Chapter 7
Jericho
I swear I have never met a more stubborn woman than Aspen.
I watch as she doesn't even bother looking over her shoulder at me before disappearing through the back door of the salon.
I took a chance today, knowing she always keeps a standing appointment at the same time, the same place, as when I knew her before. It seems she's a creature of habit, still coming to the same place on Wednesday, at three in the afternoon.
Knowing I couldn't get within a mile of the house she used to live in with her father, the one that she now resides in with Damien Gaines, I followed the sedan through town once he reached the outskirts of the city and traffic got thick enough that he wouldn't easily notice my tailing behind him from a few cars back.
I waited for an hour, knowing from our history that her appointments could take anywhere from an hour to three, depending on what services she was getting done. The thug in the car must not be a very good one because he was too engrossed in something on his phone to see me sneak up behind the car. I clocked him in the head with a bat before he could even look up.
I didn't kill him because that would bring more heat than I need, but he's going to have a splitting fucking headache when he wakes up.
The plan was to have her out of the city before his eyes opened again, but it seems that isn't going to work out.
I drive off, not certain that she didn't go inside and call Damien and tell him what was going on.
I'll be damned if I'll let the woman get the jump on me twice in my life.
I know I should've never come here in the first place, but instead of driving right back out of town and heading south, I drive around until I find a little hotel I can hunker down in while I make my next plan. I make sure the place is far enough away from Damien's territory that he'll spend a week trying to find it if she opens her mouth.
I'm not so worried about the driver. He wasn't someone I recognized from my time with the Reese organization. There's very little chance he'd recognize me, even if he got a chance to look at my face, which I know he didn't.
I don't know how he'll explain what happened today, but that's even lower on my list of things to concern myself with, despite the fact that I might've gotten him killed.
I've been gone for eight years. Unless Damien somehow has access to the emails Aspen has been sending, he'll never guess that I am back in town, attempting to take off with his wife.
If they do speak to him about what happened today, they'd chalk it up to someone else trying to encroach on his territory by going after his wife. I don't know if it will compromise my ability to see her again, but going to their home isn't an option. I know how well-guarded that fucking place is. Ivan Reese was a paranoid fuck who rarely left his house because he knew how dangerous the world he created was to him.
She may have very well ruined the only chance I have to get her out of this seriously fucked-up life she claims to be trapped in. But maybe her cry for help in the emails is just her way of getting shit off her chest.
I know from experience that when push comes to shove, she chooses to stay. I can't help but imagine that she'd turn her back on me every time rather than walk away.
She could very easily be so deep in this life that she doesn't want to leave. Or maybe it's real fear keeping her there. She doesn't know where Eli is, but with another payment to Ricco, he dug deeper and found the address of the school. I could put a plan together to get both of them out at nearly the same time if she would've just given me a second to fucking explain.
In my head, I try to play devil's advocate.
She hasn't heard my voice in nearly eight fucking years, and we only had a few short months together. Maybe she didn't recognize it.
She recently wrote about Damien hitting her, and she's afraid that even turning back to look at someone else would land her in more trouble.
She could possibly think that I was someone who was there to hurt her, and that goes both ways if she didn't or if she did recognize my voice. She has to know what a massive betrayal her silence was that day.
I wish this was something I could do on my own, but I know it's going to take more than just me to get to the bottom of this. If she doesn't want my help, I won't force it on her, but I at least need to look her in the eyes and let her know that she has options. She doesn't have to stay in a home where she doesn't get to see her son and where she runs the risk of getting hurt by the one man who is supposed to care the most about her.
I know better than to think that Damien sees her as more than another possession he can use and abuse at his every whim, but despite what she did to me, I don't want to know that she's out there getting hurt and worrying about her kid.
I pace the small motel room, trying to think of any way to take care of this shit myself, but I can't. My resources are all linked to either Cerberus or ICE, and I walked away from ICE without so much as a fuck you several months ago. I have no good graces left with anyone there, I imagine, and I wouldn't be able to choke down my pride enough to try and find out.
I pull out the new burner phone I got when I arrived in town yesterday and dial Hemlock's number.
"Good to hear from you," he says when he answers.
"How do you know it's me?" I mutter.
"Everyone else is home right now. I can honestly say, I don't know about Nyx. I'm a surly fucking bastard, but he looks like he's one stubbed toe away from taking out an entire convention center of people."
A chuckle escapes my throat. Hemlock and I were the first ones in the new cabin in East Tennessee, and I think us existing together alone for a few weeks kind of bred a deeper camaraderie than what he's been able to form with the others so far.
"Take him to the basement and set him straight," I mutter, knowing Hemlock has a certain set of skills that have come into play a lot more recently than I ever imagined they'd need to.
"Kincaid counseled against it," he says, sounding a little sad that systematic torture of a teammate was advised against.
"What was Kincaid's suggestion? Let me guess, some sort of team-building exercise? Maybe a campfire, s'mores, and a good old round of Let's Be Friends?"
His deep exhale tells me that my joke might've gotten a little too close to the truth.
"Maybe remind him that our chapter of Cerberus isn't like his chapter of Cerberus."
"They're both his chapters of Cerberus," Hemlock reminds me.
"You might have to do things a little differently than he does in New Mexico."
I knew we were picked for Gatlinburg because we're all different from the guys and gals that are on the Farmington team. We're a bunch of surly, angry bastards. I'm not saying the folks over there are chumps, but they do better with a group surrounding them. We were chosen for our ability to blend in and get shit done with a little more subtlety than kicking in a door and blowing shit up. Not that the way they do things doesn't seem like a load of fucking fun as well.
"Did you call just to give me shit?" he snaps, well and truly past our little bitch session.
"Is he scaring Zara? What about Ace's woman Cora? If they get a bad vibe off him, then you might need to do something about it," I say instead of keeping up with the joking around.
"Zara isn't scared of him and I haven't seen Cora enough to know what she thinks of him. I just don't want any problems in my fucking house."
"Keep an eye on him," I urge. "But you and I both know that Kincaid is a spectacular judge of character. He wouldn't put someone in your path who wasn't meant to take the journey with us."
"Sounding all fucking poetic and shit, Jericho. Are you being held captive and forced to get all reflective on your life?"
"I am sort of trapped," I mutter. "I'm back in Boston."
His silence is telling. He's read my file. He knows what happened here eight years ago.
"You think that's a good idea?"
"It's the only choice I had," I answer. "I need to put my monsters to bed."
"People will notice if Damien Gaines goes missing."
"I'm not talking about that kind of bed, but it might be unavoidable."
"Tell me what you've got and what you think you need to do."
I spend the next twenty minutes explaining the situation, confessing to the emails, and giving him every damn piece of information leading up to her keeping her back to me today at the salon and going back inside. I want his help. I want the support of the team I know I have, because despite my and Aspen's history, I don't want her to be hurt. I don't wish her ill or think she deserves any form of abuse she's getting from Damien fucking Gaines.
"Give me a few days to see what we can find out on our end. Try not to do anything that will put you or Cerberus in the crosshairs of any criminal organization."
"I'll do my best," I say before hanging up. There are always situations when split-second decisions have to be made and it's impossible to evaluate all the fallout that might come later.