Parker grunts and swings his head toward me. His dark green eyes are squinted, the corners a little wrinkled, and another piece of his dark brown hair has fallen out of the tiny bun at the back of his head. Beautiful people being near me should be illegal because of my anxiety.
“I fear that this one is going to make the news, Mace.” Parker taps the steering wheel and returns his attention to the road. But the nickname makes my heart race faster than killing Uncle Marc had. Something isdeeplywrong with me. “None of them would believe I killed a man point-blank with a gun. My methods are a little… cleaner.”
“So how were you going to kill him?” I inquire while turning in my seat to face him.
Parker wrinkles his nose. “I’d poisoned the bottle of scotch that’s now in the back seat of my car. The last thing we needed was them finding trace amounts of his medicine in it and realizing he was going to die tonight no matter what.”
“But why were you going to kill him? Your… your boss asked you to?”
Parker squeezes the wheel tight and ignores me. The lights of downtown Eastport brighten the sky so the stars disappear, the night sky looking hazy and overcast. No snow on the ground at least, not anymore. The closer we get to the townhouse, the more I start to sweat. I seriously don’t know how I’m going to explain all of this to Reid. And now the added element of Parker… God, this is such a clusterfuck. Which is how I should’ve assumed it would go because everything I touch turns to shit.
The car comes to an abrupt stop inside the garage, but Parker doesn’t turn it off. He angles his body in the seat so that he can face me, and like there’s a string connecting us, my body mirrors his before I even realize it. He reaches out as if to touch me, then retracts his arm, letting his hand come to rest on the gearshift between us.
“I’m sorry this is the way your evening is going. Now is your chance to tell me anything you don’t want the boys to know. I can help you… conceal some things. Not everything, but some things.”
Why is his willingness to lie for me so sexy? “I had to kill him to protect us.”
Parker leans forward a little, face close enough that I can feel his breath on my face. Normally I’d be leaning back, pulling away, stepping out of the car to get air, but after the events of the evening, I don’t quite feel the need to put as much space between us.
“Protect you from what?”
“Him,” I whisper. “I… He wasn’t a good man. That’s probably why you were tasked with killing him.”
“Well,” Parker says with all the finality of a man walking into a lion’s den. “This is the second senator to die in days, so we are up shit creek without a fucking paddle. And I’m not sure even Robin can help us clean this one up. Hopefully neither of our faces were caught on camera.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Parker agrees succinctly. “Let’s go face the music.”
I follow behind Parker into the house that’s much more alive than mine. The house is lived in and comfortable, and it also smells like banana bread. My stomach grumbles because I haven’t eaten since this morning. I was too anxious knowing that I was going to probably, most likely, definitely kill UncleMarc before the end of the evening. Parker leads me to the living room, where there’s a fire going and all the boys are patiently sitting on the sofa.
Reid jumps up, hands wringing in front of him, probably with the effort to not reach out to touch me. Reflexively, I reach up to tap my nose three times, our universal signal fornothing hurtsandI love you. The tension bleeds from Reid’s shoulders and he takes a very deep breath, then narrows his sharp gaze on Parker.
“What the hell is going on?” Reid demands, arms crossed in front of himself, foot tapping anxiously. He holds a hand out when Parker tries to speak to Hayden. “I’m asking, so talk to me.”
“Fucking chihuahua,” Parker mumbles under his breath. He glances at me as if considering how to handle the moment to best work for me. “I had a mission downtown at the Adora. That’s where I ran into Mason.”
Reid’s brows furrow in confusion. “Okay? And?”
“I killed Uncle Marc,” I say bluntly.
Obviously no one else understands the depth of the statement, except for Reid. His chest stills and his eyes turn confused, almost shocked. He closes his eyes tight, then reopens them as if rebooting his reality.
“Sorry, I think the matrix glitched. What did you say?”
“I killed Uncle Marc,” I repeat.
“Yeah… Yeah, I got that. But why would you… I don’t understand.”
I feel my heart rate start to spike, sweat prickling at the back of my neck. This is so damn hard to explain. All of it. How do I explain this?
“Pause,” Hayden drawls, coming to stand right behind Reid. His nose wrinkles as his gaze flicks from me to Parker. “Ithink we’re missing some integral parts here.” Hayden points at me. “You killed your uncle, awesome news.” Hayden then points at Parker, eyes narrowing. “But why did you get involved? You could have just let it be.”
Parker rocks back on his heels and whistles. This will be interesting for sure. All the boys continue to stare at Parker as he seemingly glues together a story that’ll get us out of this.
“Your uncle was my next mark,” Parker says to Reid.
“What?” Reid laughs, seemingly half in shock and half in fear. “The matrix keeps glitching. I thought you said that you were also there to kill my uncle.”
