I may not be good at asking questions, but it wouldn’t make sense to go through all the trouble of getting her away from Devil Tower only to bring her right back.
It’s clear his plan really was to send her as far from Devil Tower as possible. Whether or not he intended to kill her after or not.
Now she’s heading right back at the hands of a subcontractor, and it must be at the order of another Devil. Not Logan.
For the moment, he’s my best shot at helping Piper. And I’m desperate enough to grovel at his feet if that’s what it takes to save her.
Biting down on my hesitation, I grab the burner phone from my backpocket. Not an easy thing to do when you’re driving at the same time down a busy highway.
I keep my eyes off the road just long enough to search for his contact. The phone rings only once before it picks up, and I realize he must have a throwaway phone for the sole purpose of getting a potential call from me.
Clearly he knows, before I’ve even opened my mouth, that I messed up.
“Are you fucking serious?” he asks without waiting for me to say a word. “Did you really manage to fuck this up? Fuckingidiot. What did you do? I thought I could at least count on you for something simple like this. No?”
At any other time, if someone spoke to me like this, I’d beat the shit out of them. In fact, the only person who ever did was my dad, and shooting at the wall beside him got him to shut up pretty permanently around me.
Oh.
I suddenly make the connection between that and the way I shot at the wall inches away from Piper. I can barely manage to keep down the bile rising in my throat as my heart once more cripples at this new evidence of my cruelty.
Logan is still cursing me out, but none of his words are harsher than what I’m calling myself right now.
“So what happened?” he says finally as I continue driving at a reckless speed in the general direction of Astley. Though I know it’s useless. I’m nearly twenty hours away.
“She ran away while I was sleeping,” I admit.
“Ran away? Why the hell would she do that?”
“She… she hates me.”
It feels awful to get those words out. Even more awful because I know they’re true.
Logan hisses in annoyance.
“Alright. I don’t have time to listen to your silly lovebird antics. I’m guessing someone took her, right? Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Unless you’re so useless you can’t even hunt your girl down?”
“Someone took her,” I confirm, none of his words even scratching the surface of how much I hate myself right now. “Two people. Devil subcontractors.”
“Right.” There’s a long pause as I assume he’s deep in thought.
“She killed him, though,” I add.
“What?”
“One of the guys who took her. She slit his throat. So hard shenearly decapitated him.”
“Huh. Didn’t know she had it in her.”
Is it my imagination or does it sound like he’s proud of her?
“What is all this to you anyway?” I question, sudden suspicion roiling in the pit of my stomach. “Why do you care about Piper? Did you…”
“I can see why she ran away from you,” cuts in Logan. “Is jealousy the only thing you feel when it comes to her? Are you incapable of any other emotion? Then again, I’ve heard it said that youarea psychopath.”
I bite down on a retort, tears blurring my vision as I turn aimlessly onto another highway. It’s not like I can possibly arrive before the day after tomorrow, even if I drive without stopping.
Logan is right. The only thing I cared about when Piper told me how she was in the house, taking a shower, when her parents died, was that the soldier who had killed her was in the same house as her. I never asked a single question about why Logan got involved. Only now, when I suddenly suspect that there’s some history between them.
