28. River #2
I don’t want to wait. I want to grab him right here and now, fuck whoever sees us.
This is the man responsible for Rachel’s death.
He needs to be the one cut up into pieces and tossed into a landfill like so much trash.
My hands fist at my sides, and my jaw clenches.
I have to follow the plan. We all have to follow the plan. There will be plenty of time for payback soon, as long as we all do what we’re supposed to do.
“You ready, Anastasia?” Asch asks. “Wait until he’s about… a minute into his speech.”
“I know,” Anastasia says, sounding exasperated. “We talked this to death. I know when I’m supposed to do all the things.”
“Yeah, Asch-face. Ass-face,” Kratos mutters. “Don’t bother Anastasia.”
“Assface,” Ares repeats with a small laugh.
“Shut up!” Pandora shouts. “Oh my god, you dickbags. This isn’t the time to be laughing!”
Pandora is cracking.
I don’t have to see her to know. I can hear it in her voice; I can sense it from everything leading up to this moment. If she’s not careful, she’ll blow everything.
We can’t let that happen.
We’ll never get another opportunity like this.
“They’re going to shut up and listen for the signal,” I say, trying for steady. “It’s fine, Pandora. We’re on track.”
The crowd is clapping for Allers as he makes his way to Blaze, guided by Asch. Allers waves to everybody, that same fake smile that might as well be copy and pasted from his internet headshots on his lips.
Bobbi slinks in behind him, but rather than follow directly, she heads toward the bleachers. I lose sight of her there, but I need to focus on Allers anyway.
“Thanks so much for having me, Blaze,” Allers says when he reaches the center. “Wow. When the Bouchards themselves reached out to me to collaborate on this, I was honored. One of the founding families of Kappa Alpha Omega Sigma!”
Blaze claps Allers on the shoulder. “I’m just glad you could take time out of your busy day!”
I wonder what Blaze did, exactly, to get Allers here.
It couldn’t have been a simple invitation.
It doesn’t matter.
“I’m sure he needs no introduction, but for those of you who have been living under literal rocks! He’s one of our most esteemed Kappa Alpha alumnus, and he single-handedly changed the face of the tech industry. So please, give it up for John Allers!”
The crowd applauds, and Blaze takes the opportunity to step away from Allers.
Allers’s bodyguard is tense, surveilling the room.
“Well, I’m so happy to see how many Kappa Alpha brothers made it out to this event,” Allers says. “It’s true what they say about brotherhood: no matter how many miles apart we are, we’ll always be connected through these bonds.”
I can tell he’s the kind of man who likes to hear himself talk, and left to his own devices, he might drone on for ages.
Good thing we don’t have to hear his smarmy voice go on for long.
The lights turn off.
Everybody goes silent.
Then the screens turn on again, and phones begin buzzing.
“Whoo, listen up, Kappa Douchebags!” Pandora’s voice rings out through the PA system. “Everybody who connected to the Wi-Fi—ooh, looks like that’s ninety-eight percent of you—has now had their phone hacked. No, you can’t turn it off. It’s too late. We’ve copied all the credentials and data.”
The screen flips through photos of Kappa Alpha members. I ignore it and approach Allers, using the light from the screens to guide me.
“Bank accounts, 2FA, your underage porn collections, we’ve got it all,” Pandora says.
Several people are moving, trying to leave the building, but we’ve accounted for that. The exits are barred, and Reaper and his crew are there to wrangle people back into place.
“And those of you whose faces are on the screen? Yeah, you. We know where you’ve been sticking your dicks.”
Allers hasn’t bothered going for the door. He’s frantically scrolling through his phone, yelling at his bodyguard. The guard shakes his head and tries to wrangle Allers toward one of the exits.
The crowd is pushing all around us, and someone shoves me in the direction of Allers. If I can push him away from the guard and disappear into the crowd with him… I just have to get him to the other door.
The idea of putting my hands on him makes my skin crawl.
I don’t know how many women he’s raped, how many women he’s discarded.
Even one was too many.
But the fact that it was Rachel makes it a million times worse.
I get Allers a few feet away from his bodyguard, then a hand closes on my bicep and yanks me to the side.
At first, I don’t think the bodyguard knows that it was intentional, but when I step between him and Allers, his eyes narrow. “Get out of the way,” he snarls at me.
I have to take care of this, and fast, before Allers realizes something’s wrong and gets lost in this crowd on purpose.
Fuck.
The bodyguard takes a swing at me, and if there hadn’t been so many people crushing in on us, I’d have been able to dodge it. As it is, I take the hit squarely on my jaw, and I grunt.
I don’t have time for this.
Even though the bodyguard was probably complicit, he’s not my target. Allers is the only one I care about, and getting to him is my top priority.
Forget the plan. I need to see him suffer.
I shove the bodyguard back, hard, and he stumbles into the crowd.
I take advantage of the split second he’s off balance and kick him. I don’t have enough room to put much force behind the kick, but it’s enough.
He goes down.
The second he does, I spin around, trying to find Allers in the crowd.
The asshole is still on his phone, probably trying to figure out how to figure out whatever it is Anastasia has done to it.
I don’t give him a chance. I grab him by the arm. He cries out, but I shove him deeper into the crowd. The hidden door isn’t even very far, but it might as well be miles away because of fighting through the throng it takes to get there. Allers shouts, but his voice is white noise to me.
I’m going to bring him to Pandora like the sacrificial lamb he is, and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.