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“This is it.” The nurse stops. There’s an orderly stationed outside his door.
“Why is he here?” she asks.
The nurse glances at me. “Your brother’s been…upset.”
Cilla follows the nurse’s gaze to me. “Upset how?”
“Let’s go in,” I say.
Cilla faces me, puts her hands on my chest. “No. I’ll go in alone.”
“If he gets violent—”
“He’s had a mild sedative,” the nurse points out, clearly uncomfortable.
Cilla spins around. “Why?”
The nurse clears her throat, looks at me. She obviously knows who I am and she’s inclined not to upset me.
“Just go in, Cilla.” I check my watch. “You have fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Fourteen minutes and forty-five seconds.”
She lets out an exasperated breath, then nods to the nurse. The orderly opens the door. Jones is lying on the bed, his skin flushed, sickly looking. He looks a little worse than he did when I last saw him.
“Cilla,” he says, sitting up, his movements slow.
“Jones!” she runs to him, leans down. I expect her to hug him but she stops short.
Jones looks over her shoulder, finds me standing there. His eyes widen. Cilla must feel the shift because she straightens, turns to me.
“You said I had fifteen minutes. Alone.”
“Thirteen,” I say, then walk out into the hallway. “Door stays open.”
The nurse looks at me. The orderly stands there like he doesn’t see how awkward this all is.
“Thank you, nurse. I’ll take it from here.”
“Yes, sir.”
I take my phone out and scroll through emails while standing close enough to hear, but their voices are whispers, and I can’t make out what either of them are saying. There’s a moment where Jones becomes animated, but Cilla manages to quiet him. When the time is up, I step into the room and clear my throat.
“Time, Cilla.”
“Just one more minute.” Her back is to me. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed but I notice they’re not really touching. His eyes jump from me to her and he leans in to whisper something.
“It’s okay. I’ll take care of everything,” she replies to whatever he says. She stands. “I’ll come back to see you next week.” She gives me a pointed look, but I don’t care about any promises she makes him. We’ll see next week. “I love you,” she says, and it sounds awkward.
Jones nods, looks at his lap. The few times I’ve seen Jones, he was animated, probably high or stoned. Now, he just looks pathetic.
A few minutes later, we’re out in the parking lot. Cilla turns to me when we get to the SUV.
“You scared him. He’s detoxing and you scared the shit out of him.”
“I wanted answers and since I’m the one paying for this, I think I have some right to ask.”
“You have no right. We never asked for this. Neither of us asked you to do this. The deal was me. Me for one month. It didn’t come with strings!”
“That deal changed the minute you asked for my help collecting your pound of flesh. We’ve got all kinds of strings now.”
She shakes her head. “No. That has nothing to do with you. I don’t agree to your terms. I take back what I said. What I asked for.”
“That’s not how things work.”
“It is in my world and you’re in my world now, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
She exhales.
My attention shifts to the side door where two nurses walk out at the end of their shift. “Get in. We’ll talk at the house.”
“No. I don’t want to talk about this with you. This isn’t part of our deal, period.”
I take her arm, walk her around to the passenger side. “We’re not having this discussion until you cool down.”
“Until I cool down?” She digs her feet into the ground just as I open her door. “No. You have my body for thirty days. You can’t have the rest of me.”
I look down at her, see the panic in her eyes, the desperation. “Get in, Cilla. No one needs to know our business.”
She looks over my shoulder at the nurses who’ve now stopped and are openly watching us. “Killian, please. I’m asking you to please leave this be.”
“I’m low on patience here. Get in.”
It takes her another minute but she exhales and climbs into the SUV. I reach across her to buckle her belt. She lets me. When I close the door, my cell phone rings. I pull it out of my pocket and swipe the button to accept the call.
“About time,” I say.
“No one’s talking,” Hugo answers.
“What do you mean? Make them talk. Isn’t that your specialty?”
“The old woman either couldn’t or wouldn’t say anything. Had to talk through her daughter. But when I showed her photos of Jones and the girl, her face went white.”
I glance at Cilla who’s watching me through the window.
“Why didn’t you push her?”
“She’s in her nineties. I didn’t want her to drop dead on my account. Besides, her daughter wanted me out when she saw how upset her mother got. She threatened to call the cops.” He takes a breath. “I did hear the old woman say one thing before I walked out though. One word. Devil.”
