Page 85 of Intrepid

“He was my best friend. A brother to me. But that’s not the only reason I’m here, and you know it.”

“What? Your daddy? Now that was …. That was just business. Nothing personal.”

“Burning him alive wasn’t personal?”

“He came after us. Took Trevi’s eye out that night.”

“And I took his other one.” I lifted the small cooler beside me and popped off the top of it, carefully removing the hard, white, freezer-burned eyeball I’d preserved from the ice. “Here, I saved it for you,” I said, allowing the organ to drop down inside the small hole.”

“What the fuck! What the fuck! Oh, fuck!”

“In case you get hungry. I actually considered cutting out your tongue, for old time’s sake, but I didn’t want to deprive you of what could be your last meal.”

“You little prick. You sick and sorry son of a bitch! You ain’t innocent. You helped get rid of his body. They’ll know. Gideon has pictures on his phone, too. He’ll know something’s wrong, and—”

“You’ve got no fuckin’ strings on me.” I laughed and lit up a smoke, as I squatted down beside the concrete-filled hole. “I’m not a total prick, though. Like Pandora’s box, I offer you a small glimmer of hope. You’ll have access to air as you try to escape this box. I promise it’ll be plenty of oxygen to keep you alive, and I’ll come back and check on you. See how you’re doing.”

“I get out of here … I make it out of this box, you’ll let me go? Free?”

He surely had no idea that a thousand pounds of steel kept him trapped within the twelve thousand pound tomb I’d buried him inside.

“If you can make it out of that box, I won’t touch a single hair on your head. You’ll be free to go.” I pushed to a stand, staring down into the blackness of the tube. “Now I have to go. There’s one more on my list.”

“You’re a dead man if I get out of here. A dead man! I will fucking kill you with my bare hands …”

His voice trailed off behind me, as I tucked the cooler under my arm and pulled the wrinkled piece of paper from my coat pocket. Beneath ‘The Pawn’, I scratched off ‘The Fox’. Technically, he wasn’t dead yet. But considering no one would be back at the jobsite for another week and a half, he might as well have been.

Making my way toward my bike I’d left parked alongside the trailer, I whistled the tune I’ve Got No Strings.

Hope could be a cruel bitch sometimes.

28

Sera

I clicked off the phone, watching Lilia’s number fade from the screen. I’d just spent the last ten minutes calming her down, after she’d been paid a visit earlier in the day by a woman looking to assess Jo’s needs for a nursing home facility.

The woman had been sent by my father.

My throat begged to scream, defeat weighing heavy on my shoulders. I sat down at the end of the bed, eyes burning with both anger and tears. I wouldn’t cry, though. Not for that asshole. As much as my body begged to fall into despair, my head rebelled, telling me to hold on. Don’t give up yet.

I still had a bit of time to figure things out.

Bea stood in the doorway, all decked out for Friday night, in a pair of black leather pants and a cold shoulder top. “Everything okay?”

Staring off, I shook my head and rubbed a hand down my face. “It’s nothing.”

Her lips flattened to a sympathetic half-smile. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

I let out a huff, blinking away the tears itching to fall. “I feel like I try to do the right thing, and it’s always wrong.”

“This is about your dad, isn’t it?” She tromped toward the bed in her heavy army boots and took a seat beside me. “Parents suck sometimes.”

“My mom didn’t.”

“You’re lucky. Both of mine suck. So what do you think she’d do, if she were you right now?”

Her question brought a smile to my face as I imagined the answer to that. “My mom? She’d probably grab a bottle of wine and dance in the streets.”