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19
Vienna
“Are you going to use Fletcher again?” Rick asked.
The entire ride back to our house, he’d sat brooding next to me. Not in a way that said he was irritated with me, or anything like that. More like, he would be happy to never lay eyes on Fletcher again, and that would be just fine with him. Although, after Fletcher passed today’s test with flying colors, I was certain Rick had to know that wasn’t a possibility.
With what I did, I had to run in certain circles, do business with people of a specific trade. Dion had been a necessary evil...until he was expendable.
It was rare to find a colleague who shared a similar moral compass as we did. Daddy had very few that he ever liked, and no one he fully trusted. With Fletcher’s reaction to Warrick’s fucked up side business, I couldn’t help but think Daddy might have liked him.
I said might because, well, Daddy never liked any boys or men around me.
A ghost of a smile curled the corners of my lips as a particularly vivid memory crossed my mind. I was thirteen and we’d just had dinner at a truck stop off the beaten path in Oklahoma. A man a few booths over stared a little too hard at my legs.
Later, I’d found Daddy coldly beating the shit out of him as he was strapped to a chair inside our motel room. He was careful not to actually spill any blood, since this wasn’t as secure as our normal houses. I set the bag of clean laundry on the bed as Daddy called me over to him.
I didn’t bounce in my walk as much as I used to when I was a kid, but he’d placed his arm around me when I stopped next to him.
“Honey, this man thought it was okay to stare at you. That’s inappropriate any time, but especially when it’s a man and child, right?”
“Yes, of course, Daddy.” I smiled up at him, then glanced toward the man. He was trying to scream, maybe even ask for help, but the gag in his mouth muffled everything but the smallest sounds.
“What does that make him?” He asked in the voice he reserved for when we worked on my schooling.
“A monster.”
Daddy tightened his hold on my shoulders in approval, even as the man struggled against the rope and duct tape tying him to the chair. The man’s eyes widened, until the whites were visible all around his irises. He really shouldn’t be that surprised we’d figured out he was a bad man. He hadn’t even tried to hide his interest. “And what do we do with monsters?”
“Get rid of them.” I had pushed up on my toes as I answered him.
“Exactly. Now run and take your shower. By the time you’re done, there will be one less monster in the world.”
I’d listened and when I came back out, Daddy was sprawled on the bed clicking through the TV stations, and no evidence of the man ever being in our room was left.
Yeah, Daddy wouldn’t have liked Fletcher’s interest in me, but he might have appreciated his disgust with the monsters.
“From that smile, I assume we’re going to use him sooner rather than later,” Rick said after he exhaled a long, suffering breath.
I laughed at his dramatic response. “That wasn’t why I was smiling, but we are going to use him again. He does good work.”
“And you like him.” It wasn’t a question, it was a certain declaration.
After I turned down our road and past the gate, I scanned the surrounding area behind us, just to confirm nothing looked out of the ordinary. It didn’t. Then I glanced at Rick. A small line creased between his brows as his somber expression constricted around my chest.
“He’s good at what he does, and he’s a means to an end.” I took one more, hard look around as we entered the abandoned subdivision.
“But you like him,” Rick pointed out as if I’d purposely avoided that statement. Maybe I had.
I waited until we pulled into the garage and shut off the car before I answered him. Twisting to face him, I gave into the impulse to take his hand in mine. As soon as my fingers closed around his palm, he relaxed, as if my cold hand provided him a measure of comfort and safety.
“I like that he’s just as disgusted by the monsters in the world as we are.” I’d never had an explicit conversation about who the monsters were, but Rick was a good man, and the way he’d stepped up to “save” me in the alley said he felt the same way. “I like that so far he hasn’t tried to fuck us over.” Then I tried to explain something that Rick needed to understand, otherwise, we’d have a much more difficult time working together. “Lastly, in my line of work, there are times when I need to outsource jobs. Like today. I have to cultivate relationships so I have access to resources to keep us safe when I need them, among other things. Fletcher is a better option than my previous connection with the same skill.” I conveniently left out that I had killed that connection. It wasn’t that I was trying to hide this from Rick, I knew he’d understand, but that was how I’d met Fletcher, and as weird as it sounded, I wanted to keep that meeting private for the time being.
His gaze searched mine, and after he found whatever he was looking for, he nodded. “Okay. I’ll just have to keep a close eye on him.”
Grinning, I leaned forward to capture his lips in a quick, hard kiss. Whenever he said things that showed just how possessive and protective he was, it turned me on. I wished we could act on the heat spreading through my still aching core, but we had another job to do today.
The idea had crossed my mind while we were eating with Fletcher, but I hadn’t committed to it then. It was something I needed to do sooner rather than later though, if I wanted to unravel more links in the chain.
