamiliar, and yet there’s something in it, a cadence I know well. And the green eyes that accuse me in the rear-view? I know those too. They belong to Ivy, only it’s not her small hand resting on my neck and easing the needle from my flesh, it’s her father’s.
The man I’ve been dreamin’ about eviscerating for years now. And here he is, right behind me. I hadn’t had to look very far at all. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? I hadn’t been lookin’. I’d been knee-deep in Prez’s dirty work. I hadn’t been payin’ attention, and now I’ll pay for it with my life.
I don’t know how much longer I’m left alone. It seems like days, but is more than likely just hours. I’m still naked, but I’ve pulled the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around myself like you would a towel after stepping out of the shower. It hurts every time the fabric brushes over my wounded abdomen. I think it’s infected already, or maybe it just hurts—either way, it’s seeping blood and yellow plasma every time I move. It’s easier and less painful just to lie here.
I’m jonesing for another fix. I want it so bad my entire body shakes, and the only thing that distracts me long enough to forget is Tank. Will he ever know what happened to me? Will he ever know that I was an idiot all that time, and too stupid to realise that I was in love with him? Where Kick was a crutch, a bad habit, a distraction, Tank has been my anchor. He’s been the one watching my back and fighting for me when I couldn’t fight for myself, and most days I treated him like he was beneath me, when the opposite was true.
Maybe it’s for the best that he doesn’t know. Maybe then he can cut his losses and find a girl who’ll put him first. And it’ll be as if I never existed. I’ll leave his life the way I came into it—with a bang and a sour taste in my mouth.
I know Tank, though, and I know he won’t just let me go. He’ll search forever; he’ll tear cities apart to get what he wants. I’ve never met a more determined man, but I’m not holding out hope that he’ll ever find me. I’ve never given him my father’s name. I’ve never told him about the house I grew up in, what suburb, what street. I’ve never even told him my last name. Seems odd that you could know so much about a person, be so intimate and share nothing of who you are, of what made you you, while you share your body.
I might know his mind, his determination, and exactly what to do to his body to have him begging me for release, but Tank is still as much a mystery to me as I am to him. What I do know of him, I love. Not just in the platonic sense, and not just because of the way he makes me feel when he’s inside me, his hands all over me, and his lips at my ear coaxing me to let go, to fly. He annoys the shit out of me most of the time. He likes to push my buttons and I push right back, but I know wholeheartedly that I love that big, arrogant arse of a man. Not that it really matters. None of it matters now.
Footsteps echo down the stairs leading to my room. I remember that sound so well. I hear it in my dreams, the heavy footfalls and turn of the lock, the creak of the door. Only now it’s all off; it’s different. There’s a loud thudding accompanying the steps, surpassing them. And the locked door rattles on its hinges as something slams into it. My father curses, and it sounds as if he’s running down the stairs. The key slides in the lock and turns, and then the door is flung wide and he hefts a very large body into the room.