Chapter 8
eight
The Angel
“I have a question,” Heath says, stepping out of the convenience store where we stopped to stretch our legs, empty our bladders, and grab some food. We haven’t stopped for a meal since leaving Faulkner, surviving on takeout, fast food drive-throughs, and gas station sandwiches.
“Let me guess,” Walker says, nodding to Heath’s latest acquisition. “You want to know if you’re at risk of death by hot dog if you eat that thing.”
“Nah, the heat kills the germs,” Heath says, biting into the end of the dog. “That’s why they keep ‘em rolling all day.”
“The fact that you know it’s been there all day and you’re still eating it makes me question your friend’s insistence that you didn’t try to off yourself,” Walker says, twisting the top off a bottle of tea.
“Hey,” I bark, interrupting them. “Don’t act like you’re one of us, asshole. You’re here for one reason and one reason only.”
“Yeah,” Walker says calmly. “The reason is called kidnap.”
“I don’t see you running,” I point out. “In fact, you’re acting pretty chummy with my boy here.” I throw an arm around Heath, who grins through a mouthful of hotdog.
“So my question is,” Heath says. “What if we get there and Mercy’s not there?”
“Then we kill this asshole,” I growl, glaring at Walker. “He said all of Salem’s clues lead to some creepy island the Sincero family lives on. If he’s leading us into a trap, he’ll pay for it.”
He may think I’m being a dick, but if he felt half the fucking torment I’ve been in since she disappeared, he’d be on the ground writhing in agony.
I just fucking found the love of my life, and I barely had a chance to tell her before she was ripped away.
She didn’t even get a chance to say it back.
I said I loved her, and she didn’t say it back.
I didn’t press it because I know she loves Saint too, and she’s confused, and I figured we had time for her to figure it out.
But we don’t have time. We have nothing.
Mom once told me that any girl I loved would be ‘the one,’ but she’s wrong. I didn’t make Mercy ‘the one’ by deciding it, or by loving her. She always was the one, and she always will be. It’s nothing I did. It’s all her.
I have to tell her that, but I can’t.
I can’t because she’s gone because of this asshole’s family.
So I’ll look for Mercy, and I’ll show him none until I find her. If that makes me a dick, then so fucking be it. I am a dick.
Walker takes a swig of tea. “And what happens then?” he asks. “Seems like you’ll still need me to figure out where she is, maybe try to decode my cousin’s cryptic comments another way.”
I take a menacing step toward him. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means just what I said.” He doesn’t back down, which shows how arrogant the asshole is. He’s not a small guy, so we’re nose to nose, but he’s downright willowy compared to me. I puff up on him, but he just blinks at me like he doesn’t notice and takes another drink.
“Sounds like it means you led us to the wrong place so we’ll keep you alive longer.”
“Now why would I do that?” he asks. “Seems to me that I’d want you to find her so you’d let me go. Unless you’re not planning to let me go either way, in which case, why would I help you?”
He starts to lift the bottle again, but I rip it from his hand and slam it down on his head.
The glass shatters, and he stumbles back a step, cursing and swaying.
I slam my fist into his gut with all the fury in my body—which is a pretty fucking lethal amount.
He falls to his knees, and this time, I smash my fist into his face.
His head flies back, and blood spews in a wide arc as he topples to the ground.
Before I know what I’m doing, I’m on him, pounding my fist into his face like I’m going to pulverize his skull, beat his head in until it looks like a fucking watermelon shell full of pulp.
“Whoa, come on,” Saint says, grabbing me under the arms and dragging me backwards off Walker. Heath helps, glancing around.
“We better get him in the van,” he says. “Before someone inside calls the cops.”
“Did I kill him?” I ask, breathing hard. I wipe my brow with the back of my hand, and it comes away bloody, but it’s not my blood.
“Not sure,” Saint says. “Dante is bringing the van around.”
The church van pulls up, and we pick up Walker and toss him on one of the bench seats.
“That looked unnecessarily extreme,” Dante says, arching a brow.
“Fuck you,” I say, sliding the door closed before hopping in the passenger seat. “Trust me, it was necessary.”
“What if Nate finds out we offed his cousin, and he won’t help us anymore?” Heath asks, leaning forward over the seat to check the motionless body of our captive as we turn out onto the road.
“Then maybe he doesn’t find out,” I say, glowering at him before turning to the window.
My fuse isn’t usually that short, but losing M has pushed me over the edge.
I’m not myself without her, not in control of what I do and say.
Part of me knows that if we don’t find her, or if they killed her, I won’t make it through that.
I’ll do something stupid and reckless like I just did, like I did at Zephyr’s, and I’ll end up dead or doing life behind bars.
I won’t care, though. There’s nothing to look forward to but a grave if Mercy is already in one.
An hour or so later, the body on the seat behind me starts to groan and gurgle. It’s a horrible sound, like a man dying slowly.
“Jesus, what did you do to him?” Heath asks from the back, where he’s cozied up with Saint. I’ve tried to give them privacy, since they seem to have finally broken the seal on that at the worst possible time, so I’m still in the passenger seat next to Dante.
“I just hit him a few times,” I say, but my stomach twists up with guilt.
“Think he’ll make it?” Saint asks. “It wouldn’t look good if we got pulled over and they found a dead man in the van.”
“No one’s going to pull over a church van,” Father Salvatore says.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Good call on that. And hey, at least we got a priest here to read him his Last Rites if he kicks the bucket.”
Walker groans again.
“Maybe we should drop him at an ER and dip,” Saint says.
“I got some pain pills,” Heath says. “Hate to waste the good stuff, but dude sounds like he’s on death’s doorstep.”
He gets up from the back seat and comes forward, scooting onto the seat next to Walker.
“Hey, buddy,” he says, his voice quiet. “I got something here. It’ll take the edge right off that headache you got. Think you can sit up and swallow it?”
“Fuck you,” Walker mutters.
“Guess he’s alive after all,” I say. “You can stop acting like I kicked a puppy.”
“You’re gonna be alright,” Heath says to him. “Here you go. Here’s some water. Just drink that down, okay?”
I hear the gurgling sound of Walker drinking, and then his labored breathing.
“See, you did it,” Heath says. “Good job, bud. You’re going to be just fine. Probably just a broken nose, maybe a few fractures in that eye socket. Nothing we haven’t all run into a time or two. Am I right or am I right?”
Walker lets out a ragged wheeze.
Heath goes on like he’s talking to a fully conscious man.
“You’ll even get a cool scar in your scalp where that glass cut you, so you can show it off when you tell chicks you got jumped by a gangster on the side of the road in New York.
Bet you’ll get some mileage out of that one. Girls eat that shit up.”
By the time he’s done yapping, Walker has stopped moaning and fallen asleep again.
“Thanks,” I mutter grudgingly. I’m glad he and Saint have each other right now, but it also fucking sucks being alone in my misery.
“We better find Mercy soon,” Heath says. “If you don’t get your dick sucked soon, you’re going to kill one of us.”
“Let’s avoid that,” Dante says. “And that includes our hostage. We brought him along because we might need him, not to use as a punching bag.”
“I know that, okay?” I snap. “He’s not the man I wanted to hit. The men I want to kill. But their blood runs in his veins, and that was as close as I could get, so I took it out on him. I fucked up. Happy now?”
“I won’t be happy until she’s ours again,” he says quietly, and I realize I’m not alone in my grief.
Father Salvatore’s even more alone than I am, and since misery loves company, that makes me feel a little less alone.
At least when we find her, she’ll run to me.
She’ll be mine again. All he can do is watch it happen.