Chapter 8
Nico
The motel room looked even worse than I imagined it would and the smell reminded me of a stripper’s filthy apartment I once visited.
The stripper was drop-dead gorgeous, but her Brooklyn apartment was a pigsty.
As I remember, I fucked her against the wall in the tiny foyer and didn’t even think about staying.
I’d very much rather not be staying in this motel room either.
But Bianca—Alice—seems to be unravelling worse and worse ever since we reached this town, so I better tread carefully.
She’s getting bossier and bossier, tougher and tougher, but there’s panic underneath it.
Not sure why I even care so much, or why I think I can help hold her together.
But I’m the only one here and someone has too.
We’ve just been sitting in my car for over an hour now, parked across the road from the church and the community center and day care next to it.
I had a hell of a time convincing her not to ride her bike here, that we’d be a lot more inconspicuous in my car, and we haven’t spoken much since.
Not that my car doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb in this shabby town.
No one’s come in or out of any of the buildings yet and the church actually looks closed. But it’s almost four PM now and I assume parents are going to start picking up their children soon.
“So what now? Do we go in?” I ask. I’m still starving and it’s not doing any good just sitting out here. “Meet this priest, see what’s what?”
She looks at me sharply. “We’re not going in. He could recognize me.”
“Seems like something you should’ve thought about before coming here,” I blurt out without thinking. She gives me an even sharper look.
Hearing her talk to me in that commanding voice before did things to me—and my cock—I never expected. And this sharp, no-nonsense look she’s giving me now is doing similar things too. Go figure that I might actually enjoy being bossed around by a pretty woman.
I like Bianca, the soft, slightly scared woman underneath all that leather who needs my help. But clearly, I like Sarge Alice just as much. It’ll be good getting to know both of them better.
And that is probably a very inappropriate thing to be thinking, given then reason we’re here together. But I can’t stop myself.
“I say we just go in, grab him, and put a bullet in the back of his head in the nearest desert we can find,” I say after she doesn’t say anything. “That’s the cleanest way to handle this problem.”
The look she gives me is still sharp, but I can see she’s considering what I said and finding merit in it. But then she shakes her head.
“Like I said, I want him to face justice,” she says.
“That would be justice,” I say. “The best kind for his type.”
“I want his victims to know they got justice,” she says quietly. “I want to give them closure.”
She’s the one who needs closure too. Badly. I can tell from the shakiness in her voice and the way her eyes are suddenly just soft. So I’ll shut up now and let her take the lead, do this the way she needs to.
“OK,” I tell her and look back at the church. “Just tell me what you need.”
I don’t think I’ve ever said that to a woman before, unless maybe to my mother once or twice. And I certainly never meant it quite as much as I did just now.
“What I need is to find enough dirt on this guy to make him turn himself in,” she says, reaching into the camera bag at her feet and pulling out a camera that looks a lot like a phone.
She points it at the church and takes a few snaps.
“What kind of zoom do you have on that thing?” I ask, looking over her shoulder at the photos she just took, which are clearer and more in focus than any phone could ever take, even from all the way up close.
“It’s some new surveillance gadget,” she says. “Skye gave me a whole bag full of them. We just need to get close enough to plant them.”
I could ask what the point of all that is, if she knows he’s guilty. But I’ve already done that over and over and she’s not budging. I’ll keep working on it. By the end of this week she’ll see it my way and then this nightmare of hers will be over for good.
Two pickup trucks pull into the parking lot in front of the church—one white, one silver. The door of the church opens and a man in black slacks and a black shirt with a white collar comes out, greeting the two women who exit the trucks.
The very air in the car seems to congeal into a hard, suffocating mass as Alice spots the man. Her face grows even paler, the redness around her eyes more pronounced as he watches the guy chat with the women. They’re all smiling widely.
He’s a fit guy in, I’d say, his early forties, with thick, dark hair and a body that looks like he works on keeping in shape. He lifts weights for sure, and probably jogs to keep that slim. I don’t think I’ve ever disliked a person more on first sight.
Alice’s hands are shaking as she lifts her camera to snap a few photos.
The silence in the car is absolute. I don’t know what to say. And I don’t think she can speak at all.
The priest stays outside while the women go into the day care to collect their children. He’s gazing up at the sky like he’s wondering if it’s gonna rain soon.
It will rain down on him soon. Just not in the way he expects.
The two women come out with their daughters in tow.
The adults continue their jovial conversations, the priest smiling as widely as before.
And even if I didn’t know anything about the guy, I’d think something was wrong with him by the way the two little girls are shying away from him, hiding behind their mothers as they discuss whatever the fuck they’re discussing. How young does he like them?
I glance at Alice, trying not to picture her as one of those scared little girls, but it’s impossible.
The only reason I’m not getting out of this car, walking over there and putting a bullet between the priest’s eyes is because I don’t want to further traumatize any little girls—the two out there and the one sitting inside the mind of the woman next to me.
The moms finally leave and the priest goes back into the church.
“Let’s get some lunch now,” I say and start the engine. “We have a lot of planning to do.”
I take Alice’s silence as agreement and drive off without waiting for her to say anything. She probably can’t.
But that’s all right, because I’m here with her and I can do all the talking—and killing—for the both of us. And gladly.
I’ve never seen Alice smile as widely as that priest was smiling before. I don’t think she ever smiles like that. But I mean to make sure that changes before we leave this place.
Because I’m sure she has a very beautiful smile. And I want to see it.