Micah referring to Colleen as doll annoyed Tristan. Micah meant something entirely different by doll.
She said, “They live outside of Winslow, but I can’t go back there.”
Tristan glanced at her.
“They won’t have me,” she said, staring at the asphalt beneath their feet. “We’re estranged.”
Yet another thing they had in common. “Right. Well, that’s a conversation for another day,” Tristen said and turned back to Micah. “She could go to your place in San Francisco for a few days. Lie low, as it were.”
Micah said, “You both could, maybe.”
“Or you could take her somewhere,” Tristan said, gesturing at the desert mountains on the landward side of the airport. “Take her back to Phoenix and set her up in a different apartment. Put it under your name. I’ll give her my credit card to pay for it all.”
Micah shook his head. “You know they’ll be looking for both of your credit cards.” He glanced up at the private plane parked a few yards away. “You didn’t rent that with your credit cards, did you? Are they tracking the plane?”
“I used CurieCoin cryptocurrency. It’s supposed to be untraceable. I use a combination of CurieCoin, Bitcoin, and a few others for pretty much everything.”
“Paranoid, much?”
“I’m essentially a hacker, Micah. Hell yeah, I’m paranoid about cybersecurity. I could use crypto to set her up in a safe house.”
“She needs to stay with you, Tristan. She’ll be a sitting duck in some random apartment in Phoenix. They’ll kill her just to get your attention.”
Colleen said to both of them, “Screw this. I’m leaving.”
She turned and stomped off, her wet hemline slapping her ankles.
Micah called after her, “They’ll kill you, and then they’ll kill him.”
She stopped walking, but she didn’t turn back.
Tristan scuffed the loose gravel of the helipad with his soggy dress shoe. The leather was ruined. Jian was going to have a fit.
Micah continued, “It’s suicide for both of you if you split up. Your only chance is to stay together.”
It was just weird that Micah was arguing so hard for them to stay together. He was usually pragmatic to the point of emotionlessness.
“Why the hell are you arguing so hard for this, Micah?” Tristan demanded. “You don’t know they’re going to come after both of us if we go our separate ways. Unless you have inside information?”
“No, but of course, that’s what they’re going to do. That’s what bratvas like the Butorins always do, like when Dima went after Dragoljub junior year? His parents hadn’t signed on with Putin’s organization yet, so Dima made sure Drago and his parents knew that Drago’s life was at stake.”
They both walked toward where Colleen had stopped walking away from them. She stood with her back to them, opening and closing her fists.
“But this isn’t like that,” Tristan argued with him.
“Yeah, it is. And if they take her out, afterward, you’ll be wrecked. I know you, dumbass. Even with therapy, you won’t ever recover from something like that. Like that one time at school when the headmaster thought Arthur was the one who’d inserted malware into the teachers’ grading system and scrambled everybody’s grades, and you went and turned yourself in rather than let him take the fall. You scrubbed toilets for a whole semester for that. If they kill someone because of something you got them into, and especially someone you’re as invested in as her, you’ll go off the deep end. I don’t want you to unalive yourself, asshole. So we have to figure out a way to keep you both safe.”
Invested in? He hadn’t invested anything in Colleen beyond a few days’ time and a couple of rolls in the proverbial hay. Her technical coding knowledge was entirely superfluous, if he had wanted to admit it, considering his own. He’d snatched her up because he’d felt sorry that he’d gotten her fired and she was destitute, and he knew how that felt.
But, invested in?
Nah.
Tristan stared at Micah, then looked at Colleen, who’d turned back to them and was still drenched, the ocean breeze dragging her wet dress against her body.
If those assholes hurt or kidnapped or murdered anyone as a ploy to pressure Tristan, he’d be pissed off beyond measure and would drown himself in guilt, and he would find a way to get back at them to avenge what they’d done.
But Colleen—
Standing out on the nighttime airport tarmac in the glaring floodlights from the hangar, she looked like a half-drowned hamster, angry as hell at being wet and yet freakin’ adorable.
And yeah, if those Butorins hurt Colleen, if they killed her, he’d go rage-crazed and kill as many of them as he could until they took him out. He’d unleash computer viruses on them that he’d created in his mind but never typed because they were too dangerous to exist, things that would recognize VIN numbers on cars, watch the navigation software for when it was driving near a cliff, and disable the brakes while jamming the accelerator. He would become Death for them and everyone associated with them.
He was a damned mess of wanting to shove her away. Getting tied down and dragging another person around with him was stupid because eventually he would come back to an empty house. And yet, he was desperate to throw himself on top of her when the bullets hailed down.
And the bullets were going to hail down. He’d screwed up and made sure of that.
Knowing that Colleen Frost, his funny accidental admin and his little he should protect, was out in the world somewhere, alone, dodging and hiding while organized crime thugs hunted her to do unspeakable things to her before they let her die, would be unbearable.
And if the Butorins found her—dear God, if they found her—he would not be able to live with himself. After he’d destroyed the world with his revenge, he would follow her into the unknown to try to protect her there because he hadn’t in this world.
Invested in was a devastating understatement of how he felt about Colleen Frost.
He turned back to Micah. “Well, shit.”
Micah threw his hands in the air, a sigh of exasperation Tristan had seen more than once in their friendship that had spanned over half their lives. “Yeah, and that’s why the two of you need to stay together. If you let her go off somewhere, they’ll get to her. If she’s with you, you’ve got a chance of either getting away or getting them to back off.”
Colleen yelled at Micah, “Hey, I get a say in this, and I said I’m buying a plane ticket on a different airplane and getting the hell out of here!”
They both looked down at her, a furious little ball of cute.
She flung her arm out from her side while pointing at Micah, and water drops flew off her fingertip and splattered on his shirt.
Micah looked down at the spreading spots on his white dress shirt.
Colleen yelled, “Just because this new guy made something up doesn’t make it true.”
Tristan wanted to take her in his arms and pat her dry, but she might bite his head off. “Yeah, but he’s right. The Butorins are murderous assholes, and I’m sorry I got you involved with them.”
“You don’t know what they’ll do. No one knows that.”