Chapter Five
Gage
The only time I find to work out anymore is early in the morning. The temperatures are a steady zero degrees Fahrenheit, but that’s not bad for a run if it’s not windy. The stars are out, the world quiet, people still sleeping warm in their beds.
Baby runs along in the snow, the half husky in her element.
Pop will give me hell about the truck. A shit-ton more than he did over the phone. Our first day back in the office after the New Year’s holiday, he’ll be full of piss and vinegar. He always is when I do something stupid on the job.
I told Zane I thought whoever blew up my truck was a ticked off case, but in private Pop wondered about Zane’s comment—the collateral damage that came with being linked to the Maddoxes. Pop said that made more sense than anything he could come up with, but I don’t understand what I did besides date Zarah. Even if that cop is right and Ashton Black happens to know Zarah’s seeing someone, what would he care? He’s in prison—he’ll never see her again. Maybe he thought she’d never find someone who would love the woman he turned her into. Maybe he did want to keep her for himself. I don’t know.
I exhale, and my breath streams out of my mouth. The physical exertion is welcome.
Mattress gymnastics won’t keep the pounds off, no matter how much fun Zarah and I have playing around.
As my feet pound the snow-covered pavement, I write a mental list of what I need to do in the coming week. Seeing Zarah as much I possibly can is number one in bold, underlined. I wish she lived in the city, but it’s safer for her at the country house. Stella and Lucille will keep watch, and Sansa and Arya won’t let anyone hurt her.
Zane would never let her move in with me, and I’m not there enough to warrant it. I don’t like that he let her fire Ingrid. There’s too much shit happening, and it’s one fewer person making sure she’s okay, even if she was paid to do it.
Pop’s going to want me to check into my truck. I haven’t emailed the cop my whereabouts for the past few days, but I’ll call Ross instead and see what he’s heard about it. I didn’t like the way the one cop looked at Zarah. Contempt, mixing with a sick desire. He wanted to fuck her, and he hated himself for it. His partner was an improvement, but not by much, and I’ll ask Ross if they can be trusted. It’s doubtful.
We still have to talk to Savannah Mesa’s fiancé. Meredith Mesa is sure he knows something, and his family will be back any day. Those rich people and their vacations.
I have a lot on my plate, and none of that includes cleaning out Max’s apartment, reading his journal, or watching the CDs he left me.
I wish I were strong enough to tell Zarah that I need a break. It would be safer all around if we didn’t see each other so often and it would buy me a little time, but I crave her too much. She consumes me, every second of my day, and the two weeks around Christmas when I didn’t see her were the longest, loneliest, and the most painful of my life.
Not seeing her isn’t an option.
I run a hard eight miles. My mind is clearer, my muscles are loose, and the urge to slam my fist into something has lessened. Not considerably, but it isn’t an itch under my skin like it used to be.
I stand under a hot shower, dress, and the sun is coming up as I sip a strong cup of coffee and drive my new truck to the office.
It’s spectacular, the little kid in me gleefully jumping up and down every time I sit behind the wheel, and it boggles my mind Maddox won’t miss the thousands that paid for it.
Baby appreciates the larger extended cab, napping on the wide bench behind me.
I hit a drive thru to buy breakfast and more coffee, and if it wasn’t for all the shit I have to scratch off my list, I’d be in a good mood. I sigh. If Zarah’s stuck in limbo, a constant state of worry may be my new normal. I hope to God not. She deserves to enjoy the rest of her life.
The line at the nearest fast food joint is long, but I still beat Pop and I’m hanging up after talking to Meredith Mesa when he hustles inside shaking snow off his jacket.
“You’re up early,” he says, stomping snow off his boots and walking deeper into our little office.
“I was chewing over some stuff, and I took Baby on a run. I called Zarah last night, and she was upset. She decided to let Ingrid go, and she hightailed it out of there, barely said goodbye. It hurt Zarah’s feelings.”
“Can’t blame her. The nurse, I mean. You get let go, you want to move on as quickly as possible.” He helps himself to a coffee and a carton of little spicy hashbrowns.
Hopefully, Baby lifts her head. She loves hashbrowns.
“Yeah. I got that, but after a year and a half of practically being glued to her side twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you don’t say goodbye? It’s weird.”
“Not that weird. That nurse struck it rich and she knew it. She was paid a mint for not doing a damn thing, especially since Zarah met you. She’s hardly been home. I bet there was a lot of resentment. She’ll have to earn her paycheck again.”
“That’s what Zarah said. She didn’t want to keep Ingrid from helping people who need her.”
Pop scoffs and mutters something about being out of touch. “No one wants to work, and I hope Zane had her sign an NDA because mark my words, that woman will write a tell-all worth millions. What being a paid companion to the country’s richest woman is like. Never mind hurt, mixed up, and just plain heartbroken.”
I swallow hard. I hope not. I hope Ingrid grew to care about Zarah and wouldn’t sell her out that way, but I know what people will do for money. I see it on the streets every day.
Pop feeds Baby bits of his breakfast. “Gage—”
“You have your serious face on. I know you want to talk about the explosion, but I don’t have anything, Pop. Rourke threatened me, yeah, but do you think he’d lower himself to do something like that?”
“He was involved with the Blacks. What do you think?”
“Clayton Black did do some business on the up and up.”
“Sure he did. So he could hide the shit. Politicians aren’t immune to double-dealing, in fact, they thrive on it. What I want to know is what he has against Zarah besides what Ash Black made her do.”
“Why do you say that?” I sip my coffee.
“He threatened you to stay away from her. Since when in the hell does he care what you do? He had plans for Max, and those plans didn’t include him married off to a high-class hooker—”
I glare.
“—whether she was doing it voluntarily or not,” he adds so I don’t fly off the handle, “but you? You’ve gone your own way since you could walk, and Rourke hasn’t given a shit. Why does he care now?”
“I don’t know. It was obvious at Max’s award dinner he disliked her.”
Pop narrows his eyes. “It was? Did I miss something?”
“Just the way she acted—”
“The way she acted.” Pop stands, throws his last hashbrown into his mouth, and dusts his fingers on his jeans. Baby wilts. No more food.
I lean forward, scenting what he’s getting at.
“He was polite. A creepy polite, his usual smarmy self, but he acted concerned,” Pop says.
“ She’s the one who freaked out.” I pick up where he stopped. “Zarah was scared of him.”
“Does she know him?”
“She said she didn’t. Maybe he reminded her of someone. Like a doctor at Quiet Meadows.”
“Maybe, or maybe she knows him from somewhere and he wants you to stop seeing her before she remembers.”
“That will never happen. He can blow up a hundred trucks and I’ll never give her up.”
Pop points at me. “You need to stop thinking with your little head and start thinking with your big one. You were almost killed. You and Zarah both. By the sounds of it, a minute sooner and you could have been seriously hurt. If someone wants you to stop seeing her, then maybe you should listen.”
“You can’t really mean that.” My mouth goes dry. I need Pop. We need to work together to figure out what the fuck is going on, and if he won’t support me, we’re back to that shitty question Stella threw in my face at the wine bar. If I had to choose between my family and Zarah, who would I choose? Pop and I are more like brothers than father and son. I don’t know what I would do if he didn’t approve of me seeing, and eventually, marrying, Zarah.
“Gage, you almost died. Right there in the park. Blown to bits. You don’t get that. I know this job isn’t the safest, hell, you think I don’t relive you almost bleeding out on that operating table the night that meth-head punk put a nice, shiny bullet in you? But this is the big leagues. We’re talking kidnapping, arms deals, sex trafficking, and murder. If it was illegal, it sounds like the Blacks were into it. Not everyone they did business with is behind bars. Even Zane used his prostitution service and he’s free as a bird.”
“What do you think I should do then? Break up with her?” My coffee roils greasily in my gut.
“No, but you need to stop acting so cavalier. Rourke threatened you, and you need to start listening. Maybe Ash Black doesn’t like seeing you and Zarah together. He’s a psychopath who’s still got connections, and don’t you dare believe for a second he doesn’t. If he wants you dead, I have no doubt he can make that happen. Even from the state pen.”
“But our jobs—”
“Our jobs have been two-bit penny-ante deals. You know that.”
“But we thought—”
“I know what we talked about, and someone who has a grudge could still be a consideration, but you have to look at the big picture.”
He’s right. I know he’s right, but— “Then what should we do?”
Pop sinks into his chair. “I don’t know. Talk to Troy What’s-His-Name. Those three girls used to be patients at Quiet Meadows. Zarah was a patient there, too, and you think Willow pointed you in that direction. It’s as good a place as any.”
“Meredith Mesa called before you came in, and Troy’s back in town. They want to meet us later today.”
“Good.” Pop heaves a sigh. “Gage, the truck—”
“I’ll be careful.” And as much as it pains me to say it, I say, “I’ll cut back on seeing Zarah.”
“It won’t be forever.”
No, it will only feel like it.
Troy and Meredith meet us at a seedy little bar located in north King’s Crossing. It’s my type of place—shitty country music, peanut shells on the floor, the waitresses inked up more than I am—and the bartender tips his head at me. Like recognizing like.
It’s Troy’s type of place, too, but Meredith sticks out like a sore thumb. Not because she’s beautiful—she’s plain in a young-woman-who-hasn’t-blossomed-yet kind of way—but because she’s polished. Her hair shines, her skin is clear. There’s a quality about her that everyone in this bar, including me and Pop, lacks.
No one looks kindly at her, either.
Troy sips a beer, sullen. His jacket’s dirty, and tattoos peek out of his shirt’s collar.
“Hey, thanks for coming,” Meredith says, turning her eyes to us as we slide onto the bench across from them.
Troy isn’t what I expected. A rich kid, graduated from an Ivy League school, yes, but he looks like a hood, a dealer who hangs out at the high school selling pot.
“It’s not a problem. I’m Gage Davenport, and this is my dad,” I say to Troy and he shakes my hand, reluctant, it seems, to talk to us. Waving off the bartender, I cut to the chase. “Meredith doesn’t think Savannah would have committed suicide because you two were engaged.”
To my surprise and maybe shame for stereotyping him, his eyes fill with tears. “We were gonna run away and get married, you know? She loved me. We had a fight here and there, but we had plans , man. We talked about what we were gonna do all the time . No way she would’ve killed herself. And not without a note. I don’t believe that fuckin’ shit.”
“When were you going to get married?”
Troy shrugs and stares at the scarred and sticky tabletop. “You can probably see I’d win a game of ‘which one isn’t like the others.’ My parents are rich, self-righteous pricks. Vannah, we had the same ideals. Fuck the money. Do our own thing, live life on our terms. Her parents, they didn’t like that, ya know?”
“Then why didn’t you run away before? She was what? Thirty-one, I think the news said. You’re not any younger. Why wait?”
“She had some problems. Depressed. She got treated for it at QM for a long time, and she wanted to wait until she felt better. I think if she could have gotten away from her parents it would have done her a lot of good. They made her life a living hell.”
Meredith nods. “They were always telling her what to do, who to see. What school they wanted her to go to. They pull the same shit with me, but I do it. I don’t have the ‘fuck you’ attitude my sister had. I go along and it shuts them up.”
“Your parents had Savannah’s memorial service, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. They’re hardcore Catholics. Everyone said she was going to hell.”
“Did you go?” Pop asks Troy.
He shakes his head and lets tears run down his cheeks where they disappear in the stubble along his jaw. “No. I was in Sioux Falls with my parents. My grandmother on my dad’s side died in hospice. Cancer. We were close and I wanted to say goodbye. It was a fucking horrible choice, but Vannah’s parents didn’t want me there.”
“I’m sorry. Did Savannah know your grandmother was sick? Do you think she waited until you left town?”
Troy opens his mouth, then closes it again. His eyes turn hard. “I think whoever killed her waited until I was gone because we spent all the time we could together.”
“How did she act before she died? Was she happy? Paranoid? Depressed?”
His eyes narrow. “Now that you mention it, she was acting a little funny. Weird, even for her. She was always goofy, you know? But this was different. She was talking about people coming after her. Shutting her up. She said at one point someone wanted to kill her, but she liked to make shit up and I thought she was playing. Acting scared, looking over her shoulder all the time. No one would be there, and she’d laugh.”
“Did she say why they would want to shut her up? Over what? What did she know?” Pop asks.
Troy slouches deeper into the booth. “I don’t know. Something about QM. She never talked about her time there, not even with me. They were doing some fucked up shit.”
“How long was Savannah treated there?” I ask.
“Off and on for years,” Meredith says. “She hated it. She said her doctors touched her. Liked seeing how she would react.”
I cringe. “Was she prescribed any medication?”
“She took different antidepressants. None of them seemed like they helped. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear her crying. The only time she was happy was when she was with Troy.”
He smiles, barely. “Thanks.”
Meredith sighs and rests her head on his shoulder. It’s not sexual—I don’t feel a vibe that’s not anything but friendship. They’re bonded by loving a woman who’s now dead.
“How are your parents holding up?”
“It’s hard. They had people over after the memorial, and I overheard our priest talking to them. He said it wasn’t a surprise she let the devil tempt her, because of how she behaved. He implied God would give her what she deserved for killing herself.”
“Do either of you believe that?” I ask.
“Mr. Davenport, I think she was murdered. That’s why we’re here. Have you looked at the video I sent you?” Meredith’s getting angry.
Calmly, I say, “I did. We both did. Several times. And we talked to your neighbors. The power company was doing maintenance in the area. If your house needed work done, it’s only natural a technician would be there.”
“And at the same time Savannah kills herself.”
“I have a connection at the police department. Only her fingerprints were on the knife, Meredith.”
“That doesn’t mean jack shit.” Troy glares at me. “So that’s it? Did you call the power company? Did they have a reason to be on Vannah’s street?”
I clench my jaw and tamp down my anger. I don’t like being called out for not doing my job. “No, we didn’t, and maybe we could have, but there isn’t any evidence suggesting Savannah was murdered. I don’t know what else we can do. If you have any suggestions, we’re open to looking into them.”
“Talk to the people who worked at Quiet Meadows, then. Find out how many more girls they hurt.” Meredith sniffs. “I saw on Truth or Dare you’re dating Zarah Maddox. Don’t you want to know what they were doing to her?”
No. No, I don’t. I want to crawl under the bed and hide from every despicable thing anyone has ever done to her.
“Miss Maddox’s doctor is in prison for malpractice, Ashton Black is in prison, and the FBI completed their investigation. There’s nothing we can do that they can’t or haven’t.”
Meredith deflates, sinks into the bench like a balloon out of air.
“I’m sorry. Your sister sounded . . . troubled . . . and she wasn’t seeing a therapist.”
She slides out of the booth and Troy follows her, throwing a twenty onto the table. He looks at me, his eyes dark and full of pain. “What if the love of your life, your other half, your soulmate, took her own life, huh, Davenport? What would you do? Would you believe it? When she promised you her future? When she promised you everything?”
Head bowed, he walks away.
Later that afternoon Pop and I are at the office doing last-minute paperwork before heading home, and a breaking news report blinks on, interrupting the local sports update. “Troy Baldwin, thirty-three, and Meredith Mesa, twenty-five, were found dead in Manchester Park earlier today, in what appeared to be a horrifying suicide pact. There were no witnesses and the King’s Crossing police department is not planning an investigation at this time. Their families plead for privacy while they mourn the loss of their children.”
I don’t care if it’s not safe. I don’t care if I’m being targeted. I don’t care if Ashton Black has some sick fantasy involving my death because I’m in love with Zarah. All I care about is seeing her, being near her, and I wrap my body around hers as I devour her mouth, our tongues tangling, her hands roaming my body.
I press my cock into her hip. We’ve already done it once since Douglas dropped her off after I came home, Troy’s and Meredith’s suicides like glue slowing down my brainwaves and turning the blood in my veins into sludge. The guilt brought me to my knees, and in our office’s little bathroom, I sank to the floor and cried against the toilet bowl.
She stepped into my apartment and I attacked her, a purely selfish bid to rinse the taste of blame out of my mouth, but she didn’t mind, undressing me just as quickly, the snow not having a chance to melt off her boots.
This is where I need her. Close to me, sweat drenching her skin, her body hot.
She whimpers.
My fingers find her swollen and wet, God, so wet, and her clit is engorged, all mine. Her hand grips my cock, fast, frantic strokes, and I lose myself in her touch.
I need her. I need her more than water or sustenance, more than oxygen, and with a clarity I can’t block out of my mind and heart, I know how Troy felt. I know how I would feel if Zarah were no longer on this earth.
I’d go mad.
I’m in too deep, and it’s going to get us both hurt.
Pressing my thumb to her clit, I have two fingers as deeply inside her as they can be, and I make her come. The orgasm travels through her body and she sobs, her breath fanning against my skin.
I don’t waste a second suiting up and I’m hugged by her tight heat, claiming her as she lifts her hips, inviting every thrust.
It’s not the silkiness of her skin that sets me off, or her dark brown eyes as she looks at me. It isn’t her sweet pink nipples rubbing against my chest or her hair splayed over my pillow. It isn’t her berry pink lips or the velvet touch of her fingertips.
It’s none of those things and all of them at once, and it’s difficult to keep control. I hide my face and breathe into her neck. I need to keep her safe. I need to protect her because like Troy, I can’t live without my other half.
She brushes her fingers through my hair and nibbles my jaw, my whiskers scratching her lips. “Are you okay?”
“No.” Her pillow muffles my voice. “Let’s run away together.”
“Okay. Wherever you want to go.”
I lift my head and stare into her eyes. “One day we will. One day we’ll hide and no one will be able to find us.”
“And live on love?” she asks, teasing, her fragile voice in my ear. Our lovemaking turned her cheeks pink, and the corners of her mouth lift up in amusement.
“You’re all I need.”
“I love you, Gage.”
“Don’t ever stop. Please.”
“I won’t.”
I’m still inside her, but I grow soft. I’m not sated, not by a long shot, but I’m tired. Tired of picking up pieces that won’t make sense when I try to shove them together.
Reluctantly, I pull out and clean up in the bathroom. When I go back into the bedroom, Baby’s in bed, and she looks at me mournfully, hoping I won’t kick her off. I sigh. I’ve given Zarah a lot of time, and she’s been a good sport. I crawl between the sheets, but it’s not long before I’m crabby. Baby gives no fucks and falls asleep, her head on Zarah’s pillow, snoring into the faded cotton.
Zarah laughs. “She’s a sweet girl.”
“Ah-huh.” I roll onto my side and push my arm under my pillow. I cover Zarah’s hand with mine, her fingers digging deep into Baby’s fur. “Can I ask you something?”
A guarded look passes through her eyes and I can feel her mentally withdraw. She’s as tired as I am. “What?”
“Rourke didn’t want Max to marry you because of what Ash made you do.” I stop.