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Utah wasn’t a fan of this part. That much was obvious. We only had this one day to get this done and I couldn’t mess it up. I couldn’t risk it not being believable because we didn’t have an extra day anymore to spend time making it right. Utah asked several times before he closed that door if I was sure I was going to be okay, if I was claustrophobic, if I understood that he wasn’t really leaving me there and he’d be right outside the door the entire time. He seemed more uncomfortable about it than I was at first.
I spent the first few hours pacing around, touching every surface in the container, looking in every corner. I counted the ridges along the walls. I did anything that I could do to make it look like I might’ve been looking for a way out. I was sure to flip my middle finger up at the little camera in the top corner of the container more than once in my fake searching.
I tried to imagine what would happen the first moment I saw Jersey again. I tried to imagine what the rest of our lives could be like if we survived this. It was difficult to picture dating Jersey, but that’s what regular people did so I wondered if that’s what we’d end up doing. Then I couldn’t help but wonder where we’d be able to go for these make believe dates. His house in Indiana felt safe, but it wouldn’t stay safe if we ventured out of it too often. Nate would never stop searching for any of us now. There would always be someone just waiting to see one of us. Our version of a normal life couldn’t be what anyone anywhere else would consider normal.
It was a short hop from that thought to the self-loathing ones. The reason we’d all found ourselves in this position came back to me. I shot someone. I shot a twenty-year-old man right in the head. I couldn’t do it to myself like I’d originally intended. I spent years being his victim. I spent extra years nearly fucking convinced that I actually was the problem. That somehow all those nights of Dalton showing up in my room had been only nightmares. Maybe I’d been delusional like they all called me. I was destructive in nature, and I was lashing out because I’d never gotten over my mother remarrying. I’d never gotten over losing my own dad. I had a brief moment of freedom. I had one whole semester of college to be away from it all, to convince myself that I never had to go back and that I could start over anywhere I wanted after that.
Except Nate and my mother were waiting right fucking there outside the building of my last class for the semester to pick me up and bring me back home for the break in between the semesters. He was paying for me to go there, so he was there to make sure his investment was worthwhile. He spent the drive back to his house asking about the kinds of things I would learn when it came to computer skills. He was suggesting that this degree, which was supposed to set me free, was actually about to trap me for the rest of my life in the form of employment for him.
I couldn’t handle that.
And I couldn’t handle Dalton in my room that very first fucking night back in the house. So, I ended it. Then I ran.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
trista
I was sitting in the far corner of that shipping container, squeezing my legs against my chest as hard as I could and crying into my knees when Utah opened the door. He sat next to me on the floor and just waited.
“We can go whenever you’re ready, Trista.”
“I swear I’m not usually like this. I know you don’t believe that. I haven’t been anything but an emotional mess since you showed up. But I really am stronger than this,” I said, suddenly confused at how I’d ended up in this weird predicament of emotion. I spent so many years alone and never let myself crash down that path for this very reason. I couldn’t even wrap my head around why I cared about what he might think of me.
I tried to glare right through him when he chuckled.
“You’re one of those,” he said and laid his head back against the wall.
“One of those?” I repeated.
“Emotionless and strong aren’t synonymous,” he said and stood back up. “Come on. Out of the box of sadness. Let’s go.”
He held his hand out to pull me off the floor.
“What’s next, smarty pants?” I asked.
“I’m going to go save your wrecking ball boyfriend so we can all move on with our lives.”
He waited all of about eleven minutes for me to get myself back under control once we were in that truck before he started talking about all the things that had transpired while I was having my shipping container breakdown. Indy and Memphis were ready and waiting to upload what would look like a live video to Nate’s people so they could watch me pace around and flip off the camera and eventually cry myself into madness in a corner for as long as they wanted while Utah and I made our move on freeing Jersey.
Whoever Indy contacted hadn’t been overly pleased that Utah took it upon himself to snatch me up for himself, but they didn’t offer Indy any information about why it mattered that he’d intercepted me. Indy mentioned to them that Utah had another girl in his possession too and when Nate’s people didn’t immediately offer any money or instruction for her return, Indy opted to say that they’d leave the other girl behind because he hadn’t been aware of a bounty for her. That saved us from having to figure out an explanation for why Memphis wasn’t in the container with me.
Utah was both driving and speaking differently this time though. There was no playful undertone in his voice, no joking, no room for my sarcastic comments in return.
“Are we headed there now? For Jersey?” I asked. “Is that why scary Utah is back out to play right now?”
“We are,” he said, and the leather on the wheel squeaked under the pressure of his grip while it tightened. “His tracking device started moving.”
“Moving?”
“It barely moved from the moment that it turned on,” he said. “Never shifted more than a few feet. In the last twenty minutes or so, it’s been on the move. Whether that means he’s decided to take things into his own hands or they’re moving him, we’ve got to take our chance now.”
I noticed for the first time that his usual basketball shorts and sleeveless shirts had been replaced by a long-sleeved black shirt that was tight enough on him to be a second layer of skin and black cargo pants, and my heart rate increased tenfold when I realized that he was prepared to hurt people very soon.
“It’s transmitting from a warehouse near a dock that the President runs. My assumption is that it’s full of people round the clock. Organized crime doesn’t usually take dinner breaks or have nights off. They just swap out in shifts to make sure things keep moving. Whether it’s a hub for drugs or firearms, it’ll be busy. Getting in and back out as quietly as possible will be the only chance we have at being successful. If New Jersey is in there moving around on his own, he’ll figure that out quickly too. Indy got me the original construction plans for the building. Some information about updates they’ve had done to the place in the time since our organization bought the place.”
“Updates?” I asked, trying desperately to keep up with and remember everything that he was dropping on me all at once.
“Indy and Memphis are trying to work their way into the building’s security system now. They’ve got cameras inside and out. With any luck, we’ll be able to see inside the place before we ever actually try to go in, unlock doors for us, that kind of thing.”
