3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
M y entire body is dry. So dry, it feels like a desiccated husk that my shriveled organs are rattling around inside, while my brain is nothing more than a condensed lump of tissue that only knows how to quiver in response to basic, instinctive stimuli.
Everything hurts. The world is still sliding to the side whenever I lose focus on keeping it still, and my ass is pulsing with the painful reminder of whatever I did with Eamon last night, even if my mind has successfully blacked that part out.
After we got back to his place, he offered me another drink. Despite all his posturing about being concerned about how drunk I was, I know he likes me that way. Pliable. As long as I’m not so far gone that I’m messy. Then he also offered me a few lines of something, which he’s never deigned to identify for me. Not coke. Something more synthetic, that’s more sedating than stimulating. Ketamine, maybe. Whatever it is, it always fucks me up beyond measure.
It makes it a lot easier to lie back and take the kind of brutal, relentless poundings that he’s so fond of delivering. Not that I wouldn’t, anyway; I don’t exactly have a choice. But the ketamine gives me that little lift I need to peel back my skull, pull out my brain and deposit it on the bedside table as a patient observer, instead of a participant. Which doesn’t hurt.
I would love to be in my own bed right now, encouraging my brain to continue sinking into the oblivion of my Swiss cheese memory. Unfortunately, I can’t. I’m out in the world, and even though we’re headed toward winter, so it’s not that warm, it’s still bright as fuck. It’s that cool, brittle kind of brightness that lights up every surface and somehow smells like frost.
My shitty dollar-store sunglasses are on, but they’re not helping. I quickly changed into clothes that didn’t have cum and blood on them after I picked up my Ninja—which I’ve had since I was seventeen and has also seen much better days—from the bar and drove to the trailer. Now I’m headed to the hospital in Lola’s 1996 Ford Lazer that inexplicably still runs, because she’s finally coming home.
She’s been in Critical Care for four days and then Med/Surg—which I guess is hospital speak for gen pop—for another six, and I’m over it. I hate seeing her in there, but I can’t not visit and leave her all alone. It’ll be good to have her home. I just have to concentrate on not letting her notice the limp I picked up at some point last night. And hopefully the bruises from last week are faded enough that she won’t see.
It takes a long time waiting in her hospital room before all the discharge paperwork is sorted out, but she seems in good spirits. She’s also happy to see me in that genuine, undemanding way that only she manages. Eventually, we get everything sorted out, and then I’m able to take her to the exit in a wheelchair before we pile into the car.
“You seem tired, Apo,” she says once we’re on the road.
There’s no accusation in it, but it makes me tense up, all the same.
“I am. I’ve been busy. I’m glad you’re coming home, though.” My voice is wooden as I speak, but at least we’ve slipped into the conversational space where we’ve both tacitly agree not to get into details.
I’m under no illusions that she isn’t aware I’m doing illegal shit. But we need the money too much to fight about it. Her social security only covers so much.
“You still need to take care of yourself. Have you been eating?”
I shrug, because it’s easier than saying ‘no’.
She makes an unhappy sound and fusses with her purse.
“I’ll cook once we’re home, and then we can both have a quiet, restful evening. How does that sound?”
Honestly, like fucking heaven. But I won’t be able to stay for long, because I know Eamon has a job for me tonight. Maybe I can get away with pretending to go to bed and then sneaking out, so she’s not twisted up worrying about me for once.
“Sure thing, Lola. Sounds good.”
By 10pm, I’m feeling relaxed for the first time in weeks. I have a full stomach, because Lola insisted on cooking, even though I tried to stop her. Eating an actual hot meal made from (mostly) fresh vegetables is a real change of pace and comforts me somewhere deep in my core.
She made something she calls ‘Ozarks sinigang’, which is an adapted version of a recipe from her childhood that accommodates not being able to find most of the same fruits and vegetables here. It’s not authentic, and a bunch of the ingredients are powdered or frozen, but I’ve only grown up eating this version of the dish, so it tastes like home to me.
We’re both settled in front of the TV, watching some mindless cooking/travel show that she likes, while I slowly sink into the couch when my phone vibrates. I was so cozy, I’d almost let myself forget that this was coming.
Immediately, my body goes on high alert. He’s not here, but my nervous system acts like he is. I curse myself for getting so comfortable, because it makes the switch I’ve done a million times before too abrupt; like jumping into an ice bath.
I don’t move a muscle, because part of that frame of mind is being like a rabbit under the scrutiny of a hawk. Still and silent, hoping you’ll be passed over, but every muscle strung tight and ready to sprint if you need to. Lola notices regardless.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, already frowning like she knows I’m going to lie to her.
It doesn’t stop me.
“Nothing. I think it might be time for bed. I’m tired, like you said.”
There’s a long, tremulous silence while I can practically feel her weighing whether now is the time to speak or not.
“I’m tired, too.” She pauses again, and I’m very concerned about what’s about to come out of her mouth. “Tomorrow, we’re going to sit down and talk about all this. Because I’ve been silent for too long, and I’m sick of seeing you look like this. Now go to bed. To sleep .”
I wither a little under her hard stare, but nod and agree politely. I’m looking forward to that conversation almost less than I’m looking forward to tonight, because I don’t have any idea what’s going to come of it, but that’s tomorrow’s problem.
If she decides she’s had enough and this is the last straw with me, I guess I can deal with that. It’s not like it’ll be my first time being abandoned by someone who’s supposed to love me. I should be used to it by now.
It takes another hour, almost, before the dishes are cleaned up and we’re both ‘in bed’, so I can sneak away. Then it’s just a quick shimmy out the bathroom window and a short drop to the empty lot behind the trailer. I half-walk, half-jog until I make it to the main road, well out of her sight, and pretty soon I see those familiar headlights, bearing down on me like an alien spacecraft about to beam me up.
“You took your sweet time.”
He didn’t speak for the first ten minutes we were driving, and these are the only words that have come out of his mouth since. I could tell him about picking up my grandmother from the hospital, because that’s a rational excuse, even for career criminals. But I try very hard not to remind him that she exists and could hypothetically be used as leverage against me.
“I’m sorry, Eamon,” are the only words that come out of my mouth, because making some half-assed excuse would be inviting a fight that I’ll lose.
Even if he didn’t hold all the power here, I’d lose anyway. I’ve never met anyone so capable of twisting everything I say, until he somehow convinces me that I’m the asshole here. Or just crazy. Or both.
He’s a murderer and a gangster—and looks the part, despite his youth—yet somehow, he can talk anyone into believing him about anything. A mask of congeniality and over-the-top rationality comes down. As if everything he’s saying is so sensible that it’s a foregone conclusion he’s right.
No one should ever talk to him. It’s the quickest way to question your own sanity.
He doesn’t say anything, and the tension continues to mount as I imagine what could be coming next. It’s bad enough that when he reaches toward the dash to adjust the air, I flinch on instinct. I’m normally good at controlling it, but I feel like my nerve endings are all dancing on razor wire right now. I’m still brittle from my hangover, and I’ve had too little sleep in the past week. I wouldn’t be surprised if pieces of me started peeling away and fluttering off in the wind like dead leaves.
Eamon just laughs. A deep belly laugh, like my flinch was completely absurd. Then he looks at me from the corner of his eyes in a way that might almost be called fond, if I didn’t see the simmering, predatory anger beneath it.
The urge to act like the child he considers me to be and sink into my seat is overwhelming. I make a concession by pulling the sleeves of my hoodie over my hands. It’s not a lot, but it’s the best I can do without showing him how fragile I feel right now.
I still don’t know where we’re going, but I know better than to ask. I just continue to bite my tongue and do my best to remain still and invisible. Eamon mostly stays quiet, thank god, only occasionally bitching about whatever Banna drama is up his ass lately. I try to tune it out. When I was initially recruited into the organization, I knew it was shitty and unethical, but it seemed like the only way to potentially make a decent amount of money, given my history.
There were a few grandiose thoughts of rising through the ranks and becoming powerful and respected, which was clearly dumb as fuck. As if my obvious queerness and my obvious non-whiteness weren’t already hamstringing me, whether they acknowledged it or not. Instead, I was still just a baby recruit when Eamon laid eyes on me and declared me his property. He promised his attention would come with all kinds of extra boosts up the chain of command, but instead, it made me a barely tolerated pariah.
Everyone immediately shifted from seeing me as a kid with potential to either a victim or a whore. Neither of which work in this kind of setting. These are old-school guys who respect strength and independence. They take Eamon and his quirks and queerness because he’s obviously in charge. But me… I’m one step up from a barracks bunny.
Or maybe one step below. I don’t know anymore. Who the fuck cares? It’s not like I can do anything about it now.
I’m shaken out of this train of thought—with an indecent amount of relief—when Eamon pulls onto a side road. We’re at the edge of town, but still close enough that it’s lit up and not completely deserted. I don’t know what he’s planning, but I already have a bad feeling about it.
Eamon starts to talk quickly and quietly as he pulls over by some trees and kills the headlights.
“At the end of this road is that little feed store that keeps refusing our services. I need you to sneak in and roll the place. Make as much mess as you can, take whatever valuable shit you can grab. Take some spray paint and leave some bullshit race-hate graffiti, so they think the Aryan Nation assholes did it. Whatever you can to convince them to come to me begging for protection. They think they can rely on the rent-a-cops that pass for law enforcement around here, and we’re about to prove just how dumb that is. Got it?”
As the words sink in, dread hits my gut like lead. But I’m already reaching around for the things I’ll need, all in his car, exactly where they always are. Spray paint. Lock pick kit, because I’m better at finessing things than brute forcing them if I’m by myself. Gaiter to cover my face, just in case, even though Eamon always gets these ones with skull patterns that I think are so childish I would almost rather be arrested than caught wearing it. Cell jammer and Wi-Fi jammer, to bypass their alarm systems.
Once it’s all shoved in the pockets of the tactical pants I’m wearing for exactly this reason, I pause.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?”
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, and I reflexively cringe away as soon as they’re out in the world. Questioning his orders has never ended well for me.
But he seems to still be coasting on whatever endorphins he siphoned out of me yesterday, because I get a raised eyebrow instead of anything more violent.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
I don’t want to tell him, but I feel like I’ve already dug my own grave here, so there’s nothing more to lose.
“Well, we did the same thing at Ford’s garage. And it was kind of a disaster. All we did was piss him off and cause a bunch of drama, plus we almost got caught. Lucky stabbed Silas, and his boyfriend choked me out when he found out I was involved. If he’d died, we would have been fucked.”
Eamon snorts, like that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever said. It’s a noise he makes a lot when I open my mouth, so I’ve accepted that I must say a lot of dumb shit.
When he responds, it’s with barely concealed disdain.
“If he’d died, the world would have been short one more redneck.” He sneers as he says it, like he’s not from the exact same place as Silas. “The cops wouldn’t have done anything about it. They never do. And I think that whole situation worked out pretty well; I may not have gotten a protection contract out of it, but I did get myself a pet paramedic. Ford’s smarmy butt-buddy being indebted to us has already paid off more than I expected. Although maybe it wouldn’t if you people weren’t dumb enough to constantly be tripping over your own feet until you need medical care.”
This time, he looks me right in the eye as he says it. It immediately feels like I’ve been shoved back in time a few weeks, to when my face was so busted open, I considered crawling to Tristan begging for his off-books patch-up job. Not that there was anything I could do. It was more the fact that he’s nice, even though he knows I’m an asshole who robbed his boyfriend’s auto shop. He would have treated me like a real person, and right then, I was gasping for it.
All those thoughts get shoved deep into my mental lock box, because they’re not helping right now. And the wary look that Eamon’s giving me is just daring me to start something that I can’t finish. When I lower my eyes and soften my posture, he can clearly see he’s won.
Again. Was there ever a question?
“Good. Now go do the job I fucking pay you to do. We both know that independent thinking isn’t your strong suit, so you could stand to run your mouth a little less. Unless this is your way of asking me to stick something in it that’ll shut you up.”
As he says it, he rubs one hand over his crotch in a way that’s meant to be seductive, but lands firmly on menacing. It doesn’t help that he then drags his hand over to the gun tucked in his waistband and strokes the barrel with the same languorous, sensual motion.
I practically tuck and roll getting out of the car before he has the chance to test out whatever he’s thinking, despite the fact that we’re stationary. All the shit I need is in my pockets, and right now, getting out of that car seems way more important than whatever danger I might be walking into.
The lock is easy.
The security camera system is fucking antiquated, and my jammers take care of it, no problem. No motion sensors. A feed store is probably not really expecting to get robbed, in the grand scheme of things.
When I pull out the spray paint and try to hype myself up to get destructive, I’m weighed down by an exhaustion that is gripping onto me by my bone marrow. Deeper in me than any other emotion I’m capable of containing. But it’s not like there’s an alternative.
Then I hear the voice, and all hell breaks loose. Both inside and outside of me.
With adrenaline rushing through my veins, I duck to the side before whoever the voice belongs to can see me.
It’s an old man. Not super old, but old enough to be slow. Bent over a little and choosing his way in the dark more carefully than a young person might.
“Who’s there?” he calls out, sounding not nearly as afraid as I would like him to.
Fuck .
I need to get out of here, but I haven’t even started working yet and I know Eamon’s going to be pissed.
For just a second, I finger the small knife that’s strapped onto my belt. The one for emergencies. Without a doubt, Eamon would want me to at least do something threatening to terrify the man if I can’t manage any actual damage to the store.
I know I won’t. It makes me a shitty criminal, but this is probably someone’s grandfather. The thought of scaring the shit out of him for the sake of one of Eamon’s pointless power plays makes me feel sick.
I have to run.
Instead of moving toward the man, I sidestep as nimbly as I can while crouched, moving down the big, echoey aisle in the direction of the far wall. A rustle tells me he might be able to hear me, but I know I’m faster, even in this position.
In less than a minute, I’ve made it to the wall and then hustled to the exit, still too low for him to see me clearly. As soon as my feet hit the dry, packed dirt outside, I’m sprinting. The cameras are still down, and I need to be fast enough to get out of sight, because he almost definitely has a gun tucked away somewhere.
I’m completely out of breath by the time I pile into Eamon’s car. His eyes widen, obviously not expecting me back this soon and also not expecting me to be running. On instinct, he cranks the engine and takes off back to the main road so we can melt into whatever passes for traffic here at this time of night.
It takes a long time for me to catch my breath. Especially because as soon as the adrenaline of running begins to filter out of me, I get a new batch of something worse. Something that’s less like normal fight or flight and more like terror. Because now that my mind is clear, I’m acutely aware of how pissed Eamon is going to be when he figures out what I did.
“What happened?”
His voice makes my focus sharpen, but I repress the urge to shiver.
“There was someone in there. He came out and saw me, so I had to run for it.”
“Before or after you trashed the place?”
I want to lie, but I know it’ll only make things worse in the long run.
“Before,” I say in a shallow whisper.
“What? Speak up.”
“Before.”
A glimmer of pride shows up somewhere deep in my chest, and I raise my head to meet his eyes. They’re stormy, and I can only imagine what’s going through his mind.
Tobias is a fuckup.
Tobias never does his job.
Tobias jeopardizes my reputation and can’t be trusted.
I’d be better off if he were dead.
Something along those lines, I’m sure.
When I’m met with endless, simmering silence, I know things are going to be worse than whatever I’m imagining. It’s only reinforced when we pass the turn to my lola’s place and keep going toward his.
Maybe this really is the night that I’m not going to come back from. Once I realize this, a kind of fragile calm spreads through me. Just like last night, Gunnar’s face flashes in my mind. The one that was so angry when he saw Eamon come to get me from the bar.
I do hope he notices when I’m gone. I know that’s cruel, and he’d be better off not being sad about something so inevitable. But the small part of myself that still insists on being selfish is going to hope for it.