Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Cece
S hit .
A cemetery doesn’t bode well for us.
“You, get him to the gate,” the guard says, motioning for Xander to drag Liam to the entrance of the cemetery.
“How? I don’t have much in the way of hands or feet here, man.”
“I don’t care. Just do it.”
I hate to say it, but I preferred it when this guy was singing.
“I’ll help,” I volunteer, partially to not leave Xander in a lurch, but also to gauge what the guard will do. He doesn’t seem to mind, so I wiggle alongside Liam. “Put your arms above your head. Xander and I can slide our arms through and drag you along.”
Liam’s typically pale skin is a sickly paper white, his now shorter, barely brown hair soaked with sweat, a trickle tracing over the handful of freckles that I assumed would have faded with adulthood. He nods, then Xander and I loop our arms through, the three of us making painful, awkward progress across the gravel parking lot.
Once we reach the gate, the guard motions for Xander to wiggle into the graveyard. Then, keeping the gun on Xander, the guard leans down and zip ties Liam and me to the gate by our bound wrists.
Now that Liam and I are contained, he points the gun at me as he latches Xander’s hands against one leg with a zip tie under his knee. Xander effectively hobbled, he cuts his ankles free. “Up. Walk,” he barks.
Xander gets to his feet and starts a slow, half-bent shuffle into the graveyard, a spotlight in the distance signaling the destination, the shadow of a backhoe shouting that this is the end.
The fact that there are two other cars in the lot doesn’t help me figure out how to get out of this mess. More people, likely more guns, and what must be three pre-dug graves waiting for us. Mob, Triad, and Cartel, all cut loose without heirs, a power vacuum created in a single night under the sliver of a new-ish moon.
I’d appreciate how well planned this was if I wasn’t going to die tonight.
Xander must be thinking along the same lines. “Say Cece?” he calls.
“Yeah?”
“You owe me a date, this life or the next, got it?”
On an impulse, I shimmy to standing, then lean forward and loop my thumbs in the top of the obnoxious strapless dress and yank down, my boobs falling free. “I can’t guarantee this package in the next life, so aim for this one,” I call out, not liking that he’s already accepted there’s probably no way out of this.
He whistles, winking as he shuffles past the first line of headstones. “I’ll keep that in mind, sweet thing.”
Liam makes a choked sound, drawing my attention, only to find he’s transfixed by the boobage that’s now dangling over his face. Not that it’s super clear, what with my arms zip tied to an iron bar, but still. It’s a pretty enough picture, I suppose. “This isn’t for you, O’Connell,” I say.
“Even if I’m a dying man?”
“We’re all dying. It’s just a matter of when.” I go to shimmy the fabric back up, but his hand on my ankle stalls the motion.
“Don’t.”
“You really think you’re dying?”
“It took a hell of a long time to get that bandage on.”
“I warned the guy. He didn’t listen. I can’t say I’d choose this monstrosity of a dress for my next kidnapping.” I flop down on my butt beside Liam’s arms.
“Planning on another trip in a trunk?”
“If it means I made it through this one, then yeah.”
He goes quiet. I can’t blame him. We’re all crime kids—we learned how to calculate odds before we learned long division, and it’s easy to see the odds aren’t in our favor tonight.
The chattering howls of coyotes in the distance have a shiver running down my spine, but I opt to keep my boobs out for the time being. Just in case they are his last pair.
The dress was strangling them, anyway.
“Can I ask a question?” Liam asks, his voice quiet and deep, a comfort that I wish I had more time to enjoy.
“Shoot.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Flash Xander? Because he needs something to fight for, even if this situation is hopeless.”
“Not that. Not now. Why’d you try to drown yourself when you were a little kid?”
“Oh. That.” I scoot forward, resting my chin on my knees, the silk pooling around my waist, the dress fluid against my skin now that I’ve lost the annoying fluff. “I wasn’t trying to drown myself.”
“What else could it have been?”
“Honestly?”
“Please. It’s bugged me for years.”
I sigh. “I just really missed being hugged. And the bottom of the pool was as close as I could get.”
The silence lets murmured conversation from the other side of the graveyard reach my ears, something about one voice tickling my memory, but not enough for me to place it.
Liam’s thumb brushes the inside of my wrist, and the gentleness has tears pooling in my eyes. I blink them away, staring over the canyon between this mountain and the next.
“I should have given you a real hug that night. Not that half-assed thing I did.”
“It was more than I’d had in forever. It helped enough for me to make it through the worst of the grief.”
“Still. Maybe if I’d given you a real hug, you wouldn’t have been such a creeper, Rodriguez.”
“Creeper? Me? How so?”
“You thought you were so good at hiding from us, but Xander always picked you out. He teased me for years about your little girl crush on me.”
Thank god it’s night, or I’d be roughly the same color as the dress I’m not really wearing right now. “I refuse to believe that either of you ever saw me. Otherwise, I will have to go back in time and remove myself from literally years of my memories.”
He laughs, and because it’s Liam, I know it’s earned. “It was kind of cute, at least when Xander wasn’t giving me shit about it.”
“You’re not helping.”
“I’m just saying, in the interest of honesty, before we meet our maker, that you were a cute little creeper.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“But Cece?”
“Yeah?” I glance down at him.
“From where I’m lying, you grew up into one hell of a beautiful woman.”