17. Michael
The bell over the door to the coffee shop jingles as I open my eyes and blink a couple of times. The faint taste of sugar covers my lips.
Broken memories connect slowly as I move my arms, testing the bed below—but I’m not in a bed. Opening my eyes, I find my jacket has been rolled up and placed neatly under my head.
And the jingling doesn’t stop. Actually, it doesn’t sound like the bell above the door at all.
My body screams at me to stay down, but I fight through the pain and sit myself up.
“What the hell—” I wince as I touch the tender spot at the back of my head.
I follow the soft melody of the bell to the table beside me, where Dana sits, stirring a spoon in a dainty teacup. The source of the tink-tinkity-tink sound.
“Michael, we need to talk.” She looks sad, and I’m about to try to get up when I notice the bruises around her neck.
“You’re hurt. What happened?” Then I remember and jump up, staggering a step to the left. “Jack.”
She raises her hand to catch my attention. “He’s okay. He’s in the kitchen. He was knocked out in the back alley. We were able to drag him inside. I want to talk to you before he comes to.”
“We?” I look around the room at the destruction. There’s no one else in the shop with us.
“Some of the ladies stopped by.” Her casual tone is making me uncomfortable. I’m the one who got hit over the head, but she’s talking like she’s lost pieces of her sanity. Her voice is detached. “Please.” She points to the only other chair at the table, and I sit, but not because she asked me to. I’m still feeling a little dizzy.
“Dana, listen. We’re getting Jack, and you’re coming with us.”
“I know.”
“I don’t care—what?” I had my argument all ready to go.
“I know. I’d like to leave as soon as Jack is awake.” I watch everything about her as she speaks.
She meets my eyes, speaking clearly and without hesitation, and I don’t like it when she’s agreeable.
“What’s changed?” I reach over and take a sip of the tea she was stirring.
“I can’t let anyone here get hurt, Michael. I need to get out of this town, but I need to lead the other two who are trying to kill me out of here as well. I need you to help me with that.”
“Other—two?” I repeat her words, and she nods impatiently. “So this one is?—”
“Dead.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “You want me to use you as bait to lure the other two after you?”
“I brought them here. I need to take them away.”
Sitting in silence, I watch her. There are a number of questions on the tip of my tongue. “And so I ask again: what’s changed?”
Biting her lip, she looks as though a big part of her wants to unburden herself.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on,” I push, and she sits quietly for a few seconds longer before nodding her head.
“They’re hiding a grow op.”
“Who is?”
“Everyone. Most of the people in town.”
“Who told you this?”
“The little old ladies who just dropped by for tea and helped me kill the hitman,” she answers matter-of-factly, her bottom lip trembling.
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I’m not making any sense?” Her brows arch high as she gestures incredulously to the room around us.
When she lifts the cup to her lips, the tremble in her hand is obvious, and I take a second to look around at what was once her quaint coffee shop.
Desserts and cookies are everywhere, and shards of glass cover the floor.
“I’m going to table this for now. I need to check on Jack, and we need to become a moving target, fast.” Glancing at my watch, I estimate I was out for damn near twenty minutes. I groan. We need to get in motion. None of us are ready for the next round, and there are still two open contracts. Dana cranes her neck to look at a toppled table behind her, and again I catch the marks on her body. “Dana, you’re hurt.”
Her fingers shoot up to her neck where my eyes burn into her. She gingerly touches the darkened lines around her throat as she sets her cup down with her other hand. It rattles against its saucer.
“I’m—” Before I get a response from her, a loud bang, like pots clanging against the floor, echoes out of the kitchen, followed by Jack yelling expletives.
I rise quickly. Keeping an eye on Dana, I move to the kitchen to swing open the door.
I only mean to open it a bit, to make sure he’s okay, but as my eyes follow the trail of destruction into the room, I can’t help but push the door wide and walk in.
There, in the middle of the floor, lies the guy I fought earlier, with what looks like a long-bladed butcher knife sticking out of his chest.
“You do that?” Jack points at the body. He’s winded, a little weak on his legs as he gathers his bearings, bracing himself against a large table with one hand.
I shake my head. “Dana.”
We share a look of shock and admiration before taking a second look at the guy on the ground.
“Well, shit.” Jack brushes off the front of his pants and straightens his jacket.
He takes a step closer to the body and pulls out a phone, snapping a picture for identification. I join him, stepping over the mess on the floor. I wait while Jack searches our attacker’s pockets, looking for something to go on, then hook my arms under the corpse and slide him across the floor as Jack simply shakes his head and opens the door to the freezer.
What’s one more body, right?
After dropping his literal dead weight to the floor, I straighten, my breath escaping in little cloudy gusts.
“We’re leaving.” I take the lead, and Jack nods, following me out of the kitchen to Dana, who is already standing and clutching her backpack. I don’t have time to fill him in on the town’s dirty little secret. “We’ll talk on the road.”
“Wait. I have a question.” Jack stills at my side as Dana captures our attention. “The man in there.” She points past us, toward the freezer. “He said something about losing a bonus for his buyer not seeing me. Do you know what that’s about?”
Jack shakes his head and shrugs, taking a step away from the conversation, but I stop him with my answer.
“Yes, we do.”
“Grizz.” Coming to a halt, Jack turns his attention to me, warning me not to continue, but things have changed.
“No, Phoenix. She trusted us with some information, and she needs to know this.” Dana watches me with wide eyes as I tell her about the bonus on the contract. Biting her bottom lip, she tugs at her bag, holding it tighter as I tell her how Matteo Sparr might be closer than we think.
“I wish I knew that fifteen minutes ago,” she mutters to herself, and Jack rounds on her.
“Listen, you’re coming with us.”
“Yes.”
Jack pauses mid-step, squaring himself on Dana. “What? No fight?” He side-eyes her as he asks.
“No fight. I’m coming with you.” Compliant, she lowers her head.
“Well, today just keeps getting better and better.” Exasperated, Jack turns to walk out of the shop. “I’ll bring the car to the back door. Be ready in two.” He opens the door an inch and turns back to Dana. “Take what you need. We won’t be coming back here.”
She nods, and he leaves, concern etched all over him.
I know why he’s tense. What if Jessa had showed up when we were both unconscious with a contract killer on the premises? Or, worse, Matteo? We all know Jessa’s coming, and we have no way to warn her of the danger in doing so.
Dana hasn’t moved, and I lift my brows at her in a silent question she doesn’t answer. Instead, she swings her arm through her pack and secures it to her back.
“Well? What was so important you risked all of our lives to come back here for?” I hate this wedge between us. We aren’t working together, and I’m fighting her to keep her safe. I’m growing tired of the battle.
“That’s not fair. I didn’t know this would happen.”
“Nothing about any of this has been fair, Dana. We told you last night you couldn’t come here. This”—I wave my hand around her shop—“is on you. I mean, what were you thinking?” I expect her to argue. We still have a minute before we need to head out back, and I’m ready to have it out.
Her lips wrinkle as she pinches them together, and the fire in her eyes cools as she drops them to the floor, taking in the disaster around her. It’s only a sliver of luck and a matter of timing that saved her from dying here, and she knows it. Things could have been very different had we not put a tracker on her.
Her chin trembles. It isn’t obvious, and had I not been staring her down I would have missed it. She’s rattled.
“I wasn’t thinking,” she finally says. “I was leaving. I came here to sign the shop over to the kids so they had it before I—” She pinches her lips tight, and her shoulders rise with a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
I can’t bring myself to tell her it’s okay, because it isn’t. Nothing about this is okay, and I won’t give her a false sense of hope like she had before. We are attempting to run away, and we have no intel on when our next ambush is going to happen.
So, instead of saying anything, I let the uncomfortable silence linger between us until a single honk from the alley tells me an impatient Jack is waiting.
“We need to go. Stay near me, and do what we say, even if you think you know better. Trust me, you don’t. We are trying to keep you safe.” I feel like a broken record, and she nods as I spot my gun lying on the counter.
I holster my weapon and walk in front of her, and we step over broken glass and kitchen gadgets before I open the back door.
“Wait.” Her voice is low, and I’m close to throwing her over my shoulder and tossing her in the SUV when I turn to see her digging around in a small pocket in the front of her backpack. She sets some keys down on the counter, then takes out a second set and leaves them as well. She mumbles, “Car and shop keys.”
She’s leaving her vehicle and her business to the kids. Tension slowly ebbs from my shoulders as I realize she’s accepted she is leaving with us, and I hear the rattle before I notice she’s holding the keys to our vehicle out for me.
“And what’s this?” Opening her other hand, she holds out the tracker Jack slipped into her bag.
“That’s how we found you. It’s a tracker.” My lips thin into a smile as I pocket our keys and slip the small tracking chip into my shirt pocket. She watches me with her lips pinched together.
Without another word, I turn to lead her out of the shop she dreamed about owning with Jessa one day and back to the base I’m sure she never wanted to see again.