He always told me to stay away from the Learys. They don’t deal in drugs, he said, and they have powerful allies, including lawyers who would pin me for anything in a heartbeat. Even if I got off, the scandal would ruin my empire.
But I don’t even know if Lynx is aware Lele is in a coma, and he certainly doesn’t fucking know the secrets Eve spilled about him. Either or both of those facts should change things. Lengthen my leash that much more.
I don’t know if what Eve said is true, but she seems to think I don’t know what he’s capable of.
She has no idea he learned his limits from me.
My ringer blares through the speakers of my Infiniti and I flinch, tearing my eyes away from Storm’s taillights for half a second to read the caller ID.
I answer the phone with the button on my steering wheel. “What is it, Fox?”
“When’s the last time you saw your uncle?” My bodyguard’s voice is surly. I made him stay home. I don’t need a fucking babysitter, and he knows it.
I roll my eyes at the question because it’s a waste of my time. “I talked to him just before Lele?—”
“No, Lyd. I said, when is the last yousawhim?”
I bristle at Fox cutting me off but I think through his question as I swallow, my ears popping with the elevation change. I could run Leary’s car off the road right now. I could kill him by fear alone. If he survived the drop from the mountains, he’d live the rest of his life incapacitated. Maybe that’s what we call justice, considering Lele in the hospital bed, hooked up to machines doing the work to keep him alive.
I try to focus on Fox.
Saw?I haven’t seen Lynx in a while. Maybe over the summer when I met him halfway between here and Falls Church. We had dinner. He gave me updates on shipments and product and cops.
Nothing we couldn’t have done over the phone but Lynx likes to lay eyes on you. He’s paranoid in his control.
Once upon a time, he knew how to lay hands, too. But now I think he knows I can hit back.
“I don’t know, Fox, why are you wasting my time with this?”
Storm rolls to a stop at one of the few intersections on this road, then he throws on his signal to turn into the Deer Café, which serves the sludgiest coffee known to humankind.
I glance in my rearview. The car behind me has their signal on too. All three of us turning won’t look so suspect, but it’ll be best if I keep driving and circle around in someone’s driveway. Of course I’ll have to turn in and back up because these mountain pathways aren’t circular and they aren’t for the faint of heart.
“I saw him on camera,” Fox says.
My stomach drops.
The light turns green.
Storm turns.
My pulse races and I can’t risk getting honked at and drawing more attention toward my car so I go with my gut and head straight through the light, leaving Storm behind.
“You what now?” I ask Fox, even though I heard him just fine.
“I checked the feed. You said you sensed something outside, before you got the call about Lele.” Fox clears his throat, correctly giving me a moment to seethe. “I looked at the cameras facing the woods first. Then around the pool. Nothing but animals there. A couple of wolves, by the way.”
I ignore that and keep driving, aware I need to turn around so I can keep my eye on Storm but my mind is racing witheverything Eve said about my uncle and all the ways my brother keeps his distance from him. Then there are those blank holes in my memory, too.
And the places that are full.
But I recall learning. I recall feeling confident. Strong.
Lynx wasn’t a monster.
That can’t be a lie, right? And Lynx could’ve never hurt Lele as bad as he trained me. We’re related. Brother and sister. If he despised one of us, he’d hate the other, and what Lynx did with me was for my own good.
But Eve said he drowned puppies. That’s abnormal. And do I believe her? She’s never given me a reason not to, and Lynx led me to her so why would he draw us close if he thought she’d tell psychotic falsehoods about him? But she could have a deeper angle. I don’t know her motivation. Money? We pay her well and we aren’t her only clients. What else does she want?
