What do I do?
“Of course. Of course. Don’t you see? He came first, we came second. I needed the room cleared of the pesky police so everyone could see and watch your mother lose her fucking mind.” She giggled again. “They all love to watch. Miller did his part, he even got your mother to the lot, and it was all so perfect—” She pressed her fists into her eyes for a short second and then tore them away. “No, no. I want to see. I want to see you die.”
By the skin of my teeth, I turned the wheel just in time to avoid the cliff.
DAMMIT! WHAT DO I DO?
“It’s only a matter of time, sweet, stupid Jennifer.” In my peripheral vision, I saw she’d pushed out and turned down her bottom lip, her eyes on me. “You’re going off the side of the mountain and you’ll die. Or you’re going to crash into the mountain, fly out the window, and you’ll die. Those are your options. Pick one.”
Think. Think. Thi—
“Wait,” I said. “Wait!”
And I knew.
I knew what I had to do. We were only going to go faster. If we went off the side of the cliff, I would die. But if I could crash into the trees—
Lifting my feet from the floor, I braced them directly on either side of the wheel against the dashboard and pointed the car at the wall of trees on the inside of the road. The car was too old to have airbags. Without a seatbelt, my legs would be the only things keeping me from flying out the windshield. I felt her eyes on me, her confusion, and I stiffened my arms, tensed my legs.
Now or never.
The last thing I heard was Elena saying, “What are you doing?” followed by the sound of broken glass, snapping, crunching metal. We collided, head-on, and pain—so much pain—shot up my legs.
And then all was black.
Chapter Twenty-Two
*Cletus*
“Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch
I couldn’t kill Elena for kidnapping Jennifer because the woman was already dead. Or so I’d been told by Jackson when he called me with the news, suggesting I meet Jennifer’s ambulance at the hospital because she was unconscious. She’d been in a car crash. And both her legs were broken.
Dear God.
Lowering the phone, I tucked it in my back pocket and closed my eyes, working to reseal the lid on my temper and panic.
Earlier in the evening, when Blythe had called and told me someone had kidnapped Jennifer using my two door Geo, I’d taken great care to gather each and every unwieldy emotion, stuff it down, seal it up. Far, far down. I would not be caught unprepared, distracted, or agitated. Not like Jenn’s arrest.
She’d watched dumbfounded from the bakery window as a woman squeezed out of the back using the front passenger door, which when open revealed Jenn unconscious in the front. The lady then ran around the hood, got in the driver’s seat, and took off.
This time, I would be chill. Like a fucking sea turtle.
Speaking of sea turtles. . .
I eyeballed this piece of excrement tied to the chair across from me. Finding Isaac hadn’t been difficult, though I hadn’t told Burro why I required Isaac’s—sorry, Twilight’s—precise location. Billy had been my next call. We’d converged on Twilight at the Pink Pony with nary a sound, causing no scene nor any objection from the strippers or the owner.
My older brother—who I could always count on whenever I required retaliatory action against the Wraiths, no matter how violent—had been standing patiently by during the last half hour as I’d questioned Twilight.
I’d learned nothing substantive so far, unsurprisingly, as the man was a sea turtle of chill.
I’d asked why he’d shot Kip. No reaction.
I’d asked where the murder weapon was. No reaction.
I’d asked whether his momma knew he’d done it. No reaction.
I’d asked whether Repo knew he’d done it. No reaction.
The only reaction we got—at all—was to my very first questions: “What did you do with her? Where is she?”
He’d seemed genuinely confused. “Who? Jenn? What happened to Jenn?” he’d asked, an edge of concern in his tone and behind his eyes.
“You know who. Where is she?” I’d repeated.
He glared at me, confusion and concern still lingering, but that could’ve been an act.
Twilight was lucky Jackson had called when he did. Billy, growing less patient with each passing minute, had taken off his suit jacket. He’d taken off his suit shirt leaving him in just a T-shirt and suit pants. He’d cracked his neck. He’d been looking at the back of Twilight’s head like it was a cantaloupe he couldn’t wait to crack open. Billy didn’t eat cantaloupe usually, more of a watermelon man, but that didn’t matter.
My brother Billy never needed a reason to fuck up a Wraith. Didn’t matter which Wraith, any Wraith would do. If he could, he’d hand out beatings to Wraiths like Oprah handed out her favorite things to audience members—you get a beating and you get a beating!
Point was, beating Wraiths within an inch of their lives seemed to be one of only two things he loved more than his family. The other “thing” was a person. So, not a thing, but still a noun.
I digress.
“So, I might not have been forthcoming earlier,” I said while unrolling the sleeves of my shirt. I’d rolled them up earlier to keep blood splatters off the fabric, when or if the necessity had arisen. I didn’t want blood on my shirt, I would’ve had to change my clothes.
Isaac merely stared at me, but his jaw ticked. A small tell. He was interested in what I would say next. Therefore—ignoring the urgency working to steal my breath and shove me out of this room so I could get to the hospital ASAP—I waited for Twilight to ask me.
Eventually, after looking down and to the side, grinding he teeth, flashing his eyes, he did. “Who was that? Is this about Jennifer? Is she okay? Where is she?” The questions burst forth and he tried to lean forward, toward me, as though forgetting Billy had taken great pleasure in tying him up.
“That was Jackson,” I said lightly, smiling a little. “Now it’s your turn.”
He frowned. “What? What the fuck does that mean?”
“I answer a question, you answer a question.” I inspected my nails. Specifically, I inspected the black grease that never went away, no matter how much time I spent scrubbing. No biggie. Getting my hands dirty never bothered me.
“Fuck. You.”
“I don’t believe I asked a question which would warrant that answer.” I glanced over Twilight’s head to Billy. “Did I?”
My brother smirked, shook his head. “I don’t recall any.”
“Hmm . . .” I tapped my chin. “What to do.”
Billy walked up behind Twilight, stopped just behind him, and eyeballed the back of his head. “I have an idea.”
Twilight sucked in a breath, no longer looking chill. “You dumb motherfuckers. You think I won’t be missed?”
“By whom?” I asked, honestly curious. “Jennifer? Nooo.” I shook my head. “She knows what you are. People don’t miss trash.”