Chapter 75 Kane
KANE
She’s high, tripping like a motherfucker as she mumbles to herself, nearly rolling off the backseat.
Sasha drives with one hand, pushing the other against Delilah’s chest to keep her in place.
The route we carefully selected to ensure no one would be able to follow us from the port without us knowing is pitch-black, making it more difficult for her to drive.
“I told you,” she whispers, pointedly looking at the dash. “Use one of your syringes so she stops moving.”
“We don’t know what she’s on. It could make it worse.”
“You had to lose your arm like an idiot,” she mutters. “Now, I have to drive like this.”
I grab the steering wheel to stop her complaining but she slaps me away. “I know what I’m doing. You’re so annoying.”
“Sasha, are you ever happy?” I huff, sitting back in my seat so I can watch Delilah through the rearview mirror as we drive through the empty streets.
“Yeah, when you’re not being annoying.”
“I’m a fucking delight,” I say. “You’re the one who’s annoying with your insane appetite.”
“I am not annoying,” she grits. “I don’t even say anything.”
“Other than ‘hungry’ every five seconds.”
“Shut up,” she hisses. “Your voice tastes like shit.”
“Your breath smells like shit,” I fire back, discreetly turning the seat warmers on. “We should bottle it, so we don’t have to use the injections when we want someone to pass out.”
“That’s it,” she warns. “I’m telling your wife.”
I slowly turn to look at the woman who owns me, in disbelief she’s there. Leaning over the center console, I kiss the top of Sasha’s head. “Do it. We found her.”
She looks up at me with an innocent smile on her face, whispering, “You did it.”
“We did. You know I couldn’t do shit without you, right?”
“Yeah, you’re my brother,” she says even lower, dragging in a rough breath as she tenses. “You put the warmers on.” She jabs her finger on the button.
I laugh at surrealness of having Delilah in the car with us as we get further away from the fuckers. “We fucking did it.” I continue laughing.
“This is chocolate sprinkle donuts,” Sasha says, looking back at the road as she pulls her arm through the seats.
“Yeah, little one. It is.”
We both fall silent as Delilah stirs on the back seat. The hood is off her head but it takes her too long to be able to see as she groans. She’ll be coming down from her trip since we left TRR hours ago. I turn the internal light on so she can see it’s me before removing my mask.
“Delilah?” I whisper when she’s not an image on my phone anymore. “Are you with us, pretty girl?”
She groans louder as she clumsily sits herself up, making no attempt to move her hair out of her face as she blankly stares at me.
Fuck, I should have got in the back seat with her, but the guards were watching us leave and I didn’t want to risk it.
I can’t reach her or touch her, so I push my cheek against the headrest to watch her.
Her head rolls back and her lashes flutter before she knocks out again.
“Kane,” Sasha says forcefully.
I turn, seeing her eyes fixed on the mirror but as I turn back to see what she’s staring at, my phone vibrates. Little shards of glass have fallen out of the screen, leaving black spots so I can’t make out the caller as I answer, expecting it to be Decker or Vlad.
“Mr. Kobalt,” the bitch says instead, “You now understand we all have choices. As you refused to make one, I’ve made it for you.”
One beaming light illuminates the car as she ends the call.
Sasha tightly wraps both hands around the steering wheel, the engine roaring under the weight of her slamming her foot down as the back window cracks and a bullet pierces the back of my seat.
There’s another one whizzing into the car as I try to climb through the gap in the seats to pull Delilah down but the raw stub hits her bicep, shooting pain up my arm while she groggily blinks.
“Get the fuck down!” I shout, frustrated at not being able to do it for her as the beam of light moves around the car. The small shards of glass have embedded themselves into my cheek and Sasha’s evasive driving slams me into the headrest as she laughs.
The unlit streets don’t help me see who it is with Sasha speeding up.
She’s a fucking nutcase, rolling her window down and sticking her middle finger up.
The roar of a bike combats her cackling as she pushes her hand into the gap between her seat and the center console to pull her knife out.
Rather than keep the weapon, she throws it at them as she swerves through the lanes, while I singlehandedly dig under my seat to find the other weapons we hid in the car.
I battle the limitations of my body and the little nutcase’s erratic driving, managing to get the pistol free.
Using my elbow to press against her shoulder so she sits back, I see the man on the bike dressed in all black with his visor up.
The portion of his face I can see resembles a skull, like it’s tattooed on rather than a mask.
I fight the pain, shaking my limbs to get a clear shot.
But Sasha looks out of the window, blocking me as her foot lifts from the pedal.
“You…” she says on a breath, paling, then quickly puts her foot down without moving her head from the open window. There’s no more laughter or joy on her face as she chokes the steering wheel, her eyes flicking to the mirror to watch them chase us.
“Move back,” I grit as I check on Delilah.
Sasha doesn’t acknowledge me. Her arms are like bars as her leather gloves squeak against the steering wheel from how tightly she squeezes. I can’t twist my body at the right angle to reach into the back, but there’s no more gunshots.
Leaning forward with my forearm on the dash, I look through the small gap around Sasha’s head to see the bike further back.
The nutcase is going over 120 miles per hour, yet they don’t speed up to catch her.
She abruptly takes a sharp right turn, nearly toppling the SUV, kicking up smoke and burning rubber as she turns off all of the lights, even the internal ones.
Her breathing is erratic as she slams on the brakes behind an abandoned mill.
Without turning the engine off, she calmly says, “Drive away.”
I grab the lapel of her jacket, but she slips her arm free. Quickly twisting the fabric to trap her arm, I pull, rushing out, “Stay the fuck here.”
She pauses for a moment.
“We’re travelling the world, remember?” I beg.
I’ve never seen so much emotion in her eyes as she whispers, “You have Delilah now.”
“Listen to me, crazy pants,” I grit, dropping her arm to grab her jaw. “You’re not fucking going anywhere. Close the door, put your foot down, and fucking drive.”
“Bye, Kane.” She digs her nails into the healing stitches on my stub.
“You’re not fucking leaving me.” My fingers dig into her cheeks, pushing her mask up, but she has the advantage of two hands as she punches into my elbow, tearing through my stitches.
Pushing back with her entire body weight, she escapes my hand and lifts the small pickaxe from the driver’s door before slamming it in my face.
She doesn’t even give me a second look as the bike’s headlight shines further away.
The little fucking nutcase takes off running at the biker while I remain hidden in the shadows of the old mill.
The murky grey clouds part, uncovering the moon as she tips her head back, howling up at the silvery light.
The sound makes the biker falter, and they slide across the road.
Sasha turns to look at me, slowly waving towards a second exit.
When I don’t move, she lifts her hand with two fingers sticking out, the other two tucked to her palm, then points at the back of the car where Delilah is staring into space before making a trigger motion, quickly pulling her hand up.
Fuck.
“Leave. She doesn’t need you,” Asher says.
“I fucking need her.”
“Choose Delilah again. You always do in the end. Why pretend you’ll ever put her second?”
I get out, unsure of what the fuck to do. But Sasha isn’t in front of the bike laying useless on the floor. Neither is the rider. For fuck’s sake! I keep searching for her as I round the car and get in the driver’s seat. The crazy fucking idiot is nowhere in sight.
I’m going to kill her.
I’m actually going to fucking kill her.
“If you ever see her again,” Asher unhelpfully says as he sits in the passenger seat.
“She’ll be safe now she’s away from you.
” His unaged eyes are in the rearview mirror as I tilt it to see Delilah in the back seat.
“How are you going to make her life worse? I can give you suggestions like when you were pretending to be me.”
“Fuck you, I don’t need shit from you.” I slowly roll back. Driving one-handed shouldn’t be an issue when I wasn’t exactly the most careful driver with my hands at ten and two, but it’s odd not to have the ability. It’s like the loss of my lower left arm has removed any natural confidence I had.
“Where’s Scarlet?” Delilah asks. Her voice is further away, matching the vacant stare as she sluggishly turns her head. Her half-lidded eyes don’t open fully as she continues searching for her sister.
“Tell her how you planned on killing Scar.”
Gritting my teeth, I ignore Asher’s remarks as I drive, searching for Sasha through the overgrowth surrounding the derelict buildings. “Come on, crazy pants. Where the fuck are you?”
“Hello, baby,” Delilah softly whispers as she leans against the door, blowing kisses at the air. “I missed you so much.” She hugs her arms to her chest, zoning out again.
I don’t know what the fuck to do about Sasha.
Why does she always have to do crazy shit?
I can live with the masks, even eating people.
They don’t test my heart rate, but disappearing is pissing me off.
I don’t even know what she looks like without a mask because I respected her decision to hide her face.
She could walk past me one day and I’d never know the little nutcase is there.
“Have you ever noticed everyone always leaves after you tell them you love them?” Asher asks.
“Yeah? Well, I love you, now fuck off.”
“You can’t get rid of your reflection. Do you see me staring back at you in the mirror you avoid?”
“No.”
“You see me, you see the lines on your face I’ll never have because this bit—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Is it harder for you to be pathetically obsessed with Delilah when you’re reminded she killed me?”
“You deserved it.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I would have changed.” He moves around the car, sitting behind me with his elbow propped on the seat as he whispers in my ear, “We’ll never know because she did kill me. You remember what it smells like when someone burns, so imagine your precious slut watching me burn to death.”
“Stop!” I shout, hitting the steering wheel. “For fuck’s fucking sake. Just fucking stop!”
“Kane?” Delilah whispers as she weakly pulls herself to the middle of the seats to look at me through the rearview mirror. “Where did Scarlet go?”
“Go to sleep, koukla mou. We’re going to have a very long talk once you’ve come down.”