“Is Nickie short for something?” he continued, pretending to ignore me while his body did the opposite.
“No, silly. Gran named me. She said it was…”
I tuned out the rest of their mindless chatter before I’d be forced to act like I gave a shit. I had a tendency to keep quiet when there was something to observe. Talking made people let down their guard, and I couldn’t afford to do that. Ever. It was better that way.
“So sad about your fiancée. She must be missin’ you, handsome?”
Que elbowed my side, and I realized the redhead was speaking to me.
“Uh…”
“He’s real shook up about missing... Holly.” Que didn’t skip a damn beat, and that name smacked me square in the face.
Holly, really?I arched a brow at him, but the fucker wasn’t looking at me.
“Oh! I’m so sorry. You’ll get back to her real soon, Rudy.”
I tried to prevent my teeth from cracking as I nodded mechanically, with Que’s guided gesture behind the girl’s head.
“So you said…”
This time, when the chatter started up again, I ducked away from the two of them and checked in on the rest of the boys. The twins were off to themselves in a corner. Blitz magically found some weed and was surrounded by a thick cloud of smoke while Vix, Dash, and Dane were shoving their fat faces full of sweet treats. Everyone looked happy for once. It was nice to see. They deserved it. We all did.
But where the fuck is Prat?
I slipped outside to get away from the constant hum ofconversation and welcomed the frigid cold as it sobered me up a bit more. There were too many unanswered questions regarding this woman and her grandma.
Where was the old bag anyway? I still didn’t see a car—that would have been too easy. Though there were logs piled up by the door and a little shack that looked like it could house a compact vehicle, but the snow was too thick to make out any tracks. It was so fucking cold I couldn’t see much of anything, to be honest.
Didn’t matter. I had to find Prat. Maybe he was hiding out in a patch of trees or by the lake to throw off the scent of the dogs.
I tried to make my way over there, but the fucking snow was like a white blanket of fog. I couldn’t see my hand in front of me, and the longer I stayed out here, the more lost I felt.
“Fucking hell, Prat. You better get here fast.”
Begrudgingly, I stepped backwards, not having a choice in the matter if I didn’t want to lose track of the cabin and freeze to death myself. While I waited for Prat to appear, I continued to walk the perimeter of the cabin.
No car. No surrounding homes.
I tugged at the back door, it popped open, and I let myself in. The mudroom was filled with a bunch of old shoes and knitting shit that my own grandma used to fiddle with when she made me stupid scarves I pretended to wear during holidays. A red one draped around a creaky old chair caught my attention, and I picked it up, wrapping it around my neck and breathing in the musty scent.
Then I stepped into an adjacent hallway. Making a beeline for the door straight ahead of me. It was the onlyone pulled closed, so I grabbed on to the knob and twisted.
Hmm. Locked.
All the training they beat into my head forced me back outside, where I rounded the corner of the cabin and located the window that should have led into that room.
Is the grandma sleeping?
The frost was so thick I couldn’t see past the glass. I tried to defrost it with my breath, to no avail.
Snap.
I jerked my head around. Expecting Prat’s lonely ass to be wandering my way. Instead, my world spun upside down and my vision changed from the snowy tundra by a cabin to another snow-filled night of my life.
I finally fucking had him. My target lined up in my sights. My gun resting on my shoulder and his naked ass propped up on the rim of the hot tub, with some blonde bimbo bouncing on the fucker’s shrimp dick. It had taken us years to track him down and lots of red tape to finally get the okay to take him out.
I adjusted my scope, to ensure that I didn’t hit the civilian, steadied my breathing, and waited for the perfect moment.
