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I had just managed to blow my nose, and reach for the mouthwash when there was a light knock on the door.
“One minute,” I pleaded, swiping at my cheeks with my shoulder as I twisted off the cap of the mouthwash, then tipped back the bottle.
“We need to go, Aven. Finn wants us out.”
I swished and spit, repeated, then capped my mouthwash, reaching to pull the door open.
“Mouthwash too,” I heard Quinton call back to Finn. “You ready?”
“Can someone be ready for any of this?” I asked, shaking my head.
“I can. My team can,” he told me, voice brooking absolutely no argument.
“I wasn’t questioning your abilities,” I told him as I followed him out.
I didn’t doubt that they could do this, that this was what they excelled at. Fixing things. That was their job. That was what paid for their fancy website that had to set them back a small fortune. I shuddered to imagine the rate they charged for services such as these.
But, I guess, if you wanted to stay out of jail – which, well, everyone did – then you would do whatever was necessary, even if that meant selling a kidney to make it happen.
“Come on,” Quinton said as we hit the kitchen.
“I’m coming,” I grumbled a little, wondering why he was snapping at me.
“I’m talking to the dog,” he told me, sounding almost a little amused that I thought he was addressing me in that tone.
Mackey.
How the hell had everyone – my stalker dude included – gotten past him?
“He won’t come,” I told him, pointing toward the leash on the table beside him. “You kind of need to corral him over toward the door, then get the collar on.”
Quinton’s head turned to me, brows lowered like I was daft. He turned back to where Mackey was doing a low, rumbling growl in the doorway that led into the back room. He reached for the leash, pushing down the clip. “Come on, let’s go,” he barked at the dog, doing that commanding voice thing that only some people seemed capable of. And to which Mackey, incredibly, stopped growling, and slowly came over, head down, letting Quinton slip the leash on.
“Sure he will. You just need to make it clear you’re the boss, babe,” he said, giving the leash a small tug so the dog would fall into step with us as we headed toward the door. “Don’t,” he demanded when I went to reach for my purse. “I doubt you want us to keep destroying your shit,” he explained, reaching for it himself. “So you need to keep that evidence to yourself until you get fully cleaned up.”
With that, we moved outside, my bare feet smacking against the cold, damp autumn ground. My eyes darted around, paranoid, wondering if there could possibly be anyone around to see me leaving looking all beaten up and guilty as hell.
“In,” Quinton called, making me look over toward where he was putting Mackey into the backseat of a very expensive-looking car.
I made no mention about how, when I brought him home, he destroyed my headrest, because, well, Mackey was being uncharacteristically staid, moving to sprawl out on the backseat before Quinton slammed the door.
“You get in too,” he told me, making me realize that he was holding the passenger side door open for me.
“Right,” I said, giving him a nod, trying to scrub the dirt off my feet on a small patch of fluffy, uncut grass. “Don’t worry about the fucking carpet,” he told me, shaking his head like I was being ridiculous.
I was pretty sure his car cost as much as my house.
So I wiped another two times before sliding in.
“Keep your hands clasped on your lap,” he demanded, then shut the door, going around the hood, climbing in himself, then arching over me. “Just doing your belt,” he told me as he reached for it. “The fucking NBPD likes pulling me over for bullshit reasons. Let’s not give them one when I have a battered woman in my front seat, okay?”
I gave him a nod as he buckled himself, then reversed out of my driveway fast enough to make my stomach pitch again. But it seemed to accept that there was nothing left in there to throw up, and calmed right back down as we drove out of my secluded side street, then onto the main drag.
I guess I had somehow missed the address of his office building, focusing on the phone number I needed. Because there was no way I wouldn’t have balked at the part of town he was situated in. Namely, the bad side. The really bad side. I was in the kinda bad side where no one really kept up their houses very well – likely because they were barely keeping food in their cabinets, so there was nothing leftover for new exterior paint – and the street lights kinda flickered. Here, though, this was where you didn’t park your car if you didn’t want the rims and radio taken. This was where you didn’t walk alone at night because, well, it was gang turf.
