8. Angel
EIGHT
ANGEL
Nash might’ve stopped me from bashing in Rowan’s skull with the tire iron, but that didn’t mean I was going to be all hunky dory with the man. He followed me back to the asylum on foot, and I half expected to see Nash when we arrived, leaning against the Torino’s hood, his arms crossed over his chest, that know-it-all smirk on his face. Instead, neither he nor the Torino were in sight, and I was forced to march up to the rooms, angry as fuck and very hyperaware of the tail I’d developed—the last fucker I wanted on my ass right now.
If Rowan opened his mouth and said so much as two words to me right now, I’d likely punch him so hard he woke up in last week.
My room was my safe haven tonight, and I punctuated my feelings and desire to be left the fuck alone by slamming the door so hard it rattled in the frame. If my younger brother couldn’t take that hint, he was dumber than I gave him credit for.
The clock on the wall was the only sound in the silence outside of my breath, the slow tic tic tic of the second hand reminding me that time moved on whether I participated or not. My lungs expanded with a massive gulp of air, then deflated like two balloons, and on and on it went, the breathing steady and monotonous. Still, I had to do something, or my thoughts would spiral, and I didn’t feel like dealing with the unknown right now.
Nash would be home any minute. I didn’t spiral. That was his schtick. Let him have the mental breakdown. I was Angel Blackwood, the strong one, the one without a care. I was a free spirit.
But inside, I was falling apart.
If that really was Harper, we had more problems than just killing her. We had to decide if we even could do it. Clearly, it hadn’t been successful the first time around. And the longer we waited, the more time she had to form an escape plan and get the hell out of town. If she made it away from us, we’d lose our chance, and the job.
On the other hand, Rowan had one thing dead to rights. I could no more kill her now than I could seven years ago. We’d stepped aside and let him deal with it, just like he did everything else. But the problem with that was the fucker had been in love with her since the moment he laid eyes on her.
From the moment our parents introduced us as new step-siblings, he was smitten. Rowan hadn’t been interested in girls, not like Nash was, or even me. But one look in those gorgeous baby blues, and he was a fucking goner. He dragged her along to everything we did, ensuring she was always with us. When she wasn’t, he was talking about her nonstop. It felt like a fucking obsession at times. But he would deny the fuck out of it, like we didn’t have eyeballs. He’d refused to admit it, but clearly all of us, her included, had seen it.
She’d called him on it on that fucking bridge as he held a knife to her throat. Even as he drew blood and threw her to what we all assumed was her death, he still looked at her like she hung the fucking moon and stars in his night sky.
I think a tiny part of all of us died with her on that bridge. We buried our innocence there when we thought we’d killed her.
The things we’d all given up in that moment?—
I could have lived a different life.
Instead, I thought my prospects were gone. I felt I had no choice but to become something I had never wanted to be. So I embraced the new me, the killer, the complicit murderer, and I embarked on a new life with my brothers.
And here we were, the whole life we’d built falling down on us because of the biggest lie we’d ever been told.
And it was all Rowan’s fault.
The fucker was no doubt in his room now, pacing like he didn’t just ruin not only our latest job, but our whole lives. Ro would be paying for years to come for his mistake, though. I didn’t need to pay him any more mind.
Instead, I flipped open my phone and dialed Nash, curious why he hadn’t shown up yet .
When he answered on the second ring, his voice was rough, like he’d been sleeping, or crying. But Nash didn’t cry. He was one of the toughest motherfuckers I’d ever met.
"What, Angel?"
I forgot how to speak, so unsure of what I was going to say. "Um."
Real eloquent, you idiot.
His patience was worn thin. I could hear it in the tone of his voice on the other line. "Hello, Angel, what can I do for you?"
"Where are you?" I asked, moving to flop across my bed as I toyed with a strand of my hair, twisting it around one finger. "You get lost?"
I could hear his grumbling in the background. "Something like that."
What wasn’t he telling me? "Well, maybe get un-lost and hurry back. We still have to figure things out."
"I’ve already figured them out," he huffed, the phone going quiet for a minute. "Fuck, they’re locked."
"Locked? What’s locked?" He was up to something, and I wanted to know what.
"Windows," he muttered, clearly forgetting he was on the phone. "Not like a window lock this simple will keep me out, though."
I heard him flick a latch and whisper a shouted hurrah, then a dull thunk as he landed inside somewhere.
No, couldn’t be. Could it?
Nash was the least sentimental of us all, so there was no way he was where I suspected he had gone. But I had to know. Stranger things had already happened tonight. What was one more surprise?
"You’re at her house, aren’t you, Nash?"
He refused to answer and confirmed my suspicions.
"Of all the people to end up stalking her, of course it would be you. But why? "
I needed to know if he was compromised. We still had a job to do that would involve ending her life. None of us could afford to get involved with her?—
"She’s a target, Nash," I snapped, listening to the sound of his breathing and nothing else. "We’ve got to take her out."
"Don’t act like you aren’t conflicted," Nash snapped, his voice low. "I don’t want to talk about it. I just came here to make sure she didn’t get away."
Sure, and I’m an alpaca. "Whatever you say, Nash."
He disconnected the call, and I got to work. If both my brothers were going to lose their heads over this contract, I would see it through for the sake of our reputation. I might be the pretty boy of the group, but damned if I wasn’t just as good at my job as they were.
The single-minded determination only lasted an hour and a half. I had migrated to the work office, as we called it, tearing through social media, public databases, and anything else I could get into that might hint at her trail. All I could find were some school documents for her mechanic’s license and her current pay stubs from Big John’s Garage. It was like she’d just popped up out of thin air one day, two years after we’d apparently failed at killing her, as a fully grown human. Her name had nothing else tied to it, so whoever had created her alias would have had to plant false documents in government databases.
And I only knew one guy with that kind of ability who would mix with guys like us. Only one who went back far enough to have helped Rowan then.
Rick Royston.
Grade A asshole, but a damn good hacker and the best document forger this side of the fucking ocean. I dialed his burner number, but it went to an overflowing mailbox, which didn’t surprise me in the least.
The fucker had a system designed to weed out the less persistent/serious clients. He would leave his message box full, and the clients who’d worked with him before would know to shoot him a text with a callback number. I followed his convoluted protocol and waited.
Sure enough, after about ten minutes, my backup phone rang, and I answered it on the second ring.
"Royston."
His tone was dry, but he knew who I was. "Blackwood. Can’t say I wasn’t eventually expecting a call, but I never thought it’d be from you."
The couch swallowed me whole as I sank into the cushions, ready for the worst of my fears to be confirmed. "I have some questions, and I know you’ve got answers."
Rick’s laugh was dry, but his tone was guarded. "What if I don’t want to give you the answers?"
I cleared my throat, already pissed off as I tried to keep my tone neutral. "You will."
"What do you want to know?"
"You helped a girl disappear for Rowan seven years ago. He swears he didn’t know the details, refused to let you tell him anything, other than she was safe." I paused for a moment, listening to the hum of the recording device Rick used on his calls to keep collateral should someone decide to turn on him. "That true, Rick?"
"Mmm," he hummed, "it is. However, I don’t know why. She seemed important to him." Now, it was his turn to pause, weighing the words that would come from his mouth next. "He know you called me?"
"I’m sure he suspected I would. I didn’t go out and tell him, though. We’re not exactly on speaking terms. "
I knew how to lure Rick in with the juicy tidbits that had him salivating. At his core, Rick Royston was a gossip. He dealt in information, and if he thought there might be something there, he’d sniff it out like a hound on the hunt.
"Something happen between you two? I thought you Blackwood boys were thick as thieves."
Hook, line, and sinker.
"Let’s just say he didn’t plan to ever share his involvement with her, or her existence, with the rest of us. His hand was forced."
Royston was silent for a hot minute, the gears in his head turning at a mile a minute. "Do I need to hide this girl again? Because that’s gonna cost extra, Angel."
"No, no, we don’t need her hidden again. Let’s just say it was destiny that she ended up on our radar now."
"Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me."
He didn’t wait for me to end the call; he had what he wanted—the latest gossip and confirmation that his services weren’t yet needed. Rick was in high demand, and time was money.
I tossed the burner across the floor and groaned to myself, flexing muscles that had begun to cramp.
An hour went by as I reclined on that couch, then another, with no sign of Nash and no indication that Rowan planned to come in and confront me. I was half convinced that if I fell asleep here, he’d sleep in the living room in protest so he wouldn’t have to walk past me to get to his own room.
He’d cut off his nose to spite his face before he’d admit he fucked up. He was Mister Perfect. Couldn’t stand to be out of control of a situation or not know what would happen next. Never mind that we all really needed to have a talk about what was going to happen, or where we planned to go from here. No, he’d rather stew in his own self-pity and frustration than open up to his brothers.
Fuck him, then.
I could handle this all on my own.
But first, I’d need a few things . . .