Christian stood up. “I’m taking my partner out for a drink. Don’t forget to wear a jacket. I wouldn’t want your da thinking I’m an irresponsible friend.”
I laughed and stood up. “Irresponsible is the least of your worries.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
I crossed the room and reached into the armoire for my favorite ripped jeans. “Nothing. Just that my daddy doesn’t like your kind.”
Christian strode over and leaned against my blood-red armoire. “Handsome? Well endowed? Or is it the Irish part?”
“Cocky. He can smell an asshole a mile away.”
“Perhaps prison is where he belongs.”
I decided to keep my long black T-shirt on and reached for socks and a pair of shoes. When I sat on the bed, nerves tightened in my stomach like a coil. “You know what my worst fear is?”
He arched an eyebrow.
“That he’s gotten over me.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted, lass.”
I pulled the laces tight on my black-and-white sneakers. “I do.”
“And you think I’m the one with issues.” He turned around and ambled toward the door.
I grabbed my leather coat and attached a push dagger to the waistband of my pants. “Stop trying to understand women. It’s not your strong suit. Are we taking the Honda?”
He held open the door. “Unless you’d rather we take the motorbike. Wouldn’t that impress the old man?”
I zipped up my coat and chuckled. “If you’re looking to impress my father with stupidity, then riding a bike in the snow would be the way.”
* * *
Ispitmy stale gum into a silver wrapper. “I’m surprised this thing is in one piece,” I said, referring to the Honda we’d left behind in the Bricks during the ambush.
“I only had to replace four tires,” he remarked. “And she’ll need a new paint job, but she still runs like a dream. Those fecking shitebags.”
Christian had recovered his car earlier that day. Four flat tires, busted taillights, and someone had spray-painted a giant penis on the hood.
I wiped the condensation off the window with my sleeve. “How do you think Cristo found all those single moms and pregnant women?”
Christian turned down the volume on the car radio. “Men like Cristo sniff them out. They pay people on the outside to find single women in desperate times. It’s not hard to do. It sounds like early in his career, he stole babies from the womb. It takes a certain kind of animal to do something so vile. It probably didn’t take him long to figure out that stealing children was easier, and the older ones probably easier to take care of than a newborn.”
“All that for what? A few homes in the Bricks? He wasn’t exactly living in the lap of luxury.”
“He’s a hoarder. Immortality is a terrifying thing for men who don’t have a trade. There comes a time when you realize you’re going to either work until the end of time, or you need to hoard as much money as you can to sustain you in the centuries to come. The room we found him in had a hidden safe in the kitchen.”
“Which he blew up.”
“He probably has a little everywhere he resides. Not everyone trusts the bankers, and I’ve known a few men to bury gold bars in the woods. You lived on the streets for enough years to know that no man wants that life forever, and an eternity is a long time to live. Not everyone commits crimes to feed an addiction or live on a yacht. Some of them are frightened mice who fear what the future holds for them.”
I opened the visor, and light illuminated the vanity mirror. “Maybe black eyeliner was a bad idea. I look like the walking dead.”
“Youarehalf Dracula. A bloodsucker. A shark of the night. A parasite.”
“All right. I get your point.”
“Maybe it’s easier if he doesn’t see the little girl he once knew.” Christian made a right turn. “Exactly how many times are we going to circle the area? We’re practically plowing the snow.”
