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“I can handle it myself,” I snap at him with a loud bark that makes the kid burst out crying. “Shit. Sorry.”
“I know, mate, he’s a cunt,” he coos at the baby before he tells me, “If anything happens to her, I won’t protect you. Her brother is a hero around here—he died protecting Casper’s wife. And Casper will fuck you up if so much as a drop of her blood is spilt.”
“Where is she?” I ask him as I try to pull his message up on my screen without taking my eyes off the road. With all the notifications from Simon and Julian pinging at me, it’s impossible to get to the one I need.
“I sent you the ping to a pub. The White Hart?”
“Fuck!”
“That’s not a good fuck…”
“I have to go, Fred,” I tell him as I put my foot down on the pedal.
I don’t need directions; I know where I’m going, and I don’t care how many speed limits I break as I race back to the crime scene I left behind. George Chapman’s pub. His lair.
“Not a fucking drop, Henry,” he says down the phone as I hang up.
I don’t need his shit. The relentless pounding of my heart is making it hard enough to breathe through the suffocating squeeze of my lungs and the twist of my stomach.
My whole existence is balancing on the sharp precipice of a steep fall, and I’m grappling at it with every vestige of my strength. I just hope I’m not too late to protect my only joy in this world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
EVE
“Come on, Eve, it’s just one drink,” Mary says, putting a similar drink to the amaretto sour Hannah made me at Hush in front of me. “It’s not going to hurt.”
“She’s too good to drink the bottom shelf. Her tastes are a lot more sophisticated.” Cat drinks down what’s left of her pint before tapping my shoulder with the glass and turning it upside down on the table.
“Don’t be mardy,” Mary tells her. “We don’t want your little green-eyed monster ruining our fun tonight.”
“It doesn’t matter how you try to paint it. A fucking turd is a fucking turd, Mary,” Catherine says with a leering slur.
I did wonder when she was going to start on me tonight. If I had known she was coming, I wouldn’t have bothered joining them tonight. Catherine’s made it pretty clear she hates me with her constant rude remarks and scowls. I’ve just about had enough of holding my tongue. We’re not at Hush anymore, I don’t feel any two ways about giving as good as I get.
“I’m sorry,” Mary mouths at me with a grimace as Hannah comes back from the toilet.
“What’s going on?” she asks, looking between the three of us. “I thought we were getting along?”
Isn’t that the misjudgement of the century? I scoff down at my lemonade.
“The two of you are fucking stupid if you think that she’s one of us.” Picking up the amaretto sour, she gives it a long sniff before she drinks it down in a few long gulps. “You just sit on your little throne playing on your fiddle while the rest of us are on our hands and knees.”
“If you hate it so much, maybe you should find something else you’re good at,” I bite back with so much venom that I surprise myself.
Maybe it’s nerves or just the frustration of the last couple of weeks, but a laugh bursts from me. I can’t be bothered with this crap. There’s more to life than trying to be friends with someone that’s going to hate me in spite of all my efforts to placate their unfounded dislike of me.
“Little bitch,” Cat hisses as I grab my backpack, and she grips my wrist, pulling me across the table. “What did you say?”
Fuck, her nails are digging deep into my skin. It feels like they might pierce through at any moment. Her eyes bore into mine with more spite than I can bear as I try to yank myself free of her hold.
Her grip tightens, and in an effort to ease the strain of her hold on me, I lean closer. My heart is hammering hard and fast. My vision is fraying with my raging temper.
“I said,” I growl in her face, “if the dirty chip on your shoulder is so unbearable, you should show yourself out.”
I tug myself free suddenly with a pained grit of my teeth. I realise too late how that sounded, and as I look at Mary to apologise, Catherine smashes her empty pint glass across the table, into my arm. Ice cuts through my veins instantly. I know it’s bad even before I look at the damage.
Silence cuts through the jukebox playing in the corner as a man pushes up from the table beside us and tackles Catherine. The music echoes through the entire pub: My, my, my Delilah… Why, why, why, Delilah…
