4
Logan
Ipause, the phone against my ear, the information sending goosebumps up my spine.
“But he promised... he promised us he would stay in Italy,” I say. “That’s why we let him live.”
“Yeah, well, clearly he’s not that good at keeping promises.” Damien marks a beat. “He’s barely even stepped foot in Italy. He spends his time jetting between Paris and... guess where?”
Oh… fuck.
“Please don’t tell me…”
“Ireland.”
I pull the phone away right before retching into the bathtub again.
“You okay, man? Sick? I didn’t know you had a problem with flying.”
“I… don’t…” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “I don’t get it. Fuck, I don’t get it. There’s something really fucked up going on. But what? What, Damien?”
“I don’t know,” he says slowly.
“You don’t think…” Try as I might to keep it down, the pinprick of doubt gets just a bit bigger. “You don’t think, after all this time…”
“No, I don’t,” he says urgently, and I can tell he hears the bubble of hope in my voice. “I’m sorry, Logan, but it doesn’t seem possible. Don’t get your hopes up. Just know that whatever you’re walking into, in Ireland… it’s not good news.”
“Yeah. No, I know that. I know it, Damien.” I take a very deep breath. “But Piper says… she says whoever called her said Cabello was dead. That the woman on the phone had killed him.”
“Hmm.” Damien sighs. “I wish you had waited a little before leaving. We could’ve tried to figure it out. Right now, you’re going in blind. It makes me nervous, Logan.”
“It’s fine.” It’s hard to reassure him when I feel far from reassured myself. Though I’m not worried about me, but about Piper. Why the hell did I let her come along? “I once killed dozens of men in a single night. I think I can handle this.”
“Right. Okay, well, I love you, man. Be careful.”
“Oh, and Damien?”
“Uh huh?”
“What’s the fun fact about Anna Price?”
“Oh, that.” He chuckles. “I’ll tell you later. You just go and kill all those fuckers, and then give me a call, and I’ll tell you. Okay, man? You’re gonna have to walk out of there alive if you want to hear it. Promise me you will.” His voice comes out a little strangled.
“I promise, Damien.”
I hang up, my heart heavy. What the hell have I gotten myself into? No: what the hell have I gotten my daughter into?
_
It takes two hours of driving through tiny roads in the steep, rocky countryside to reach the address the woman on the phone gave Piper.
The surroundings are stunningly beautiful, but I’m far too preoccupied to take any of it in.
Piper, though, is beside herself with excitement.
She still seems to firmly believe her mother is alive, that she’s the one who called her, and that she’s now waiting for her.
And I guess she views this place as some sort of ancestral home.
Her roots are here, in a way, and she’s fully conscious of it.
I look over to the passenger seat, where Piper is sitting in Quill’s lap, held firmly by him, in utter disregard of safe driving rules. Reaching over to her, I squeeze her hand. Quill doesn’t glare at me when I touch her, but he does squeeze her other hand, a lot harder.
“Ow! Stop it, Quill! That hurts!”
Despite the panic and pain I’ve been struggling with all day, I can’t help but laugh. Those two are going to be the end of me.
But I sober up when I realize that we’re just a few minutes away. I park the car on the side of the path leading up to the cottage, a sloping cliff hiding us from view.
“Are we sure about this?” I ask Quill.
Damien’s words ring out in my mind: You’re going in blind.
It’s true. I don’t have the first idea of what awaits us. All I have are some photos Everest got on Google Maps. A small, unassuming cottage. Not the kind of place I would assume mobsters to be hiding out in. Or the group of masked Irish bikers the woman told Piper about on the phone.
I just don’t know what the hell to think anymore.
“We’re sure,” says Piper stoutly in answer to my question.
“I was asking Quill.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” she snaps. “She’s my mother, isn’t she? Don’t I get any say in this?”
“No.”
Both Quill and I speak at the same time, and she huffs out in annoyance.
“Well, great. I’m glad you’re getting along. United in your desire to dominate me. Seriously, you are such a psycho chauvinist pig. I mean you, Logan. Quill is just a psycho, that’s all.”
But she speaks the word affectionately, and he kisses her, his hand going up to play with her hair.
I grin. “If I were a chauvinist pig, I’d want to dominate all women. But my desire to dominate extends only to you, Piper, and it’s because you’re so oblivious and clumsy that you’d probably walk straight off that cliff and into the water below, if we let you.”
“Whatever,” she grumbles. “Bet you wanted to dominate my mother too, back then.”
I look away, and she seems to regret her words. “I’ll be careful, Logan. I promise.”
“Okay.” I’m terrified, suddenly, of ending this conversation on a negative note. What if…? “Okay,” I say again, trying this time to put a lot more warmth in my voice. “You’re going to be a good girl, Piper—”
“I’m not a child.”
“You’re going to be a good woman, Piper, and Quill is going to take good care of you, and everything will work out perfectly.
Now, Everest tells me there are two houses here.
That two-story stone cottage the woman gave you the address to, and a little cabin a few feet away.
Probably some sort of gardening shed or something.
I’m going to head out there, and then I’ll send you a text message as soon as I have a clear view of the house.
If there’s no window, I’ll have to find some other place, but it’ll be on that side.
See?” I point in the direction of the cabin Everest found on the map.
“Don’t get out of the car until I text you.
And don’t go inside the house. Draw whoever it is outside, so I can shoot if necessary. ”
“It won’t be necessary. She’s my—”
“Shh, Piper. Just let him do this. Okay?” Quill murmurs the words in her ear while running his hand up and down her spine, and she sighs.
“Okay.”
I open the car door as quietly as possible and creep out, trying not to make any sound. But whoever is waiting must have eyes on us. Cameras, or armed men hiding. Goosebumps prickle over my back. I can’t even begin to understand this situation, and it’s freaking me out.
All I can do is hope that whoever set up the trap knew I would come. They must have expected it. If so, I’m their target. Not Piper.
That’s fine; I can handle being a target. I’ve been a target for much of my life.
I just can’t handle my daughter being one.
If Quill lets anything happen to her, I swear to god…
Fuck me. Why are there no trees in this godforsaken land?
I try to stay hidden, ducking under rocks, crawling through grass as I head toward the shed, but there’s just no way they don’t see me—if they’re watching.
Suddenly I feel something wet under my hands. Despite the vividly green, lush grass that tells me this place gets a lot of rain, today, the ground is dry. Except for the one spot right under my hands. I look down, and have to bite down on my tongue so I don’t let out a cry of surprise.
Rivulets of murky red trickle through the dirt, dyeing the grass a sickening shade of crimson.
Blood—that’s what it is. Blood.
And it’s coming from the shed.
What the fuck?
Still crouching, I grab the gun from my holster and angle it at the cabin. Despite the red tinging the ground, I try to lie as flat as possible.
Swallowing my nerves, I creep around to the other side, still on my hands and knees. Then I stand up and kick in the old wooden door.
It breaks in a loud cracking noise, splintering off its hinges and falling backward into the shed, stopped by some large object on the ground.
I don’t even have to look to know what kind of object it is.
A dead body, the source of the blood dyeing the Irish countryside red.
But what I don’t expect is the face that stares up at me unseeingly when I flip it over.
What… the… fuck?
She said she killed her father.
No. Impossible. It can’t be, and yet—
I turn to the window, and a strangled cry leaves my throat when I see Piper and Quill walking toward the cottage.
No! What the fuck? What about the plan? The message? I could strangle that girl. I could fucking strangle her. And him… I am going to strangle him.
They must think they’re invincible. They must think they’re on top of the world. Just like I did once, before it all came crashing down.
The only thing that’s left for me to do now is angle my gun toward the door of the house and wait.
I suddenly realize the plan I carefully laid was for me, not them. They didn’t need to wait for a message. They just needed to wait until I was out of sight in that shed. I’m the one who needed… time.
Yes. Time before that door opened to reveal the person who called Piper.
The person who can’t be Lia.
And yet…
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m not ready.
The door opens onto a flash of hair. Red hair, curly red hair, that makes me want to hurl out whatever contents remain in my stomach.
A ghost of a girl, identical to the one who died, down to the seventy-four freckles.
It’s her.
It can’t be her… but it is her.
She walks timidly out of the house, turning toward Piper, who lets out a gasp. I don’t know if she recognizes her from the old photos, or if the grey-out, as she calls it, is fading. Or because the woman looks like a carbon copy of her, just older.
The redheaded ghost is on the point of opening her arms hesitantly to Piper when I burst out of the shed, my gun pointed at her.
“Piper! Get away from her! Get the fuck away from her!”
Piper turns to stare at me, confusion written all over her face. Quill comes up from behind, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her back.
I put my finger on the trigger, walking toward the woman who destroyed me.
“You… you told him…” she stammers, staring at Piper. “But you promised…”
“Logan, please,” begs Piper, struggling against Quill’s hold. “Please don’t kill her! What are you doing, Logan? You can’t kill my mother!”
“Your mother died eighteen years ago,” I say, my voice harsh. “This isn’t your mother. This is a monster. Quill, take her back to the car.”
I didn’t need to tell him. He’s already dragging her to it despite her struggling. She’s fighting back so hard he has to use all his force. But he’s far stronger than her. I know he’ll keep her in that car.
I turn back to the stranger standing before me. She looks even whiter than a ghost, now, as she stares at the gun, and then at me.
“Logan…”
Just that word in her mouth has me itching to pull the trigger.
“Don’t say my name. For fuck’s sake, don’t say my name. Don’t speak. Just stop speaking.”
She shakes her head wordlessly, tears making her green eyes glitter. Green, just like a snake.
I take a few steps toward her, removing the safety, my finger on the trigger.
She stares at it, at me, and then suddenly… she starts to run.
Fuck. Why the hell is she running? She knows she deserves to die. She knows it’s the only possible outcome. Why the hell is she making it so goddamn hard?
Removing my finger from the trigger, I start walking slowly after her. There’s no place to hide, anyway. No trees in this fucking place. Just a lot of grass and rocks. I see her yards away, her pink dress swaying in the breeze, her feet bare…
It’s a fucking mirage, that’s what it is. An illusion. It’s not Lia; Lia died eighteen years ago. Whoever this abomination is, I need to end it. I can’t let it taint her memory.
She stops at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the rocks and water below, then back at me. I’m still walking slowly toward her, my gun pointed at her. She has nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.
“Please…” she whispers. “Please don’t come closer, or I’ll jump.”
I stare at her. She’s beautiful, like a photograph, frozen in time. So beautiful, with her red hair blowing in the wind, that I could almost forgive her.
Almost.
“You can jump if you want,” I say quietly. “You’re going to die anyway.”
She shakes her head. “That’s what you used to say too. But you never did kill me. You don’t have it in you to do that, do you, Logan?”
I take another step forward, and she gasps, taking a step back. There aren’t many more steps she can take before she falls.
“I think you know exactly what I can do,” I growl. “I should have done it then. Before the gangrene set in. I should have stopped the damage at twenty-seven broken bones.”
“Please, Logan… stop!”
I’ve just taken a few more steps forward.
“You’re a little coward, aren’t you? You’re not going to jump. You should, but you won’t. You’re a real fucking coward. You’re going to force me to do it myself.”
“Please, Logan… please. I don’t want to die.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I hiss. “You’re already dead. You died a long time ago.”
She’s at the very edge of the cliff now. A single step, and she’d fall. I close the distance between us, but she doesn’t move. I knew she wouldn’t. I know everything about her.
A heartless, cowardly snake. That’s what she is. An illusion. No: a reflection. Maybe she never was more than that—the superficial reflection of my own devotion.
I press my gun to her temple, and she falls to her knees.
“I don’t want to die, Logan…”
“I once thought, for all your faults, that you were a good mother. But you’re not even that, are you? You didn’t just abandon me. You abandoned your daughter too.”
“Logan…” She crouches down, trying to press her face to my shoes. Just like she did that one time I learned of her rape.
Back then, I’d pulled her back up and comforted her. Now, though, I withdraw my foot.
“Don’t touch me, scum. Don’t fucking touch my shoe.
You’d dirty it.” I let out a strangled breath.
“I fucking visited your grave every day. Every single fucking day.” I watch as she remains on the ground, in a pathetic kneeling position.
“What are you doing right now? Are you trying to apologize to me? Is that what this is? Don’t make me laugh.
Nothing could make me forgive you. Besides, you don’t really want to apologize, you just want to live.
But scum like you doesn’t deserve to live. ”
“I do… want to… apologize…” She forces out the words, and I’m thankful she’s facing the ground so I can’t see the tears I hear in her voice.
“Yeah? Well, you can do that by eating the trash I should have let Damien force-feed you back in high school. No—there’s no trash here, only dirt. Dirt’s too good for you. But that’s all there is. So fucking eat it.”
Her tongue slips out from between her parted lips, and she slowly, very slowly, licks the ground.
Fuck, that feels good. It takes the edge off of my overwhelming fury. I just have time to wonder if, maybe, I could keep her alive after all, just so I can force her to eat shit every day, when she rises back up on her knees, makes a small movement backward and… lets herself fall.