Chapter 12
Iwas really struggling with my guilt after watching Alfie's forlorn expression as he walked away from me. Not to mention the anger at seeing him hold that... that... lumberjack's hand as he led him to the truck they'd arrived in.
Who was the asshole, and why was he holding my Alfie's hand?
No!
Definitely not my Alfie. Not my anything.
The thought should've settled something in me.
It didn't.
If anything, it just made the hollow feeling in my chest worse. I swore under my breath and dragged a hand through my hair as I turned away from the road where the lumberjack's truck had disappeared in a cloud of dust.
It didn't matter. Didn't matter who Alfie was with. Didn't matter how he found me. Didn't matter how damned hard it had been not to pull him against me and tell him to stay. With me. What mattered was finishing the job. I'd already screwed up enough for one day.
Behind me, Milo groaned from where he lay cuffed on the porch, blood soaking through his shirt in thick sluggish waves.
"Looks like your bullet went clean through," I muttered to Milo. "Aren't you a lucky boy." I watched him with a weary eye as I grabbed the first aid kit from my truck and headed back to him.
His lip curled immediately as I crouched down beside Milo. "Don't touch me."
"Then stop bleeding out all over the porch." I pressed gauze against the wound hard enough to make him hiss through his teeth.
Good.
"Stop whining like a baby," I muttered as I continued to work on him.
He in turn continued to look at me like he wanted to kill me. Honestly? I couldn't blame him. I had just put an end to his villainous ways.
The wound itself wasn't pretty, but it was far from fatal. I wasn't a doctor or anything, but I had enough experience that I knew it hadn't hit anything important, and with enough pressure, he'd be fine until I got him to a police station.
I wrapped the bandage tight, ignoring his cursing, then hauled him upright by the arm with enough force to nearly take us both off balance.
"I'm gonna kill you," Milo snarled. "And don't think this is over. I'm not going to get locked up again."
"Yeah, yeah," I returned, rolling my eyes at his dramatic diatribe.
My leg was starting to ache from where his buckshot had got me earlier, each step sending a dull pulse of pain up my side, but I ignored that too.
Pain was nothing. Pain made sense. It was feelings that were the problem. Specifically, feelings for loud-mouthed blond boys in cargo shorts.
I shoved Milo into the back seat of the truck and slammed the door behind him harder than necessary.
Climbing into the driver's seat, I scowled at Milo in the rear-view mirror before starting the engine.
The road stretched ahead in long, dusty ribbons beneath the fading afternoon sun.
Milo sat cuffed behind me, occasionally muttering threats under his breath.
I tuned him out. And tried really fucking hard not to think about Alfie.
My fingers tightened around the wheel as I failed spectacularly at that endeavor.
He'd looked hurt. Not angry, or dramatic as I'd come to expect from him in our short time together. Just outright hurt. And somehow that felt worse than getting shot.
I exhaled sharply through my nose. None of it mattered anymore. He was gone. Safe, as far away from me as he could be. That was all that counted.
Before I could congratulate and self-flagellate myself anymore, my phone buzzed against the center console. I tried ignoring it, not in the mood for any of the usual suspects and definitely not in the mood for any strangers.
But it just buzzed again. And then a third time. Annoyance prickled down my spine as I snatched up the phone, expecting someone to harass me for some overdue paperwork.
But that wasn't what it was.
A photo message from an unknown number.
The second the image loaded, the world stopped.
Alfie. Unconscious. His head lolled sideways against what looked like concrete flooring, his hair falling over his face, and his wrists zip-tied in front of him.
And what looked like a bruise darkened one cheek.
Something inside me went absolutely cold. Milo leaned forward slightly from the back seat. "What's got you so glum, bounty hunter?"
I barely heard him.
Before I could do anything to respond to the text, another message came through.
If you want the boy back, you bring us Graves. No cops. No funny business.
A location pin followed immediately after. My grip on the phone tightened hard enough that the plastic threatened to crack. Behind me, Milo cackled, like he knew exactly what was happening.
"From the tense set of your shoulders, old man, I'm guessing you got some bad news. That’s definitely made my day." He sounded much too gleeful.
I looked at the photo again. At Alfie. So still. He was filled with too much life to look so... quiet.
I don’t know how long I waited for the inevitable threat, but the phone stayed silent. No sadistic follow-up, no ticking clock or a promise of violence. It was all right there in the first message: they had the boy, and they knew I’d give them exactly what they wanted.
I put the truck in park at the nearest rest stop and stared through the windshield, letting the dull ache in my leg ground me.
Milo was quiet now. I guess, due to my earlier silence to his jab, his confidence was replaced by an uneasy tension. He might’ve been a dirtbag with a history of poor decisions, but even he could sense when the game might turn sideways.
“Seriously, fucker. What the hell is going on?” he finally asked again, voice lacking any real bite.
I didn’t reply. Didn’t even look at him.
Instead, I opened my phone and copied down the coordinates.
Whoever was behind this had gone out of their way to make things difficult for me.
The pin dropped just about two hours from my current location, which meant Alfie and his lumberjack friend had headed in the opposite direction I had.
Just my fucking luck.
I drove. Past the posted limit—past what anyone with a lick of sense would’ve considered safe, with a bullet wound tightening in my thigh like a vise.
My hands were steady, but my vision kept narrowing down to just the phone screen and the location pin blinking at me like a dare.
Every ten minutes I checked the rear-view mirror to make sure Milo hadn’t managed some escape artist bullshit, and every time I looked I wished I’d see Alfie instead.
The only other thought in my head, looping like a broken tape: how the fuck had this happened?
I’d left him. I’d made sure of it. I’d watched him drive off with the world’s ugliest lumberjack for backup, and I’d congratulated myself on keeping him safe.
That was the whole point: I ruin things, I leave before they break, and everyone gets to live another day.
So how did he still end up on the line? Simple answer: I wasn’t careful enough. Or…
Well… maybe he would have been safer if I’d just kept him close?
Could that really be the answer?
Should I save my bratty boy, and then keep him close to me forever so I could make sure he was safe?
That sounded reasonable.
Right?