Chapter Twenty-Five
“I’m sorry, Calista, Amir—” The rest of what Tanner was going to say was cut off by Arlo’s vicious blow to his jaw.
His head jerked to the side, but the chair he was tied to stayed upright.
I felt his pain, seeing as just moments before I’d been on the receiving end of Arlo’s right hook.
The Aussie had one hell of a power punch, although he obviously pulled his punch to my temple since he hadn’t knocked me out like he had Tanner.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t seeing stars floating in my peripheral.
“It’s been a long time, Calista.”
Just hearing Jason’s voice made my stomach roil. Memories from the last time I saw him raced to the forefront of my mind, bringing with them excruciating pain that rivaled the blow to my head.
“Amir sends his regards,” Jason continued.
Fucking hell.
“He wasn’t pleased to learn that the woman he’d dined with wasn’t who she said she was.
He drove a hard bargain. You cost me a pretty penny.
Luckily for you, I’ve already had a Ventura woman .
. . and liked the taste of her. I’m sure you’ll find your time with me more pleasurable than what Amir had planned. ”
I glanced around Tanner’s living room. He’d put up one hell of a struggle before he was tied to the chair, if the broken coffee table and overturned chairs were anything to go by. Not to mention his face looked like he’d gone through all twelve rounds with a heavyweight champ and lost.
“If you’re feeling sorry for your friend Tanner, don’t. He sold you out. All it took was a phone call from Amir and the guy sang. Told Amir everything, down to today’s pickup. All I had to do was wait. And voilà, here you are.”
And there I was, unarmed, with no phone, and a headache after Arlo got the drop on me.
I would’ve felt like a schmuck about this, but Arlo was six-three, two-fifty pounds (by my guesstimation) of pure muscle, and he’d had the added benefit of knowing I’d be walking up to Tanner’s door at some point.
Atlanta must’ve called Tanner after I’d spoken to her, knowing I’d want to pick up my kit sooner rather than later.
Ironically, the woman’s efficiency might get me killed today.
If only I hadn’t tossed my phone out the window of the cab, she could track my location, but that was exactly what I was trying to avoid—Mason calling Shep to get my location.
“A Steyr DMR. I’m impressed,” Jason went on, taking his gun off of me to wave it at the table. “Tell me, Calista, was that for me or for Amir?”
I bit my tongue.
Time.
I needed time to figure a way out of this clusterfuck. I couldn’t make a move with Archie guarding the door, Arlo standing sentry next to Tanner, and Jason pointing a gun at me. I had yet to see Bodhi, but he’d be here too.
“Not that it matters, now that you’re coming home with me.” Jason paused and smiled. “I’ll have your sister’s room prepared. I’m sure you’d like to see where she lived all those years she stayed with me.”
I willed the pain not to lacerate my insides as the memories of my sister reared up.
“Wait until you meet him, Calli.” Lili beamed and patted her pink cheeks.
“Is he hot?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe. But he has this voice. It gives me goose bumps.”
Goose bumps.
The man who would be the death of her gave her goose bumps.
I was going to enjoy every second of killing Jason Anderson.
Back in high school, I had this history teacher who was into watching Dateline, and once a week, she’d tell the class about the episode she’d seen.
The bad guys always look so normal.
At the time, I hadn’t known how right Mrs. Hill had been.
Most of the time she relayed the stories, I didn’t pay attention—something like murder or kidnapping didn’t happen to people like us.
Naively, I didn’t think horrible things could touch my family.
My father owned a dry-cleaning business, my mom was a stay-at-home mom until my sister and I went to high school, then she worked part time helping my dad at the cleaners.
We had a good family. We loved each other.
Bad things didn’t happen to good people.
God, I was stupid. Bad things happened to everyone.
“Nothing to say? My Lili used to give me the silent treatment too. When she’d get mad at me and not speak, I’d tell her, her Russian was showing.”
My Lili.
I was going to throw up, and not from the blood all over Tanner’s small bungalow.
My dedulya had once told me a story about growing up in Moscow.
He called it a gangster’s paradise. Crazy stories.
But the one that stuck out was him telling me that he saw a man through a shop window, hanging from a hook and being electrocuted.
My parents hadn’t been happy he’d told me the story.
For the next week, I had nightmares of a man hanging on a hook.
That was how I was going to start. Jason would see my Russian.
Apparently, he liked the sound of his voice as much as my sister had, since he kept going without any input from me.
“I was surprised to see you last night.”
I bet you were.
I kept that comment to myself and my eyes on the table across the room.
So many weapons just out of my reach.
“You were a beautiful teenager,” he grossly went on. “I almost picked you. But you were too young.”
That confession settled in my stomach. If he’d picked me, Lili would still be alive. I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been me instead of my sister, if my mother would’ve found a way to go on.
“You’re totally Dad’s favorite.” Lili shook her head, smiling, holding up my birthday present from our dad—a new MP3 player. “This thing costs almost two hundred dollars.”
“So? You’re Mom’s favorite. She bought you a pair of Guess jeans for no reason. Do you know the last time Mom bought me a present for no reason?”
“You’re right.” She smiled wider. “But do you know who my favorite is?”
“Mom. She buys you expensive jeans.”
“You, you dork. You’re my all-time-forever favorite.”
I stared at my sister, thinking she was my favorite too. Unfortunately, the thought never left my mouth.
“We need to go,” Bodhi announced.
Jason ignored his guard. “I had Arlo look into you.”
Arlo . . . not Archie. My gaze swung to the door. Archie had his arms crossed over his wide chest, eyes narrowed on his boss.
“You’ve done well for yourself. Commercial real estate, impressive.”
That cover was so old, and I’d used it so often, I wasn’t impressed Arlo had found it. We left it out there dangling for people like Jason to find.
I waited for him to say more. It wasn’t like he had a problem with carrying on a one-sided conversation while Bodhi stood watch over a passed-out-cold Tanner. I wondered if they ever got tired of him talking.
If that was why one of them had turned traitor—just to get him to shut up.
“I would think a woman with your wealth would know better than to travel with second-rate bodyguards.” He sounded like he was actually scolding me for not having more protection.
“But then, a woman in commercial real estate wouldn’t be dealing with an arms dealer, now, would she?
Tell me, Calista, why are you really here? ”
Since there was no reason to hide the truth, I didn’t.
“To kill you.”
Jason’s mouth tipped up into a smile, the one that I knew my sister had fallen in love with. But it was his obnoxious laugh that triggered a memory so painful, I had to grit my teeth.
“I think I love him,” Lili said, and plopped down next to me on my bed.
I looked up from my notebook and couldn’t stop my smile. She looked so happy.
“Where’d you guys go today?”
“The miniature golf place.”
“The one with the arcade or the one next to the bowling alley?”
“Arcade.” She glanced down at the textbooks cluttering my bed. “You need to find a boyfriend, Calli. There’s more to life than studying.”
“One day.” I brushed her off, not telling her last weekend I’d gone on the lamest date ever, worried I’d never find my Jason. “Tell me everything.”
“He’s . . . I don’t know . . . perfect! And when he laughs it’s like .
. . I don’t know, I just want to sigh. He said he wants me to meet his family.
I want to meet them, but I don’t know if I’m ready.
What if they don’t like me? I don’t want to lose him.
Jason Anderson is the best thing that ever happened to me. ”
Jason Anderson was the devil.
“Lili told me you were an idealist, always coming up with wild stories in your head. I see you haven’t changed.”
I’d changed more than he knew. I wasn’t the same naive girl who’d cried in his arms at the police station after he’d given his statement.
He’d played the part of worried boyfriend like an Oscar winner.
His story never changed, not a single detail.
That should’ve been a red flag. It had been rehearsed and memorized.
And I should’ve known it was a lie. I knew my sister, and there was no way she’d ask Jason to end a date and take her back to her apartment because she got a headache. She loved him, wanted to spend every waking moment with him. She would’ve suffered through a headache to spend time with him.
The timing of his story had been impeccable.
His alibi solid. Sometimes I wondered if he’d driven the route from my sister’s apartment to his friend’s house at the exact time of day, so he’d get the traffic right.
Twenty years ago, there weren’t cameras on everyone’s front doors and on street corners.
It was easier back then to kidnap someone and get away with it.
“It’s time, Jason,” Bodhi pressed again.
“Do you believe in fate?”
That question caused actual physical pain.
“Why do you look so happy?” I asked Lili as she tossed her purse on the kitchen island.
“Are Mom and Dad home?”
“No. Dad’s still at work, and I don’t know where Mom is.”
“I think Jason’s going to ask me to marry him.”
Marry him.
“Isn’t three months too soon to get married?”
“I said ask me to, not run off and elope tomorrow.” Lili had this dreamy look on her face, which seemed to be her permanent state of being these days.
“Did he take you to a jewelry store or something?”
“No, last night we were lying in my bed, and he asked me if I believed in fate. I told him I wasn’t sure. He told me he did. That he knew we were fated to be together.”
“Absolutely,” I replied.
From the second the thought had crossed his depraved mind to take my sister from me, his fate had been sealed.
Quicker than I thought Jason could move, he swung his Colt—or was it mine that I’d ordered from Tanner—in Arlo’s direction and fired.
Two-hundred and thirty grains of stopping power slammed into the man’s head.
Before Arlo could drop, Jason had Archie in his sights and double tapped.
What the fuck just happened?
The pounding in my head got a friend called tinnitus.
Jason turned back to me. “Let that be a lesson to you, Calista. I don’t tolerate traitors or incompetence.”
Well, fuck. So much for me using the traitor for help.