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Savage happiness swells in my chest just thinking about that. “Good. So what’s next?”
“First, breakfast,” Knox says, plopping down at the kitchen table with his plate of food. “Then murder.”
“Not murder yet,” Gage tells him, shaking his head. “At least not without a plan. We’ve cut off one of Julian’s major buyers, but he still has other things we need to take. We need to cut off more so he’ll really feel it. It’ll take some digging to find out what the next step is.”
It sounds like more waiting, which isn’t my favorite, but there’s nothing for it. We can’t rush it and risk fucking it up and tipping Julian off that we’re coming for him.
But I’m still so eager for the next move.
* * *
Unfortunately,I was definitely right about there being more waiting. Planning our next strike on Julian is a bit more time consuming than the first hit we landed on him. There are several moving parts in our ultimate plan to destroy him, so we set about plugging away at several different things at once.
It makes me antsy to wait, though. Every time I have a bad dream about Hannah’s death, I wake up with the knowledge that Julian hasn’t suffered for it. Not yet. I want to finally end him. The high and satisfaction of what happened at the club is starting to fade, and I have to remind myself every day to be patient.
Several days after the hit at the club, I get up and press a kiss to my fingers and then press my fingers to the picture of Hannah. I look at it for a long moment, missing her so fiercely it aches.
It’s worse now than the first time I thought she was dead. Then, I was filled with righteous fury, and I wanted to destroy everyone who had a hand in her death. But seeing her die a second time, even if it was the only real time she’d died, just hurt even more.
It was like getting her back and then having her ripped away. Some kind of cruel joke of the universe that stabs me every time I remember she’s gone.
I let out a rough sigh and change my nail polish again, removing all the black from the night at the club and going with a metallic blue this time. Blue was one of Hannah’s favorite colors, so it makes me feel a little closer to her.
Once my nails are dry, I get dressed and head downstairs to meet the guys.
Ash, Knox, and I go out, doing more digging into the inner workings of Julian’s business shit.
They know the right people to talk to, and it’s easier for me to go with them than wait at home, since seeing progress being made makes some of that antsy feeling go away. We’re working hard at this and not just stagnating, even if it feels like it’s not happening fast enough for me.
We talk to some of their informants, and Knox has a phone call with their hacker friend to see if there’s anything he can do to get access to some of Julian’s records. It doesn’t sound promising from what I can gather from the one sided conversation I can hear, but it’s something to think about.
“I gotta take a leak,” Knox says when he hangs up the phone.
“Charming,” Ash replies, sounding pained. “What a beautiful turn of phrase.”
Knox rolls his eyes. “Sorry, lemme try again. Please, sir. I need to drain the piss from my—”
“Okay, okay!” Ash cuts him off, laughing and waving his hands. “We’ll stop at the gas station. We could use a top off anyway, and I want snacks. That good with you?” He glances at me, and I shrug a shoulder.
“Sure. I like snacks.”
Ash grins and we get back in the car and drive to the closest gas station. It’s one of those stops on the highway that has gas pumps and a large convenience store, so people on long trips can stretch their legs and buy a lot of overpriced drinks.
Knox is out of the car in a hurry, going to the bathroom, and Ash and I take our time, walking through the aisles, checking out the snacks.
“What do you think about these donuts?” he asks, holding up a pack of them. “Good or trash.”
“Good trash,” I tell him, grinning. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“See, this is why I like you. You’re a genius.”
Knox comes out of the bathroom, whistling a little, and he joins our snack debate, talking about the benefits of spicy snacks over cheesy ones with Ash in a loud voice.
I glance over to see if any of the other people in the store give a shit, and my eyes fall on Julian and Natalie Maduro, coming through the door.
In this instant, it’s like time has screeched to a halt and all the air has been sucked out of the room. I don’t pay much attention to Natalie, but my eyes are locked on Julian. There’s a moment where he’s overlaid in my mind with how he looked before, standing in that alley with fury twisting his features, his gun raised.
I’m in a shop, not an alley, but it’s like I can hear Hannah’s labored breathing and feel her blood coating my hands all over again.
