Huntsman by Cambria Hebert
15
Earth
“What’s wrong with you?”
I glanced up, startled to see Beau gazing over his computer monitors, green eyes studying me intently.
How long has he been staring?
“Nothing.” I rebuked his concern. Dude barely ever looked up from his screens, so I don’t know why he felt the sudden need to do it now.
“Usually, by now, you’re down at the bar cleaning up.”
“I did it last night after I closed up. Couldn’t just leave it the way you left it.”
Pushing out of his chair, Beau tugged at the beanie on his head, rolling his eyes. “You’re welcome for covering the bar for you.”
“You could have at least restocked. Everything was empty!” I yelled after him as he disappeared into the kitchen.
Truth was the bar wasn’t in bad shape. No more out of order than it would have been had I been there. Except maybe the coolers wouldn’t have been so low. I just used it as an excuse to stay late, working until I was so tired I knew I wouldn’t be able to lie awake and think.
To wonder who that shadow was following me. To wonder what he wanted and who sent him.
He mentioned Virginia. His filthy stare had laid upon her innocence.
The hand not holding the mug slapped onto the arm of the leather sofa, my fingers digging in aggressively. I definitely hadn’t planned to slice him open. But I wasn’t the type who could let him walk with any vision of her in his corrupted thoughts.
Snort lifted his head off my jean-clad thigh when Beau sat in the chair nearby, holding his own mug of coffee and propping his feet up on the table. After a sip, he smirked, glancing at the way we sat.
“Ivory would kill us if she saw our feet on the coffee table.”
I made a sound. “Ivory ain’t here.”
“Something happen with Neo?”
I glanced up, then away, my hand absentmindedly rubbing Snort’s belly. “Didn’t see him. Not even sure if they’re back from Texas yet.”
“Then Virginia? How was the appointment?”
I opened my mouth to tell him to mind his own fucking business but bit back the words when I saw the concern in his face. Telling him to butt out of my business was a lot different than telling him not to care about her.
“You know, Neo made her condition seem a lot better than it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that fucking pimp of a doctor told her she wouldn’t walk again.”
He sat up a little straighter, feet dropping off the table. Both hands wrapped around the mug when he leaned forward. “But Neo said—”
“Apparently, Neo is living in a dream world,” I spat, then paused to toss some of the black coffee down my throat. “Every doctor says the same thing, and he just keeps dragging her to another one, hoping to hear something different.”
Beau seemed shell-shocked for a moment, and it made me relive the first moments after I’d heard that quack tell her. “And V?”
“Virginia just goes along with him, acting like every time someone else tells her she won’t walk again doesn’t kill her inside.”
“Well, maybe she’s hoping someone will say something different too.”
“She’s not,” I snapped.
It is just like she said.Everyone just assumed all she could want was to walk again.
“She’s more than a wheelchair,” I muttered, picturing her smile when I drove too fast down the highway as I stared down into the last sip of the black brew.
There was a pregnant pause, and then Beau said, “Of course she is.”
I don’t know what it was—the tone of his voice, the fact I couldn’t get her out of my head, or lack of sleep—but I heard myself say, “He just keeps her locked up there.”
“And that bothers you,” Beau stated. For someone who lived in front of a computer, he sometimes was too good at reading people.
Realizing I’d voiced something I should have kept inside, I made a rude sound and brushed him off. “Whatever. It’s not my business.”
Snort’s nails clip-clapping along the scuffed-up wood floor as he followed me to the kitchen was the only sound in the apartment.
“He made it your business.”
My retreat halted, shoulders and spine stiff as I lingered in the opening between the kitchen and living room. I didn’t turn back, and though I wanted to keep going, my feet remained rooted in place.
Beau’s voice was a little louder, almost as if he was speaking up because he realized he had my attention. “Neo made it your business when he called you. Besides, we’re family. If we can’t be all up in each other’s business, then what’s the point?”
There was no point. To any of this. So I continued into the kitchen to set my mug in the sink.
“I’m going to the bar,” I informed Beau on my way to the door.
“It’s okay to be worried about her, you know.”
“I’m not.” I rebuffed, practically slamming the door when I left.
Snort stared up at me from the floor, his bottom row of teeth sticking out along with his smooshed nose made him look like he was in a permanent bad mood.
“I’m not worried about her,” I repeated.
He made a sound, a cross between a sneeze and a snort, and followed me downstairs. Since the place was already prepped for opening, I went into my office to do some paperwork. My leather jacket was hanging on the hook where I’d tossed it the night before, so I reached in to pull out the napkin.
After glancing at the note one more time, I fished out a Zippo and lit the corner. The flames creeped up slowly, curling the thin napkin in on itself as it slowly ate it away. After a few moments, the flame grew, and it scorched faster. I held it until the fire licked my fingers, then dropped the small piece into an ashtray on my desk where it burned the rest of the way.
Dropping into the chair, I pulled out a desk drawer, opening a false bottom no one knew about but me. The phone I was requested to answer sat there silent, screen dark.
A few taps on the screen lit it up, revealing a notification of twenty-one missed calls. Before curiosity got the better of me, I hid the phone away once more, turning my back only to have my gaze land on the cabinet where I stored my blade.
Thoughts of last night pricked the back of my mind, and I flipped on a small flatscreen that was mounted to the opposite wall.
I let the local news play in the background while I pretended to work on purchase orders and inventory when, really, I was waiting for the discovery of a dead body to be reported.
None came.
I refused to search the internet, knowing damn well that kind of stuff left a trail. Hell, normally, I wouldn’t give a damn at all, but this was different.
He mentioned her.
The news went off without a single mention of the man in the alley, and I could only assume two things:
- He hadn’t been found yet.
- He actually made it to a hospital in under thirty minutes.
Why hadn’t I just made it a clean kill?
Holy shit. He mentioned her.
The realization had me on my feet in seconds, the blade and holster in my grasp before I even knew I’d reached for it.
The odds that douchebag was alive were slim. Slim wasn’t zero. The worry I denied so heartily before roared inside me, so aggressive there was no way I could fool myself into thinking I wasn’t suddenly bone cold with fear.
He’d seen me with Virginia. Whoever he worked for could know about her now too.
The second my hand closed around the leather jacket, Snort was up on his feet, staring expectantly at me.
“C’mon, boy. Let’s take a ride.”