“Mate, you gotta come get her. She’s in the bathroom. Locked the bloody door. Won’t come out for anyone but you.”
Leo doesn’t look surprised by the information, but his face seems to droop, like a flower wilting after having spent too much time in direct sunlight.
“Okay, give me your address, and I’ll be right there,” Leo says, and he sounds strangely exhausted, like he already knows the nightmare coming his way once he arrives wherever his mum is. Maybe he does know if this has happened before.
Teddy rattles off the address to Leo, who hangs up immediately after. He gives me a lightly apologetic look, appearing unbothered by the fact I was listening in on the private conversation.
“I have to go,” he tells me, utterly resigned to his fate. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”
If I were an ordinary person, someone who gives a single flying fuckbiscuit about social cues, I would accept the out Leo is offering and let him go unobstructed. But I only just stopped being a mass-murdering monster a handful of months ago. I feel no obligation towards social propriety. And I don’t want Leo to go off on his own even if there’s zero chance whatever is going on with his mother is something he can’t handle.
“Can I come with you?” I ask as a formality. I’m definitely going. If Leo forces me to shadow him rather than accompanying him as a partner, that’s really on him.
Actually, I think I might prefer following Leo from a distance. I’d make a far better bodyguard than I would a friend.
Leo isn’t a complete muppet, so he picks up on the undertone of obstinance and thankfully sees the futility in refusing.
He presses his lips together, annoyance flashing across face. Annoyance, mixed in with a bit of fear. The second of which I don’t quite understand. He wasn’t afraid before, just tiredly frustrated. There are a few options why me inviting myself along would cause him to feel scared, but none match up with what I know of Leo.
“Alright,” he allows. “But it’s going to be awful. She.She’sgoing to be awful.”
I’d guessed that, just from how he was reacting before on the phone, but the fact Leo feels the need to confirm it verbally, like a warning, makes me reassess how serious the situation is.
“I can almost guarantee I’ve been through worse.”
Leo winces in acknowledgement of that obvious truth. He tips his head down the hallway.
I start walking in that direction, following the silent command. Leo draws up level with me, and we walk side by side.
“A stab in the gut is worse than a paper cut,” he says wryly. “That doesn’t mean anyone actuallywantsa papercut.”
It takes me a second to work out what Leo means, but once I do, my mouth works faster than my brain.
“Is that what your mum is? A papercut? Is she where you get your Olympic-standard ability to irritate people?” I ask before I can set the words on fire inside my head and watch them burn like they deserve.
Leo doesn’t take offense, which is too good of him, simply giving me a playful glare instead of a scathing retort. His reply is surprisingly sombre, though.
“My mum is what she is.” He swallows hard, averting his gaze, brows drawing together in consternation. “I stopped hoping for anything else a long time ago.”
I don’t ask him to elaborate. Whatever the issue is with his mum, I’ll find out soon enough.
…..
We borrow a black Ford Fiesta from FISA’s garage.
It takes us almost an hour to get to the address Teddy gave Leo, mostly due to the city traffic. I’ve been to cities that were more dramatically busy, but it’s still frustrating to be stuck, not moving for such a long stretch of time.
I feel the pressure of time if for no other reason than the fact Leo seems to get increasingly agitated as times passes.
He doesn’t say so out loud, but his worry for his mum is clear to see. The tenseness of his shoulders. The twitch of his jaw. The rapid darting of his eyes, like he’s searching for her on the streets we pass. I’m already scanning the crowds of people because it’s second nature for me, but Leo’s palpable desperation makes me concentrate a little harder on looking for someone who might be related to my partner. I keep imagining a woman who looks exactly like him, with the same pretty mouth forming the stunning smile I’ve become used to seeing.
That smile is nowhere to be seen now. If anything, Leo seems to have been entirely drained of his happy-go-lucky nature. He’s gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are white, and there’s tension in every muscle. He looks more on edge now than he did when we were out on a potentially dangerous mission.
We eventually pull up outside a very expensive-looking townhouse in one of Danger’s richer areas. Everything on Voracity Avenue is clean and well maintained, the pavement shining like it was newly polished just this morning, the road appearing freshly tarmacked. There are immaculate flower boxes on every windowsill.
It isn’t what I was expecting. I half thought we’d be pulling up outside some dingy crack den to retrieve Leo’s wayward mother.
This type of street is more high-end cocaine territory.
