Chapter 19 Vex
VEX
I admired her fierceness at first.
But now I despise it.
Because it’s gonna be what gets her killed.
“Carmen,” I holler, speeding after her. She flies out the door, ignoring my call, so I follow her out into the twilight and grab her wrist. “The Harley is out of bounds.”
“The Harley can speak for itself, as can you, instead of going mute and wasting my time.” She tips her chin. “Are you gonna accept the plan so we can get out of here, or are you gonna keep making weird eye contact with your friends?”
Carter and Skipper join us outside, tumbling down the veranda.
“Let’s do it,” Skipper announces, weirdly out of breath. “It’s a risk, but it’s the best shot we have. Carter, prepare the bikes. And go get the others.”
“The others?” Carmen questions.
“Yeah,” Carter says. “You think we call ourselves brothers if we don’t help fight each others’ battles?”
I ignore the corniness and focus on preparing my own bike. Hues of pink and orange bleed into the sky. The day is almost over, the sun already set. Ahead lurks tumbleweed, darkness, and a weather forecast I really don’t feel like riding into.
But for Carmen, I’m willing to damage my Harley and go headfirst into crazy wind.
I holster the gun Carter hands me, and secure the knife in my belt. The pointed edge hits the fading colors in the sky and glints silver. Soon, it will be dripping fresh blood, and that is one of my favorite sights to behold.
Second to Carmen’s naked body.
First is her smile. The radiance it emits does something foreign to my chest. It’s a nice feeling, and that scared me at first.
Until we found her at the airport. My gut brought us all straight to that terminal building. Things were getting difficult with Conrad. She was seeing no way out—I knew she’d run.
And it was at that moment I realized I didn’t want her to.
Her smile was starting to uplift my chest, and that’s when I knew something was different with her. Smiles were just smiles. They weren’t supposed to rewrite your reality and turn it into something wonderful.
With her around, the colors were starting to get brighter. The air felt cleaner every time I breathed it in. I took agile steps. Each time I walked, I did it with purpose. I finally had one—I’d been searching for that since I was eighteen years old.
And then she jumped on that motorcycle and said goodbye, and it became painful to walk.
You don’t feel like that around a person you don’t care about.
I knew the costs that were going to come with my intense feelings for Carmen. I knew they were gonna bite me in the ass and make me susceptible to life’s trials and tribulations again.
Because the second you choose to feel again, you stop being immune. You don’t get to decide fate. You don’t get to kill without consequence. Caring about someone throws you back into the passenger seat. Life becomes out of your control again.
But driving into the abyss now with a full tank of gas and a beating heart, I realize I’m willing to step out of that safe, middle area and gamble again. I could fall short, but I could also win big and take home everything I’ve ever wanted.
When you have feelings, you give someone else permission to play with them.
The O’Neills will do their worst.
But when you find something your father once told you didn’t exist, you want to cling to it with everything you have. Because you know it’s rare.
Carmen saved me from the shackles of my own mind, so now I’ll save her.
And her son, who apparently is Carter’s child.
I race through the desert with the others behind me. In the rearview mirror, I catch Carmen clinging onto Carter, her hair ribboning behind her in the breeze. Visibility is low, but from the projections of my taillights, I can still see her face.
She looks ill, her skin lacking its famous bronzed shimmer. Her eyes are somewhere else, looking out into the desert, but not really. The screaming wind hits her hard in the face and she doesn’t bat an eyelid, not even in reaction to the grit swirling in the air right in front of her face.
Good people always finish last.
I refocus my vision and grip the handlebars.
Always remember that, son.
My hands are dripping sweat underneath the leather gloves. I focus on the long stretch of road in front of me and hope that the roaring motorcycle engine is enough to quiet my father’s words.
Good people always finish last.
Love doesn’t exist. Only duty.
He was wrong.
But no matter how many times I reject his outdated, irrelevant opinions, I still hear his rattling voice.
Good people always finish last.
I open my mouth to release a breath, but in doing so, suck in desert grime and dust that makes my throat even dryer than it was to begin with.
I need as much energy as I can get. But I’m unsure how much energy I can muster without water.
I haven’t hydrated in hours, too preoccupied thinking about Carmen. Feelings have that effect on your body, taking away the urge to eat, drink, and sleep.
I’ve been thinking about her so much that the last sip of water I took was before we rode out to the airport. Since leaving her home with Carter, my mind has been swirling.
And then I find out she was upstairs fucking Carter when Otis was being taken?
Good people always finish last.
I shove my father’s opinions aside.
We’re not the same person. He was with my mother because of duty.
But I choose to be with Carmen because love—contrary to his belief—does exist.
The sky turns black and the wind soon drops. We slow to a crawl on approach to Conrad’s location.
I pocket my phone when we get close and kill the engine.
“Carmen’s gonna have to take it from here,” Carter says.
I’m glad for the chirping crickets, preventing the desert from falling into an eerie silence.
I’ve never been one to scare easily. The police force shapes you up to be that way. When someone threatens with a gun, you learn to confidently lower it for them, maybe crack them a smile if you’re having a good day.
Get under people’s skin. Make them feel inferior.
I brought that practice into Venom Vultures when I first joined. You can choose to be afraid when a knife or firearm is being threatened against you, or you can choose to remain calm and not react how the opponent wants you to.
Being scared is a choice.
Until tonight. My heart is leaping out of my chest and it’s impossible to get it under control.
Feelings have that effect on a person.
Up ahead is the doomed warehouse, sitting loud and proud in the middle of the desert like a haunted house that has been without guests for decades. Tonight, the derelict building looks hungry to swallow someone up.
“You’re telling me they live out here?” I ask.
Skipper nods. “It’ll be one of their many hiding spots. They probably come here when they’re feeling unsocial.”
Light wind blows through the expanse, rustling a few dead bushes nearby. The land is dry, more so than my throat.
The panic is back in my stomach again. “How are we gonna know when to enter?”
“I’ll scream,” Carmen says.
Skipper adds, “You’ll also most likely hear gunshots.”
Brilliant. I was hoping for that detail to be left out.
I cast Skipper a daggered look in the darkness and swallow my nerves. But in doing so, I merely pass them out of my stomach and into my bowels. I want to shit myself.
And that phrase has never felt so literal before.
“Remember,” Carter says. “Give him what he wants. We’re right behind you.”
“Right,” Carmen says absentmindedly, too busy calculating the distance between us and the warehouse.
There’s a barbed-wire fence a few meters away that loops around the perimeter of the building. The darkness prevents me from seeing around it, even when I step out to get a better look.
“If we can’t go around it, we’ll have to go through it.” Carmen disguises her nervousness with sarcasm.
Another gust of wind blows, sending her soft, brunette curls up into the air. My hand twitches, wanting to grab them and steer her back to where it’s safe.
But she’d never forgive me.
“Scream as loud as you can. Do everything he says, unless he tells you to take off your clothes.”
I want to melt Carter for putting that thought into my head.
But I want to melt Conrad more. I’ll strip him naked, throw him into a bathtub of boiling water, and celebrate with popcorn.
But then Carmen disappears from my side and nothing else matters. I watch my love walk into the arms of a monster, and all I can do is hold my tongue from shouting for her to come back.