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“Things have taken longer than expected. We had a tail.”
“You were not supposed to take the girl anywhere but straight to me.”
“Did you want me to bring the cops straight to your front door, Rich?”
“So you fucked up the drop. What do the cops know? Did they see the girl?”
“They saw her apartment, and her neighbor who called them. They likely know she’s missing.”
Cursing from the other end. I dig my nails into my palms and freeze in place. Stone is hunched over the phone, facing the distant highway through the trees, not seeing me.
“Bring her to the casino. Now.” The casino. The Revel they’ve been talking about?
“They could still be on us; I don’t know if I can ditch them for long enough to—”
“You will if you want me to keep her alive.”
I blink, my eyes widening. Her? Her who?
Of course, at that moment, Stone decides to turn around. His eyes land on me, standing just a few feet away from him, and they light up with a flurry of emotions. Surprise. Fear. Concern. Anger. He clamps his lips shut tight and points at the distant picnic bench. I shake my head, but he points again, even as Rich on the other line starts up, “Are you still there?”
Reluctantly, I start to back away.
“I’m here,” Stone replies, eyes burning holes into mine. “And I’m telling you, no can do.”
“I’m serious,” Rich says, and then I’m too far away to hear his replies anymore.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to hear. I know what I need to do.
27
Stone
This is it. I’ve really done it this time. One last job and I managed to fuck it all up. Now the one person I love—other than Skye, other than my brother who’s god-knows-where—is being used as leverage again.
Part of me knows she will understand. Part of me has known this was coming for a long time. “Living,” after all, is a strong word for what she’s been doing for the last two years that Rich has held me under his thumb.
But still. I can’t help it. Despite what I know I need to do, where I know I need to go, I make one last detour. After all, this may be the last job I ever perform on this earth. I’m about to go to the Revel alone, no Skye, and tell Rich that she escaped.
He won’t take this kindly. Especially not after I told him I’ve attracted police attention in the process. But I see no other option. I won’t take her to him. Not knowing what he’ll do to her.
I pull aside at the hospital on the outskirts of town. The woman at the desk waves me through without so much as a glance at my ID. We’re friends by now. Hospital friends, the kind who don’t ask too many unnecessary questions.
I walk the corridors by memory, the way I have for years now. On holidays, on weekends, any quiet day I can get away. I pause outside her room and take a deep breath. Then I step into the dim, private suite where my mother lives.
Or, continues to breathe, I should say.
I take a seat beside her tiny form. She’s even smaller now than she was a year and a half ago when she finally drifted into this sleep. Her hand is light as bird bones in mine, when I cup it gently.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. When I agreed to work for Rich, it was because he said he could help her. Pay for her medical bills.
For the first six months I worked for him, she received regular treatments—treatments she thought were provided by an anonymous benefactor that she thought was a fan of my fighting. She talked all the time about the nice man or woman, bless their soul. She prayed for them every day and all I prayed was that she’d improve. That she’d live.
The seizures had other plans. They’d led to the coma. And a few months after that, the doctors had said a handful of words I’d never wanted to hear: permanent loss of brain activity
The irony of that bites deep. She left thinking Rich was a saint. She had no idea the kind of depravity he’d hired me to carry out in his name, dangling her life before me like bait on a hook, blackmail for any time I got squeamish.
We’d agreed I would work do thirteen jobs for him in exchange for helping her. This should have been it for me. The last job. The last time I had to fuck over someone to line his pocket. After this, he’d promised, he would keep everything the way it is now. He’d continue to pay for the private room, the doctors and nurses who monitor her, even though I know she won’t return.
