There’s a loaded pause, and maybe Alex’s stories of how his father treated him have scarred me, because I wait for the string of expletives, the cutting remark. But Rocco just sighs, like this is the third time this week that Belladonna has put her life at risk. “Don’t try anything clever. Just shoot for the heart and I’ll clean up the rest.”
Oh God. I think I’m having a panic attack.
I tune out for the rest of their conversation, staring at the inky landscape that juts above the bushes. The hills, fields, and pines of the Highlands are stained in dark shades of juniper and slate, ruffled by the wind beneath a cloudy, black sky.
Belladonna is watching me out of the corner of her eye. I’m sure she can see the panic on my face because she says, “Do you want me to turn around?”
“I don’t know.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you. Alex is family, which makes you family. I think you’re a dumbass, but he clearly doesn’t.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, picking my nails. “I’m just so tired of having this looming over me. I can’t remember the last time I actually slept. Like, properlyslept.”
“So we’re doing this,” she says, finality in her tone.
She dims her headlights on the deserted road, I know we’re not far from Lochinver, because I can just about make out the lonely curve of Suilven jutting out over the hills and lochs.
The screen says we’re a few minutes away, so she slows the car to a roll, leaning forward slightly to scan every shrub, rock, and tree that we pass.
It’s eerily quiet, eerily deserted.
The location from the text takes us off the narrow road and onto a grassy plain that looks like it leads to nowhere. The wind whips around the car, churning the sea of sharp brambles and browning bracken that carpet the earth beneath us.
She turns all the lights off now, tires sinking into the marshy earth as we roll blindly toward a dense thicket of pines in the distance.
God, I hope the car doesn’t get stuck.
I don’t like this, and I can tell by the way Belladonna leans over me to open the glove box for her gun that she doesn’t like it, either.
She stops the car in the soft earth, pointing to something in the distance.
A car is parked at the edge of the trees.
“At least we haven’t been stood up,” I breathe, on a nervous laugh. I try to make out the silver car in the dark. It looks cheap, dented, and damaged. “Can you make out the license plate?”
“No. Looks like a piece of shit car. They might’ve stolen it.”
My shaking hand pulls the door handle as quietly as I can, the soft whistle of the wind infiltrating the car. “I’m scared,” I whisper, as I push the door open. The thought of standing face to face with my tormenter is suddenly overwhelming. The list of suspects parade through my mind, a little procession of everyone I’ve ever pissed off.
“I’m not,” she replies, calmly. “We’ll handle it.”
“If it’s Cain?”
“It’s not. But if it is, we’ll deal with it.”
“If it’s Carmichael?”
“It won’t be. That’d be miraculously stupid of him. He loves this job.”
“Who do you think it is?”
Her eyes widen, like she’s one annoying question from leaving me to die in some thorny swamp in the Highlands. “How the fuck would I know? I hardly know you.”
“Could it be Shawn?”
“I could snap Shawn in half. Are you gonna keep naming people all morning?”
“Right. Uhh … no. I’m going.”
