Chapter 55
RJ
The buzz of the clippers against my scalp marks our progress, the change too big for me to watch. Jansen’s idle chatter does little to help with the discomfort of being shorn like a sheep.
Almost five years of growth. Gone.
I have no idea what I’m going to tell Trish when I see her again.
Jansen tries his best, and with my direction, I end up with a reasonable fade. I wonder if Walker would have been a better pick, but he was gone long before I woke up this afternoon. Either way, with my new hair and close-trimmed beard, I look like an entirely different man.
“How’s it feel?” Jansen asks, handing me the prop glasses we had lying around.
I drop them on my face, and I hardly recognize myself. What was left of my youth disappeared with my hair, and the man that looks back at me is grave, contained. Joyless.
“Yeah. I get that,” Jansen says, responding to my silence.
I ignore my discomfort, looking for familiarity. “You’ve adjusted.” I point to his new piercings—a black gem on his nose and a hoop through his eyebrow—and the dark makeup smeared around his green eyes.
He hops onto the counter, forgetting that there’s still hair to be cleaned up.
“It isn’t me, though. When this is done, I’ll keep the piercings, but this hair?
Doing makeup every time I go out? No thanks.
At least you don’t have to learn how to do nail polish.
I still can’t do my right hand without smearing the stuff all over my skin. ”
I push him out of the bathroom as he tries to show me his nails. “I’m taking a shower. There’s hair stuck all over me.”
My shower finishes faster than I’m used to, but I take a long time at the mirror, uncomfortable with the changes and worried about what Clara will think.
The feeling of her fingers in my coils, the tug she’d give against my scalp the moment before she shuddered under my tongue, God, even the way she’d traced the lines of my cornrows for those first few weeks on the run, unwilling to say much, but unable to sit still—they’re another piece of her I’ve lost.
Those sensory memories are gone.
The problem isn’t that it won’t grow back.
It’s that the teenager who grew out his hair at eighteen isn’t the man staring back at me in the mirror. And I’m not sure that she’ll like the man I’ve been forced to become over the last few months. I’m not sure I like the man I’ve become.
I’m more sullen, focused on my work to the point of ignoring the people in my life. Despite my attempts to step up, at least half the time I’ve instead dove deeper into my obsessions. I haven’t been the person I’d promised I’d be before all this started.
I shake my head, knocking the spiraling thoughts out of my brain, not wanting to question the love I know Clara has for me. The same love I have for her. I know she’s probably a little different now, but that doesn’t change the way I feel about her. I have to trust that she feels the same.
Even if she’s getting married to my untrustworthy kind-of best friend in only a few hours.
Walker’s been silent since he left, but I still woke up early in case he needed me.
It was the main reason I didn’t go with Jansen last night—I’m prepped to jump in if everything falls apart earlier than expected.
Trips’ father gave his word that Walker won’t be in danger, but I'm not certain how much to believe him.
The man is a tyrant, but he also seems strangely big on keeping his promises. So, Jansen and I will run our parts of the plan alone without knowing if the rest of our team is where they should be, if they’re safe, if everything is still okay.
For the millionth time, I wish the estate’s security wasn’t so tight. But it is, so here we are.
I find Jansen sprawled across the kitchen counter after I gather my gear. It’s so uncomfortably normal that I want to turn around and leave the room.
Nothing has been normal around here for months. For more than a year. Not since a broken but brave girl knocked on our door and demanded we treat her with respect, while still learning what that looked like.
I don’t want to go back.
But I’m so goddamn scared of the future.
What if today fails?
Jansen and I are both risking prison tonight. And if things don’t go smoothly with the wedding, who knows what kind of danger Clara, Walker, and Trips could be in?
This plan is absurd. Sure, we built in redundancies, but we’re going against one of the most powerful families in the state, one with even more powerful connections across the country based on the names we found in the directory last night.
But I say nothing, and I don’t duck out of the kitchen, especially after Jansen tilts his head, catching sight of me in the doorway.
“Ready?”
“Yup,” I say, lying through my teeth.
He nods, then runs up the stairs to take his now typical exit through the attic window. I haul my bags down the alley to the junker of a pickup truck we bought a while back, the hood of my coat pulled low on my head, the wind biting my less protected skin.
Once I stash my stuff, I walk another block where Jansen meets me to go the rest of the way to the coffee shop. The heat inside the building burns after the cold air, and I let Jansen order us drinks while I approach the cop waiting at a table in the corner.
“You’ll be there tonight?” I ask, skipping pleasantries.
“Unofficially, but yes.”
I slap down what I hope will be my last zip drive for a while. “The girls should be there. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty damn sure.”
He looks skeptical, and I can’t deal with it, not from a cop.
“Listen, I can’t do shit for those girls. But you can. It’s your choice. I’ve got other things to worry about today.”
He takes a slow sip from his coffee, then pockets the drive. “Will I see you there?”
“No.”
He raises a brow, but Jansen interrupts his interrogation.
“We’ve got to head out,” he says, handing me a Mountain Dew that I know they don’t sell here, the scent of grass reaching my nose from his cup.
Turning away from the cop feels like a door closing.
I’ve always handled the important things myself.
I kept the roof over my family’s head. I tracked down every threat I could find against Clara, against my friends, even investigating the guys my sisters have mentioned.
I’ve robbed pedophiles, deleted videos and messages, done everything I could, but always alone.
This is big. The future of five girls rests on what this cop does with the information I’ve given him. I’m trusting my enemy with something that is objectively so damn important that I shouldn’t leave it to anybody else.
But I’ve got my own girl to worry about.
My own fucked-up little family needs me, and to focus on them, I have to trust my greatest enemy to save the rest.
Misery really does make for strange company.