25. Nash
TWENTY-FIVE
NASH
"I ain’t talking over the phone, man; just get here, okay?" I hung up the phone and prayed he’d drive fast. The girl’s body was going cold, and soon, she’d be hell to move. We’d have to break some bones, and that could be messy and irritating if rigor mortis set in.
"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuckety fucks." The cobblestones under the heels of my boots made a dull thud as I paced back and forth, shooting the dead body an irritated grimace with every pass.
I didn’t come here to fucking kill a bitch. I came here to blow off some steam. The whole point of frequenting a dark, seedy strip joint was to find girls who weren’t picky. Who weren’t above doing anything for a dollar. I paid the bitch to follow me outside and suck my dick, but instead of using that cocksucker for its intended purpose, she decided to run it.
Her first mistake was staring too long at my face when the fucking streetlight flickered and put it into stark relief. When I left the house, I didn’t bother to put any makeup on, and she got a full view of the scars one of her kind gifted me with.
Her second mistake was laughing.
At me.
With my cock out and at eye level.
I wasn’t used to my cock not working, but fuck all if she hadn’t played with it, and still, the fucker wouldn’t stand up like he was supposed to. It was probably all the booze that’d replaced my blood. I was well over the legal driving limit and no doubt in alcohol poisoning territory.
Not that I could tell. Right now, the only thing racing through my mind was the irritation that I’d been so out of control of myself that I let a bitch like her get under my skin and affect me like this. I let her make me feel something, regardless of the emotion behind it.
It wouldn’t happen again.
Ever.
Blood pumped through my veins as I spiraled, something I hadn’t done in a long-ass time. She looked at me from the other side of life through dead eyes that glassed over like windows. Her face mirrored mine, a sloppy, shaky recreation that made me suddenly sick.
I didn’t want her to look at me anymore.
Couldn’t stand the way my compulsion forced me to make these women as miserable-looking as me.
Made me wanna vomit.
With a practiced flick of the wrist, I turned her head, grinning maliciously at the telltale snap as I broke her neck—or what was left of it, anyhow. Her throat was sliced damn near to the spine, blood staining the front of her skimpy ass top and half her stomach. Abs that had seen better days created a break in the natural path, and it trailed off in two forks, disappearing around her hips and pooling into a puddle beneath her cooling body.
Bitch got what she deserved.
But was that me telling myself what I had to in order to deal with what I’d done, or was it the truth?
The fact that I couldn’t differentiate between the two was alarming.
A problem for another day.
"Fuck you, whore." The words echoed off the wall, but the only one of us who’d ever hear them was me. She was well past giving a fuck. "You did this to yourself, really."
I froze in place as a car turned into the alley and inched closer, headlights off. I almost panicked, until I recognized the telltale dark black that was almost a void and heaved a sigh of relief.
I started forward when Rowan slipped from behind the wheel and slammed his door, Angel climbing out on the other side. He slammed the door behind him, and it felt like there was something I was missing, but my mind was singularly focused on my kill. I couldn’t devote any more brainpower to figuring out what had me out of sorts .
Until I started to explain to Rowan, and the passenger door opened with an exasperated grumble.
"You know, Angel, you could try being less of a dick. No reason to offset all that pretty with the attitude of a douche."
Harper climbed from the backseat and slammed the door behind her pointedly, a cheezy sneer on her face as she stuck her tongue out at Angel as she shoved past him.
Oh, fuck me.
Of course they’d bring her; they couldn’t just leave her at the asylum. Too many untrustworthy fuckers in there. But I wasn’t pleased with her presence. For some reason, a new emotion shot through me, one I was unaccustomed to dealing with.
Shame.
"What the fuck happened, Nash?" Rowan spat, his eyes on the dead body lying in a heap behind me. "That looks like a lot more than ‘I fucked up,’ you asshole."
Harper’s eyes were on me, taking in my disheveled appearance, and then those eyes traveled south, following the path of the blood spatter, and the side of her mouth quirked before she covered her mouth.
The pain was too raw, and I took an involuntary step forward, intending to give her a taste of what I’d given the last girl who laughed at me.
Wait.
No!
This was Harper, man. I didn’t want to rip her throat apart and scar up her face to make her ugly like me.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
"Yo, Nash, your fly’s open." Angel pointed to my zipper, which I belatedly realized was the sole reason Harper had grinned at my crotch.
The fact that I’d come so close to taking my knife out on her brought all that alcohol back up, and I quickly swallowed the bile that rose in my throat, fighting the urge to be sick at the thought of my uncontrollable tendencies.
"Jesus, you smell like a fucking vat of tequila, you prick." Rowan sniffed in my direction, wincing at the scent that clung to my jacket and my breath.
What could I say? I had a love for the clear stuff.
I didn’t even bother to zip up. I just strode over to the body, and for some reason, I turned her face back forward, fighting the stiffness of her joints as my warm hands encountered her cold skin.
Ugh, dead bodies were so fucking boring.
"She fucked up, man. She called me a freak, and she laughed at me. Laughed. I couldn’t let that shit go, so I gave her some pretty scars to go with mine. Now we’re both laughing."
"Ha, ha, hilarious, Nash. Get ahold of yourself before I beat some sense into you." Angel flicked an imaginary piece of lint off his shirt, staring at the ground at my feet. "Your uncontrollable personality and rash decision-making tendencies are precisely why we’re even here right now."
Harper’s fist darted out and socked him in the shoulder, earning his ire and an intense stare of disapproval. "Jesus, Angel, learn when to shut the fuck up already." She still hadn’t looked away from me, and though she didn’t vocalize the words, I could feel the confusion and anger and fear churning in the depths of those beautiful twin orbs of sapphire. "Rowan, where do you normally get rid of your, err, targets?"
To see her leaning into our lifestyle so soon was like a dream come true and a heartbreak all rolled into one. I hated to think of the kind of life I lived tainting someone who’d once been so pure and innocent. She was so good—even if she had been a spoiled brat. At the same time, I never thought any woman would inspire feelings of pride and excitement in me at the thought that she wouldn’t shirk away from the real us. That she might adopt our lifestyle as her own.
Just not Harper.
Rowan cleared his throat, a hand on the back of his neck as he eyed her warily. Suddenly, he didn’t seem too eager to answer her. Not that I could blame him.
It’s hard to tell someone that you dump all your dead bodies at the site of your first murder.
Her murder.
When Rowan seemed unable to answer her, she looked to Angel, who was still staring at the ground, this time in the other direction.
"Oh, for fuck’s sake. We drop them off the bridge, Harper," I spat, aghast at my attitude. "They’re afraid to tell you we dump all our kills where we shoved you off the bridge."
She blinked for a moment, the news sinking in finally. I could see the moment it hit her brain, because her calm, composed face fell like a bowling ball from the roof, slamming into the ground at terminal velocity.
"Oh," she whispered, her eyes falling to join the others. "That’s, uh, wonderful. Okay. Yeah, totally normal. Makes sense."
I could hear the crack in her voice, but her glare told me to stay the fuck in my own lane. It dared any of us to question her as she strode over to the dead body, shutting the girl’s eyes as she tugged her into a fireman’s carry and marched over to the trunk like it wasn’t the first dead body she’d ever moved.
Which, of course, left us all speechless.
A melancholy and somewhat disappointed gaze trailed over all three of us pointedly as we watched. "Is someone going to open this damn trunk for me, or do I have to stand here until my arms go numb?"
Watching Rowan trip over himself to help her was like watching a spider trying to climb an icicle or a dog running on a wet floor. When he bent over and popped the damn thing open, his damn hands shook .
He didn’t say a word to her, and when she held out her hands for the keys, he gave them to her.
The keys to the Torino.
Just like that.
The fucker was whipped.
"Pussy must be pretty fucking good," I muttered, hands shoved in my pockets as I strode to the car. I felt like a petulant child who’d been denied his checkout lane candy pleas. "She the boss now, too?"
"Shut up, Nash, you’re drunk." Angel shoved the passenger seat forward and climbed in, then scooted over so I could follow behind.
Rowan slammed the seat back and reached beneath the seat for the quick cleanup kit we carried with us. "How many more messes of yours will I have to clean up, Nash?"
Like a whipped dog, my spirit sank at his words. But this was Rowan. He’d never made me feel bad about a kill before. Well, okay, so most of my other kills were sanctioned, but still ? —
"If you want me to feel sorry, I don’t." My eyes found Harper’s as she slipped into the driver’s seat, the mirror perfectly conveying her disgust and disappointment. "I’d do it again. She got what she deserved."
"She was someone’s daughter, Nashville Blackwood."
If I thought Rowan’s words were rough, Harper’s managed to cut me to the bone. She couldn’t have made my heart bleed more if she’d used an actual knife. Why did I want to apologize to her? Nobody asked her to come. I didn’t call her for help.
Did I?
It was hard to remember what the fuck I’d done when I was still not thinking straight, riding the high from the kill and fumbling with bloody fingers to make a phone call.
"Yeah, and so were you, once upon a time. Didn’t stop us then. Why should it stop us now?"
She looked forward and turned on the blinkers as it began to rain, both hands on the wheel as the beastly tires on the car ate the pavement up and spun out, kicking the ass end around to the side from the excessive horsepower.
Rowan’s hands clutched the oh-shit handle and center console, respectively, and I chuckled as his eyes found the dash display, watching it and the road simultaneously.
This would be a torturous ride for more than one of us.
We got to the bridge in one piece, but Harper had stopped at the end of it, wipers flashing across the windshield in a mad dash to remove all the water from the now-torrential downpour to allow for some visibility. Her head didn’t move; she just stared emptily out at the old bridge, which had been shut down years ago because of the holes in the sidewalk concrete. In some spots, you could see straight down into the water. Nowadays, even if a body didn’t draw the attention of the crocs, the idea that someone had fallen from the bridge by accident was a lot more plausible.
And yeah, they had marks, but I mean, seriously, a lot of exposed rebar everywhere; who’s to say they didn’t slip and stab themselves on the metal?
Harper’s throat worked as she gripped the steering wheel, white-knuckled and shaking, but I might’ve been imagining things. Maybe I wanted her to feel something shitty, just like I did.
Maybe I wanted her to hurt a little because of how she affected me.
Her fear of the bridge was just icing on the cake.
"I’ll get out and move the road sign," Rowan muttered, slipping from the Torino with a frown. "Just drive on through until you come to the second sign and put it in park."
I chuckled as I realized she wouldn’t be able to do it .
And I hated myself for it.
"What’s so funny?" Angel muttered in confusion, his head cocked to the side quizzically.
I gestured at Harper, who was visibly shaken. "She can’t drive this car across the bridge. She can’t even stand the sight of it."
Sure enough, she didn’t even seem to register my words. She was singularly focused on the road before her, the pathway to her own death and dumping seven years ago.
It was his turn now to look toward the rearview mirror, trying to meet her gaze, but she wasn’t paying either of us a lick of attention. When Rowan opened the door to ask what was going on, he gestured wordlessly in her direction as his brows hiked up to his hairline.
"She’s not with it, man. This was a bad idea."
"Harper?" Rowan called to her, but she didn’t show an inkling of attention. She was lost in the hidden corner of her memory that paralyzed her with fear. Immobilized her. "Harper, why don’t you give the wheel to me?"
Rowan reached across the car and put his hand on her shoulder, and the touch might’ve been electric, for all that she jerked like a bolt of lightning went through her. Her hands shook, and she stepped on the gas, careening across the bridge like a woman possessed.
I saw my life flash before my eyes, and the feeling was euphoric. I deserved nothing less, really. Death by the hands of the woman we’d killed once and were hired to kill a second time. A more perfect, ironic end, I couldn’t have paid someone in showbiz to write.
Come on, then, Grim Reaper. I’m ready for your skeleton ass.
I closed my eyes and prepared to plunge off the side of the bridge in a mockery of the way we’d killed her seven years ago.
Coming full circle.
Ah, Karma, you're quite the bitch.