It’s been nearly three hours since I left the hospital between driving, waiting for Richard, and then talking to him… it could be him.
If I could hear his voice one last time before I get out of his life forever…
I accept the call, but I don’t say a word.
“I didn’t know I fell in love with such a ridiculous man,” Gabriel says, sounding tired and groggy. “Let me guess. After you do what you need to do, you’re going to run away because that’ll keep me safe… Liam, the only thing you’re running from is fear. I know you struggle with emotions. I know you think that you don’t have to deal with such pesky things, and I know they are hard for you to understand. But what you’re feeling right now is just fear over losing me. Everyone feels this every fucking day in some form or another. I feel it every time you leave the house to do… what you have to do. I lie awake, hugging Lucille to my chest, absolutely drenched in fear that you’re not going to come home that night. Or that something will happen and you’ll be taken away from me forever.”
I grit my teeth before forcing out, “You’re safer without me in your life.”
And then I hang up.
I don’t know what I’m going to do when I reach Whitaker’s place, but I’m going to make sure he’s dead at the end of it.
The location Richard gave me is a cabin on the outskirts of the nearest city. There are trees that hide the cabin and many pull-offs for hunters, making it easy to hide the car. I pull off and barely get out of the vehicle when I see another car heading down this road. I slide down, hiding behind my car, so theywon’t think I need help. I have to assume a lot of hunters come to these parts, so I doubt they’d find it suspicious.
But when the car gets closer, I see exactly who it is and question whether Gabriel has betrayed my trust in him. I’ve allowed him to track my phone, soheknows where I am. Did he share that with Jesse?
Jesse parks and gets out of his car while I lean against mine and realize that there’s no fucking way I’m getting away with this now.
He rushes up to me. “I’m so glad you came. When you didn’t answer my text, I assumed you weren’t coming.”
I hesitate as I listen to him, well aware that he never sent me a text. Hedidcall me but didn’t say much of use. And for him to have nearly beaten me here… something’s not right with this. Did he know the address before I did? If he did… who told him?
Immediately, I’m on high alert when he gets closer and does this weird movement around me, like he’s wanting to look into my car, but to do so, he has to touch me. It’s almost too quick, but where I should feel his flat chest, there’s something hard and rectangular.
“No one else is with you?” he asks, as though that’s what he’s looking into the car to see.
“No.”
“Back when I escaped Whitaker with Lacey in tow, I became obsessed with looking into the man I killed for him,” Jesse says as he pulls back from where he’d been looking into my car. “I learned that my victim was a really good guy. He had two little kids. He was divorced, simply looking for a hookup, and assumed I was eighteen. There was absolutely nothing indicating the tendencies that Whitaker had convinced me he had. He was pushed to the limit, forced to fight for his life because of Whitaker… and I killed him, convinced he was a monster. Kill or be killed… or so I thought.
“It was really hard for me to face what I’d done because of Whitaker. And when Lacey saw Zach… I knew I would do whatever it took to make sure he couldn’t touch her because all of those people… he’s done everything he can to destroy them.”
Jesse sighs before he continues. “If Whitaker goes to prison… do you know how many fucking minds he can manipulate inside? He might never see outside those walls, but the people whose minds he fucks with will eventually get out and they’ll come for me. It doesn’t matter where Whitaker goes, hewilldestroy my life.”
Taking a deep breath, he asks, “Will you do this for me?”
“For you?”
“For Gabriel?” His look is desperate. “I don’t care who you do it for, I just… I need it to happen. I need him to die. Liam, you’re the only one I can count on.”
I blatantly rub my eye, hoping he gets the hint. Leave it to Jesse to do so. He’s always watching everyone. He didn’t have an easy path in life and probably got through a lot of it by assessing people, much as he assesses their bodies after death.
He gives me a nod that’s so discreet I barely catch it, telling me that Whitaker is watching us at this very moment, which means he can also hear us.
How on earth did we end up in this situation?
And how the hell am I going to get a fucking bomb off of Jesse?
TWENTY-EIGHT
Liam
Whitaker must not plan on blowing me to bits or he’d have done it the second Jesse got close to me. No… he wants to play with us. He wants to meet me. He wants to monologue about some bullshit to me. Or hell, maybe he wants to kill me with his own hands. I sure want to kill him with mine. I want to add his fingerprint to my collection.
“I was planning on assessing the cabin, seeing how many people were inside before moving in,” I tell Jesse.
“Let me help. What if you go in through the back, and I’ll go in through the front? I have a gun on me,” he says, even though I can’t see any weapons on him at all. It’s likely said so he can assess what weapons I have on me for Whitaker to hear. “Is a gun all you have? Do you have anything else on you?”
