Chapter Twelve. Malachi #2
“Only your stalking ass knows about my other properties,” I remind her. “And there were just two people who knew the location of my main place. Abena found it because she paid someone off for the information.”
We reach the second level, and I repeat the same process on the reinforced steel door, then enter the loft.
“I’m going to assume that person has been efficiently and painfully unalived.”
I don’t reply. Because what’s understood doesn’t need to be explained.
“Who was it? No offense, but you’re not just antisocial and extremely mistrustful of the human race as a whole but paranoid as fuck.
Who did you allow to have the info of where you laid your head?
” she presses, striding across the living room, her usually graceful, confident stride almost disjointed, jittery.
Frowning, I study her as she crosses her arms over her chest and restlessly paces from one side of the room to the other.
“Derrick.”
Her head pops up at my answer, confusion wrinkling her brow. Join the club. I don’t know why I’m telling her any of this. Shit. I don’t know why I’m talking, period.
“Derrick,” she repeats. “But he’s been dead for seven years.”
“Yeah, he has been.” A splinter of old, dusty pain pulses beneath my skin. Funny how I haven’t thought of him in years—haven’t allowed myself to—and now he’s been on my mind a few times in as many days. “He was the one person I trusted for years. Not since…”
I duck my head and start for the kitchen.
It’s going on seven o’clock in the morning now, and the only sleep I’ve had was those couple of hours after Eshe and I fucked.
I need coffee, a shower, then to crash for at least two more before getting up and hunting down Abena to finish the job we fucked up.
“Before he died, he spent a lot of time at my place. We were damn near roommates because he didn’t have family. Never risked getting seriously involved with someone or having kids because that only gave his enemies easy targets.”
I fall silent, what Eshe relayed about my own family jumping to my mind.
God, I wish my own father had been as fucking thoughtful as Derrick.
Not being born would’ve been a blessing compared to being abandoned and watching my sister die in front of my eyes.
Shaking my head as if that can eject my thoughts, I round the island and open the cabinet door over the stove.
I pull down the box of coffee pods and pop one in the machine.
Just as I grab a cup from the cabinet above me, Eshe pads into the room behind me, nabs the broom and dustpan from the closet—I don’t even bother asking how she knew of it—and starts cleaning up the mess we left last night.
“I’m guessing Derrick told someone he was staying with you,” she murmurs into the silence several moments later.
I nod as the fragrant, strong scent of freshly brewing coffee permeates the air.
“Yeah, his Creed handler and a man he considered his best friend. Also the man who took him out when Derrick failed to complete a hit.”
Gutting Noah Lacombe had been a long time coming.
I don’t give a fuck that it hadn’t been personal for him when he’d blown the back of Derrick’s head off.
Just a Tuesday. The only thing that had saved his life seven years ago was knowing Derrick believed the same thing.
But betraying me to Abena? That greenlit my hatred that had never fully disappeared.
And when I sliced that tongue from his mouth before putting a bullet between his eyes, I made sure the shit was for old and new.
“I can see you over there just reminiscing.” She snorts, sweeping the last of the soggy vegetables up into the dustpan before dumping them into the garbage can.
“I hope you made him hurt.” Switching out the broom and dustpan for the mop and bucket, she glances over at me.
“Who’s the other person who knew about the location of your place? ”
“Jamari.”
“Yeah, he didn’t betray you,” she says with an abrupt chuckle.
I stare at her as she takes the bucket over to the sink and fills it with hot water and dish detergent. I know that, but how does she?
“Why do you say that? You was in his company for a few hours. Not enough time to make that kind of determination.”
She looks up at me from where she’s crouched under the sink, a bottle of bleach in her hand.
“And it took all of ten minutes of those hours to know how much that boy looks up to you and worships you. I think he’d throw himself in that river he rowed a whole-ass canoe across before betraying you.
When you’re around snakes long enough, recognizing purity of soul isn’t hard to do.
It shines like a beacon, and you have two reactions: Dirty it or protect it. ”
“Yeah?” I remember my cup of coffee and pick it up. “Which side do you fall on?”
She straightens and looks me dead in the eye, shrugging a shoulder. “Depends. But Jamari? He’s a fucking national treasure. Protect it.”
I snort, handing her the cup. Surprise flashes in her hazel eyes before she hesitantly accepts it. Not caring to see the gratitude in those pretty eyes, I turn around for another cup and pod.
“That national treasure is one of the best hackers on the dark web and at this very moment is either being hunted or recruited by the FBI. At sixteen.”
“All I heard is he’s as brilliant as he is sweet. With very discerning taste in movies.”
“Jesus.”
I pop the lid down on the coffee maker and focus on that while she laughs and mops the floor.
“How did he know to be waiting for us on the river?” she asks, wiping the mop back and forth, and it’s almost as if she’s lost in a trance. And I’m damn near caught up in it, only the hiss and pop of the brewing coffee yanking me out.
“I didn’t know what I was going into, so on my way to the compound, I contacted him and told him to be on standby.
Woods surround three sides, and the river borders the other.
Escaping by land would’ve been expected, and that’s probably where they’re searching even now.
The odds of them thinking we went to the river were slimmer. ”
“You just have canoes on hand?” She side-eyes me.
“You don’t?”
“Can’t say I’ve ever needed one. But then again, I’m not a paid assassin.
” She tilts her head, studying me when I shrug.
“You don’t feel bad involving him in your shit?
I had a body count at sixteen. I can just look at Jamari and tell he doesn’t know what it is to look in someone’s eyes and see the life leave them. Not everyone belongs in our world.”
I turn around, taking my time and deliberately picking up the cup of coffee. The seconds afford me time to get my annoyance at the insult she delivered under control.
“You claim to have spent two years stalking me—”
“Studying you.”
“—and yet you still ask me some shit like that.” I lift my cup, sipping the brew.
She doesn’t flinch, just steadily meets my hard stare.
“You’re the one who ran my shit down. So yeah, I don’t do hits on kids, and I also don’t willfully involve them in my business.
But, contrary to what you think, you don’t know Jamari.
Yeah, he’s brilliant and loyal, but he’s also stubborn as fuck.
And no matter how many times I tell him to leave me alone, he won’t.
It’s that same loyalty that won’t let him forget he ever met me.
So it’s either I take him under my wing and monitor his activities or let him go off on his own and get killed.
That’s what tonight was about. Feel me?”
She nods, her thoughtful scrutiny leaving me feeling splayed wide open, exposed.
I’m seconds from telling her to find something safe to do when she resumes mopping.
Once she finishes with the floor and empties the bucket in the bathroom—again, not asking how she knew its location in the loft—she returns to the kitchen and scrubs the pan.
“You don’t have to do all that,” I say, sipping my coffee with a scowl. “I don’t need a maid.”
“I don’t mind. I … need it, actually.”
“Nah.” I set my coffee cup down, and when she glances at it, I shift, blocking her view, and reach over, twisting the faucet off. “What you need—what we both need—is a shower and sleep.”
Irritation immediately flashes over her face, tightening her beautiful and tired features.
“I thought we covered you trying to tell me what I can and can’t do. Refresher course.” Her soapy hands ball into fists. “You can’t.”
I crowd closer to her, bumping her chest with my own. Bowing my head over hers, I get up in her face until our noses bump. Of course, Eshe doesn’t back down. No, she pushes closer because that’s what this is about. For her, anyway.
“You wanna fight, olori? Work out what has you practically climbing these damn walls? ’Cause you’ve been acting like you strung out since we got here.
Now I’m tired. I’ve been through a fucking gauntlet of shit tonight, and the last thing I’m going to do at God o’clock in the morning is indulge you and the guilt or whatever the hell is eating yo’ ass up.
You got two choices. Either I can give you a hit of this dick to calm your li’l ass down, or you can get in that fucking shower and take your ass to sleep so we can figure out our next step with Abena. What’s it gonna be, olori?”
Her narrowed gaze roams my face, and for a long moment, I return that stare, waiting for her to pop off.
With Eshe, there’s no telling. No one could ever call her predictable.
But as the seconds tick by and I don’t back down, the tension gradually eases from her body, and her lashes lower, a long, low breath shuddering from between her parted lips.
“Shower,” she murmurs.
“All right.”
There’s no gloating in my voice as I raise my hand and cuff the back of her neck. Squeezing the sides lightly, I tilt her head back, and the sadness—no, the desolation—etched there is a gut punch.
This woman with the eyes of a raptor, face of a warrior angel, body of a sinner, and soul of a monster chained me to her bed, forced me to share it, then broke me with savage pleasure.
And now she’s doing the same, but she’s tearing me apart with the need to destroy the source of her pain, her grief.
I didn’t ask for this, for damn sure don’t want it.
I’m not that beautiful soul she once called me, and I never aimed to be.
But in this moment, and for the first time since I stood between my Miriam and her murderer, I want to be.
God help me—the same God who forsook me on that same night when both my and my sister’s blood stained that ratty-ass trailer’s floor—I want to be.
Shock ripples through me at the unwanted revelation, a quake that rocks so deep, I involuntarily take a step back and away from Eshe, but with my hand still gripping her neck, I bring her with me. And if that isn’t a sign, a fucking omen, I don’t know what is.
Jesus Christ.
She stalked me.
Repulsion creeps through me, leaving a slick, oily grime behind. Not because I’m disgusted by her twisted actions. No, my revulsion is self-directed. Because I’m not repulsed. I’m hard.
What kind of sick fuck does that make me?
Hers. It makes you her sick fuck.
My mind whispers the claim before I can shut it down, and the electrifying shock of it is enough for me to release her. I pinch my forehead, rubbing it, and looking everywhere but down at her upturned face.
“Huntsman,” she says, and I drop my arm, a bolt of something I don’t recognize charging through me at the sound of that name on her lips.
That’s a lie. Yeah, I do. I recognize it.
Revulsion.
“Malachi,” I growl.
She doesn’t betray a noticeable reaction, but I can practically see that big-ass brain of hers working behind those pretty eyes. “I thought you didn’t want me to call you by that name.”
I didn’t; shit, I don’t. And I’d snatch the throat out of anyone else who uttered it so they wouldn’t make that fucking mistake again.
I don’t want to be reminded of the innocent boy I was—the person I abandoned to become the monster I am.
But somewhere in the past few days, I’ve started to crave that name from her.
Hunger for how she looks at me when she says it.
Like she sees the man as well as the assassin.
Like she can’t get enough of both.
That has my head reeling, my heart speeding so fast, I grip the counter to steady myself.
“Malachi,” I repeat, not offering a further explanation. I don’t have one.
But as she peers into my eyes, for the first time since she made the outlandish claim, I believe—I believe Eshe knows me.
“Malachi,” she murmurs, dipping her head in acknowledgment. Because she’s her, I halfway expect to see some kind of smirk, some kind of I told you so. Instead, looks toward the stairs and the bedroom. “Shower?”
“Yeah, shower.”