Him laughing about this is bullshit. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“I know who I’m not,” he says way too fucking calmly, considering he just killed a man. “That’s enough.”
“Who aren’t you?”
“I’m not some rich kid playing the villain for attention from his dead daddy.”
He’s wise not to mention my mother. “Fu—”
“Fuck me. Yeah. Yeah. I get it.” He’s the type of guy that sits in judgment of all others on his high and fucking mighty horse. There’s no point in arguing with someone who never intends to listen.
Cruise pulls over in the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour laundromat, and gets out. Mumbling about Connor and us shooting him, his hands are pulling at his hair while he starts frantically pacing. But my attention is stuck on the asshole in the backseat. “What gives?”
“Gives? Nothing. Nothing ever came without a price, so I take.” He glances out the back window as Cruise passes. “I did what had to be done, what you couldn’t.” Sitting forward, he lowers his voice, and says, “It’s not about forcing people to call you a name you haven’t earned. It’s about acting the role so they do it automatically.”
“What’s your problem?”
“My problem?” He laughs while leaning back again. “Where do we begin, Doctor?”
I glance to Cruise. The reality of what’s happened to us and the role I play sinks in; it’s on me. Not Jason. His eyes aren’t wild. His body’s relaxed. A life is gone, one he took without a second thought, and he’s in the backseat like we’re out to raise a little hell on a Friday night. I’m not sure what league I was playing in before, but I’m in the majors now. To think I left the one person I love most in his hands, trusting him to protect her . . . who is this insane bastard I entrusted with Sara Jane’s life, which he didn’t protect in the end. “Why’d you kill him?”
“Because that fucker back there killed one of your closest friends and tried to kill Al—Sara Jane. He tried once and failed, but he’d make sure to get it done the second time. So I took care of business.”
Turning around, I know he’s right. Johnson tried and failed. He and O’Hare were trying to blackmail me, and when I didn’t bother sending their offshore payments, they thought they’d send me a message. Chad and Sara Jane paid that price. I know this. I do. I just wonder where that line that I used to stare at is. Where has the line I dared myself to cross disappeared to?
Shifting my arm, I look back once more, and ask, “What’s in this for you?”
“I’m doing the job I was hired to do.”
“I hired you for a job back wherever the fuck we found you. So I’ll ask again. What’s. In. This. For. You?”
Our eyes lock, neither of us moving.
Cruise gets back in the car, slamming the door closed. “I can’t believe you killed him.” His voice is too high. My gaze deviates to Cruise. Panic is written all over his face. Shock is setting in. Reaching over, I squeeze his shoulder. “It will be okay. You will be okay.”
“What the fuck just happened?”
“Would you have felt better if it were me who shot him? That was the plan. That was why we went there.”
His hands are shaking almost as much as his head. “You wouldn’t have shot him. I know you wouldn’t. Not like that. Not with his wife right the fuck there next to him. And his baby, for fuck’s sake. He had a baby.”
So did I. “I killed O’Hare.”
“You had reasons. Two.”
“Three.”
A gloomy fog lays heavy in the car, sucking us in. Cruise rubs his temples and says, “I’m sorry.”
An apology won’t bring my baby or Chad back, but I appreciate it.
Jason leans forward. His hand covers my shoulder, but I quickly shrug out from under it. He says, “I’m sorry about your loss.”
My loss? That’s what my baby is—a loss in the aftermath of a war my father started. He bankrolled these criminals to cover what? Dirty dealings? Offshore accounts? Fuck him. Fuck him. I kick the dashboard.
Cruise leans his head back with his eyes closed, leaving me to be the one to reply. I won’t give Jason my sorrow. I owe him nothing. He’ll get only what I want him to. “We should go.”
Cruise’s face has fallen, a paler, sicklier version sitting there sweating. His door flies open and he runs to the back corner of the laundromat. His stomach is expelled onto the concrete, and as I stare at his hunched-over body, I realize I’ve never seen him so emotional.
I get out and take the driver’s seat. When he returns, I say, “I’ll drive.” I won’t forget where Jason and I left off, but right now, I need to get Cruise back to the penthouse before some cops find us sitting here looking like the criminals we’ve become.
As I back up, I turn to look Jason in the eyes once more. He may be able to kill without a second thought, but that doesn’t mean I’ll cower to him. As he said himself, he’s being paid to do a job. I’m not sure what that job is anymore, now that Firefly is back.
Forty-five minutes later, Cruise is calmer, but his eyes are still wild when we walk into the penthouse. I don’t take two steps before I stop. Sara Jane doesn’t get up from the couch, but she does look our way. Her gaze lands on me first and then slips to Jason. The seconds shared between them is unsettling, and I start walking again, stepping in front of him, to break the connection. “You’re here.” I state the obvious, feeling guilty for I don’t know what.
“Hi would be nice.”
“Hi.” I smile, but it’s all wrong. I feel it and she knows it. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” she snaps back.
Approaching her, I say, “You shouldn’t have left the manor. You just had major surgery.”
“You weren’t there.”
I sit next to her to lessen her irritation, for her and for me. Kissing her on the cheek, I rub my hand underneath her skirt, over her bare thigh. “You should be in bed,” I whisper in her ear and then kiss her behind her earlobe.
“You should be there with me.”
Angling my head, I look her in her pretty eyes and smile. “I’m not the one who’s in recovery.”
“Alexander,” she pleads, my name spoken only for me to hear. “I thought we were moving forward, moving away from the dangers that got us here.”
I stand with her hand in mine. Looking down at her, I offer her my other hand to help her up. “I’ll take you home.”
“Will you stay with me?” Her bottom lip wobbles, and her eyes become glassy.
“Yes.”
Standing slowly, her gaze drops. “You weren’t tonight.”
“I have to work, Sara Jane.”
“You’re not working. You’re hunting, so I’m here, begging. Begging you to stop this before someone else . . .” Yanking her hands from mine, she moves around me and heads for the door. “I can’t . . .”
“You can, Sara Jane, and you will.”
Spinning around, her glare hits me like two deep-blue daggers. “What did you say?”
“I’ve had a rough night. I don’t want to fight with you, but I’m not letting you leave.”