We shake on it, laying our normal wager of one pound on top of each other on the table.
“Winner takes all.” I grin over at Xav, and he shakes his head. He mouths ‘sick’ at me, and I chuckle, continuing to spin.
When it’s my turn to keep watch, Xav sneaks out to get some food, and we sit watching her shit herself and puke her guts up. She managed to make it back to bed, so we have front-row seats, but she was better where she was. The smell must be horrendous, but we wait and eat burgers and curly fries and slurp chocolate milkshakes, which makes Xav’s nose turn up when mine makes a gurgling noise as I empty it, and it sounds like it could almost be coming from across the hall. I laugh out, and Xav punches me in the arm.
She’s tried to get to the phone a couple of times, but each time she moves, she shits or pukes. I mean, it’s a horrible way to die, but mainly, it’s fucking boring, long-winded and very unnecessary. I could have put a bullet between her eyes a good twelve hours ago.
One hour, thirty-seven minutes, and twenty-four seconds later… That’s how long it takes for her to gasp her last breath after we set the wager. Before her eyes are wide and vacant, we record the footage for Father, and we fry the cameras so they can’t be traced. We slip out of the maintenance entrance to the hotel and back to ours, then head to the airstrip to go home. I need to mentally prepare myself for our meeting with Father. I know he’s going to push my buttons to try and make me flip, and I owe it to Xav and Jacob to keep my cool.
Father paces back and forth while Xav gives him the breakdown of it all. I sit with my hands on my knees and wait till Xav finishes and hands Father the drive. He watches a bit, then skips to the end to confirm her death, and the corner of my mouth quirks slightly.
“Anything to add, Ten?”
I shake my head, knowing how much it pisses him off, but I can’t do a one-eighty now. It will be obvious. And Father’s not stupid, not by a long shot.”
“Use your words,” he grits out.
“No, Father.”
Xav rises and takes Father’s hand. He does the whole kissing him on the back of it before bringing it to his head nonsense. When Father turns to me, I nod and walk out of the room.
Xav catches me up as I near the lifts.
“You did good.”
I just nod. I don’t want to say anything yet till we’re home. I’m desperate to see Jacob, but Xav won’t let me. He’s been keeping an eye on Jacob and seems to think they’re leaving him alone for now, but I can’t help but worry that one day, Father’s going to make his move, and when that day comes, I need to be prepared. I need to be ready. I cannot fail. I fail, we all die. I refuse to let that happen; Father will die before I do.
Xav
Chapter XXIV
I’m so proud of Vic. She’s been true to her word, and she’s stayed away from Jacob. She’s trusted me to handle the situation, and I haven’t let her down. She needs to steer clear. The slightest hint of interference from her and Father will lose his shit and destroy us both. I’m not prepared to let that happen. I could have a future. For the first time in my life, I have… hope.
I’ve contemplated what that could mean. Hope is a dangerous thing. I now have something to live for, something to hold on to, and I can’t help but want to cling to it and smile.
Father’s been watching closer than normal, and he’s up to something. I can feel it. I’ve not found anything yet, which makes me itch with anxiety. If he’s being underhanded… scrap that. He’s definitely being underhanded. I just can’t find what channels he’s using tocommunicate with whoever he has looking into us. I will, though. I can’t have him being one step ahead of us. That will be fatal for all involved.
Vic’s itching to pull the trigger, and I’m inclined to agree at this point. I’ve got someone on Jacob, an independent contractor, if you will, and he’s been reporting back. Jacob is being watched, and at this point, Vic is climbing the walls to get to him. She’s obsessed, and I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing for Jacob. She’s prepared to burn the world with us all in it to protect him, but in the end, it could be catastrophic, to say the least.
I’m not sure if I should just let her off her leash, though, because Father can’t be trusted, and the sooner he’s gone, the better. I’m just fine-tuning some of the evidence we have. There’s still a little more to gather, and I know I’m being anal, but we can’t have anyone walking away from this. We’ve worked too many years for this to be fucked up on a technicality.
We need it to go like clockwork, a slam dunk case. I need the evidence to be perfect, to contain every scrap of information, every kill, every person we saved. It’s not going to be enough to save us, and although I’m hoping for a future, without a shadow of a doubt, we will end up dead or in prison. We are questionable people at best, and while I long to be something else, I just can’t see it happening.
I’m broken from my thoughts by an alert. I check it out, and yes, I’ve found the channel Father is using. I scan back through the conversation. It’s mainly an intimidation order, but he’s avoided The Collective’s operatives. He’s gone rogue with this one, contactingoutside contractors, and that’s a dangerous move. We don’t know them, and they certainly don’t know us. He’s paying peanuts, too, and you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. They’re not even being subtle. The number of fingerprints that were found at Jacob’s was ridiculous, and I’ve been an extremely helpful citizen by making sure the gentlemen involved are all in the system so they can be identified. I grin to myself as I upload the latest goons file to the database for the police to get a match on his fingerprints.
I intercept all the communication and filter it, it’s more in the same, intimidation. Stalking. Breaking and entering. I don’t tell Vic. She will flip. I mean, I know we know they’re watching Jacob, but if she sees it in black and white, she will storm to the base and put a bullet between his eyes before breakfast.
The door clicks, and my eyes rise to meet hers. She’s been running a lot lately. It’s like she’s crawling in her own skin. She just can’t settle. I think if Father was going after Shelley, I would feel the same.
“Find anything?”
“Nothing new.” I shrug. I never lie to Vic, but I feel now might be the time to start. I need to protect her, and if that means protecting her from herself while lying, then I’ll do that.
She pushes into the bedroom to shower, and I upload all the latest information I have to our servers, the backup, and the hard drives, adding it to the files ready to be sent to all news outlets and law enforcement offices.
When Vic steps out of the shower, she joins me at the table, bringing us both a coffee. “I have that meetingwith Father at the base tomorrow.” She nods but frowns. It’s not unheard of for me to have a meeting with Father, but it’s not the norm either. “Stay alert, okay?” She nods again as she brings the coffee to her lips and closes her eyes as she takes a drink. “Hey, you good?”
She opens her eyes and stares through the steam rising from the mug.
