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The world had been like this long before I was born. If The Order and the Savages really did have some diabolical plan for the rest of us, there wasn’t shit me or Tito could do to stop it.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” he asked me outright.
“Highly unlikely.”
“You should probably grab a seat, then. We have a lot of shit to talk about.”
He turned around and shut the door, letting out a deep breath before facing me again.
“Let’s start with his name.”
CHAPTER FOUR
His name was Romero.
That was the first time I had ever heard someone say it. People were too superstitious to speak it, as if he were some demonic entity that would appear and slit their tender throats before dragging their fragile souls straight to hell.
We’d spent hours discussing risks and potential outcomes. With time being sensitive, we had to do the best we could, converting their months’ worth of information into a last-minute plan.
Sighing, I looked out the Touareg’s window and watched all the empty fields, vast open wasteland passing us by.
We were getting farther and farther away from anything remotely civilized.
Into the wild. That’s how I thought of it—away from petty moral barriers and society’s fragile sensitivities.
“This could all be nothing,” Tito told me for what had to be the tenth time in less than two hours.
“Or it could be everything.” I pursed my lips and narrowed my eyes. I wished we could play the quiet game until I was no longer stuck in a car with him. Our eyes stayed locked in the rearview mirror until he was forced to look away or risk veering off the road.
“I just don’t want you to end up like his last girl.”
His last girl? That instantly piqued my interest and further irritated me. I didn’t know about any girl.
“Why? What happened to her?”
“That isn’t relevant to your situation. He’s just trying to change your mind,” Grady interjected.
“Trying to chit-chat me out of this is a waste of your precious breath. This is the best lead I’ve had in four years.”
The only response he gave to that was a shake of his head. I knew the only reason he caved on this was because he knew I’d just take their information and do it anyway. I didn’t particularly like being told I couldn’t do something because my balls were on my chest and not between my legs.
For the first hour of our drive, he had told me every horror story about Romero that he could think of, not realizing what he was doing. The brutality didn’t scare me; it intrigued me. Truthfully, I wanted to see who these people were and the way
they lived. Every scrap of information, no matter how disturbing, only made me want to meet him more.
I needed to get away, needed something to pull me out of the murky cesspool of the thing I called life.
Every day I felt like I lost another part of the woman I shunned in order to assimilate. I needed to do this. It was everything I’d been waiting for.
I couldn’t tell them any of that, though. They would never understand the parts of me I hid. Jinx was the only person who had ever tried, and I’d just had to leave without telling her goodbye. I sincerely hoped she would understand why.
“This is it.” Grady pointed in the direction of a treeline looming in the near distance.
Squinting, I peered through the front windshield, trying to spot what he was referring to. Tito drove a half mile further before pulling over. We sat in silence for a few moments. I couldn’t say for sure what they were thinking, but it was more than likely about how crazy this whole thing was.
I was going to solicit the lions that ruled over a land of sheep. They would either sink their teeth into me or let me in their pride.
When Tito’s brown eyes met mine again, I knew on some level that he did understand, and I knew he wanted to find David just as badly as I did.
