30. 30 – Maverick
T ipping my face up into the shower spray, I let the heat of the water wash away the filth I feel after a day spent working on identifying the exact locations of John Miller’s victims.
The heaviness continues to press down on my shoulders as I turn it off, reaching for a towel and wrapping it around my waist as I head back into the bedroom.
As tired as I feel, my body still feels too wired to sleep. I’m very aware of the fact that Enzo is working out his demons on John downstairs right now, whilst Zella is sleeping, blissfully unaware of the torture taking place right under her nose.
Ryder pokes his head around the door, coming in when he sees me sat on the edge of my bed. “You too?”
I nod. We both feel it, when the end of a case like this one draws near. We know what we have to do. “You want to go tonight? Get it over with?”
“Yeah.” He sighs heavily, taking a seat next to me. “What about Zella? I don’t want to leave her on her own.”
I frown into my hands. It’s a good point. Enzo is not someone to be reasoned with when he’s in this mood. We’ll be lucky if we see him anytime in the next two days.
A creak on the floorboards outside pulls me from my thoughts, and Ryder and I pause as Zella appears in the open doorway. “Sweetheart?”
It takes me a bare moment to notice the shivers racking her frame. She’s shaking violently, and as I jump up and move towards her, I notice the paleness of her skin.
Ryder is close behind as I take her hand and gently draw her inside. I nudge her to sit on the end of the bed and she folds her fingers in her lap, her eyes darting everywhere like a wild animal.
A thought occurs to me, and I share a look with Ryder. Comprehension dawns on his face, and he drops down, putting his hands on her knees and rubbing them as though her skin is cold to the touch.
“Princess,” he coaxes softly. “What’s the matter?”
But it’s me she searches out when she looks up. “I didn’t… I didn’t realize.”
She wets her lips with the tip of her tongue. “You told me not to go downstairs.”
Fuck. Icy fingers wrap around my heart as I kneel next to Ryder. Her eyes look dazed, her forehead clammy when I press my fingers against it.
“I should have listened,” she whispers. “Why didn’t I listen?”
My lips press together. I know exactly what she would have seen. “Zella, listen to me. That man downstairs… he’s not a good man, sweetheart. I know that probably doesn’t help, but he’s a murderer.”
He’s a sick son of a bitch, in fact. But I don’t think the gory details will help her right now.
She looks at me bleakly. “But so is Enzo.”
I hesitate. The line between black and white, that sharp edge of good and evil, has never seemed as thin as it does right now, with Zella staring at me blankly.
“Yes,” I admit finally. “Yes, he is.”
She nods slowly, and I sit back on my heels, contemplating our next steps. Finally, I pull myself up to sit next to her. Her eyes glance at my bare chest, a hint of awareness filtering in as her golden skin darkens in a blush. “I didn’t mean to barge in.”
I clear my throat. “Don’t worry. Will you tell us what you’re thinking?”
Her shoulders sag, and she sighs. Her tone is defeated when she speaks. “I’m thinking… I don’t know. My whole life, Ethan would tell me these things about the world, and it turns out they were all true.”
“No. Not all of them,” Ryder says softly. “There’s a lot of good in the world, princess.”
“But not here,” she murmurs.
Ryder and I share a concerned look. “Zella,” I ask delicately, trying to swallow down the sudden pounding in my chest. “Do you not want to stay here anymore?”
She shakes her head, and the dread tightens my throat, only to relax a moment later. “I want to stay,” she whispers, almost too quietly for us to hear. “I think I’m panicking because… I thought it would bother me more. But… it doesn’t, really.”
She turns her eyes to mine, a question in them. “What does that say about me? If I don’t care?”
She looks so desolate that I wrap my arm around her shoulders, pulling her into me.
She comes willingly, and I breathe out a sigh of relief as her head tucks into my side.
“Enzo isn’t evil, Zella. At least, I don’t believe so.
He likes to pretend he is. Maybe he even believes it.
But he only goes after the bad guys. I’ve never seen him hurt someone who didn’t completely deserve it. ”
“But why him?” She challenges me. “Why does it have to be him?”
“I… he needs it. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Ryder shrugs when I glance at him for help. “He was brought up in shitty circumstances, princess. Something is broken inside him.”
“Has he ever tried to stop?”
I nod. “Once.”
He lasted three months. Three months before we had to sedate him to make him sleep, the nightmares inside him crawling out, making him a danger to everyone.
“It didn’t go well,” I tell her. “And given our line of work, we were able to work out a way for him to get what he needed.”
“By killing people. Bad people.” Her face is unreadable when I glance down.
“Yes. You asked what it says about you, if you don’t care. None of us care about the people on his table, Zella. They deserve everything they get, and then some.”
I turn her to face me, cradling her cheek.
“What I do care about,” I say firmly, “is my family. There is nothing I won’t do to keep my family together, Zella. Even if we have to hunt down murderers to do it.”
She takes a deep breath. “So you just… look for people to give him?”
“Not quite.” Letting her go, I stand up and move to the closet, pulling out fresh clothes in preparation for our trip tonight.
When I turn around, she’s watching me, and her eyes drop down a little too late.
“We identify cases where we can help people get out of bad situations, and we try to help them, where we can.”
“Sometimes we’re too late,” Ryder tells her. “Sometimes the bad guys win, princess.”
“So Enzo makes sure they pay for it.” I duck inside the closet, pulling up the jeans and buckling them. “And then Ryder and I finish the job.”
“What does that mean?” she calls out, and I tug the hoodie over my head before I head back into the bedroom. “Why don’t you come with us, and see?”
Ryder makes a concerned noise in the back of his throat, but I hold out my hand to Zella.
There’s a faint challenge in my silent question.
How much is too much?
If she can stomach what we do… then perhaps this is possible, after all.
She looks up at me uncertainly, but her hand reaches out, her fingers curling around mine as I lift her up. “Where?”
“You’ll see.” I nod to the parcels stacked up against the wall, the deliveries I was planning on giving to her this evening. “You’ll need shoes, and something a little warmer than that shirt.”
Ryder stands, making his way over to the packages and rummaging through them. “I don’t think the gold sequins will cut it this evening, princess,” he says, turning with some dark material in his hands. “But Maverick ordered you some plainer things too.”
She takes the clothes slowly, hugging them to her chest. “I’ve never worn anything apart from white,” she murmurs, looking down at them. “They don’t feel plain to me.”
“Get dressed,” I order softly. “We’ll be leaving in thirty minutes.”
She nods. “What about… is Enzo coming?”
Shaking my head, I place my hand on her back as I lead her to the door. “No. He won’t appear for a little while.”
I jerk my head, and Ryder follows her out, pausing beside me.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” he says under his breath as we watch her make her careful way down the hall. “She’s very calm.”
Too calm, considering what she might have seen.
“We’re in this now,” I say to him just as quietly. “It was going to happen sooner or later, if she’s staying.”
Even if it’s happening much sooner than I would have chosen.