Chapter 66
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
BELLATRIX
Iglanced outside the window, watching the city speed by. Blurry people strolling down the sidewalk avoiding the delivery guys on bikes, double-parked cars, and the occasional dog tied to a lamppost waiting for whoever was inside to remember they were waiting there.
Kinda like me. Except I was waiting for the man in the driver’s seat to let go of the leash that was strangling me a little tighter each day. The self-imposed leash. Vee told me to forget about her notebook. But I refused to give up now that I was so close.
There couldn’t be more than a dozen pages left to go. I’d been checking that they were legit before immediately burning them. I didn’t need to read what she wrote to know it wasn’t a good idea to leave it lying around to be used against us again.
Mama didn’t raise no quitter. She didn’t raise no fool either. She did, however, raise an impatient speed demon, who felt like this car was moving at a snail’s pace.
I huffed, a little louder this time, and Casper glanced in my direction.
“Where are we going? And whose car is this?” It was rusty as shit, didn’t have any plates, and smelled worse than the inside of an ashtray… if that ashtray had been left to rot in the sun for a year or more.
“Got it from the graveyard.” He shrugged, and I quirked a brow. “It’s what we call the back lot at Briarwood. Buncha old junkers from patients who showed up and never left. This one’s been there since the 60s, I think.”
“Is it even legal to drive?”
“Nope.”
I was about to remind the fucker he never answered my first question when he pulled to a stop outside a modern dark-gray building.
All lines and angles. Glass windows across the sides of the second floor and sleek wooden letters telling me it was some fancy gym/spa, the sort that had security at the door and definitely needed a membership.
“What are we doing here?” I asked him.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” he threw back at me.
I looked to Casper, who was already yanking his black hoodie over his head before sliding out of the car.
I followed suit, flipping up my collar and tucking it around my face.
I grabbed for the baseball cap on the dash next.
Because if he didn’t want to be seen, I sure as shit didn’t want to be seen either.
He chucked the keys at the valet station as we walked by, but he didn’t acknowledge the guy. Then he strolled up to the front door, flashed a card against the panel, and tugged on the knob the moment it buzzed him in.
“Ladies first.” He grinned, waiting for me to enter, then clicking the door closed behind us.
I paused, taking a tentative step forward, only to have him breeze past me again. He didn’t stop walking until we were at the back of the building—no one seemed to question him—where the signs for “sauna” seemed to direct us.
He counted the doors, pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his hoodie pocket, put them on his face, and peered up at the security camera in the far corner.
It was turned in the other direction, focused on the wall and not the hallway it was supposed to be monitoring.
Casper removed the glasses and shoved them back into his hoodie, drawing a hammer from that same pocket.
Then I watched as he knocked the handle off the sauna door, plucked it off the ground, and tossed it to me.
I caught it midair as he pivoted on his boot and strolled down the hallway the same way we came.
But not before replacing the handle with one that looked just like it.
Except this one wasn’t actually attached to the turning mechanism.
“What was that?” I hissed after him.
“Keep your voice down.” He shook his head. “Please tell me this ain’t your first time.”
I caught up to his slow saunter in three steps. “First time for what?”
“Making a hit look like an accident,” he replied as he led the way towards the back of the spa. He stuck his head inside what appeared to be a supply closet, grabbed my wrist, and tugged me after him.
“That was a hit?” I peeked out the little glass window but we were too far away to see anything but the corner we’d turned down.
“It will be if you hurry up and change out of those clothes before someone catches us.”
When I turned back around, Casper was standing in a uniform that matched the other spa workers and his hoodie and pants were stuffed inside a bright-purple trash bag. He shoved another uniform into my chest and motioned for me to hurry up.
I rolled my eyes, quickly stripped down, deposited my clothes into the bag with his, and threw the uniform on. It didn’t fit as badly as I thought it would. Fucker was actually smart enough to grab something in my size.
He didn’t say anything more before he was walking out of the supply closet with the bag in tow. Once again, no one looked at us twice as we headed out the back door and into a waiting car—different from the one we pulled up in but just as old.
Casper tossed the bag into the trunk and then jumped into the driver’s seat. The moment I shut the car door on the other side, he was speeding off down the street.
“Who was it?” I asked after a few miles of awkward silence. Though they didn’t seem all that awkward or silent to him with the radio on full blast and his hands tapping on the steering wheel.
“Who was who?” he countered.
“The guy you just took out.”
“You’re assuming it was a guy, myshka.” His lips twitched at the side.
“Fine. Who was the girl?” I grunted.
“You were right. It was a guy,” he said with a full-on grin. “Remember that politician?”