Chapter 42
Bohnes
After greeting Widow and Alexei with much less enthusiasm than they rightfully deserve, after hearing what happened at the hospital, I’m as unsettled as I’ve ever been.
This is all Scarlett’s fault, making me care about Fuckboy Two, I think, using my phone to send out a hundred different feelers, tentacles of intrigue and gossip that twine through the entire city of Springfield.
I’m not going to need favors after this, remember? I can use them all today. Right now.
I’ve never felt much sympathy or worry or care for anyone but Scarlett. But now that she’s ruined my lonely little existence with Ash? What am I supposed to do if he dies? Cook my own breakfast? Make my own dinner? Change my own sheets?
“You fuckheads,” I snarl as messages start pouring in.
Nobody knows where Jonas Kelly is. We’ve got him leaving the hospital, that’s all on camera.
We have him getting into a silver Genesis G90 and taking off.
But between one camera and the next, we lost him.
Scarlett’s crew found that vehicle abandoned in a parking lot, likely swapped out for something else.
There’s nobody in or around that parking lot or the buildings surrounding it. On the traffic cams, we have too many cars to easily track them all. So how do we pick? Which one is Ash in?
“Hurry up, Hype!” Scarlett is shouting, pacing the floor in the office with a gun in one hand and a phone in the other.
We exchange a look, me and my Nightmare.
Each of us tells the other in perfect, furious silence that we’ve got nothing.
Nothing. I fucking hate feeling incompetent. I hate feeling human.
“I’m doing the best that I can,” Hype singsongs back, a strawberry Pocky stick hanging out of her mouth like a cigarette.
She pulls it in with her tongue, crunching it as she goes.
She looks like an octopus with the way the brightly colored pink sleeves of her hoodie are flying around.
A dozen screens and every one of them has something different on it.
“Well, it ain’t good enough,” Widow snaps, also tapping into the Prescott gossip network through his phone. “It’s not…he’s not…” Adrian’s voice breaks and when it comes back, he’s angrier and more fired up than ever. “We need to find him. I promised him. I fucking promised.”
I close my eyes and mentally scan our resources, searching for an untapped vein.
Valeria Navarro.
I crack my gaze to find Alexei rising from his chair.
We exchange a look, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing.
“Be right back, sweets. Just a tiny bit of torturing to do.” I grab the back of Scarlett’s head and press a firm kiss against her forehead. Her eyes flash with hope, but all she does is nod, leaving me and Alexei to our work.
He takes off outside and I follow after him, left hand fiddling with my pink semi-auto in the front pocket of my hoodie. In my right, I’ve got my phone. Live updates are pouring in from all directions and any scrap of information could be the crucial piece.
I’m about two seconds behind him, part of my focus diverted to the two dozen group chats I’m participating in.
Alexei opens the door to the cottage and walks right in, finding Valeria on the couch in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt.
Trish’s corpse is sadly not rotting on the floor.
Not only did I need to borrow a few bones, but the smell would’ve certainly caught in the wind and contaminated the main house.
Mr. Borisov removes his gun from his torn jacket and aims it at Valeria. I barely glance up from my phone, giving Alexei a chance before I pull out my kit and start teaching Miss Navarro the meaning of pain and suffering.
“Where do you perform the operations?” he asks, frigid and still, a marble statue of elegance. He looks like the future head of the Borisov Group. I’d grin if Ash weren’t missing. If Ash weren’t worse than missing. “For the organ harvesting. Where?”
Valeria spits at us, so Alexei shoots her in the hand. Blood and bits go everywhere. Seems like one of her fingers is missing. She starts screaming, holding the wrist of her wounded hand and gushing red everywhere.
“Address. Now.” Alexei fires another shot at the wall and Valeria drops to her knees, her tough Prescott bitch attitude stripped in seconds.
This is the sort of effective torture I like to see.
“If your answer is misleading in any way, I will pencil an appointment in my calendar for each of your sisters and your cousins. I will even fly overseas to meet your mother.”
The cowering idiot mumbles out several addresses, all of which I write down on my phone.
I’m already searching for these places before we’ve even left the cottage.
The door is shut and locked behind us as I send the list out to my entire network of contacts.
Some of these men are dark, fucked-up individuals that I’d rather avoid.
Me. Prescott’s resident fixer. I find them demonic.
Doesn’t matter. If I have to kill a few of my contacts later to save Ash now, I’ll do it. Not even a sacrifice.
“Scarlett won’t survive his death, Kellin.” Alexei pauses briefly before re-entering the house.
We turn to look at each other, sporting burns and blood and ruined clothing.
“Ash saved my life, Alexei. I’m not in the habit of leaving debts unpaid.
” I swipe a hand down my face, pausing as the messages flood my phone.
So-and-so has seen such-and-such vehicle around one of the addresses.
Reaching out a hand, I grip Alexei’s arm, leading him back inside and over to the office.
“Hype, find me a black Mercedes Sprinter on those traffic cams.”
Scarlett and Widow both pause in their pacing to stare at me and Alexei.
There’s hope in both their eyes which terrifies the fucking shit out of me.
Our only hope here is that Ash was right about Jonas: death is too quick for him.
He likes to play with his food before he eats it, right?
If this was Chet we were up against, Ash would already be dead.
“Holy fuck!” Hype exclaims, a matcha Pocky stick dangling out of her mouth this time. She’s pointing at the traffic camera that’s closest to the abandoned grocery store where Jonas dumped his first ride. “You got the license plate?”
I toss my phone onto the desk beside her, matching the license plate from my contact with the one on the video.
“Did you find him?” Scarlett whispers, looking between me and Alexei. She’s got her shit together. Of course she does, she’s my woman, isn’t she? But her eyes…fuck, her eyes…
“The plates match.” Hype is zooming in, fingers flying, octopus arms waving as she swivels from one keyboard to the next. Nisha and Bastian are waiting patiently for orders nearby. Thankfully, the Crimson Crew girls were scattered around the grandstands. We didn’t lose a single person.
Except for the one that matters the most.
Ash, you better not fucking die and ruin everything.
How will we get your bones back to add to our mausoleum?
It’s not acceptable for us to face eternity and not do it together.
Something about the idea of losing Ash’s body as well as his soul, that destroys me.
My bruised chest aches, pushing this low, vibrating pain into my bones and joints.
“My recommendation is this: send your girls to the other locations. Let’s personally check this one out.
” I point at the property on another of Hype’s screens.
It’s the office for Housing Dignity for Lane County, a bullshit NGO where Valeria Navarro was in charge of the books.
There’s a ten-foot-tall brick wall all around it and a metal gate with a security booth.
“We’ll bring plenty of firepower. The killdozer, too.
It’s not far from there, and worth the risk to drive it into the wall. ”
“Let me drive it this time. I don’t give a fuck about getting arrested.” Widow rakes his fingers through his bloody hair, searching around the room like he’s looking for shoes. He’s still wearing the scrubs from the hospital.
“Yeah? Well I do,” Scarlett retorts, raking her fingers through her own bloody hair in exactly the same way.
Peas in a pod, these two. Or, bones in a coffin, as I might say.
Birds of a feather, corvids with sleek black plumage.
“I’ll drive it. Might not be the witching hour, but Prescott understands what’ll happen if they fuck us over. ”
“May I suggest proper clothing and firearms?” Alexei continues, holding out a hand to indicate the hallway and the staircase waiting in the foyer. All the good stuff is upstairs, in the panic room.
“We leave in ten minutes.” Scarlett turns on her heel and takes off after Alexei and Widow, who’s already halfway up the stairs.
I grab her arm, pausing her in the foyer at the base of the steps. She knows I’d never delay us for a useless reason.
“I’m going to load up the cars for every eventuality.
Rope, anchors, bolt cutters, tarps, a medical kit.
” I drag Scarlett close to me, scenting the fear on her that she’s trying so valiantly to hide.
Her huge brown eyes peer up at me, and it’s impossible not to feel overprotective.
Maybe it really is my fault that we have other fuckboys in our lives, but I don’t care.
I’ll never stop trying to take care of her.
I might be her husband, but I am always, forever, her Nightmare.
“When we get there, you can drive the dozer into the wall. Let us take care of the shooting.”
“If he isn’t there, then what?” she asks, not because she’s weak but because this is one of those moments where the torture involves cutting off someone’s fingers to get answers, not wandering around the property looking for black widow spiders.
“I’ve put my entire reputation on the line today.
Every favor owed. Every debt called in. I haven’t bungled a job yet.
Trust, love.” I press my lips against her forehead, finding Widow at the top of the stairs, already dressed.
I’ll leave Alexei to select our weapons for the day.
Meanwhile, I’ll handle the overlooked necessities.
“We’ll save Ash today. If not today, then tomorrow.
And we won’t stop until he’s dead or we’ve had our vengeance, and then we’ll keep going until the world burns. ”
I smile at her, my heart filled with the comforting knowledge that one monster can have of another.
Killing Ash, alone, off-screen, and without preamble, that’s not Jonas Kelly’s style.
“Let it burn. It was never worth much anyway.” Scarlett’s face shifts, the stray strands of her dark hair sticking to the sides of a face that usually isn’t this pale. Her warm bronze skin has faded into a haunt’s white pallor.
I’ve never seen such hatred, resolution, or violence on the face of the woman I love. I always assumed that these qualities of hers, all this Prescott depravity we share in our veins, was the initial spark of my attraction to her. The part I admired most.
My aching, black heart—not rotten, but only bruised—splits in half.
I’ve just realized that when Scarlett is full of love, even when she’s gazing into the eyes of another man, that’s not only the absolute best part of her but also the mien I appreciate the most.
She kisses me once on the lips, no less passionate for how quick it is.
I kiss her back with too much tongue before letting her go, reluctantly, to change out of her ruined racing suit and into something more suitable for a stalking/kidnapping. We’ve stolen Ash from the mayor once, so why not a second time?
Fuck. I can’t let Ash die. I can’t let him die because it would kill her, and… I reach out and pick up the frog stuffie I won for Ash. It was sitting on one of the bottom steps, like he placed it there so that its face might welcome him home after the race.
“I need to pack,” I growl to myself, turning away and stalking off in such a rage that Scarlett’s girls scatter wildly out of my way. I kick open the front door and storm across the gravel to the Chevelle, clutching the hand of the stuffed frog all the way.
Yes. I need to pack carefully.
You never know when something as simple as a metal carabiner might save your life.