Chapter 19 #2
“It’s okay, Gram,” I tell her as I force the bus to give up its parking brake, standing up and moving over to help her remove the blindfold. She slaps me off and I try not to get my feelings hurt.
Bohnes turns to me, putting his hands on either side of my face and leaning down to rest his forehead against mine.
“Meet me at the house,” he whispers, kissing me softly.
Then kissing me hard. He makes me bleed a little, and I love the taste.
I nip back at him, catching his tongue and he shivers like something risen from the dead.
Uncanny. Perfect. Now that I’ve removed the clogged hair trap in the shower of my love, all of that blood in my ventricles is flowing right down the drain.
“What’s your plan?” I ask, but Bohnes shakes his head. Later, his eyes say. “Are you sure our phones aren’t compromised?”
“That’s what Hype is for,” he purrs back with a sultry wink, pushing a cool metal key between my breasts.
Letting him take my grandmother off that bus, it’s an act of ultimate love and faith in him.
“Please do what Bohnes says,” I tell Patricia, but she marches stoically down the bus steps like a prisoner.
I hate that. Her reaction to me is harder to deal with than Alexis’ death.
Than the box of Lemon’s bones and ashes, held carefully by Widow as we drove.
Wouldn’t want to spill any of my bestie during a sharp turn.
“We’ll talk soon,” Emma tells me, her suitcase tucked under her arm. With disturbing cheer, she takes it all in stride, following Bohnes out the door and over to the Chevelle.
I wait until they’ve left before I sit back down and release the brake.
The other three boys are respectful enough to keep their blindfolds on and their eyes closed as I follow my own route out to the Mohawk Valley neighborhood and down the winding, forested driveway that leads to Bohnes’ personal residence.
Not the safe house where Alexei was kept and the police chief’s son was killed, but Bohnes’ actual house.
His sanctuary. His den. Where he took me after Lemon died and cared for me so gently and lovingly.
Where he detailed the Chevelle after I defiled it, breaking so many of Prescott’s careful and meticulous dating and car culture rules. Where the killdozer is kept.
My heart blooms and then explodes, soaking my insides with feeling.
Kellin Bohnes. Oh, Kellin. Oh God.
The bus lurches to a stop with a dying creak and, when I turn the screwdriver that’s jammed into the ignition, sputters, coughs, and dies. Yup. That was a last hurrah for the Crown Coach. RIP. We can break it down for any useful parts later.
“Take ‘em off,” I command, rising to my feet and turning as the three remaining fuckboys in the bus remove their makeshift blindfolds. Silk tie. Greasy tee. Opening stubborn eyes.
“Bohnes’ place?” Widow asks, and I shrug.
“You’re lucky to be here,” I tell him, and he sneers and then spits on the condom-strewn floor. Alexei jumps and reaches into his pocket, pulling out his sewing kit before he can stop himself. Thankfully, he doesn’t jam a needle into Widow’s abdomen the way he did with Waylon Tucker.
“Yeah, that so?” Widow retorts, eye-fucking me as I move down the near-empty aisle of the bus and pause beside him.
“Adrian. What did I say to you? Everything I do is in your best interest.”
He hands over Lemon’s ashes with a resigned sigh, observing me with curiosity and strong skepticism. I take her in my arms and use my foot to nudge Ash, knocking him out of his stupor.
He peers up at me with huge black eyes, awaiting command.
“Come.”
I turn away, opening the emergency exit and hopping out onto the grass. Ash scrabbles across the metal floor, clutching his sword and his frog as he falls over himself in an effort to obey and then ends up falling out of the bus at the same time.
Alexei follows us, leaping out like some sort of homicidal buck and landing in such a graceful, violent crouch that I bite my lip. Oh. Damn. He rises to his feet, gloveless and dirty but commanding. Wedding. A wedding invitation. I’m not stupid. I have ideas.
If you were Bohnes, and you had a client who was promising to pay him and me two-thirds of his inheritance, how would you go about ensuring that all of this nonsense would pay off?
I swallow and push aside the thought for now.
Knowing Alexei, if there was going to be a wedding, he’d want to be all chivalrous about it and shit.
He’d want to take me out and get on one knee—
Panic floods me and I turn, clutching Lemon in my arms and whispering to her bones, “gold digging was your dream, not mine.”
“What’s that?” Alexei asks, striding alongside me.
I shrug one shoulder like it ain’t nothing and then I tug the key that Bohnes gave me from between my tits, unlocking the deadbolt from the door and removing the chains.
I’m sure there are security cameras here.
An alarm system. But Bohnes didn’t tell me to do anything else, so I shove the heavy metal door aside to find both the Devil and the Stingray waiting for us. The L88 is here, too.
“Thank fuck,” Widow mumbles as he and Ash move into the warehouse behind me and Alexei.
I sigh softly and move over to the Pantera, putting Lemon on the hood and planting my hands on my hips.
I am so tired. So fucking tired. Alexis is dead.
Alexis was murdered last night. It feels like a hundred million years ago, but this time yesterday, she was still alive.
Time is moving in strange, sluggish ways and yet, it’s speeding past, too.
I reach up and rub at my temples, trying to push aside the torrent of thoughts cascading together inside my brain.
“I need to stop by and pay my parole officer off at some point,” Widow remarks absently, strolling into the space and looking around with a begrudging acceptance.
Bohnes is only eighteen years old and he owns this property.
There’s a fucking army tank in here. He’s a dark god.
“What the…actual fuck?” Widow whistles, circling the killdozer.
He pauses beside it, hands on his hips and looks up at the monster of a machine with parted lips.
“He really is batshit insane, but goddamn.” Widow turns a look over his shoulder as I open the refrigerator, grabbing a can of soda.
Alexei is at the kitchen sink, shirtless and scrubbing at his arms with vigorous, frenzied motions.
It smells like lathered dish soap and laundry detergent in here.
Ash wanders in with the tip of his sword dragging in the dirt, peering around like a lost boy in the woods with his frog tucked under his other arm.
I crack the top of the can, throwing back the bubbly, sugary liquid.
“If Ash tries to leave, I need the two of you to hold him down. Stab him with a special needle, Alexei. Clock him, Widow. He’s not walking out of here.
Soda?” I lean down, peering into the bright white lights of the fridge.
There’s plenty of soda in here. Brown bottles of beer.
Some fruit. Such an odd sight, to see blueberries and strawberries and blackberries in Mason jars in my Nightmare’s fridge. Sometimes I forget he’s human, too.
“I won’t leave,” Ash says softly, moving up to stand beside me. “It’s too late now anyway. My father and Chet are going to hunt us with every resource at their disposal. They weren’t doing that before, you understand that, right?”
“Have a little faith, will you?” Alexei says, drying his hands and arms with the paper towels as he pauses beside us, looking down his princely nose at Ash. “You alone are not responsible for Scarlett’s safety and well-being.”
“I am responsible for my safety and well-being,” I remind them, pointing at myself.
“I’m also responsible for the four of you.
Have some faith in me, will you?” I give Alexei a nasty look and he returns it with something like barely-checked longing.
Ah. We were supposed to have our super special date today, right?
That’s not going to happen, but my ideas and thoughts and things are telling me what that date might’ve entailed.
My heart jumps and I kick the fridge door shut, staring at the metal doors of the warehouse and wishing Bohnes was here.
I can’t relax until he arrives, until I hear that Gram and Emma Jean are safe.
“Crap. I forgot about Trish and Ernest.” I set my drink aside, intending to go out there and deal with them when the sound of car tires on the gravel spikes my blood. Widow, Alexei, and Ash surround me in a half-circle, waiting.
The doors open and there’s Bohnes; I let out a sigh of violent relief. Thank fuck. He pushes them wide and then pulls the Chevelle in beside the other vehicles before climbing out.
“Miss me?” he asks, using his taut ass to shut the car door. I’m offered up a blue-eyed wink and a naughty curl of the lip. Bit of cheeky tongue there, too.
“Where’d you store Gram and Emma?” I ask, hating that I don’t personally know the answer to that question.
Delegate. You can’t do everything alone.
I’d let Bohnes hang both the sun and the moon if needed.
This is nothin’. I pick up my drink. With all this beef around, why the fuck would I carry our captives myself? That’s what men are for.
“Another house I own,” Bohnes says casually, leaning his big shoulder against the edge of the doorframe.
I’m having trouble untangling myself from his eyes.
We should talk in private, me and him. I have a lot of things that need saying.
I turn and open the fridge again, extracting a cherry soda and walking it over to him.