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“We’ll give him a few minutes,” I say.
“Is this thing that X wants urgent?”
I shoot Ransom a look. “What do you think? It’s X.”
He nods, taking my point. Although we don’t know a lot about our mysterious benefactor’s identity, we do know that he likes things done promptly. Even when he doesn’t give us an exact date, it’s always best to treat every task from him as being fairly urgent.
Before we can discuss much more, the front door to our living space bangs open and then slams shut.
“There’s Mal,” Ransom notes, shooting me a half smile. “Good timing.”
Heavy footsteps ring out on the concrete floor in the hallway, and Ransom raises his voice and calls out for Malice to join us in the garage. My twin appears a moment later, shucking his leather jacket and tossing it over a workbench before he strides toward us.
“Did you unload those parts?” Ransom asks, cocking his pierced brow.
“Yeah,” Malice grunts. “Checked up on the girl too.”
Ransom nods, grabbing a few of his tools and hanging them up on the rack set up against one wall, although he places them in an order that makes me immediately want to re-organize them. “Is she back home now?”
“Yeah, got back like an hour ago,” Malice says.
In the back of my mind, I think to myself that I know exactly what she’s been up to since she got home, but I keep my face impassive, not saying anything.
Malice shakes his head, a grimace twisting his lips. “She’s becoming too much of a fucking distraction,” he grumbles. “She’s taking up too much of our goddamned time. We have shit to do, and the more time we waste on her, the less time we have for the important shit.”
“Important shit like what?” Ransom asks, folding his arms. “Fucking random girls and then throwing them out?”
There’s no heat in it, and Malice won’t take offense to that comment anyway. Everyone knows he doesn’t care about those women, and we don’t care that he brings them here. He needs to work out that energy somehow, and he’s found a system that works for him.
“No, important shit like trying to secure a deal with the Donovan gang,” Malice grunts. “That should take priority. We’re one of the best chop shops in this part of Detroit, and it’s time for us to level up our game to match our skills. Wasting hours checking up on this girl takes time away from our business, and we wouldn’t have to do it if we’d dealt with her already.”
Something about his last words makes me uncomfortable, and I shift in place, frowning at an engine block on the work bench close to me. It’s not because Malice is talking openly about murdering someone, but more because we’ve had this conversation at least five times in the last two weeks.
We talk about killing Willow often, but we haven’t done it.
We haven’t done anything, other than watch her.
The question ofwhywe haven’t haunts me—because it’s not logical. Not at all. It’s not the careful, controlled choice. It doesn’t make sense that we’ve left her alive and now have to spend time monitoring her to make sure she’s not going to fuck us over.
And I don’t trust things that don’t make sense.
Shaking off that thought, I refocus on the reason I came down here, turning to Malice to repeat what I just told Ransom.
“We have a job from X.”
“Fuck.” He curses with feeling, dragging both hands over his hair and shoving it back from his forehead. “Goddammit. Speaking of distractions we don’t fucking need.”
Ransom sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair too and leaving a dark streak of oil behind from where he missed some when he wiped his fingers. “So what’s the job?”
“We need to steal some files and destroy a warehouse in Philadelphia,” I explain to them both. “We should head up there in the next day or two to get it done.”
“Fucking hell.” Ransom makes a face. “He wants us to go all the way to Philly? That’s gonna add at least a day on either end of however much time it takes us to do the job.”
“It’s not ideal,” I agree. “But it’s also not like we have a choice.”
“I know,” he replies, sighing. “It’s just…”
Malice lets out a breath too, and I can see the echoes of Ransom’s frustrations on his face. None of us are thrilled at having to jump whenever X sends us a job. It makes Ransom cranky and sends Malice into a stalking rage when it cuts into something we were already doing.
