Chapter 19
WOODY
I stopped pacing to glare over at Leif and Forrest, opened my mouth.
Leif pointed double finger guns at me. "If you say this is bullshit one more time, I will kill you."
"You're not going to fucking kill me," I growled.
This was bullshit though. We'd gone back to Forest's house in Saltgrave, packed up our stuff, and returned here, to New York. The three of us crammed into the car with Noah and Urban.
Yes, it was a Suburban.
Five big men squashed into one SUV. It was fucking miserable. I was fucking miserable. Listening to Leif sing would have been better. Until he started singing. I might have said 'kill me now' a time or two.
"I told you what would happen," I said, starting to pace again. "I told you she was up to something. Did either of you believe me? No, you didn't. You jumped right on in with both feet, didn't give a shit about the consequences."
"Your feet were there too," Leif pointed out. "And your dick."
Neither he nor Forrest had said much since we left the Christmas party. Both were quietly stewing in their own frustration. Both looked ready to rip someone a new one.
If they thought that someone was going to be me, they better think again. Also, if they were ripping people a new one, I was going with them. I had anger I needed to burn off. If I didn't do it soon, I was going to explode. Maybe implode. Whatever, it was going to be ugly.
"You didn't buy all of that, did you?" Leif asked. "Everything Benjamin Kohl said about Sable?"
I sure as hell didn't want to believe it, but I'd seen her leave. I'd watched her climb into the car with those other two men. She hadn't even looked back. Hadn't looked around for me, hoping I'd come to her rescue. She climbed on in, without a care in the world.
Why would she do that if what he said wasn't true? Why wouldn't she fight back? Tell her father no, she didn't need fucking help. She wasn't sick.
I stopped and pressed my forehead against the wall.
Maybe she was sick. Sick of us. Sick of me. I had tried to kill her a couple of times. I was trying to kill for her now, to earn her forgiveness for being an attempted homicidal maniac. Apparently it wasn't enough. She was over all the shit I'd put her through. Why wouldn't she walk away from me?
As for Forrest and Leif, we'd become a package deal. If she was stuck with one of us, she was stuck with all of us. That's what we'd let her believe. If she wanted to be with them, she had to put up with me as well.
"This is my fault," I said to the wall. "I should have walked away. Let you and her have your happiness or whatever." I flapped a hand vaguely. "I'm toxic. I poison fucking everything." I glanced over, waiting for one of them to contradict me."
Neither of them did.
"Fuck you," I told them. I pushed away from the wall and headed for the door. "Have a nice life. Now I'm out of the picture, she might give you another chance."
"Woody," Leif started to say.
Forrest raised his arm in front of Leif's chest. "Let him go. He has to calm down by himself."
"Yeah, what he said," I said bitterly. "Let me go." I unbolted the front door, slid the chain aside, undid the other lock and the other, other lock before I pushed the door open and stepped out, letting it close behind me.
I could have ridden the elevator down, but I took the stairs instead. The long walk might help to cool some of the fury that was burning me up inside.
While I stomped down, I thought about the million things I could have done that would have made things different.
One: killed more people. I could have started with her father.
Two: I should have taken her on a date. We could have snuck around and ended a predator or two. That would have been romantic, am I right?
Would it have been enough? Probably not.
Three: …
"You're hopeless," I told myself out loud. My voice echoed off the walls, thrown back at me, like the bricks were mocking me.
She doesn't have a tally of people she wants you to kill. She wanted to be safe. She'd be safer away from us. Away from me.
She might even be able to have one of those, what are they called? Normal lives. I've heard about them, read about them in books. I can't say I know anyone who has one. I certainly don't.
Why would I want to? Working on the subway and killing people on the side was my thing. It was what I did. What I enjoyed doing. What I was good at. Other people took up tennis. I took out bad guys.
We'd dragged Sable into this world. All of us. Starting with Forrest. We should have known better. What sort of men were we that we brought a woman into this insanity? Killed in front of her. Put her in a position where the senator could get to her?
I ran a hand over my hair. Chances were she was innocent of the things her father said, but we weren't. He was right, she needed help. Help to get away from us.
I finally reached the bottom of the stairs, pushed out the door and into the foyer of the building. I ignored the dude sitting behind the desk, my attention on the other dude who was just stepping into the building.
"Woody," Boner called out, giving me a vigorous wave as if I hadn't seen him. "I was just coming to see you guys."
"You were?" I narrowed my eyes at him. "Why?"
"That's a conversation we shouldn't have here," he said. "Do you feel like a coffee?"
"I could go for a coffee," I agreed.
"Great, there's a nice place across the road." He opened the glass doors and stepped back out onto the street.
"Is this a conversation you should have with Forrest?" I glanced up at the building behind us.
"I get the feeling you need to have a conversation first," Boner said, his English accent stronger now.
"Don't start analyzing me." I told him. He wasn't a therapist. He was an artist. Some would say he was a bullshit artist, but his heart was in the right place, I supposed.
He laughed, "Why would I do that? I'm looking at the expression on your face and seeing someone who's pissed off at the world.
Kinda like Jules. He's pissed off at the world a lot of the time too.
He's okay though when you get to know him, but something I've learned—" He waggled a finger in the air.
"It's never a good idea to let him stew on things.
So I said to myself, 'Edward 'Boner' Bonegard. Woody needs to talk,' and here we are."
I grunted and followed him into the cafe.
"Maybe he's pissed off because you talk a lot," I suggested. I flopped down on the seat opposite him and grabbed a menu.
He looked thoughtful, but his smile didn't slip. "That's possible. I do have a lot to say, a lot of the time. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say I'm annoying, though. I think Jules just has that kind of personality."
"He's an asshole?" I suggested.
"Exactly." Boner grinned. He turned that smile on the server and ordered a coffee before I did the same.
"I thought Englishmen only drank tea."
"I like tea," he said, "but this feels like a coffee sort of conversation."
I propped my elbow on the table and rested my head on my thumb and fingers. "Why do I get the feeling this is a vodka kind of conversation?"
"It's borderline, but vodka makes people do things they otherwise wouldn't do," Boner replied. "For this particular conversation, it's better to have a cooler head."
I frowned at him sideways. "I think you'd better cut to the chase. What is this about?"
Should I get up right now and walk out of here? Probably, but I had the uneasy impression I needed to hear what he was going to tell me. Did this have something to do with Sable?
"I heard through the proverbial grapevine. Proverbial, since you don't exactly see grapevines hanging along the streetlights all through the city." He mimed a long line, running all the way down the block with his finger.
"I figured you didn't mean it literally." Was it possible to impale someone with a packet of sugar? If he didn't hurry up and say whatever he was going to say, we were going to find out.
"Of course you did," he laughed. "As I was saying, I heard it through the grapevine that you're looking for the assholes behind auctioning off women."
I wasn't surprised he knew that, but I was surprised he managed to keep his voice down, low enough for only me to hear.
"That's right," I said. "From the things Forrest has said, this is something you're into as well?"
"Very much so," he agreed. "Anyway, this same grapevine mentioned a very high-stakes auction tonight. There's speculation as to who they might have to sell, but the sums they're talking about are eye-watering to say the least."
My heart stopped. Also not literally, but it might as well have.
"I'm an idiot," I said, pushing my chair back and rising to my feet.
"Don't be so hard on yourself," he said. "However, you should stay and listen to the details."
He was right. Vodka would have made me do something silly like storm out of here and try to find this auction without any information. That would get me absolutely nowhere.
That being the case, I sank back down into my chair and nodded my thanks to the server who stopped to place our coffees in front of us.
"Okay, you better tell me what you know," I said.
Someone was going to fucking die over this. And it wasn't going to be me. I was, however, going to do a bunch of killing, but you probably figured that out already.
Buckle up, buttercup. This is where things get wild.