29. Kade
Kade
Todd's already back at his fucking office.
I watch him from across the street, slouched low in the driver's seat of a borrowed sedan.
Tank's been awake for the better part of two days, so I sent him home because he wouldn't have gone otherwise.
He's worse than me when it comes to not knowing how to help Ellie.
Worse than all of us, maybe, but we've all got our own brand of dysfunction.
She's home, she's safe. But her mother's in the hospital and I could tell from that look on her face the entire time I drove her home, a part of her is still in that room.
Even when we were kids, Ellie looked after Marney in a way a kid shouldn't have to look after her parent.
Making her appointments, taking off her shoes, pouring her into bed after a long shift or a night of drinking.
But she was the only one of us who had a mom or dad who gave a shit at all, so I understand why she's as protective of her mom as she is.
Which means I'm protective of her, too, because she's part of Ellie's world. Even if it's a world she cut me and the rest of us out of.
Tank is right. Ellie is too good for us. Always was. But that awareness didn't make the gaping hole she left in my chest when she walked out of our lives bleed any less.
Todd walks into the building with his phone pressed to his ear, briefcase swinging, and there's not a single line on his face that says my wife's in a fucking coma.
You'd think this was just another day at the office for the smug bastard.
He stops at the security desk and laughs at something the guard says, like he's a normal person even though I know enough from Cyrus lurking in his computer to know that's bullshit.
The senator doesn't even do his own dirty work, let alone what his constituents elected him to do.
I flick the lighter in my left hand without meaning to.
I keep thinking about her face when Marney dropped on the dais. And then I think about her panicked screams as she thrashed against me, clearly thinking I was someone else. Todd.
Every breath he takes is a debt I'm owed, and I always fucking collect. But while I have every intention of making Todd suffer for everything he's done to Ellie, plus a few extra sins just to be sure I've covered my bases, he's not the only one who deserves to be punished.
I made her sign a contract in exchange for his death, but how can I collect on that debt when I already want the bastard dead for my own reasons?
I drag a hand down my face.
I'm going to tell her.
I'm going to drive back to the house and walk up those stairs and tell her the contract is gone. Tear it up in front of her if I have to. Burn it.
I'm going to put Todd in the ground without a trace, and then I'm going to give her back her name and her life.
And if after all that she wants to come down the stairs in the morning and eat pancakes Jinx made her at our island, she can.
If she wants to lie in Tank's lap on the couch with her feet in Cyrus's, she can.
If she wants to spit in my face and walk out the door and never look back, she can do that too.
But I can't fucking do this anymore. I can't keep punishing her for leaving us when the person I really hate is myself for never being good enough to give her a reason to come back.
I sit and wait, letting Todd do whatever the fuck he does in there, and occasionally get out for a smoke while I occupy my brain with rehearsing exactly what I'm going to say to her in the interim.
Each version sounds shittier than the last, and by the time Todd finally comes out, I've convinced myself that winging it can't be any worse.
I pull out behind him three cars back, ease into the traffic, and let two more cars slot between us.
He's still not going home. He's going north, up past the financial district into the stretch where the warehouses start. Guess he's gotten jumpy and figures he needs to take a more hands-on approach to his dirty dealings.
What Tank overheard about the canceled shipment replays in my head. Todd is spooked, and a spooked man makes mistakes.
I track him for six minutes through three turns and a yellow light I have to floor the gas just to make. He's going fast. That's normal, from what I've seen trailing him, so it could be nothing. Or it could be he knows he's not alone.
I can tell he hasn't spotted me yet, but he keeps looking into his rearview mirror.
The realization has only just dropped when the black SUV slides up on my right, too close, hugging my mirror, and the sedan in front of Todd brakes sharp. Todd guns it around them and disappears down a side street with the SUV peeling off to box me.
Fuck.
Another car. A gray Impala comes up from behind hard and fast.
They had the whole thing set before I even pulled out of my spot.
Maybe the senator is more observant than I gave him credit for.
The SUV swings hard into my lane and I yank the wheel left to keep the panel from kissing my door. The Impala's bumper taps my back end just enough to skew me toward the curb. I correct, overcorrect, and a streetlight pole slides past my mirror so close, I hear it hum by.
I floor it.
The sedan's not built for this. It's a stakeout car, beige and anonymous, ideal for disappearing in a parking lot. The SUV is bigger and heavier, the Impala faster. It's two against one and I'm in the worst car out of the three. But the bastards know that, too.
I take a hard right onto an access road I'm only half-sure connects to anything, and the Impala follows tight, the SUV dropping back to swing wide and cut me off at the far end.
Classic squeeze. Same play me and my men have run on stragglers in our own neighborhood when we want to box them out of escape lanes.
If there was any doubt in my mind these fuckers are Southside, it's gone now. They fight too dirty to be private security.
My phone vibrates on the passenger seat. Tank probably, wondering where the hell I'm at since I haven't checked in for a while.
The Impala pulls alongside on the driver's side, and I see the window crack just enough to reveal the tip of a barrel poking out.
I don't even have time to think, I just yank the wheel hard right into him, metal scraping metal, the whole car shuddering like it's coming apart at the seams. The shot goes wide and pops my back window but it's better than my skull.
I ram him again. Harder this time.
The Impala fishtails. The driver tries to correct and overcorrects the way I almost did back there.
The back tires skid out and he goes sideways across the access road at fifty, hits the curb, and then the whole car lifts and rolls before it finally comes down on its side in a rainfall of sparks and shattered glass that I see in the rearview as I'm already past it.
One down.
The SUV is still ahead, slowing now, the back doors opening before it's fully stopped, and I have maybe four seconds to make a decision before two men with rifles are standing in the road.
Easy enough.
I drop into reverse and put my foot through the floor.
The transmission screams. The SUV gets smaller, and I'm watching for the cross-street I passed twenty yards back.
When I find it, I swing into it backward and pull the wheel hard.
The car spins violently and for a few seconds, I'm actually pointed the way I want to go.
No sign of the SUV. Then it comes out of nowhere.
Another vehicle slams into my driver's side, going at least sixty, and the airbag punches me in the face.
Metal screams, punctuated by what's probably my own ribs snapping like toothpicks, the sound filling the slow-motion emptiness.
My stomach lurches into my throat as I'm airborne and for a few eternal moments, I'm suspended in nothing.
Then I feel the road through what should be the window against my shoulder.
The world goes black and I hear a loud, shrill scream I realize is coming from my own eardrums but I can't lift my head or even remember how to open my eyes.
Through it all, I hear footsteps. Boots on asphalt, crunching their way through glass. A man says something in a low voice and someone else laughs in response.
They're coming closer.
I try to move, to reach for my seatbelt, but my arms aren't in my own control anymore. Hell, I'm not even sure I'm still inside my body. It all feels fuzzy and I still can't remember how to open my eyes, if they're closed at all.
It should hurt, I think. There's a twisted reconfiguration of metal and glass around me and if the car is this fucked up, I know I am and it should fucking hurt, but it doesn't.
That and the men coming toward me are distant noise, though, compared to the sound of her voice, calling to me from a creaky porch on a sweltering summer day. From a past that would be so much easier to slip into than whatever waits for me on the other side of this mess.
"Ellie."
My voice sounds broken enough that I know it's actually coming out of my throat rather than just in my head, but that's the first indication I'm even still alive.
She doesn't answer. Of course she doesn't. But I see her face plain as day, that defiant pink streak running through her hair as the sun glows through the golden strands around it. She's smiling, and I try to remember the last time she did that because of me, but I can't.
That's the last thought in my mind before the darkness swallows me whole.