Chapter 31
Freya
Jed was late, goddammit. Late twice over.
I’d let the first one slide without panicking, figuring that Jed had been in the middle of some tense negotiation with Grifo. That he would of course have silenced his phone for that, to focus on what he was doing, and who could blame him.
That hypothesis was borne out by the trace on Jed’s phone. It was still at the location Grifo had sent them. Jed’s icon had not moved. For over an hour.
The second deadline slid by with no call. My fingernails started digging into my palms. My own messages to him were starting to pile up.
Hey
U r late
We talked about this
Then, a few minutes later,
r you talking to Grifo now? Dude, catch me up. For fucks sake.
The next appointment came and went. I texted, despairingly,
***
Jed please oh please
There was no point in writing after that. Not until he responded.
I knew what Jed would say. The smart, self-protective woman I was supposed to be would call Ethan, bleating for help and protection. She would huddle under her overbearing brother’s ironclad protection, and let Ethan and his team take over, and find out what had happened at Grifo’s forest hideaway.
That woman was not me. That woman would probably make a lot fewer enemies, and live a much longer, more peaceful and productive life, but fuck it.
Full speed ahead. It’s not like I had any choice.
I put on my coat, wondering if I should load up with my Badass Bitches bits and pieces.
They all seemed too fussy, too femmy. I wish I’d accepted the gun when Jed offered it.
It wasn’t stealthy, or clever, but damn, it was effective.
But what I had told Jed was still true. I had no business hauling that thing around with me until I learned how to use it.
I took off in the Jeep, trying not to speed. My foot was incredibly heavy on the accelerator tonight, but the last thing I needed was to explain myself to a state trooper.
I made the trip to the location on my phone monitor in slightly under forty minutes. I cut my lights far from the house, bumping off the road into lumpy grass and coasting quietly down the slope toward the house, winding through the sparse trees.
There was a light on inside. Jed’s car was nowhere to be seen, but he might have hidden it, if he was still here. There were two other cars as well.
So quiet. No sound other than the rustling of the wind in the trees.
I tiptoed closer, picking my way over the uneven terrain, using the limited light available from the windows.
The door was slightly open, and as I crept up the stairs to the porch, I heard a sound.
A wet, pathetic little sobbing sound. Like a small child whimpering.
I pushed the door open with my elbow, and sidled inside.
A man’s body was stretched out on the floor in a pool of blood. Not Jed. A woman was crumpled up on the ground next to him, sobbing.
I walked inside. She didn’t hear me. Didn’t move. “Rachelle,” I said.
Rachelle shrieked, and scrambled to her feet with her hands up, stumbling and swaying. Her face was distorted, mouth stretched wide with helpless sobbing, blood smeared on her hands “Y-y-y-you!” she gasped out. “You got him killed! We would’ve been fine if you hadn’t come, messing things up!”
Well, that was a classic. It was easier to blame us for everything. I ignored her as I circled the room, looking for signs of Jed. “What do you know, Rachelle? What happened here? Where is Jed?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care! I just found Joe. He killed my Joe!”
Then I heard it. That almost inaudible buzz of a phone, vibrating against something hard. It was time for Jed to call me, and the timer app was reminding him.
It took a few minutes of searching, and Rachelle was babbling hysterically the entire time, but I couldn’t focus on what she said. Behind the couch, the sound was slightly more audible, but I still saw nothing.
I crouched, peering under the couch. There it was. I slid my hand under, nudging out Jed’s smartphone. I entered his code, which he’d given to me when we bought the phones, just as I had given him mine. The phone was already open to our chat, and a message glowed on the dialog box, still unsent.
gas love u sorry run run ru
Gas. He’d been overcome by gas before he could even send it.
Terror slammed into me. Grief. I could see so clearly now, how much I loved him. How beautiful and gallant and brave and fine he was. All that wonderful, shining excellence of a man, wasted. For spite and meanness and greed.
I was so angry. A different person, now. One who could do desperate, cruel things. One who was capable of shocking, ruthless behavior. One who could kill.
I pocketed Jed’s phone as I stood, and took a few steps toward Rachelle, who was still hunched over her husband’s body.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she sobbed out. “This is all wrong!”
Wrong? Hell of an understatement, from a woman weeping over her husband’s bleeding body.
My mind took all the pieces, spun them around, looking for the pattern.
Gas, Jed said in his message. Which meant this house, which was supposed to be the secret hideaway, had been carefully prepped. And the Grifos were pussycats. Not hard for Boer to manage. Gas was a tool to neutralize someone deadly dangerous.
Someone like Jed.
“What a strange thing to say,” I commented. “What do you know about what happened here, Rachelle? Talk to me.”
Rachelle shook her head wildly back and forth. “No!” she gasped out. “No! It wasn’t supposed to happen like this!”
Well, duh. Of course, it wasn’t. Men weren’t supposed to be gunned down in their own home. But her word choice implied that something else was supposed to happen, but had not. Some expectation had not been met.
That lying, traitorous, stupid bitch. I knew there was a reason I disliked her.
“You told Boer we were coming, didn’t you?” I said.
She cringed back defensively. “You don’t know anything about it!”
“I know a selfish fuckwit when I see one,” I told her. “You lost your nerve, didn’t you? You thought you’d be safer if you cut a deal with him yourself. You just wanted to save your own miserable skin.”
“They weren’t supposed to kill Joe!” she shrilled. “That wasn’t the deal!”
“No, just Jed and me, right? But you sold out your own husband!”
“No!” she cried out. “I didn’t! I wouldn’t! They weren’t supposed to hurt Joe!”
“And you thought this sonofabitch would keep his word? Wow, Rachelle. So you’re stupid, as well as despicable.”
Rachelle backed away unsteadily. “Don’t you dare judge me! I have kids! Someone had to put the girls first! Someone had to do something!”
I gestured at Grifo’s body. “Well, congratulations. You definitely did something.”
“Don’t judge me! You don’t have kids, you bitch! You don’t know how it is!”
I was overcome with the futility of it. I shouldn’t waste my time scolding her. It was stupid and sad to have a screaming catfight with this wretched woman over her husband’s cadaver. I needed to get away from her. Before I ended up punching her.
But not before getting everything I could get out of her.
“How did you communicate with Boer?” I demanded.
Rachelle backed away. “Get away from me! You’re the reason Joe is dead! You and that…that awful thug!”
I had yet another moment of sharply wishing I’d taken the gun Jed had offered me while I looked frantically around for a prop to make me scary enough to bully her.
Fate was kind, for once. There was a big firepit in the middle of the room, and a stand, equipped with pokers and tongs.
Heavy, black rust-treated wrought-iron pokers, with a sharp little spike at the end.
I grabbed one, and hefted it up, lunging to rest the sharp spike right at the hollow of her quivering throat. “Talk to me, Rachelle. Tell me how you contacted Boer. Or your girls get orphaned.”
Rachelle’s jaw dangled. She looked helpless and clouded, and too fucking slow. I brandished the poker again, trying to look thuggish. “How did you do it? Did you have a phone number to call? Did he give you a burner phone?”
Her eyes flickered, so I seized onto it. “Burner phone, then. Give it to me.”
“No!” she squeaked. “I can’t! He’ll kill us! He told me!”
I pressed the poker as hard as I dared. Breaking the skin was a line too far for me. “That’s right,” I said. “I can kill you now, or he can kill you later. You decide.”
Rachelle squeezed her eyes shut as she shoved her shaking hand into her jacket pocket. She pulled out a flip phone. “Take it,” she hissed, flinging it at me. “He said he’d leave us alone. He wasn’t supposed to kill Joe! Just…” Her voice trailed off.
“Yeah, I know,” I said bitterly. “Just my boyfriend. Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you. What’s the number?”
“There’s only one number in the address function. The name is…Boss.” Her voice choked a little on the word. “He said he’d leave us alone,” she bleated.
“He’s a liar, a cheat, a thief, and a killer, Rachelle. And you just made yourself his bitch.”
“Fuck you,” she said.
There I went again, haranguing her. Rachelle had to live the rest of her life with what she’d done. Or else spend all her energy stuffing it. Either way, she was fucked.
Whereas I, on the other hand, had a great deal to accomplish in a very narrow window of time. I had to come up with a brilliant plan, and be braver than I’d ever been in my life, and I was not looking forward to either thing. I was shaking in my boots.
Dawn was starting to lighten in the sky on my way back to the hotel room as I pondered the optimal moment to call Boer. He or least his minions couldn’t be very far, having just killed Grifo and taken Jed. No more than a scant hour in any direction.
I also had to be extremely careful about how I timed the call to my brother. He, too, would try to take control of the situation, according to his own idea of what was most important, which wasn’t necessarily mine. A careful balance had to be struck.