Havoc was on my heels. He pointed to the bedroom on the left. Jessica’s room. Spade followed us as we moved in.
“The cops are on their way, Nate. You can still let Jessica go and get out of here before they arrive. Nobody has to get hurt or arrested.”
I was lying through my teeth, because there was no way in hell I was letting this motherfucker get out of here unscathed. He’d harassed Carly for the last goddamn time. There’d be no cops. The gun in my hand was legal, I had a concealed carry permit, he’d fucked up and broken into the apartment, and now he was threatening Jessica’s life.
All I needed was a clean shot to end this shit.
“Nate? Jessica?”
Nobody answered, so I kept creeping forward with my brothers at my back. If this went south, I knew Havoc would finish the job. As ex-Special Forces, he didn’t need a gun to end a man’s life. No matter what happened to me, Carly would never have to look over her shoulder again.
I reached for the doorknob.
“Jess? You okay? Nate? Let’s talk and figure a way out of this.”
“Fuck off,” he growled. “Get Carly here, then we’ll talk.”
Not going to happen. “She’s on her way, man, but I need you to be cool until she gets here. You know she’s gonna freak out if you hurt her friend. You don’t want piss off Carly now, do you?”
“Carly doesn’t know the fuckin’ meaning of friendship. She said we were friends, but she lied. Then she left. Friends don’t do that shit.”
Good. He was talking. I needed to get him comfortable enough with me that he didn’t blow my head off the second I opened the door. “Dude, friends don’t ask each other out, either. You stepped over the line and scared her. She didn’t want to hurt you, but her ex had just died. She wasn’t ready for a relationship. You should have waited, man. Hell, I bet if you would have contacted her and asked her out again when you got here instead of giving her kid a creepy-ass note, she would have gone out with you.”
“You think so?”
Fuck no.“Yeah. Totally.”
“Then why did she change her number? Why didn’t she tell me where she was going?”
“I told you, she was scared. Dude, I don’t wanna have this conversation with the door between us. Can I come in, so we can talk man-to-man and you can see that I’m bein’ real with you?”
Silence. I was banking on the fact that somewhere inside of that psychotic brain of his, he still wanted to be understood and accepted. Carly said the entire town knew he was off. She’d probably been the closest thing he’d ever had to a friend. He wanted people to like him, and I could make anyone feel liked. Link had given me my nickname, because most wasps are social insects that could rally the troops and get them to do the necessary. People liked me. I clowned and made them feel at ease. I could read them and know which strings to pull to get them to work with me.
“You can come in,” Nate said finally. “But don’t try anything stupid.”
Turning my body sideways to hide the gun in my right hand, I opened the door with my left and peered around it, giving him my most harmless smile. With messy hair, dark circles surrounding his crazed eyes, and about three-days of stubble covering his face, Nate looked fucking deranged. He and a wide-eyed Jessica stood in the middle of the room, watching me.
“Hey Jess, Nate, you guys okay in here? You need any water or anything?”
Nate’s brow furrowed. He was trying to figure me out, even as his scowl softened. “We’re good.”
“Okay.” Seeing that I’d have to get him away from her to take my shot, I slipped my pistol back in the holster, letting my cut hide it, before easing my hands into the air and slowly stepping forward. “Thanks for talking with me, bud. I appreciate it.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“You look tired, man. You haven’t been sleeping, have you?”
His scowl deepened. “We’re not friends. Stop that.”
“Right. I haven’t even introduced myself. Sorry about that. I’m Wasp. You know, Carly has told me a lot about you. She said you looked out for her when you guys were kids. That you wouldn’t let anyone pick on her. You let her sleep on your couch, you fed her, you sound like a real stand-up guy. She doesn’t understand why you’d want to hurt her now.”
Pain registered across his features. “I don’t want to hurt her. I want tobewith her. She needs to see that I love her. That I just want to take care of her again.”
“But Jess is Carly’s friend, and if you hurt Jess, it’ll hurt Carly. You need to let Jessica go and talk to Carly. Tell her how you feel. She thinks you want to hurt her, man. You gotta set her straight. You can’t do that with a gun pointed at her friend.”
His expression torn, he battled with my words, no doubt sensing the truth somewhere in that twisted brain of his. “Where is Carly?”
“I told you, she’s on the way. She’ll be here any minute, and I’m rootin’ for you two to get together, but I think if she sees that gun… that’ll be a deal breaker. Why don’t we let Jessica get out of here and back to work, and you and me can wait for Carly together? I’ll put in a good word for you, let her know that this was all a big misunderstanding, you know? Then she can go home with you. She misses Idaho. Talks about it all the time.”
