Chapter 8 Let’s Do This
Let’s Do This
Trenton
My brother was using this trip to play games with Ariel and push her every chance he got.
Every time I looked at him he was either touching her in some way or whispering some bullshit in her ear.
I wanted to be annoyed with him, and I would have been if she seemed in any way uncomfortable with it. She didn’t. Quite the opposite, really.
The little shit was actually making all the right moves for once. I was never going to hear the end of it when we were alone again. He could be up his own asshole all he wanted and I’d let him get away with it because we both benefited from his actions this time.
We’d gone out for breakfast after we’d all gotten up this morning and it had been a quiet outing. Ariel hadn’t talked much but it was easy to see she had a lot weighing on her mind.
Both Simon and I ate but we both spent the majority of our time watching Ariel and everyone else in the restaurant with a close eye.
We weren’t under any kind of threat but that didn’t mean we still weren’t taking Ariel’s safety very fucking seriously. We'd never slack off on that job. Her safety and wellbeing would always come first and be the most important thing to the both of us.
We would never take most of the Council around here being wiped out to mean there was no threat lurking anywhere. Isobel was a prime example of why it was impossible to ever let your guard down in any way. Bad shit almost always happened when you got too comfortable.
Ariel could get comfortable all she wanted. She’d never be in any real danger when she was out with my brother and I. The fact that she could take care of herself was just an added bonus.
The car ride to the store until after breakfast was uncomfortably silent and Simon’s constant fidgeting with his phone made it obvious that he was struggling to keep his mouth shut and remain quiet.
It was a battle he thankfully won because Ariel didn’t need any of his bullshit at the moment.
She’d shut down and had receded into her head.
It was a defense mechanism I’d seen her do several times before.
A way to protect herself from the hurt she thought was coming her way the moment we made it to our destination.
She did this often and I never liked it.
But I always let her be because she’d come back to the real world when she was ready to.
And, besides, she already had enough people in her life that badgered her and made her spill her guts constantly.
I didn’t want to add my name to that long list of bossy motherfuckers.
I hoped Simon got the silent memo and all of a sudden learned how to be cool. He probably never would though.
We left the diner and made our way to the storage place. All without incident.
I parked in front of the building that had a sign in the window that proclaimed it to be the manager's office. “I’ll run in really quick, grab the keys, and make sure no one bothers us. These people in some of these places can be nosy as fuck sometimes. Especially if a unit has been left alone but paid for as long as this one has.”
We didn’t need any curious people with prying eyes. Nosy people pissed me off. How hard was it to just mind your own business all the fucking time? Impossible for some people, it would seem.
Not to mention we’d seen some serious shit in a place like this before and I couldn’t take any chances.
The woman sitting behind the desk in the office barely looked up from her computer screen when I walked in.
Not smart. A woman here all by herself ought to pay closer attention to what was going on around her.
Anyone could easily rent out a storage unit and plenty of people did so for not so good reasons.
We’d been there before, for fuck’s sake I couldn’t stress this shit enough.
I wanted to lecture her but her safety wasn’t my concern and I didn’t really care what happened to her. I didn’t care if that made me sound like a dick, it was the honest truth.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a nasally voice as she clicked around on her mouse. All without bothering to look up from her screen at me. So fucking stupid it was almost kind of sad.
I pulled the little black pouch out of my pocket and opened it up. I dumped a quarter size amount of the gray powder out into the palm of my hand.
“Hey, buddy. You can’t be doing drugs in here,” she snapped at me, finally looking up. “You can’t do drugs on the premises either. You should just leave before I call the cops on you and you end up in big trouble.”
I guess she had some common sense after all. Too little too late. And she was lucky I wasn’t a creep or something worse. Just a pissed off witch on a mission.
I leaned over the desk and blew the powder right in her face.
She blinked slowly as she otherwise sat there completely frozen. The powder disappeared as if it had never been there in the first place. Always worked like a charm.
She couldn’t move or talk. She’d be just fine when it wore off. She’d just have a small lapse in her memory. No big deal.
I walked around the desk and scooted her in her chair out of the way, thankfully it was on wheels.
I clicked around on her computer, going through things until I found the files and searched through the bills until I came across the name Quinton had given me that Vivian Kimber had used as one of her many aliases to keep herself hidden from Rain.
I memorized the unit number before moving on to the app that opened up the surveillance cameras.
I deleted the footage from the last ten minutes and shut the cameras down entirely.
These people needed better security because this system sucked.
I started searching the office for where the woman kept her keys. They weren’t on the desk or in any of the drawers in the desk. I found a keyring with several keys in her purse under the desk and swiped them.
I started in on one of the many tall cabinets along the wall behind the desk. The second one I opened is where I found the lock box. I pulled it out and carried it over to the desk. One of the keys on her keyring from her purse fit into the lock on the box and opened it.
Inside I found a handgun, a few envelops full of cash, and several keyring full of keys with little plastic colored circles on the end of them that had numbers printed on them. I found the one with the number to Vivian’s locker on it and removed it from the ring.
I put everything back where I found it and pushed the woman in the chair back in front of the desk. I left the office and locked the door behind me using my magic.
I might not have given a shit about the woman I’d left in there but I felt a certain responsibility towards her until my magic wore off and she was no longer sitting there vulnerable and unable to defend herself. I wasn’t a complete asshole after all.
The SUV was silent when I climbed back in behind the driver’s seat.
The tension was also there with Ariel but the silence was otherwise comfortable.
So I knew my brother hadn’t said something stupid to make the situation any more difficult while I’d been inside.
I knew I could trust him but sometimes his impatience could get the better of him.
I followed the signs around the lanes that indicated where the unit was located and parked in front of it. I shut the SUV down and turned in my seat to ask Ariel if she was ready. And found her looking right at me, finally looking like she’d left her mind for the real world once again.
Thank Christ.
I hadn’t even wanted to admit it to myself but I’d been staring to get a little worried about her frame of mind. A person could only take so much until they reached their breaking point and she had to be getting close to the edge.
“I need you two to make me a promise.”
That got my hackles up. I didn’t much like secrets and knew she was about to ask us to share one with her.
There were some things that my brother and I wouldn’t be able to promise her, no matter how hard it would suck for the two of us to have to tell her no.
Our loyalty would always lie with her but there were others we would always have to take into consideration as well.
I hoped she wasn’t about to try and put us in an uncomfortable situation here.
That would piss me off and make me disappointed in her because she was better than that.
But this was Ariel I was talking about here. Anything was possible.
“I know how close you two are with my dad…”
Jesus. This shit just got worse and worse with every word out of her freaking mouth.
“Depending on what we find in here, I might not want you guys to tell him about any of this.”
“Ariel,” Simon started but she cut him off to speak over him in a rush.
“My dad spent years as a ghost of a man and it was all because of the actions of this woman. She wrecked his whole life. Over and over again. He’s been through hell and back so many times I can’t even keep track of them all.
He’s finally at a place in his life where he’s truly happy and has everything he could ever possibly want.
I don’t want to dredge up the past. It’s just going to hurt him.
He deserves so much more than that and if we have a chance to save him from going down that road then I don’t think it’s so wrong to keep this from him.
Just try to see things from my point of view here, please. ”
I chewed over her words, carefully digesting them. I got where she was coming from. Her dad wouldn’t hesitate to keep something from her either if he thought it would hurt her. And I absolutely wouldn't fault him for that.
I caught my brother’s eyes and held them.
We had a silent conversation where words weren’t needed.
I could tell by just looking at him that he wanted to give her whatever she wanted without question.
It was me who was the problem here. I did not want to ever lie to Rain or hide anything from him.
He deserved honesty from the two of us. He’d more than earned it from us.
But Ariel was right. He was happier than we’d ever seen him before and he didn't deserve to have his whole world rocked right now if we could avoid it.
I dipped my head and my brother sighed in relief. He’d been worried that I was going to say no. He should have known me better than that.
“Okay,” I told Ariel. “We’ll do things your way.
For now. But you need to understand that if we find something that he absolutely should know about then it’s going to be you who calls him to explain to him what it is exactly that we’re doing here.
Neither Simon or myself are going to get in the middle of that.
You’re going to do it and you’re not going to be a brat about it. Okay?”
I didn’t care if she got offended by being called a brat because she damn well was one and she knew it. We all knew it.
“Trenton, come on, man.” My brother whined.
It did nothing for me. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t hesitate to do for my brother but his whining had lost the ability to affect me a very long time ago. You’d think he would have gotten that by now but apparently not.
They were both pains in the ass.
“No, Simon,” Ariel interrupted our stare off. “He’s right. I can agree to those terms and I know what you’re giving up in order to agree to this for me. I appreciate it. Thank you. It means a lot to me.”
“Now that we got that out of the way let’s stop procrastinating and get this shit over with.”
I wasn’t about to let her sit in the car all day in order to avoid going inside and dealing with this.
She might have come out of her head and back into the real world but that didn’t mean she still wasn’t attempting to stall in order to hide from things.
Because she’d do that shit all day if we let her.
And since we were already here we might as well just get on with shit.
I got out of the vehicle and walked over to where the lock was at on the steel door. I dug the key out of my pocket and unlocked the lock.
I pulled the lock off and slipped it and the key back into my pocket.
We’d need it to lock back up after us so everything would remain safe for when we figured out what the fuck to do with it.
It might end up that Ariel didn’t find anything that she wanted so we left the place to rot just as we found it.
There was no telling what would happen when we walked inside.
I was starling to get nervous for her because I didn’t want her to walk into something that could potentially hurt her.
It made me feel like I was falling down on the job here and it wasn’t a good feeling at all. No one wanted to suck at the most important job they’d ever have in their whole life.
“Let’s do this,” Ariel said from directly behind me in a small voice that was so unlike the strong female I’d fallen head over soul in love with. “I’m ready to get it over with so I can permanently close this chapter in my life. It’s well past time.”
She was right, it absolutely was well past time but I was glad to hear her being strong about it. Even if I couldn’t actually hear it in her voice but only in her words.
I slid the door up and open and held my hand our for her. “Ladies first.”