Chapter 27
After getting two phones and activating them, I stand and watch the girls as they say goodbye.
Bianca is a mess, and has asked Heather not to go.
Luckily for me she was insistent that she had to leave.
I think if I had to spend too much time with her I’d probably kill her, which would be bad for my new relationship.
Heather grabs the taser and hands it to me, but I don’t take it. Shaking my head, I say, “Keep it, just in case you need it.”
They hug one last time, and Heather walks away as Bianca sobs.
“She was my only friend.”
Dropping to her knees, her cries become louder, and completely uncontrollable.
“I have to go back,” she says between hiccups.
“What?” I ask in total confusion.
“I left Marie. I have to go back and get her.”
What she went through in that cell must have made her insane, because we are not going back.
“Who’s Marie?”
She lifts her gaze to mine, and her face is covered in tears, as her bottom lip quivers.
“My cockroach. She’s my pet. I have to get her, Raven. She was my only contact in that cell.”
A crazy person trying to make sense to another crazy person is much like the blind leading the blind, but at this moment, I feel like the less insane person out of the two of us.
People fucking kill cockroaches, they don’t become friends with them. I take a deep breath while grabbing the bridge of my nose and then kneel in front of her, because I know, as nuts as this sounds to me, to her, it’s very real.
“Baby, we can’t go back. It’s dangerous, and I can’t allow anything to happen to you. Marie is a cockroach, and will be fine. Chances are, she’ll go back to the tunnels where she likely came from. We need to get going.”
I go to stroke my fingers down her cheek, and she flinches.
“I’m never going to hit you, Bianca.”
Her response is immediate, “I’m sorry.”
I sigh and pull her into my arms, remembering what Heather said before about trauma responses. The flinching was likely from her past, not because she’s afraid of me.
Getting up off the ground, I pull her up with me, and head toward the sign I saw earlier.
We’re taking a bus somewhere out of state.
I need to get to New York, because I have a house there, and money stashed in various places.
I know I need to be careful because the Bonetti brothers are also there, and I’m not sure if Alexsander actually has a lawyer that he was feeding information to.
We walk inside the bus terminal, and it’s isolated. There’s one man in a backwards ball cap, sitting and rocking back and forth, with music blasting in his ears.
“Keep your head down, pretty girl. I don’t want anyone to recognize you.”
She does as she’s told as we approach the counter. I glance at the buses leaving soon, listed on the screen behind the attendant.
“How can I help you?”
“Two tickets to Buffalo, please. One way.”
He types away on his keyboard, looking between me and his computer screen every few minutes.
“It’ll be two hundred forty-six dollars and seventy-six cents. You’ll have one transfer in Columbus, Ohio.”
I reach into the bag to get the cash I stole from Alexsander, and spot something I did not expect.
A fucking cockroach.
Not letting Bianca know her friend is in the bag, I take the tickets and walk over to the tiny gift shop, hoping they have something to put this damn bug in. I’m not going to let it get all over our food, and I already know, if I kill it, she’ll likely lose what’s left of her damn mind.
Bianca watches me curiously as I move through the smallest gift shop known to man. They have a rack of snacks, a cooler filled with drinks, and some travel toiletries. That’s when I spot it.
“Aha!” I say out loud, earning a giggle from her sweet lips.
Fuck. That laugh is going to be the death of me.
I grab a small travel container, that looks like you might put some kind of girly cream in it. I’m not entirely sure, but it’ll work for what I need.
“What do you need that for?” Bianca asks, and I shake my head at her, not bothering to respond, she’ll find out in a minute.
We walk up to the counter to pay, and I want to choke the woman out when she says, “Six dollars, sir.”
I glare at her, but bite my tongue, when really I want to say something about her charging six fucking dollars for an empty container.
After tossing two travel toothbrushes and toothpaste along with it, she changes the total to seventeen dollars, and again, I want to say something but don’t.
I don’t need to attract attention to us by skinning this bitch alive.
Fucking inflation must have hit a peak during my short stint in the asylum.
I toss her the money, grab Bianca’s hand, and head out to the seats. We have fifteen minutes before we have to board the bus, hopefully enough time to put this bug in a container, and away from my damn food.
I take a seat and she sits beside me, while watching as I grab the swiss army knife that was in Alexsander’s bag, and poke holes into the lid of the container I bought.
Once I think I have enough holes for the insect to live, I open it up, reach into the bag, and grab the cockroach.
Placing it into the container, I screw on the lid and hand it to Bianca, who stares at me like I just handed her a pile of diamonds.
One hand is over her mouth, covering her gasp, and tears fill her eyes.
“You saved my emotional support cockroach.”
Jesus. I want to roll my eyes at her, but instead I nod, as I try to ignore the feeling in my chest like I did something monumental for her.
“Thank you, Raven. I can’t believe you did this for me.”
I don’t tell her, but there are probably very few things I wouldn’t do for her. To see her face light up the way it is right now, I’d do an awful lot. The problem is, as much as I want to do good things for her, I’ll also do bad things too. I can’t change the man I am. Not for her, not for anyone.