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I just waited.
“Why’d you take me? Why not kill me there?” he asked.
“You know why.”
He fell silent. “Guess I do.”
Well. There it was. “You still rape girls?”
He looked at me. I saw no remorse, but he seemed to have lost his calculation. It was like he knew there were no more moves for him.
“Yeah.”
“You must enjoy that?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Right.” I lifted my gun and shot him.
He was as surprised as I was, but by the time he saw the gun, it was too late.
I thumbed off the shot and got him in the chest.
He fell back, blood spilling from him. He began choking, more blood spewing up and out of his mouth. He rolled to his side, then the other side.
He was trying to crawl away.
I frowned. That wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
Then again, I didn’t know how any of this was supposed to happen.
I didn’t follow him. I didn’t have it in me to shoot him again. I already loathed myself. Raize was right. I was going to hold on to this for the rest of my life.
I twisted to the side and vomited into the ground.
Bang!
I froze before looking back.
Jake stood over Bronski, his gun smoking. The last shot was to his forehead.
Bronski was dead.
I threw up again.
I’d been wrong again. My last line.
44
Ash
I didn’t want to be in my body anymore.
I decided this an hour later.
Not anymore. No, thank you.
So, I left.
I was gone, off, floating outside of my body.
It felt better this way.
Safer.
Not so scary.
I wanted to stay like this forever.
45
Raize
I’d had to send a text ahead of time to get the newest burner phone’s number.
Downer picked up after the first ring.
“It’s done,” I told him.
I was about to hang up when he said, “That girl you have?”
“Yeah?”
“Roman asked me to ask around.”
I didn’t like that.
“There was a poster about a missing girl that got our attention. One of our guys said they looked similar. Don’t know if you want to know this, but the missing-poster girl? I found the house she’s working from. You probably did her pimp tonight.”
“Maybe.”
He gave me an address and a name.
Yeah. That guy had been done tonight.
“So you know, we’re calling that house in—anonymous tip. Roman doesn’t work girls. We’ll be sending authorities to all those houses, so she’ll be rounded up by the government. They’ll be classified as sex trafficked.”
He gave me the address where she was, and I hung up and made a second call.
Jake answered after the first ring. “Boss.”
“What’s happening there?”
“He’s gone.”
“Who?”
He paused. “Her, then me.”
“Her?”
“Yeah.”
Okay then.
“We’re heading back.”
“Okay.”
46
Ash
The guys showed up and the body disappeared. I couldn’t tell you a time. That had ceased for me. I was in zombie mode. Nothing mattered at the moment.
Then Gus was licking me, trying to squish me with his wiggly body.
There was a lot of Gus.
I showered.
Raize helped me change my clothes.
In the days that followed, I remembered being told to eat, so I ate. Being told to drink, so I drank. Being told to lie down, so I did. I couldn’t fall asleep on command, but Raize had taken to holding me in his arms at night. That helped. It wasn’t normally like that. We slept together, but usually there was space between us. He liked to be free in case he had to jump out of bed.
And Gus had taken to joining us on the bed some nights. Other nights, he went with Jake.
“Where are we?” I asked Raize one day.
He and I were sitting on the patio in the backyard of the house where we’d been staying. It was nice. There were mountains around us, a creek down the path.
Raize looked over to me, and I looked down. There was a blanket on my lap.
That felt nice, too.
“We’re in West Virginia.”
That made sense. By the mountains. We must’ve been in a valley. Did they have valleys? I didn’t know much about West Virginia.
“Why?” I asked.
“We did a lot of bad shit. We need to lay low.”
Oh yes. Right.
I blinked a few times. “How long have I been like this?”
“A week.”
A week? Wow.
I remembered what Bronski had said…
“My sister…”
Raize’s bench squeaked, and I was momentarily shocked by that because one, he’d moved and made a sound, and two, he’d sat in a chair that squeaked. The world was ending.
Also, I’d just made a joke. The world really was ending.
“We need to have a conversation about your sister.”
Well, duh.
Right?
Wait…
“What about?”
“Your sister is alive.”
“That’s what Bronski said.” Goddamn Leo Dipsicky. What a name. “I got the wrong boss.”
He frowned. “What?”
“The wrong boss. I thought I did my research right. I didn’t want to be too obvious and come in through Brooke’s boyfriend’s boss. But I got the wrong boss, under the wrong brother.” A tear slid down my cheek. “I had it wrong the whole time.”
“Listen.”
Razie moved to sit next to me, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. Raize wasn’t a comforting guy.
