“It’ll be fine,” I say and stride into reception, the bell over the door so loud it practically pierces my eardrums.
I’m not at all sure about staying here, but I need to take my power back, because just the thought of giving it up even a little bit scares me to my core. That power, that command I have… those are the black tar lines holding me together, only as strong as I am strong.
The receptionist—Betty—is a kindly older woman, who tells us all about her three grandchildren, a girl and two boys, as she books us in for a week. She gives us two double bedrooms next to each other on the ground floor facing the street.
“And don’t worry about how the building looks,” she says with a wide smile. “It’s perfectly safe.”
Even as I pay for the rooms, glad Nico isn’t pulling out his own wallet to do it, I’m not sure we’ll be staying here for the whole week. But I want Betty to have the money, this whole place looks like she desperately needs it.
“All right, so what’s next?” Nico asks once we’re back outside, looking down at the key in his hand like it’s poisonous. “Get settled in and then lunch.”
I look up at him because I have to do that since he’s always standing too close to me and he’s so much taller. “Going forward, I’m going to be the one calling the shots. That’s the only way this will work.”
That look of heightened excitement is back on his face, bright as the morning sun. Whatever that means.
“All right, Boss,” he says. “I’m just here to help.”
But that’s not the only reason he’s here. I hear that plainly in his tone, see it in his face, feel it deep in my chest where I usually don’t feel much at all. Unless it’s a panicked fear that I’ll be cornered like Gael cornered me, tricked then hurt in ways that still makes me wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night whenever I dream of it. Which is almost every night.
“Don’t call me Boss,” I say and walk over to my bike, then roll it to a spot just outside my room.
“We’ll meet out here in ten minutes,” I say. “Then we’re going to check out the church. Then maybe we’ll have some lunch.”
“Yes, Boss,” he calls after me and I can clearly hear the smile in his voice.
I don’t know how to react to that, so I don’t. I just enter my room, close the door behind me and hope everything will get easier and less confusing soon.
But before that can happen, I have to focus on Gael and bringing him to justice. And nothing else.
8
Nico
The motel room looked even worse than I imagined it would and the smell reminded me of a stripper’s filthy apartment I once visited. The stripper was drop-dead gorgeous, but her Brooklyn apartment was a pigsty. As I remember, I fucked her against the wall in the tiny foyer and didn’t even think about staying. I’d very much rather not be staying in this motel room either.
But Bianca—Alice—seems to be unravelling worse and worse ever since we reached this town, so I better tread carefully. She’s getting bossier and bossier, tougher and tougher, but there’s panic underneath it. Not sure why I even care so much, or why I think I can help hold her together. But I’m the only one here and someone has too.
We’ve just been sitting in my car for over an hour now, parked across the road from the church and the community center and day care next to it. I had a hell of a time convincing her not to ride her bike here, that we’d be a lot more inconspicuous in my car, and we haven’t spoken much since. Not that my car doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb in this shabby town.
No one’s come in or out of any of the buildings yet and the church actually looks closed. But it’s almost four PM now and I assume parents are going to start picking up their children soon.
“So what now? Do we go in?” I ask. I’m still starving and it’s not doing any good just sitting out here. “Meet this priest, see what’s what?”
She looks at me sharply. “We’re not going in. He could recognize me.”
“Seems like something you should’ve thought about before coming here,” I blurt out without thinking. She gives me an even sharper look.
Hearing her talk to me in that commanding voice before did things to me—and my cock—I never expected. And this sharp, no-nonsense look she’s giving me now is doing similar things too. Go figure that I might actually enjoy being bossed around by a pretty woman.
I like Bianca, the soft, slightly scared woman underneath all that leather who needs my help. But clearly, I like Sarge Alice just as much. It’ll be good getting to know both of them better.
And that is probably a very inappropriate thing to be thinking, given then reason we’re here together. But I can’t stop myself.
“I say we just go in, grab him, and put a bullet in the back of his head in the nearest desert we can find,” I say after she doesn’t say anything. “That’s the cleanest way to handle this problem.”
The look she gives me is still sharp, but I can see she’s considering what I said and finding merit in it. But then she shakes her head.
“Like I said, I want him to face justice,” she says.
