46. Jackal
FORTY-SIX
JACKAL
When we woke up the next day, Ivy was gone.
As was my bat, Coyote’s jacket, and Dingo’s bike.
When we went to her and admitted what we'd done, St. Clair was already dispatching a crew to run the streets in search of the missing dirtbike. She then sat us down and admitted she’d known who Ivy was to us all along.
So she’d let a snake into the den, fully aware that it might lash out and bite someone.
We moved on past that faster than I’d have liked, but with Ivy unstable and on the run, who knew where we’d find her? And in what condition?
Time was of the essence.
We split up into groups, scouring every fucking inch of this town for the girl who’d turned our whole world upside down, the girl we’d taken a job to save. A girl who didn’t know us as well as we knew her. A girl who’d turned into a vengeful woman, all because nobody in her life trusted her with the truth.
What she’d become was mostly our fault, good intentions or not.
I cracked my neck, wishing there was a sign that led us to her, wishing for some sort of hint. I walked in front of the old apartments where we’d first picked her up, accompanying her to pack up most of her life and move it into the asylum. To join the Guild.
Nostalgia washed through me, deep and emotional, as I realized that even as much as I hated her for the menace she’d become, She was more than just a girl we had to protect, a girl whose father was our target, a bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, now, she was more. She was a smiling face in the morning at the coffee pot as we discussed the week’s jobs and divvied up household chores. She was a comforting scent in my bathroom that I denied enjoying, breathing her in after I closed my door so that others couldn’t know my shame, my weakness, had become the thing I resented most.
The girl who’d invaded my life and made me want things I had never wanted before.
I lifted my hand and stared at her picture again, wishing I’d taken more when she wasn’t looking. If I never found her again, all I’d have was this photo off the security cameras in the entryway that caught her as she marched out of our lives and into the night while we slept unawares.
Some things you really didn’t miss until they were gone. And by then, it was too late.
And you were just left with regrets.