Chapter 22 #2
“Prescott, you all know there’s a party tonight,” Wolfman says, husky voice oozing sex through the speakers.
“The celebration of our own Scarlett Force’s wedding.
Can you folks do me a solid? Don’t tell anyone outside of our neighborhood about it.
I know these big Bohnes parties are lit, but let’s see if we can keep a secret together, as a community. ”
Bohnes. My heart wails. My bones scream. My spirit shrieks.
There’s this sharp, clinical part of me that I can disconnect from every single emotion. The demon half of me, just like I said. I’m not a human woman today. I’m just a devil. That’s it. I use her to get through this, occupying the short drive thinking up possible complications with my plan.
If we get caught, we’ll be outnumbered. They’ll have a lot of guns. We need to avoid that at all costs. It’s critical.
“I’ll be right there, Kellin. Wait for me, okay?” I whisper, clutching the steering and using my heels to put the pedal to the metal.
Good thing my inner self is a slave to logic, or I might’ve felt a tear roll down my cheek just then.
“Make these necking shitheads leave,” I tell Widow immediately upon arriving at Pussy Point.
There are vintage cars on either side of us, wet-slick in the rain, with couples banging it out and pre-gaming for my party.
Bohnes’ rager, the one he planned, could end up going off without him if I mess this up.
I expect a lot of intuition from my husbands, trusting them as critical supports to save Bohnes.
If Widow, Ash, and Alexei don’t put their all into this, I’m fucked.
I’m putting my soulmate’s life in their hands.
The only possible solution is that somehow, in some way, they’re soulmates with him, too.
Doesn’t always have to come with sex, that connection.
Widow rips open the door of one of the cars, yanking a guy out and slamming him into the side of it. He even grips the boy’s lapels, all while wearing a balaclava and black-and-red contacts. The dude practically shits his pants.
“Tell everyone to leave the parking lot or they’re fucking dead—and not by our hands.
” Widow shoves him back, and the boy’s eyes flash with understanding.
He knows exactly who it is that’s talking to him, and also knows better than to mess this order up.
If the King of Prescott high tells you to do something, then you do it.
That boy isn’t stupid.
I keep walking, kicking off my heels as I move. I don’t need shoes. The muddy ground squishes between my toes, cold and sticky. I barely notice it. I forget entirely that I’m wearing my wedding dress. My hand flicks out, nice and casual, a signal for my househusband.
Ash scales the fence like some sort of creature, barely human at all. He’s gone and out of sight, disappearing into the graveyard with a single mission: kill. I let him go, dropping his leash when I trust that he’s doing exactly what I want him to.
All four of us will head in on our own, breaking apart and taking different routes to our final destination.
If Bohnes isn’t there then…he’s probably dead.
Alexei takes my face in his bloodied hands, meeting my eyes with the stern, strong countenance I’d expect from any man I’d offer my heart, too. He’s as steady and composed as I am.
“I will go in last. Do not wait for me.” He presses his mouth to mine, a short, violent shear. Rising to his feet, Alexei moves along the wall, running his fingers through the ivy like he’s looking for something. I trust whatever it is that he’s doing.
My gaze shifts to Widow, knowing that we’ll be wanting to take the same route: plow through bodies and run a slaughter. But that’s more dangerous. We’ll get caught.
“I go right and you go left?” he suggests, referencing the fork at the end of this trail.
I know the left side comes out at a spot relatively close to the mausoleum that Bohnes bought me.
He took me there for a reason, for a situation exactly like this.
He has dozens and dozens of safe houses, all throughout Lane County and even beyond. This is just the closest one.
If I were him, and I were wounded and outnumbered, this is where I would come.
“Yes.” It’s all I have the time to say to Widow, but our hands brush as we reach up to climb the gate at the exact same time.
Land in crouches on the other side. Take off running down the trail together.
At the bottom, our hands touch one final time and then we each split off in our respective directions.
Ash and Alexei are nowhere to be seen.
I rush noisily to the end of the next trail, favoring speed over stealth for now.
It feels like it’s been hours since Bohnes disappeared, but it’s really only been minutes.
Twenty, at the most. The men prowling the cemetery will be searching specifically for Bohnes.
If they’re posting guards, it’ll only be a few.
I can kill the ones I come across easily enough, silently.
The first man that I run into looks stunned to see me there.
Can’t blame him. I’m barefoot and wearing wet white silk and rubies in my manicured coffin-tip nails.
I already have my knife in my hand. It’s not even a thought before I plunge it into his neck.
It just happens, and it’s only so easy because he really, really didn’t expect to see me here.
Or, if he did, he didn’t realize the wild animal he was looking at was one of his targets.
The rain picks up, washing the blood down my skin as I slow. I’m breathing a little hard, and it’s too loud. I need to be quiet.
Taking the knife with me, I crouch down and creep out of the woods and into the cemetery proper.
There are fuckers everywhere, combing the place with a precision that implies years of prior training. We’re literally in guerilla warfare mode here, just a bunch of scruffy kids on a mission in the rain. Please.
Love is the peak of crazy. Even rational people will do absolutely insane things for the people they love. Going in here, in the middle of some highly paid mercenary team, I could very easily die. Easily.
But having the power to protect someone in an unfair world, that’s what violence is for.
Love and violence, tangled together in my Prescott-addled mind. Sometimes, the rules of the universe that dictate right and wrong vary between neighborhoods. Love and violence. Love and violence.
Because in Prescott, you just can’t have one without the other.
I’m not above getting low to the ground, slithering the way Bohnes does.
I’m on my chest, dragging myself down a row of footstones, hidden more by the grass than the old crumbling stones.
I see a little bit of blood there on a few blades of grass.
It’s protected by the overhang of a large gravestone, preventing it from being washed away by the rain.
I reach out a hand and wipe it off, smearing Bohnes’ blood over my own skin.
Boom, boom, boom, boom goes my wild heart.
Dragging my horrifically expensive designer dress through the mud, I work my way in the direction of the safe house.
I can’t really call the men around me goons this time.
They’re not goons at all. Already, I see that they’re planning to break into two groups.
One is heading off into the woods to see if Bohnes has escaped the cemetery without them noticing.
The other half is collecting bolt cutters and sledge hammers from the SUVs, ready to break into one crypt after another.
If they need to, they’re going to destroy all the grave sites. Just in case.
I crawl faster, hoping to get inside our mausoleum without having to make another kill.
One missing guy is bad enough. Two might put them on alert.
When they start going through this place like it’s a grid, we’re screwed.
If that happens, I need to at least be inside the safe house proper.
It’s possible they won’t find the trapdoor when they come in.
They’re professionals, but so is Bohnes.
If you die on me, I’ll kill you, I think, cursing him out as an exercise in staying calm. If I cuss Bohnes out inside my head, then he must still be alive. If he were dead, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d feel that it was wrong. I’d know.
He’s alive. He has to be alive. Fuck him. How dare he scare me like this on our wedding day? This is why I had the five-foot rule in place. I should’ve made the bastard ride in my car.
I find our mausoleum, and it’s not good.
There’s enough blood here at the front that the rain is taking its sweet time washing it away.
If there’s reason to look hard at this particular tomb, then that makes finding the trapdoor much more likely.
I use my hands to push mud into the puddle where most of the blood is pooling.
It helps, and if it keeps raining, nobody should notice.
Lift the urn up, find blood smeared on the keypad. Type in the code. Put it back.
I’m inside now, pulling myself into the crypt and dragging the door shut. It swings like it’s freshly oiled and doesn’t make a sound. Easy to move, too. Not nearly as heavy or unruly as it looks. Every detail is meticulous.
That’s why I’m shocked to see a smear of blood across the floor, the trapdoor open and giving away the secret of the safe house. That’s bad. That’s so fucking bad.
I forget about being silent, rushing for the door and nearly falling down the stairs when I see what’s waiting at the bottom.
Ash is there, tearing through a chest full of medical supplies. His eyes are peeled wide, unblinking and manic. No. No, no, no. On the ground near his feet, there’s a comatose body in a sea of ruby red.
I hit the bottom and scramble through blood to get to Bohnes’ side. I’m so obsessive over him that I don’t really notice Widow coming in behind me. He curses at the blood and I think maybe he’s going to clean it up to try and hide our trail. I don’t know.