Chapter 6 – Ava Jade #2
“How much longer?” I asked, speaking over the low hum of the radio for the first time.
“As long as it takes,” Corvus grumbled in reply from the seat in front of me, his elbow resting on the window’s ledge, his thick fingers propping up his heavy head at his temple.
I rolled my eyes and caught him giving me a spiteful look in the side view mirror. To which I flipped him the bird and he looked away, appearing bored, but the vein throbbing thickly in his neck told a different story.
“I’m fucking starved,” Rook groused, sliding his tongue over his lower lip. “Let’s stop for food, yeah?”
“No,” Corvus deadpanned.
My stomach rumbled at the mention of food, and Rook shot me a smirk.
“Awe, come on, man. I promised the girl an ice cream.”
He winked at me and dammit if my toes didn’t curl.
“I don’t care.”
“It’s five now,” Grey put in. “By the time we get back, it’ll be past eight. We should eat.”
Rook reached a tatted hand around the headrest to squeeze his brother’s shoulder with a triumphant grin. “Majority rules,” he said, smug as fuck.
“Fine. But make it quick.”
“There’s a diner up ahead,” Rook said, his teeth spinning the lip ring at the edge of his mouth. “Stop there.”
Corvus made a disgruntled sound and sank lower in his seat, bloodshot blue eyes fixed on the horizon.
The diner came into view as we crested the top of a low hill.
A short, squat building that looked like it hadn’t been renovated whatsoever since the eighties.
Only three cars were parked in the front lot and through the fogged glass windows, I could only see a handful of people seated at purple pleather coated booths.
I’d eaten at worse. Dad always joked I had an iron gut. Forged on trailer park water supply and fifty cent street hotdogs for dinner. I could eat whatever the hell I wanted here and be fine tomorrow, but these guys?
I doubted they could say the same.
“Pull around back,” Rook directed as Grey slowed, the Rover’s tires moving from uneven pavement to the dirt and gravel drive of the diner.
Grey cast Rook a look in the rearview, but did as his brother asked, driving us around to the back of the building to park beside a rusted old black van I assumed belonged to the owner or an employee.
“Who’s going in?” Grey asked. “We should grab some shit to go. I want to be back before dark.”
Rook nodded, his glimmering gaze hedging in my direction.
“We’ll send her,” he decided, still turning his lip ring.
“I’ll take their fattest burger,” he told me, licking his lips. “With fries and a shake. Chocolate.”
“Oh, so now I’m your fucking butler, too?”
“She’s not going in alone,” Corvus huffed, as though he was explaining something for the tenth time to a bunch of dimwits. It wasn’t lost on his brothers, either.
Grey’s jaw tensed as he shut off the ignition. “Where the fuck is she going to go?” he asked, and it was odd seeing this side to him. Ever since that night out at the warehouse, something in Grey has shifted. Hardened. He wasn’t who I originally thought he was.
Not their weakest link. Not by a longshot.
Though that’s what he’d have you think.
Corvus lifted his head from resting on his knuckles to give Grey an appraising look.
“She’s not to be out of our sight.”
“There’s nothing for miles,” Rook chimed in. “She could run as far as she wanted in any direction and we’d find her in half a minute.”
He wasn’t wrong. The terrain here was desert-like. A flat expanse of hard packed, hot dirt with the odd shrub or stunted tree jutting up from the cracked earth. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run to.
Corv’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t reply.
Guess that meant I was playing servant.
Though the prospect of being alone without any of them to shadow me, for even five minutes, felt like anything but a punishment.
Grey removed his seatbelt with a sigh. “I’ll go with her.”
“You won’t,” Rook snapped, cutting his brother a meaningful look before his expression levelled back out. “She’s got this. What’ll it be, Brother? Clubhouse?”
Grey’s brows lowered, his lips pressing together as he considered his brother.
Was I missing something?
“Yeah,” Grey replied. “With fries and gravy.”
“Corv?” Rook asked, expectant.
“Not hungry.”
“He’ll have whatever looks the least greasy.”
“I said I’m not fucking hungry.”
“Ignore him. He’ll be less of a hangry grump once I’ve stuffed dinner down his throat.”
I bit back a laugh as Corvus growled quietly to himself, his jaw grinding.
I slipped out the door, but Rook stopped me. His rough fingers slipping around my wrist, making me shudder internally. “Don’t forget your ice cream, Ghost.”
He slipped a small wad of bills into my hand and released me. “Oh, and I’ll be needing you to leave your phone with me.”
A bolt of ice struck low in my gut. “Why? I probably don’t even have service here.”
A lie. I did have service, and I fully intended to make a call while I was alone inside.
I needed a better bug. The one I’d planted in the knotted wood beneath the kitchen window at the Nest was a fucking dud.
It barely lasted more than twenty-four hours after the second charge.
Useless. I needed the good shit. The kind Kit’s contact could get for me.
If I made it worth his while, I was willing to bet I could even get him to drive it out to me at Briar Hall.
Rook’s devilish grin told me he knew exactly what I’d been plotting. Or at least, that I’d been plotting something .
He held his hand outstretched, the tough leather of his palm flat and expectant.
My jaw clenched as I slid the phone from my pocket and dropped it into his hand.
“Fine.”
He closed his fingers around it and nodded. I reassured myself that there was nothing they could do with it here in the middle of nowhere, without a computer and the proper cords to bypass my password and hack into the device’s backup drives.
My call to Kit would have to wait. At least for now.
I shut the door behind me, maybe a little too forcefully, as I could feel Corvus’ eyes burning a hole into the back of my skull as I stalked around the building towards the front entrance.
The smells of greasy bacon and home cooked chicken soup drew me in, and my stomach twinged in hollow discomfort.
I should’ve eaten more at lunch, but Becca had about a million questions and I wound up leaving with my plate still half full. A waste of perfectly good food. Enough to have fed Mom, Dad, and me once upon a time.
I wanted to tell her the truth of everything that was going on, but wasn’t sure what exactly the rules were. Not that I was averse to breaking them...more like I just didn’t want to deal with Corvus’ bullshit if I did.
The bell atop the yellowed glass door jingled as I stepped into the diner, the humidity kicked up a notch from the dry heat outside. I inhaled deeply, reveling in the greasy scent. I wondered if I could eat a burger fast enough to keep my ice cream from melting.
Sounded like my kind of challenge.
I ignored dirty looks from an older couple seated in a booth to my right and approached the counter, sliding between two tall pleather coated bar stools to flag down the waitress at the other end.
She caught sight of me and gave an apologetic smile to the man she was working down at the end. He looked like he was about a minute away from asking her to marry him. And from the look on her face as she turned away from him, she knew it, too.
If he looked beyond the pound of makeup on her face and her big tits, he’d have noticed the slight swell of her belly beneath her apron. The way her pupils were more dilated than they had any right to be given the lighting.
She had a nice body, I’d give her that. But in less than, maybe about six months, she’d lose the belly and trade it for the babe growing inside. If she had her way, though, she’d be one baby daddy richer, too.
Poor bastard.
Men could be such idiots. Only seeing what we wanted them too. Not bothering to scratch any deeper than the surface. I wished the three bozos out back were as stupid as the man in the plaid shirt at the other end of the counter.
“Can I get you somethin’, hon?” The waitress asked as she walked up, her shuffling steps giving away sore feet.
“Yeah. I need a few things to go.”
“You need a menu?”
I shook my head as she dipping her fingers into the apron of her faded pink uniform and drew out a notepad and a pen. “Name?”
“Evangeline.” The response came automatically, my nom de guerre rolling from my lips almost easier than my own. Another thing dad taught me. If they don’t need to know your name, don’t give it to them. Everybody could be a mark someday. Give nothing. Take it all.
“Pretty. What’ll it be, then?”
“A clubhouse sandwich with fries and gravy.”
She nodded.
“Two of whatever your best burgers are, with fries and one chocolate milkshake. A salad. Don’t care what kind. And an ice cream, what flavors do you have?”
The bell jingled behind me, and I didn’t have to turn to know it was Rook. His footfalls gave him away, and I cringed inwardly at how I’d somehow already memorized the sound of each of them. Their mannerisms. Fuck, they even breathed differently.
Like air wasn’t a necessary thing for them. Like it was lucky to enter their lungs at all.
I rolled my eyes. They couldn’t leave me alone for even five fucking minutes.
The waitress lifted her head from jotting down my order. “We have chocolate, strawberry, and va?—”
Her words choked off, eyes widening at Rook just behind me with a gasp.
Yeah...he had that effect.
A startled cry from one of the patrons by the door sank into the pit of my stomach.
Maybe it wasn’t Rook, maybe it was…
I carefully ran my fingers down the side of my leg, ready to make a grab for my blade.
Before I could whirl on him, he had me.
The barrel of a gun pressed to my temple. His gloved hand snaked around my waist, securing me to him, enveloping me in the scent of him.
Rook.
What the actual fuck?