She pushed his hood off his forehead and cupped his damp cheeks. “You killed my mom. I thought you were going to kill me.”
He shook his head in the frame of her hands. “Tried to save her.” His chest heaved. “Drove…wasn’t fast enough.” He gripped her wrist and held her eyes, his nostrils flaring. “I was too late.” His eyebrows clenched together, and his breaths rushed out as he squeezed his shoulders against the floor. “I’m sorry.”
A low, agonizing hum vibrated her chest. He wouldn’t lie about that, and the realization tore through her in a barrage of buckshot. “Oh no, Van.” Her chest convulsed, and a sob climbed her throat. She stroked his cheek, staring at the blood soaking his shirt. “Oh, God. What have I done?”
His eyes fluttered closed for a moment and snapped open, glassy with pain. “It’s okay. There’s no—” His spine arched, and he moaned. “No contract.”
She gulped at the thinning air and pressed her hands to the bullet hole. “No contract? No hit man to collect on your death? Or Mr. E’s?” She glanced at Josh, his eyes wide and locked on Van.
“A bluff.” The corner of Van’s mouth wavered as if attempting a smile. Sweat trickled down his temples. His gaze landed on Josh, and his lips bowed downward.
A bluff. She knew Van’s coercions intimately, and this wasn’t one of them. He would never fuck around with Mattie’s life. Tears rose up and burned trails down her cheeks. “If he doesn’t hire hit men then who killed Mom?”
“He arranged it.” His voice quaked. “His job—” His chest caved in, and his teeth snapped together in agony.
Warm streams of red pumped over her fingers. The steel in his eyes dulled, his complexion a pallor of white. He was losing too much blood. Josh disappeared behind the bar, banging things around in the cabinet.
The paper crinkled in Van’s fist. “You love him?” His chest stilled as if he weren’t breathing at all.
She didn’t glance away as she nodded, slowly, confidently. If anyone understood the connection between captor and captive, he did.
He closed his eyes and released a slow, easy breath.
Josh returned with an armful of dish towels, pressed them against the wound, and lifted Van’s shoulder to see beneath his body. Van hissed, his lips pulling away from clamped teeth, his eyes rounding in shocked pain.
“There’s no exit wound.” Josh lowered him to the floor and held the towels in place.
She caught Josh’s eyes, and they shared a harrowing look. The bullet was still in there. She reached in her back pocket and handed him the phone. “The code to unlock it is 0054. Call 911.”
“No cops,” Van murmured. He raised the wadded paper in his hand. “He’ll know.”
She flattened the edges of the news clipping, watching at Van’s shallowing breaths, and read the first sentence of the article.
Austin Police Chief, Eli Eary, stood at the podium during a recent celebration to honor his career…
“Mr. E.” Van’s voice jolted through her.
Her veins seized with shock, her body shivering. “Eli Eary? The police chief who handled my disappearance? He’s Mr. E?”
Van nodded, his hand gripping her knee. “My dad.”
She choked, her throat thick with tears, panic sprinting through her blood. She gave the paper to Josh and wrapped her hand around Van’s cold, sweaty one. Her thoughts wheeled violently around the axis that was her arrangement. “That’s why he gave me to you, why he’s so lenient with you.”
It also explained why Mr. E hadn’t punished him for his stunt at the intro meeting with Camila. He’d simply banned him from future meetings and deliveries.
Van’s eyes flashed, his voice straining. “He turned me into…this.” His lips curled into a weak snarl. “He killed your mother. I never—” He coughed and slapped a hand over Josh’s, adding pressure to the towels. “My mom was one of his.”
“One of his…” She searched his red-rimmed gaze and found a haunting, deeply rooted pain. “She was a slave?” She looked at Josh, seeking his reaction and perhaps his comfort.
Josh pressed one hand on the towels, the other settling on her back. His gaze formed a grim mirror of her own, creasing at the corners.
Was that why his mother fell into a life of drugs? Because she’d been a slave? Resentment engulfed her, shaking her limbs. Mr. E had ruined so many lives.
“Came back to kill him.” Van panted. “Needed your help.”
Across the room, the dolls waited at the table, his morbid things to remember her by. Her lungs shuddered. “Then you were going to disappear. You were going to let me go.” Guilt ravaged her insides, twisting and fraying.
“Have to kill him.” His eyes glassed over, his gasps weakening. “He’ll avenge me.” He choked. “He’ll kill Livana.”
“Livana?” The unfamiliar name hit her where she breathed. A name formed from two… “Mattie’s real name is Livana?”
He closed his eyes, his nod so devastatingly subtle beneath his short, bucking exhales. She was losing him.
“Van? Where’s Livana?”
“She’s…” His eyes flickered open, unfocused, and confused. He reached for her face.
She leaned in to meet his hand, eyes blurry, heart collapsing. “Van.” Her voice rasped, clogged. “What’s Livana’s last name?”
His clammy fingers fumbled over her scar, across her lips, and lingered on her chin. He opened his mouth and strangled on an incoherent noise that died in the air. His eyes drifted closed, and his hand dropped.
“Nooo.” She scrambled atop him, fingers trembling over his bloodless face. “No, Van. No, don’t go,” she screamed.
Anguish took hold in a series of wails, raging in her throat, shaking her limbs. He’d tried to save Mom. He was a fucking victim of his own father’s greed. Why had she thought he’d kill her? He never would’ve done that. He loved her.
Oh Jesus. Fuck. Fuck. Look what she did to him. “Oh, Van. I’m so sorry.” She couldn’t take it back. The bullet. The blood. She clung to his limp body, weeping, nose running, her heart shredding.
Arms came around her chest and pulled her to her feet. She elbowed him, dropped to her knees, and hugged Van’s waist. He gave her a few more minutes to release a torrent of sobs. Then his arms were back, wrapping around her and dragging her up.
He half-walked, half-lifted her to the sink, dragging her blood-soaked hands with his under the water. “I know you’re not thinking clearly, Liv, but we need to make a decision and act quickly.”
She wept in breathless starts and stops, staring at the pink-tinted water spiraling down the drain.
With his body wrapped around her back, his hands slipped over hers, rubbing her arms and rinsing away the evidence. “We have two choices. One, we go to the cops. Mr. E is brought in for questioning. His corruption may be embedded amongst his peers or he may be working on his own.”
“And Mat— Livana? If he were incarcerated, he could still kill her.” Goddammit, she hurt. Her head. Her heart. This shit with Van shouldn’t hurt this badly.
He tore off some paper towels and dried their hands and arms. “Two, we look up his address and stop him ourselves. By whatever means possible. Right now. Before he tries to call Van. It’s the safest option for Livana.”
Turning to face him, she gathered strength from his eyes and curled her hands around his neck. “Then it’s the only option.”
“Agreed.” The resolution in his taut expression matched his voice. “Mr. E tracks both of your phones?” He pulled her phone from his pocket.
“Yeah. Leave it on the counter.” She scrutinized their clothes for blood. Both in dark t-shirts, the smudges were inconspicuous. With a final glance at the blood-soaked body on the floor, she pressed a fist to her chest and blinked away the watery ache in her eyes.
“There’s a handwritten Austin address on the back of the news article.” He held it up. “Mr. E?”
She closed her eyes. “God love you, Van.” And goddamn him. He wasn’t making it easy to
walk away on sturdy legs. She grabbed his car keys from the counter and headed toward the garage. “Van’s phone stays here. Mr. E is in contact with him hourly.”
Josh remained a breath behind her. “If his phone is here, Mr. E will know he’s here. You’re hoping he doesn’t call?”
She punched the code in the keypad and grabbed two long scarves from the hook beside the door. “Yeah. It’ll buy us some time to make the drive to Austin. Or if he does try to reach us, maybe he’ll think we’re asleep.” Van was asleep. Forever. Fuck, she should’ve been relieved, but the ache behind her breastbone burrowed in with brass knuckles.
Fifteen minutes later, she parked Van’s Kia in the Daddy’s Grill parking lot outside of town. The sun clung to the horizon as the gray cast of night crept in. She left the engine running. “I’ll be a minute. Try not to let anyone see your face.”
He glanced through the tinted windows at the three cars in the lot and said, sarcastically, “I’ll do my best.”
Inside, the waft of cigarettes and bar-b-que thickened her inhales. She stood before the only pay phone in the area, pumped it with coins, and lifted the receiver.
“Who is this?” The smooth, feline voice answered on the first ring.