Chapter 33 Sloane #2
Deep, bottomless grief washes over me. It’s like a small part of me has convinced itself that she’s dead, and every time he says her name, it’s preparing me for the moment he returns without her.
The moment when he tells me he was mistaken.
That this person he’s found isn’t my sister at all, and that Alexis is already dead.
I let the grief sink into my bones, then I say the only thing I can say in light of what he’s just told me. “Well. Thank you. I guess.”
“You’re welcome. Now ask me why I stayed away.”
I really don’t want to play this game anymore. I don’t want to feel so powerless, pinned against him, unable to get away, either. I also don’t like how, thus far, he’s coming out of this smelling of roses. “Fine.” I fix defiant eyes on him. “Why have you stayed away?”
“I stayed away because you needed time to not feel stupid over me rejecting you.”
Whoa! What. The. Fuck? He is—he is un-fucking-believable! “You did not reject me. You’d just screwed me, asshole!”
“I’m aware of that. But you felt rejected at the time, right? If I’d come to see you two weeks ago, you still would have felt that way.”
“So you wait two weeks until I’m fucking furious at you instead?”
He shrugs. “Furious is easier to fix.”
I’m going to castrate the motherfucker. I’m going to repeatedly kick him in the balls until there’s no chance he’ll ever reproduce. At least that way, future female generations will be safe from the possibility that there will ever be anyone else as manipulative and clever as him.
He’s right. I hate that he is, but he’s right. I did feel rejected. I would have hated to see him fourteen days ago. Urgh. Out of nowhere, extreme exhaustion turns my limbs to lead. “I need to go home, Zeth. I can’t do this with you right now.”
He doesn’t say another word. He releases me but keeps hold of one hand so that he can guide me through the maze of hallways on the ground floor.
The ease with which he does this makes me think he knows this place.
Knows it a little better than I might like.
He keeps his head down at least, eyes on the floor until we reach the exit.
Gracie, the head nurse on shift, gives me a wave as we leave, but apart from that we aren’t stopped.
Outside, Zeth leads me away from the brightly lit area of the lot where I parked my Volvo to the dark back corner of the lot where the security cameras don’t work.
“What are you doing?” I try to pull my hand free, but his grip is solid. “Zeth. Zeth!” He stops. Turns. When I have his attention, I demand the information I need; I can’t go a single step farther without it. “Did you shoot that kid?”
“No.”
“But you do work for a crime boss, don’t you? Don’t you!”
Zeth just sighs, like I’m trying his patience.
“I need you to look after Lacey, Sloane.” We glare at each other for a long time while I try to work out if I should be trying to hide with him or calling for help.
This is a pivotal moment. He’s denied shooting someone, yes, but he hasn’t denied being on a seriously dangerous criminal’s payroll.
I know what that means. Whatever this man may be—murderer, thug, criminal—he is honest. With me, I know he is honest. Our conversation in the hallway has only highlighted that.
By not giving me an answer, he’s found a way around lying to me.
He gives me a loaded look. It’s almost pleading. And then he actually does plead.
“Just… please, Sloane. I’m going to fetch your sister. You can do this for me.”
“Yeah. About that. Where is Alexis? I should come with you. She’s shy, Zeth. She won’t just leave with you.”
He shakes his head. “She’s somewhere you can’t come. Somewhere dangerous. I want you and Lacey here, where I can have people keep an eye on you.”
“Zeth! She’s my sister!”
“You fight me on this, I won’t bother fucking going at all,” he growls. “Either I get her outta there alone, or I stay put and you can keep on missing her.”
Oh my God. He knows how badly I want to get her back, the scheming bastard. “Okay. Fine!”
He looks away quickly. No expression of relief. No thank-you. No nothing. Walking briskly, he brings me to a matte-black Camaro parked in the darkest corner of the entire lot. Through the car window, I see Lacey staring worriedly at us, her knees tucked up under her chin.
“You brought her with you?”
“I’m leaving now, Sloane. If the cops think I had something to do with Archie being shot, then it sounds like I’m due a trip out of Seattle, anyway.”
I could wrap my hands around his throat—not that they’d fucking reach—and throttle him to death. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”
Zeth opens the door to the souped-up muscle car, leaning inside to scoop Lacey out.
She looks even paler than when I last saw her in the hospital.
Her eyes seem brighter, though. More responsive.
He straightens, Lacey’s arms looped tightly around his neck, and for a moment he looks torn.
He cares for this girl. Loves her in his way.
For the fifteen millionth time I wonder who the hell she is to him.
“I’m tired, Zeth,” Lacey mumbles. “Just take me home.”
“Can’t, kiddo. Gotta leave you with the doc for a while, okay?”
Lacey eyes me suspiciously, then buries her face into Zeth’s chest. He gives me a hard look. “Which way to your car?”
I feel like being a dick about it. You tell me.
You’re a psycho, right? You’ve been watching me.
You should know where my car is. But what purpose would that serve?
The purpose of fuck you, that’s what. Still, I turn around and set off in the direction of my car.
When we reach it, I open the front passenger door, but Zeth shakes his head.
“She can’t. She won’t,” he says.
Okay. I guess I should remember that. He places her carefully onto the back seat, along with a small rucksack I didn’t even see him grab. Once he shuts the door, he puts his hands on my shoulders. “She needs to see Pippa.”
I nod, at least not arguing with him on that front.
“I’ll make it happen.” I open my car door, determined to get in and drive away as fast as I can—perhaps if karma is on my side, I’ll be able to spin up a few puddles of rainwater into his face—but he grabs my arm, stopping me.
Ding. Ding. Ding. The door chimes as he stares down at me.
“I’m sorry, Sloane.”
I blink up at him, trying to get a read on him. His expression is conflicted, making it hard to decipher his emotions. “You’re sorry?” An apology? Coming from him? Doesn’t seem like something he would do.
He looks back across the car lot, clenching his jaw. “Look, I don’t ask anyone for help. But I know I can trust you,” he rumbles.
“Of course you know you can trust me. You’re using my sister to hold me as an emotional hostage. You know you have me cornered. The question is, can I trust you?”
Slowly, a crooked smile draws one side of his mouth upward, his eyes sparking with amusement.
“Should you trust me? Absolutely not. Can you trust me?” He lets me wait a moment, still smiling down at me.
Ding, ding, ding. The car insists that the door is still open.
Zeth steps forward, carefully cupping my cheek in his palm.
With his other hand, he brushes his fingertips against my temple, leaning into me.
Unabashedly, breathes me in. “Yes.” He exhales.
“You can trust me. You gave yourself to me back at my apartment. I gave myself in return. I may not have wanted to, Sloane, but I didn’t have a fucking choice in the matter.
That means we belong to each other now. It means I’ll come back for you soon.
I’ll do my best to find your sister, and I’ll make those bastards pay for what they’ve done to her. ”