“Screw that! You can turn around or I can jump out and walk back!” I argue.
Bull seems to have a war with himself, but in the end, decides to turn around. He flies, heading for the church. I know we’re breaking new speed records getting there, but it seems like we’re crawling. As we approach the church, I can see smoke and police cars blocking the road. Blue and red sirens are going crazy and there are uniformed cops standing in front of squad cars, blocking the main entrance. It’s far enough away that I can’t get a good look. I take off running, my arms cradling my stomach. These damn heels keep me from being able to get any speed, so I kick them off. I reach the cops and they try to hold me back, but by this time I can see Dragon’s Tahoe and the one beside it—or what is left of them. They are charred and smoking and one of them is still burning. The flames are engulfing the seats on the inside. You can make out nothing, but the heat, even at this distance, is stifling. I scream trying to get through. I need to find Dragon… I need, oh God, I need to find Dragon.
I feel a new hand on my shoulder and the ones around my chest lose some of their rigidness. I could get away now, go to the cars. I could, but Bull’s voice and the pain in it stops me.
“Nic girl,” he says and his words are quiet, but they reach the haze I’m in, and I am in a haze. I don’t even know half of what I’m feeling, I have no idea of anything around me. I am in shock. I look up at him, and the pain in his eyes pierce my heart. Standing beside him is Dancer, his face black, cuts scattered across his face. There are bandages seeped with blood on his hands, but it’s his eyes that pull me in. Dancer has these brown eyes that have always caught my attention, but now there is something else in them. Something I don’t want to see. So, I turn from them. Looking at Bull, praying for something different from him. I shake my head back and forth in denial of words not spoken aloud, but that are heavy in the smoke filled air.
“Nic, girl…,” he repeats again. With just those two words, Bull pulls me in. His gruff, quiet voice sinks deep into my heart, and the dam breaks. The tears that were streaming down my face are nothing compared to the sobs that rock through me as I collapse against him.
“No!” I scream out in anguish. “No,” I moan against his chest. The single word extending out as if it was the longest word in the English language. Bull tightens his hold and keeps me from falling to my knees. “Dragon…” I cry out again.
“I’m sorry, Nic. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I don’t know who said that. I don’t even care. I’m too lost in misery.
I’m too…lost.
Chapter 20
Crusher
There is a limit to what the human spirit and body can bear. I watched it accumulate for years with my mom. She was broken. She was dead inside way before her old man dealt the final death blow. So seeing Dani now curled in a corner, her face unrecognizable. Her body so beaten, so bruised and bloody that she looks as if she has been hit by a semi-truck—my heart stops.
I wasn’t honest with Dragon. Maybe, I should have been. If I had told him how far I went to get the smallest glimmer of information from the rat he was planning on letting loose, what would he have done?
Would he have congratulated me, patted me on the back? Would he have told me I did a good job? Somehow I highly doubted it. So? I kept shit to myself, buried the body out in the forest away from hiking trails and set about finding Dani.
This Kavanagh’s patsy we captured, did indeed know next to nothing. He let something slip though, as I was branding off anything that might be used for identification purposes. Whoever hired him, it wasn’t Kavanagh himself. It was someone different and in one of their conversations the man had mentioned an old Tobacco Barn on Route 11. That small morsel of information allowed me to finally give him what he had been begging me for. Death. I thought about waiting to see if it panned out, but truly he didn’t know anything else and I was running out of things to torture him with.