25. Nolan
25
NOLAN
S weat drips into my eyes as I push up from the ground. Grass digs into the palms of my hand as Coach’s sneakered feet stride by. He barks out.
“Down!”
We go down.
“Up!”
We lift back up.
The muscles in my upper arms are burning today, but all I can really think about is the look on her face. The emptiness. The hollow panic that invaded the second she’d realized what she’d almost done.
Juliet Donovan is a danger to us all.
“Megan’s become a problem.” It takes a moment for me to recognize Lex’s voice.
I turn my head in his direction, giving him a solid nod, and then I flip to the right to eye Gio. “You need to take care of it,” I inform him.
The coach yells out again and we do another push-up, holding for as long as he forces us to. Gio hisses out a breath between clenched teeth before responding. “I’m not fucking dating her,” he snaps. “I’ve told her to back off now.”
Knowing Megan, she won’t. She’ll blame Gio’s loss of interest on Juliet and if she tries to attack her in a less public setting … well, I’m not worried about Megan so much as I’m worried about what will happen if Juliet takes a page from our book and kills someone.
Wait, I’m worried about her killing someone? The realization slams into me and I nearly slip on the already slick ground, but I catch my sliding hand and stabilize my position. No, I tell myself. It’s not Juliet I’m concerned with. It’s Lex. That’s who I care about. If Juliet ends up in jail, there’s no telling what Lex will do to get her out. He’d probably even risk burning his hacker identity—the 5C0RP10N.
Which reminds me … my eyes slide back to Lex, but I clamp my lips shut as Coach passes in front of us once again. When I’m sure he’s clear, I direct my question to the man on my left.
“Have you had any more contact with Allen Donovan?” I ask, keeping my voice low so only the three of us can hear.
Lex pushes up, the muscles in his arms bulging even beneath the black t-shirt he wears. “ Yes. ” He hisses out the word as the three of us drop to our bellies once again.
“And?” I press. My fingers flex and the black lines that stretch over my forearms shift as we lift back onto our palms.
“I’m working on it,” Lex grits out.
If Lex hasn’t figured shit out by now then the chances that Allen Donovan is as guilty as everyone thinks he is just shot up.
“Why are you even bothering?” Gio bites out, the strain in his voice adding to the shaking of his forearms when I look back at him. “Whether or not Allen Donovan is guilty or innocent won’t change anyone else’s mind.”
No, but it would mean something different for the girl that Lex is in love with. “Quiet,” I snap as Coach’s footsteps approach.
Coach Kale stops before the three of us. “Keep it up,” he calls out over our heads. “If you want to beat those preppy motherfuckers then I wanna see your asses sweating.”
The corner of my mouth tips upward. No other coach would ever get away with talking to students like that, but here at Silverwood Public, the coaches are as real as the rest of us. They know what’s on the line and they know what will get us motivated. It’s not promises of pizza parties and polite preaching.
Practice passes in a haze of pain and sweat. By the time Coach calls an end to the run, reminding everyone of the upcoming game a few short weeks away, I have no interest in heading over to Laurenti’s Auto Shop. The other players all groan through their after-practice showers, moaning about soreness and exhaustion that I understand all too well.
Planting myself against the row of lockers older than even our parents, I let my head slide back against the metal and wait for the room to empty out. The guys are smart and quickly get their asses moving, offering up hands and goodbyes as they head out. Once there’s no one left but Gio, Lex, and me, I get off my ass and strip down to my skin.
“Tell me what you’ve found,” I order as I head into the nearest shower, twisting the knobs and gritting my teeth at the icy spray that shoots out over my chest.
“If Donovan is being framed, then the cover-up is well done. It’s professional.” Lex’s voice echoes in the near-empty space of the shower room just beyond the thin plastic curtain separating us.
The water slowly begins to heat up and my muscles unclench enough for me to reach for the bar of soap waiting on the rack beneath the shower head. “Are you still convinced he’s innocent?”
“I’m not convinced of shit,” Lex admits, “but if he is, I want to know.”
“I’ll be honest,” Gio pipes up, “when everything first hit, I thought it was weird. I mean, why would a guy who has everything risk it all by embezzling from his own company?”
Working up a lather, I scrub down the front of my chest. As I move, the skin of my back—stretched beneath the scars—tightens, an old ache building up as the nerves beneath resist the movements. Gritting my teeth, I force myself to move beyond the pain.
“People are greedy,” I say. “He didn’t think he had enough.”
“Yeah, I’d get that if he were like an employee,” Gio agrees, “but why wouldn’t he embezzle from his partner’s funds or even one of their associate partner companies? He had to know he would get caught.”
“I agree,” Lex says, “and I’ve been following that trail. All of the money was well hidden, but they found it fairly easily and every link directly comes from one of Allen Donovan’s accounts.”
A silent curse threatens to break free when the soap slips from my fingers and my back seizes. I slap a palm to the wall and breathe out.
“You good, Nolan?” Gio’s concerned voice rises up over the shower wall and curtain and a man’s shadow hovers on the other side.
“Fine,” I bite out. I reach back and work my fingers against my spine, every vile, disgusting curse I can potentially think of screaming through my mind as the pain nearly overwhelms me.
“Coach went pretty hard on us today,” Gio continues. “You might need to take it easy tonight—ice your back.”
He’s right, but damn it, I don’t have the time to do that. Darrio wants me at the shop tonight when they bring in the next job. I’m supposed to take apart an Escalade they lifted from some business magnate in Tangier and Darrio doesn’t want any of the other mechanics’ hands on the fucker.
“I’m fine.” This time when I say the words, they sound at least marginally more believable. I straighten and sigh when my back doesn’t offer any more protest. Finishing scrubbing myself clean, I shut the shower off and rip the curtain back before stepping out.
Gio steps back and Lex tosses me a towel from where he reclines against the row of sinks on the opposite side of the room. I deliberately ignore the foggy mirror behind him and head back towards the lockers. They follow. Quiet falls over the room as I open my locker and pull out a pair of jeans so worn through that they’re more white than denim colored and a black sleeveless shirt. The three of us finish cleaning up the locker room before heading to the student parking lot. It isn’t until we reach the back of the lot where G’s Firebird, Lex’s SUV, and my Indian are parked that any of us speak again.
“Things with Megan are over,” G says. “I told her to back off Prep Girl, but if she doesn’t—then you’ll have to come up with a different plan. Short of making her one of ours, there’s no way we can keep the students off her ass.”
Making her one of ours might be our only choice. I sidle a look Lex’s way. Without commenting, though, it’s hard to figure out what he’s thinking as he slides on a pair of black sunglasses and crosses his arms.
“We need to address the other thing,” I say, keeping my gaze locked on Lex’s face even though half of it is now hidden from view. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t even move a muscle. I sigh. “What did you do to Rich and Josh, Lex?”
Gio frowns. “Why does it matter?” he asks. “They were pieces of shit. Let them disappear.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, G, though it’s good to know you approve.”
“They were going to rape her.” When Lex speaks, it’s in a voice so deep and low, I have to strain to hear it.
I lift my head and scan the parking lot. Once I’m sure we’re alone, I return my gaze to him. “They were missing from school today,” I say.
Lex doesn’t respond.
“Did you kill them after we finished roughing them up the other night?”
Nothing but silence meets my question. I curse. “Damn it, Lex.”
“No one will find them,” Lex says. “It won’t blow back on us.”
“We don’t kill where we sleep,” I snap. Gio snorts and I swivel to glare at him. “Got a fucking problem, G?”
He rolls his eyes. “Just with hypocrisy, man,” he shoots back. “If we don’t kill where we sleep, then what the hell was your dad?”
I shove my finger at him. “That was necessary,” I bite out.
“So was this,” Lex argues. “They annoyed me.”
The pulsing behind my eyes drives into my skull. “You can’t just kill someone because they annoy you.”
The asshole merely shrugs. “Too late. Already did.” Before I can say anything more, he fixes me with a look. “They already hurt several of the girls in school. They were going to rape her too. I took care of a problem. You would’ve done the same thing.”
But I hadn’t. I’d left them alive for a damn reason. Josh Michaelson and Richard Glean were pieces of shit, but they were too close to us that if anyone ever actually did find their bodies we could come under scrutiny.
“You wanted to,” Gio agrees, reaching up to clap a hand on my shoulder as I lower my arm. “I could see it in your eyes when you beat them to a bloody pulp that night.” Not that I’d been able to tell the difference after both G and Lex had dragged their already bruised bodies through the woods and thrown them into the trunk of Gio’s Firebird.
He’s right though. When they’d woken up and claimed to not understand why we’d come after them, I’d wanted to pound their faces—and I had. It wasn’t until later when they’d finally realized they’d been found out that I’d truly lost my shit. That was when the excuses had come—those girls had wanted it, they were teases, they asked for it. Why would they dress like whores if they didn’t want to be treated like one?
Each sentence makes me want to cut out their tongues. I’d barely held myself back from slitting their throats myself. Even now, it’s a struggle not to applaud Lex for his actions. The only thing that holds me back is the worry that if people start asking questions about where a couple of Silverwood Public’s basketball players are, it’ll come back to us … and to her.
“She saw you two drag them away,” I snap. “If someone finds out that they’re dead, she’ll be the last one to have seen you two with them.”
Lex shrugs, his big body barely moving as his shoulders lift and lower. “She won’t say anything.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” I say.
“It’s done,” Lex says. “There’s no taking it back.”
“And what are you going to do if she does decide to talk?” I ask, narrowing my eyes as I jerk my arm out from under Gio’s grip. “Are you going to be able to silence her?”
Lex stiffens and then uncrosses his arms, taking a step towards me. Gio hurriedly jumps between us, putting both hands up. “Whoa, whoa—calm the fuck down!”
“You need to fix this,” I snap. “I don’t care how you do it—but make sure she keeps her mouth shut.”
“Don’t threaten her,” Lex growls.
I blink and lean away from Gio’s hand. “I’m not threatening her , asshole.” My upper lip curls away from my teeth. “I’m threatening you !”
Almost as if those were the magic words, Lex’s earlier tautness evaporates and he relaxes. “Oh, that’s fine then,” he says.
I shake my head. “You fucking psychopath.”
Gio sighs and drops his arms before speaking. “No one is going to ask questions about Josh and Rich,” he says. “I’ve already started working shit on my end.”
Both Lex’s and my head turn towards him. “How?” I demand.
With a smug grin, he shoves his hands into the back pocket of his jeans and waltzes backward toward his own car. “Rumor is that Rich and Josh were planning to head up to Eastpoint.” His tone practically drips with satisfaction. “Someone might have mentioned that Rich has a cousin that lives up there—and that maybe that cousin works for the mob. People who work for the mob disappear all the time.”
Lex reaches up and removes his glasses, a smile curling his lips. “You fucking smart bastard.” He laughs. Yeah, because that’s Gio. Lex loses his shit and we fix it—or rather, usually I’m the one that fixes it, but it’s good to know that Gio can do it all on his own.
My pocket buzzes and the creeping grin I feel stretching my face falls flat the second I slide my phone out and see who it is. “Shit.” Gio stops walking, and as one, both he and Lex look at me.
“I gotta go,” I say, shoving my phone back into my pocket and circling the Indian.
“Dad?” Gio guesses.
I press my lips together but offer him a short nod as I lift the helmet from my handlebars. Just before I slip it on, though, I lift a finger and point at him. “I want you to keep an eye on the princess,” I say.
He blinks. “But I just told you that we’re in the clear,” he says.
Pressing a hand flat to the seat of the bike, I swing my leg up and over the back. “Rumors are just rumors,” I say. “We’re not sure we’re in the clear yet. Until we know, you need to watch her.”
Gio groans, turning and shoving his hands into his hair. “How the fuck am I supposed to do that?” He swivels back to face me as I straddle the bike and lower the helmet onto my head.
I flip up the visor and then buckle the strap beneath. “Don’t care,” I tell him. “You were fucking around with that chick that lives next to her, right? The one that works at The Veil .”
Gio grimaces as if remembering something foul. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t been a good fuck. In all likelihood, she’d probably been just shy of a fleshlight. Everyone knows that the girls who work at the strip club on the outskirts of Silverwood are the desperate kind.
The Veil is the place where people go to get cracked out. There are more drug deals in the back rooms than there are lap dances. Were it up to me, I would’ve steered clear of the place forever, but they’re under Darrio Vargas’ protection, which means the regular visits Gio makes are business-related. Still, he should’ve known better than to get involved with one of the strippers.
“I don’t do seconds,” Gio states.
“And I don’t make unreasonable demands.” Lifting a hand, I point his way for the third and final time as I turn the engine of my bike over. “You’re closest to the girl. Use her however you want, but you’re in charge of keeping an eye on Juliet Donovan while Lex figures this shit out with her father. I’m not going to ask again. Watch. Her. ”