Flawed (The Mercenary Series Book 3) Page 2
Chuckling, I left the cabin and headed out to the truck.
We’d had no choice but to find a new mode of transport. Harvey’s car had been a write-off in the accident. Strangely, I’d felt bad about his car, even though I knew he was dead and would have no use for it. I wondered what Tony the Hound had done with his body. I guessed now Tony was dead as well, I’d probably never find out.
In the end, I’d paid cash for the seven-year-old Ford which sat outside. It might not have been anything flash, but it seemed reliable enough, and best of all, it blended right in with the surroundings. No one was going to notice a young couple driving around in that thing. I scratched my fingers through my beard. The clean cut appearance was gone—no more black shirts and being clean shaven. Now I was in a leather jacket, gray t-shirt, jeans, and boots, with plenty of hair covering my face. I wasn’t sure I even recognized myself.
It was getting colder now, and I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket as I crossed the clearing to get to the truck. The small resort was made up of five separate cabins. I imagined this place would be busy in the summer—there was a lake at the back of the cabins, with a small jetty, which would be perfect for boating and swimming when the weather was warmer. But right now we were the only ones inhabiting the cabins, and I was happy for it to stay that way.
I drove the truck the couple of miles down the road to the nearest grocery store. The main town was still another couple of miles beyond that, but I got the impression everything was pretty quiet in town as well this time of year. I wondered if we could risk heading into town to have dinner together one evening.
The store had a single gas pump outside, which looked like it hadn’t been used in forever. It was a single story building, which also looked as though it had seen better days. But it was well stocked and always seemed to be open, so I couldn’t complain.
I pulled the truck up outside and climbed out. I didn’t need to lock the doors here, but years of city life made it impossible for me to break the habit.
As I pushed inside the store’s door, a small bell jingled above my head. Moments later, movement came from the back of the building and a large man in his late sixties bustled out to greet me.
“Morning,” greeted the man, who I assumed was the owner of the store. I’d seen him before the couple of times I’d been in. He’d smiled politely at me, but I guessed now he’d seen me more than once, he figured I wasn’t just passing through.
“Good morning,” I replied back, giving him a nod and a smile.
He nodded back, but I saw the slight draw down of his brow as he regarded me. He might be acting friendly enough, but he was wary.
“I’ve seen you around a couple of times,” he said. “Are you staying down at the cabin?”
“That’s right.”
“On your own?”
I shook my head. “No, my wife and I are taking some time out from the city. She’s pregnant and the fumes and bustle of the city were starting to get to her.”
He seemed to relax at the mention of my ‘wife.’ Having a lone man staying in a remote cabin down the road when it was out of season had obviously sent out warning signals.
“Yeah,” I continued. “She’s actually put an order in for donuts, and I don’t dare go back there without them.”
The man chuckled. “Oh, I still remember how that was. When my wife was pregnant with our son, she sent me out in the middle of the night for ice cream, even though I told her everything was shut. I drove thirty miles that night, and by the time I’d gotten back, the whole thing had melted and she was sound asleep.”
I laughed at his story.
A woman’s voice came from the back. “What’s that, Wayne? Are you talking about me again?”
“Of course I am, sweetheart. I only ever talk about you.”
A woman in her early sixties, I guessed, with long graying hair braided down one side of her body, emerged from the back of the store. She regarded me as she moved to stand beside her husband.
“Now, who is this handsome young man?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” said the man she’d called Wayne.
I stepped forward and offered my hand. “Jason,” I told him, giving him the name on the fake identification I’d rented the cabin in. “My wife’s name is Anna. I’m sure you’ll see her down here soon enough.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your surname.”
“Vernon,” I told him, though I hadn’t wanted to. The fewer people who knew details about the young couple staying down at the cabin, the better.
“Well, it’s great to meet you, Jason,” he said. “You think you’ll be staying long? Snow will be setting in soon, and then you’d better hope you’ve got a damned good set of snow chains for that truck of yours, and be handy with a shovel.”
“I don’t think we’ll be around that long. We’re just down for a break.”
“Sure, I understand. Well, shout if you can’t find anything.”
“Thanks.” I turned away to mooch around the store, picking up various items of groceries we needed. I lingered over a bottle of liquor, but decided against it. It felt strange not to drink, but if Vee wasn’t able to, it didn’t seem right for me to be breathing whiskey fumes all over her. I remembered the donuts and added them to my collection, before heading back to the till and paying the store owner what I owed.
“Hope to see you again soon,” said Wayne as he bagged everything up for me. “Tell your wife to stop by and say hi, if she feels up to it. It’s not often we get to see different faces at this time of year.”
“Will do. Thanks.”
Balancing the bag of groceries in my arms, I carried them back out to the truck and then drove back to Vee. It was stupid how I was able to miss her already, when less than an hour had passed since I was last in her company. I’d never thought this would happen for me—the girlfriend and baby. I hadn’t thought I’d had the kind of heart that would be open enough to have room for other people. I’d been cold and hard, and yet Vee had woken that part of me. I couldn’t imagine going back to being the person I’d been before I met her.
I parked the truck back outside of the cabin. Instinctively, I scanned the area, checking for anything that might be different. I didn’t think anyone knew we were here, but I didn’t plan on getting blasé about things. Dropping our guard for too long might be the thing that would get us killed.
“Vee?” I called out as I unlocked the front door. “I have your donuts.”
I expected her to appear and snatch them from my grip, but the cabin remained in silence. Had she gone back to sleep? My stomach turned uneasily.
Dumping the bags where I stood, I hurried into the bedroom. It was empty, the bedcovers thrown back as though recently abandoned.
“Vee?” I called again.
Still nothing.
Shit, where was she?
I remembered how she’d said she was going to take a bath and read, so I checked the bathroom and then the other room, but the place was empty. Only then did I notice the sliding door to the back porch standing open. Had someone come into the property?
Panic-filled now, I ran to the back door. I opened my mouth to yell her name again, not expecting an answer, but then I spotted a small, forlorn shape sitting on the end of the jetty which led out across the still water of the lake.
I steadied myself against the side of the door frame, my body weak from relief. The adrenaline that had been coursing through my blood quickly subsided, leaving me drained. I took a couple of breaths and forced myself to straighten before stepping from the sliding doors and out onto the patch of land leading down to the jetty.
I’d expected her to sense me approaching and turn around, but she just sat, staring out across the water.
A thought popped into my head; this woman is incredibly sad.
It hurt to think how I would be happy if it was just me, her, and the baby, and yet she needed more. I wanted to fix that, but I didn’t know how.
“Hey.” I walked down the dock to sit beside her. “You gave me a fright when I didn’t find you back at the house. You okay?”
She gave a small smile. “Yeah, just thinking.”
“About the baby?”
She shrugged. “More like home.”
“Your sister?”
Vee sighed. “I know it’s hard for you to understand. You never had any siblings, but even after everything she did, I can’t turn off my feelings for her. I feel like I’m torturing myself thinking about what might be happening to her, while I’m just hanging out here, with you. What if our father is harming her? He might think she knows where we are, and be trying to get information out of her by hurting her.”
“You said she was his favorite. I’m sure that isn’t what he’s doing.”
Her eyebrows lifted, her eyes widening. “How can you know that? This is the man who made his own daughter shoot her mother—his wife. He’ll know she betrayed him by going to Tony. I can’t imagine him letting that go.”
She was right. I didn’t know that, but I wanted to make things better for her.
I wanted to fix this.
“I’ll go back to New York and take care of things. I’ll even ask your sister if she’ll come back with me, though I can’t promise she’ll come.”
Vee’s eyes widened. “What are you saying, X?”
I made her an offer. “Let me kill your father.”
Chapter Three
V
The last thing I wanted to do was let X go to New York without me. Not only did I not want to be without him, I was also terrified something might happen to him while he was gone. My father was a dangerous man with plenty of other dangerous men around him, protecting him. I couldn’t ask X to take that on.
I shook my head. “No, X. I don’t want you to do that.”
“Then tell me how we fix this. I hate to see you so unhappy. I want us to be looking forward to the future.” His hand moved to my stomach. “To be excited about the baby. How can we do that if you are constantly beating yourself up?”
“I was beating myself up long before I got pregnant.”
“But you can’t keep doing it. It won’t just be yourself you’re beating up now, you’ll be hurting the baby as well.”
I sighed. I knew he was right. I’d battled with depressive tendencies and self-sabotage throughout my teenage years, and it had gotten even harder after my mother had died the way she had. But at least then I’d felt like I’d had a way of combating how I’d felt about that—through taking care of my sister and making sure my father was put behind bars for what he did. Now I had neither of those things, and even though I had X and the pregnancy, I felt like I was freefalling through a whirlpool which threatened to drag me under.
He took my hand. “Just tell me to go, Vee. Tell me to go and kill your father, make sure your sister is safe, and then we can get on with our lives.” His gaze flicked back down to my stomach. “All three of us.”
My heart contracted in my chest. “I should come with you.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
I didn’t want to feel resentful toward the pregnancy, but at that moment, I couldn’t help it. I wanted to do what I’d always done and fight, but the baby prevented me from doing so.
“We could pay someone else to do it,” I suggested. “You of all people should know someone who’d take on the job.”
“To kill Mickey Five Fingers? No one is going to want to take on that kind of job, and even if they did, it would cost a huge amount of money—hundreds of thousands. Even if we could scrape that kind of cash together, it would leave us completely broke for the future, and we have a baby we have to plan for now.”
“We can always get more money,” I said hopefully.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Vee. No one is going to take that job. Also, if I start asking around, the wrong people are bound to hear about it. We’re safe here, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to risk what we’ve got.”
“But you’re willing to go to New York alone and kill him yourself?”
“I can be quick and clean. No one will even need to know I’m back in the city.”
I pressed my lips together, my nostrils flaring. “I don’t like it, X. Every single part of me is screaming that this is a bad idea. I hate the thought of you being away from me. What if something happens to you? I’ll be sitting here alone in this cabin, praying for you to come home again, and what if you don’t? I can’t raise this baby alone. Not like this.”
“I’ll be careful. I won’t take any risks. If I can’t get him with a clear shot and a quick getaway, I won’t try anything, I promise.”
“No,” I said again.
“So what are our options? If you won’t let me kill your father, you need to cut both him and your sister off from your heart. You need to move on.”
“I can’t do that either.”
“Then let me go.”
“Or let me come with you.”
I could see he was starting to get annoyed, and I didn’t blame him. “You can’t, Vee. You’re too recognizable, for one. Your father would spot you from a mile off. He doesn’t even know what I look like, as far as I’m aware. I can be fast—in and out. What if you get sick while we’re there, or you have a dizzy spell? You know it’s likely to happen. I hate to say this, but your presence there will only make things more dangerous for both of us.”
He was right. I had been suffering from morning sickness and getting lightheaded, especially if I was stressed. I wanted to be able to do all the things I’d been able to do a month ago, but I had other factors to consider now. If I didn’t consider them, I was being irresponsible.
“Vee,” he said, “we don’t have to decide now. Let’s go inside, and we’ll think about it.”
A breeze lifted my hair, causing small waves to appear on the surface of the lake. I shivered, and X rubbed my bare arm where goose bumps had appeared.
“Come on. You’ll catch a chill. And besides, I brought you those donuts.”
I forced a smile and allowed him to pull me to standing. He stopped, tugging me to face him, before ducking down and kissing my lips. He placed his forehead to mine. “I’ll do whatever you want me to, okay? All I want is for you to be happy.”
His words should have made me feel better, but they didn’t. They only made me feel worse. Shouldn’t I feel the same way about him? Shouldn’t I be considering his happiness first?
If he went to New York and killed my father, and made sure Nicole was safe, would I be happy then? Would that be what it would take to allow me to look toward the future instead of constantly living in the past?
We walked back up to the cabin and slipped in through the rear sliding doors. X went and picked up the bag from beside the front door. I frowned slightly, wondering why he’d not taken it into the kitchen, and he must have caught sight of the frown.
“I was worried when I came back and didn’t know where you were,” he explained.
“So you just dropped the bag where you were?”
He gave a slow nod. “That’s exactly what I did.” He bent and took out a box and handed it to me. “Your order.”
I looked down to see a box of frosted donuts in my hands. “You’re too good to me.”
He didn’t say anything. I figured getting some donuts wasn’t exactly on the same level as offering to kill someone’s father.
He made us coffee—I was limiting myself to one cup per day—and we sat together on the couch, me curled up under his arm. There was no television or radio at the cabin, and definitely no internet connection. We both had new cell phones—X had destroyed Harvey’s cell after the car accident. It was one thing driving his car, it was another to be found in possession of a dead man’s phone as w
ell. There was very little cell phone coverage in this area. It was as if every step had been taken to make sure that when people came to stay at the cabin, they were forced to enjoy the outdoors, rather than being cooped up inside watching screens. There were plenty of books, however, and I had the books on pregnancy which I had bought, allowing me to obsess over the size of my little bean, and what changes were happening inside me that week. I thought I was probably boring X to death by explaining every detail, but I couldn’t help myself. It was hard to stop thinking about it, when the changes were happening inside my own body. It wasn’t as if I could escape it.
X kissed the top of my head. “I think I should go before the day passes us by.”
I leaned away from him, surprised. “Go?”
He nodded. “I need to go to New York, at least to check things out. We’re not going to be able to move on with our lives until the situation with your sister and father has been dealt with.”
“Then I should come with you.”
He lifted a hand. “I’m not having this conversation with you again, Vee. You’ll put us both in danger.”
X telling me what to do riled me, but I knew he had a point. And he was right—I wouldn’t be able to move on, at least until I knew my sister was safe. Perhaps I could deal with my father at a later date if X wasn’t able to do it, though having Mickey Five Fingers walking the streets until then concerned me. He’d be looking for me, too. As much as I was determined not to let him get away with what he did to my family, I knew he wouldn’t want to let me get away with trying to testify against him. I wouldn’t be safe until he was dead. And if I wasn’t safe, neither was the child growing inside me—X’s child. As much as I wanted to control everything, I had to admit that he should have a say when it came to keeping his baby protected.
“How long will you be gone?” I asked, admitting defeat.
His lips twitched in a small smile. “At least overnight. I’ll stay in touch. You still have your phone.”
“Yeah, though cell coverage is useless in the cabin. I’ll have to walk toward town before I’ll be able to speak to you.”