"I can't ask—"
"You don't need to," I cut her off.
I gave leeway to a lot of criminals. You had to if you lived the lifestyle yourself. I understood why loan sharks and arms dealers and contract killers and even drug kingpins existed. Supply and demand.
But the fuckers who abused women and children?
There wasn't a speck of mercy in me for them.
The way I saw it, maybe if we ran through sex criminals on pikes, we'd see a lot fewer of them in the future. Fear was a powerful motivator. Even for the twisted kind of bastards who did those sorts of crimes.
"What do you need from me?" Belle asked, gaze lifting, finding, and holding mine.
Strong.
She may have been soft and sweet and shy like Shy said, but she was powerful too.
"Anything you can give me," I told her. "Descriptions. Names you overheard. Sounds or smells you may have encountered. Doesn't matter how small a detail it seems like, it could help in the long run. We—"
"Hey," Shy's voice broke in, still slow and thick from sleep. "Everything okay?" she asked, doing a small stretch, and I could feel the way her unused muscles trembled as she did so, a fact I needed to actively put from my mind to keep certain thoughts—and other things—from popping up.
She still didn't seem to notice that she was plastered to my side, or that my arm was around her.
As someone who woke up at a pin dropping—a skill honed through necessity since I was a kid—I'd always found people who came awake slowly fascinating. It still seemed like Shy was halfway in her sleep still as she gave a soft smile to her sister.
"Yeah, everything is okay," Belle said, giving her big sister a smile that was tight around the edges. "Want some coffee?"
"I'm supposed to be taking care of you," Shy insisted, finally starting to realize how close she was to me. Her head whipped over, eyes going wide. "Did I sleep-fight you?" she asked, giving me a guilty look.
"I survived with minimal bruising," I told her, getting a choked laugh from her.
"Sorry about that. I should have warned you."
"What are you fighting?" I asked, seeing the look the sisters shared. It was one that was both amused and horrified at the same time. "Now you have to tell me," I added, raising my brows at Shy.
"Oh, God," she grumbled, starting to slide away like she couldn't be touching me when she broke the news. "Fine. Mr. Hicklerman."
"Mr... what now?" I asked,
"Mr. Hicklerman. He was my sixth grade math teacher. He was the meanest human being ever to exist. And he was so hard on me that I developed nightmares where he turns into a giant demon who chases me around my school barking out math equations that I need to answer, or else he will chew my head off. Literally. He has like five rows of razor-sharp shark teeth. Oh, I should add here that I am terrible at math to give it more context."
"Every single night for the past, what, thirteen years, you've been fighting your demonic math teacher in your sleep?" I asked, dangerously close to laughing.
"Come on now," Belle said, clucking her tongue at her sister. "You're not being completely honest, now, are you?"
Shy shot her sister small eyes before letting out a deep sigh. "Sometimes, he is joined by someone else."
"Who?"
"Lily."
"Who is... oh," I said as it clicked. She worked at Lily's. "Your boss?"
"Lily might actually be scarier than Mr. Hicklerman," Belle said.
"You just think that because Mr. Hicklerman liked you."
"Like it's my fault I am good with numbers," Belle said, rolling her eyes. "Lily likes you better than she liked me."
"Well, that's true. Belle worked with me at Lily's for a while. But she was let go."
"'Let go' is a very nice way of putting it," Belle said with a pout. "More like she verbally assaulted me in front of a packed salon."
"I wasn't there," Shy admitted. "But I wouldn't be surprised if it was that bad. I'm pretty sure Lily is half banshee. I've never heard someone shriek like her before."
"Why the hell do you work there then?"
"Believe me, I've thought about quitting a million times," Shy said. "Especially after Belle was fired. But we really need the income if we are going to open our own salon one day. I mean, that's why I live here," she added, waving a hand around.
"Your place is nice."
"Yeah," she agreed. "But the area? Not so much. There was a murder downstairs last year. Like... an actual murder. It was like living in a primetime TV drama," she told me as Belle excused herself to check on Max. "But if we're careful for another year or so, we will have what we need to open our own salon. We've been working on building a client-base," she added, waving toward the nail desks. "We have a little success here, but we do better at Belle's place," she told me.
"Why's that?"
"She lives in a better area."
"Doesn't that hurt the bottom line? Why not move in together?"
"I don't want to sound like I'm talking about Belle behind her back, but I thought it might be good for her to get out on her own. I guess that backfired," she added, voice and mood going dark instantly.
"It's not your fault that someone took your sister, babe."
"I know that. Rationally. But I can't shake the guilt either."
"Do you really think it wouldn't have been possible for them to do it when she was here? Hell, it might have been easier since people around here mind their own business. Life is unpredictable. You just gotta roll with its punches."
"I want her back here now," she declared, looking toward the bathroom where we could hear Belle cooing at the rabbit.
"I was going to say that there really isn't much of a choice when it comes to that," I told her.
"What? Why?"
"Why don't we get you some coffee before we get into that?"
"Ah, no. I would like to get into that right now actually," she said, a stubborn brow raising.
"Alright. Well, you know this didn't go to plan. We didn't take the fuckers out. Which means they will eventually figure out that I'm not dead. And then—"
"Oh," Shy said, lips parting, eyes going worried again. "Oh, God."
"We're going to handle it," I told her, giving her foot a squeeze since it was close to me. "But until we do, we need to be careful. You two stay together."
"But I have to work. And lord knows, Lily would never let me bring Belle with me. She can't be here alone," Shy insisted. "They can't get to her again."
"Don't get ahead of yourself," I demanded softly. "We aren't going to let that happen. It's just... do you need to get that?" I asked at the insistent, shrill sound of her cell phone.
"What? Oh," she said, shaking her head, then jumping off the couch to fish her phone out of her purse. "Work," she said, grimacing as she swiped to answer. "Hey, Lily, what—"
She didn't get anymore out than that.