Chapter 16 - Ryker
SIXTEEN
RYKER
We drive past Jimmy’s camping spot, where his tent is still set up and the truck is waiting for its driver.
It pisses me off.
Normally I’d pack everything up or wait until it was already packed up.
Fucking Jimmy had to run his mouth in the truck though.
“I think your friend is… is one of them…” His words were slurred, but their meaning wasn’t unclear. “Let’s go back. Bash his head in.”
Fucking sloppy on my part. With how dark it was, I’m still not sure I didn’t leave any evidence behind.
I know blood got on my hand.
I should have washed up better.
But after taking care of Jimmy, I’d been too wound up, and Liam had been right there, ready to take everything I wanted to give him.
“So how’d you do it?” Liam asks me, leaning his head against the window. “And why didn’t you wait for me?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I say. My SUV winds down the trail.
I need a new car. Fuck. I’d pointedly avoided parking in the visitor’s center lot, and it’s not a busy season, but if anyone remembers my SUV, and any of the numbers on the license plate…
Maybe I’ll get a very boring, standard gray hatchback. Or a sedan. That’ll remind me not to get ahead of myself.
Liam sighs. “You’re no fun,” he complains. “I know you did it. You can tell me just a few tasty tidbits. I’m not going to run to the feds and tell them anything. I don’t even know anything about you beyond what might be your first name.”
“You already have the feds on your tail,” I point out. “They just need to put you in a cell for one night and you’ll beg to spill all your secrets.”
“I will do no such thing,” Liam huffs. “I know how to keep secrets. Just… not around you.” He frowns at me. “I don’t know why that is, either. It’s not like I’m running off to tell my bestie about any of this.”
“Good thing there are no secrets to tell,” I say. I reach out to ruffle his hair. “Worry about your own shit. Like how you’re going to convince the feds that you didn’t murder that guy you murdered.”
He grumbles. “I’m not going to have to convince them of anything. They have like… a horrible photo that could be of anyone of me dancing with the guy. That’s it. And I have the best lawyer money can buy.”
“From your daddy’s trust fund.” I did a bit of reading on Liam, and as far as I can tell, the influencer thing he pretends to do online is the extent of his working career. “You get along with your parents, then?”
Even out of the corner of my eye, I can see how his expression goes stony. “No.”
I wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t elaborate.
Apparently, he does know how to keep some things to himself.
“Any siblings?” I ask.
“Nope. What about you?” he counters.
“One brother.” I tap my fingers on the steering wheel while I wonder how much to reveal. “He’s got three kids. I look at his family, and I’m reminded why I’m never having children.”
Liam makes a face. “I’m never having kids either. It sounds horrible to have parasites sucking the life out of you. Nah, I’m not perpetuating these stupid cycles.”
Parasites?
That’s an interesting way to phrase it.
I don’t think my nieces and nephew are parasites. I think they’re stuck in a shit environment, and my brother and his wife are not doing anything to help them better their lot in life. I think if they had a different family, the kids might be able to escape that hellhole of a small town.
On the other hand, I had the same family, and I got out. Maybe I’m not giving them enough credit.
…Did I escape it? I’m not exactly a shining bastion of a human being. Maybe I’m taking the small town with me everywhere I go, every time I cut another man to pieces.
Of course, there are plenty of big city killers too, so it’s probably not the small town that made me this way.
“So you hate your parents, you barely like your best friend, you only like me for my cock… Is there anyone you do like?” I ask.
Liam smirks at me. “It’s a very nice cock. Anyone who’s had it would agree,” he says.
“Very few people speak about my cock,” I respond. He can read into it what he wants. “Does that mean there isn’t anyone you like, though? If you’re deflecting.”
“I’m not deflecting anything!” he protests, but he shrugs. “I like my Gran. She’s funny, she’s clever, she’s always there for me. I dunno what I’d do if anything happened to her. My Gramps is cool too, but he’s always busy.”
“My grandparents live in a different state from both my parents, and I think my parents were happy to keep them all distant.” I try to remember the last time I’d seen either set of grandparents.
“We used to visit them over the holidays, but with how those visits went, I’m not surprised my parents want nothing to do with them. ”
There was nothing outwardly abusive, of course. Just lots of nitpicking and criticism and little digs that would build up over the course of the days we were there, until one or both of my parents were sick of it.
My brother probably never noticed, but as I got older, it became really obvious to me.
“Guess I had to get lucky somewhere,” Liam remarks. “My parents are just… Well, they’ve made it clear they only had me because they were expected to, you know?” He shrugs. “I don’t care that much.”
I wonder if he’s telling the truth.
The stoplight ahead is red, so I slow down and reach for my phone to find a good podcast.
Organized Crime in NB: Modern Histories has a new episode ready.
Good enough. I hit play just as the light turns green again.
“The Pavones. The Crescis. The Voronkovs. The Mancinis. We all know them as the scourge of our New Bristol neighborhoods. But today I want to talk about a crime family that disappeared from our streets, virtually overnight.
I want to talk about the Winters Gang.”
I groan in annoyance. “I know this one.” Unfortunately, I can’t exactly switch the track while I’m driving to find something better. “Every single organized crime podcast wants to talk about the mystery of the Winters Gang.”
“What’s that about the Crescis, though?” Liam asks, tilting his head. “I met a Mr. Cresci at the FBI place. My lawyer seemed to know who he was and all. She made a comment about the mob, but I didn’t look it up or anything.”
“They’re one of the top crime families in New Bristol.” We hit one of the long stretches of country road, with very few vehicles around us. “Do you really not know them? You live in NB.”
“Eh.” Liam shrugs. “I don’t really pay attention to the crime families. That’s so… impersonal, you know? Shooting people for money or whatever. But now I’m curious. I didn’t realize they were that prominent.”
“Yeah. It’s about money, not the crime itself.
Although you don’t become a mobster because you value human life.
” I think about Madison, asking me to murder my own brother.
“Being a hitman sounds boring, too. You’d have to kill people on somebody else’s schedule, and your client would have demands about how to eliminate them. ”
“Definitely boring,” Liam agrees. “So what are the Crescis known for? Drug running? Arms? Human trafficking?”
“Arms dealing and drugs, I think. Maybe they sell those party favors you buy at the clubs.” I wonder which clubs they operate out of, and whether there’s a risk of Liam pissing off the wrong drug dealer.
I clench the steering wheel tightly.
“Maybe,” Liam says. “I’ve had to be really careful about who I buy from these days, and I usually go through proxies.” He shrugs, then eyes me. “How do you get your drugs? Or are you going to insist you don’t do that, either?”
“I travel around a lot. I try to vary which dealers I buy from.” I shrug. “The first time I bought drugs was from a high school classmate. His brother was a drug dealer. I think several of the girls at my school had very, very bad nights at local parties.”
I’d warned one of them not to go, but she’d laughed off my concerns.
She was much more excited to have been invited by somebody from the football team than to listen to the weird loner.
Liam purses his lips. “Maybe I have some morals,” he says thoughtfully. “That seems shitty, but who am I to talk?”
“Yeah, it’s shitty.” I try to drum up disgust about it, but mostly, I just thought the whole thing was stupid. Somebody leaked a video of the football team doing it, and that was when I knew I’d never, ever get caught like that.
You can’t trust anyone.
“Murder’s pretty bad too,” I point out. “I don’t think you get points for not liking rapists.”
“What if I killed rapists instead of randos?” Liam replies. “Think I’d get a pass for being a vigilante?”
“Vigilantes are still murderers. They get cheered on by the public at large, like that CEO-rial killer—what a dumb fucking name—but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re killers. Killing CEOs instead of fast-food workers isn’t morally superior.”
It’s a philosophical question I’d ruminated on for a while.
I could switch up my targets and only take out ‘bad’ people, but what makes a person worthy of capital punishment?
Do I know everything about somebody in order to be able to judge them?
Jimmy had been an asshole, but for all I know he also donated all of his money to a soup kitchen, even if it was only so he wouldn’t have to pay his ex alimony.
“Nobody has the right to be judge, jury, and executioner. If you’re going to kill, just be honest about the fact that you’re a killer.” I smile. “To yourself. Don’t tell anyone else unless you want to be caught.”
“Even the guy I want to dick me down until next Sunday?” Liam asks. “Because I didn’t get you to pay attention to me until I started talking.”
“You got me to pay attention by waving a stupid flag around saying you were a dumbass and wanted everybody to know you were a killer.” I admit defeat on the podcast and hit the pause button on my stereo. “You also made wild assumptions about me.”
“Wild assumptions that turned out to be correct,” Liam says, stretching in his seat. “Because no matter what you might say, I know the truth.”