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“Really? Who do you think you are to him? Love of his life? Let me tell you something about your precious Stas. You’re a dalliance. He’s got women in every port. Tigers don’t change their stripes. He should be thanking me. You all should.” He looks at me and adds, “You know it’s true, don’t you? You know you don’t go together. He doesn’t just leave town for business, you know. Just like your father didn’t.” A grin spreads over his lips and I wonder how he knows anything about my father. “Stas and I are quite alike, actually. That’s how I knew how to play him. Let me kill you? He would never do that. He’d rather capitulate to all my demands than lose the bigger game. You get to live and he can always think that he won, that you’re alive because of his higher intellect when it’s a relief to him to be free of you as well. Feeds his hero complex.”
I don’t care to give him the satisfaction, but I’m dying inside. My body is numb. All the niggling doubts I had come to fruition. If he lied about what he did for a living, he’ll lie about everything else.
The guilt I had about lying to him doesn’t feel any better, but hearing this man’s words it feels like someone has taken a rusty razor blade to the most sensitive parts of me.
A new being comes alive in my core. I’m not Ginger anymore and I’m not Stephanie. I don’t know who I am.
An aching, wretched soul that grabs onto my heart and squeezes, laughing and saying every sort of I-told-you-so.
I’ll take whatever is next, as long as it takes me away from here. From Stas. From the painful entity that has sprung to life inside of me. As long as they don’t hurt him. I still don’t want that, ever. Or my donkeys.
13
Stas
I’m ready to tear into anything within reach.
The warehouse where we are gathered is filled with guys, but we still have zero idea where my girl’s being held and the deadline is looming. When George hands me an iPad with a video feed running, I’m ready to tear his fucking head off, but the look in his eyes tells me this is important.
On the video screen I see Hamish—one of the army of George’s less-than-sparkling-clean acquaintances—holding a man by the back of his jacket. Hamish is a local; he comes from near Herald, Virginia, where Ginger had said her family lived in that fucking cult.
I never could find any evidence or history of a cult near there but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist, so it was a long shot but we set up a bunch of guys in the area asking questions, flashing Ginger’s picture and trying to beat the bushes for anything about anything.
My thinking was maybe, just maybe, there was some bit of information Calfus knew about her or the cult or something. It didn’t make any logical sense, but you follow every lead and clue until it isn’t one anymore.
I wasn’t going to dismiss the possibility there was some thread that may tie some clues together. Guess it paid off.
We had Hamish running surveillance around Herald at bars and questioning some informants around the area that were friendly to our sort.
When I told George to set me up with an army, he took it very seriously with more scouts than I could count.
“Look who I found.” Hamish’s voice crackles on the microphone setup he’s using. He is standing in a parking lot that looks to be in the middle of nowhere, outside a dive bar.
Hamish is practically dangling the portly man on is tiptoes and his glazed eyes tell me he’s not an amateur drunk.
“Who is he?” I snap, my patience long gone. I don’t have time for guessing games and sleep has been non-existent, so my temper is raw. “Who are you?” I blast at the video screen, knowing he must have something to do with the hurricane that’s become my life, or Hamish wouldn’t have brought him to me.
“Nobody you want to know.” The man slurs. “Nobody anyone wants to know.”
His uncooperative tone pushes me over the edge. “I don’t have fucking time for this shit.”
“Oh, you’re so tough…” He smacks back.
“Shut the fuck up.” Hamish shakes him and his eyes roll back, but he shuts up. “He’s Ginger’s father.”
A chill takes me by surprise at his words. “What?”
“Tanner Lukus. Father of Stephanie Lukus, who you know as Ginger Murphy.” He sees the look on my face and nods, his expression grave. “Yeah. One of our people called me and said there was a guy running his mouth. Telling anyone who’d listen all about his daughter, how they were going to get her back and things would go back to the way they were. Showed him her picture and he couldn’t hold a poker face for nothing. Didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. I beat the extra details out of him once I got here, and you are not going to believe those.” Hamish shakes his head.
