Canary by Tijan

16

Ash

Raize woke me the next morning.

I rolled over and glared. I couldn’t stop myself.

He chuckled—chuckled! I was so surprised I forgot I’d been glaring.

He stood up. “Get up. I want to do this before they wake up.”

Right.

This.

He was going to teach me how to shoot.

I didn’t want to learn how to shoot a gun. It was my line. Everyone had lines. But as I considered yesterday, I was going to cross that line. I’d need to learn or die.

I couldn’t die yet.

I had my sister to find or avenge. At this point, it was an either/or sort of situation. That was the ultimate goal for me. Trudging to the bathroom, I made quick work of getting washed up and dressed. Today was my second pair of jeans, a new tank top, and the same sweatshirt from yesterday, mostly because it was my only sweatshirt.

I pulled my hair up, wrapping it up in a slightly loose/slightly messy bun. A few tendrils would fall through, framing my face. They always did.

I paused and looked at myself, really looked at myself.

I’d always been pale growing up. Brooke was the one in the sun, running around, mostly flirting with guys.

Me. I was the inside girl, the study girl. Brooke was lively and extroverted. I was just quiet, but we had the same face. Oval shape, flush cheeks, big lips. Dark eyes. Both Brooke and I had the same eye color. But I liked makeup.

I used to go a dark shade over my eyes. Frosted lips.

I did the slight pink hue on my cheeks.

Brooke didn’t like makeup. She was almost a tomboy kinda girl, but she was the partier of us.

I didn’t recognize that girl anymore. My skin was darkly tanned. No makeup. Lips were chapped.

My cheeks were gaunt, not flush or rounded.

With the weight loss, my chin stood out more. The oval face shape was almost a triangle one.

I had no clue if I looked better before or now, then I shook myself of that question. How could I look better? But I had dark hair before. Now it was blonde.

“You gotta change your hair color.”

They decided to change my hair color, not me. They wanted me to have platinum blonde, but now with my roots, it was a beachy blonde look. I knew the back was super light, almost white on some strands. My eyes were the only thing I recognized anymore. They were the only thing I still had.

“...I can’t use you until your hair is blonde.”

That guy. A wave of nausea rolled through me and I grasped the bathroom counter, leaning forward.

I chose to go to him. I picked him. They asked my name and I told them Brooke.

That was the first name I used. She was the first one.

“You’re gonna die with a needle in your arm...”

The lady who did my hair, because I argued, telling them they needed someone professional to turn hair from black to platinum said to me, “Go to the bus station, buy a ticket, and disappear. They’ll forget about you… Go far.”

She tried to save me, but she hadn’t known.

Hell. I hadn’t known, and now here I was, seeing a stranger in the mirror who was wearing a brand new fucking sweatshirt. In Texas. Go figure.

No more memories. There was no point.

No going back. Only forward, and thinking about that, I might want to get a second sweatshirt, especially if we’d be using it to hide a gun because that meant I’d be wearing this thing everywhere and every day, and holy moly, it’d get stinky.

I was so tired.

I’d trudged to the bathroom, so keeping with the theme, I trudged down the stairs and through the kitch—I stopped as I passed the living room. Jake was sprawled out in the middle of the room, arms and legs akimbo. He was snoring. I felt it vibrating through the floorboards.

Movement caught my attention from the kitchen.

Raize was pouring coffee into a thermos… When did he get a thermos? He turned and grabbed a second thermos. My eyes went wide as he handed one to me, and I sniffed it, smelling the cream he’d added. He took his coffee black, so I knew he’d done it just for me.

“When did you get these?”

He gave me a look but didn’t say a word as he stepped outside.

I couldn’t discern whether that had been a good look or a bad look. It’d just been a look. It had me flabbergasted—and there I went again. Flabbergasted? I did not talk like that, or think like that.

So odd. What a morning already.

Raize got in the truck, and I slid in on the passenger side.

“Those two stayed up until a few hours ago,” he informed me.

I glanced over, sipping my coffee. I would expect him to sound pissed. “You’re not mad about that?”

He pulled out and turned onto the road. “I wouldn’t have allowed it if it didn’t work. Jake figured out that we’re setting everything up, and his job is to either follow Cavers or distract Cavers. I’m guessing he got tired of following him yesterday.”

Jake was a genius.

“Are you hungry?”

I shook my head. “I’m good. Maybe after shooting?”

Asking to wait to eat food until after an errand, that’s what normal people did. I was hoping Raize would let me pretend we were normal this morning. Again.

He nodded. “That’s fine.”

He was going along with it. I was speechless.

He drove us to a legit shooting range.

Noticing my look, he shrugged. “I didn’t have time to scout any land. Do you have your fake?”

I did.

We went inside, and an older guy with very keen eyes had Raize fill out some sort of form. Both of us showed ID, and then we were allowed through a door and into a shooting room. There were a few other guys there, one other woman. She glanced over, saw Raize, and her gaze lingered. She looked him up and down. The guys did the same, but likely for a different reason.

I needed to be honest with myself here, because it had become obvious that I was stupid in denying it.

Raize was hot. More than that, he was gorgeous, and the whole dead-and-cold vibe he gave off somehow accentuated his attractiveness. He was tall, six two and lean. But he was muscled. I’d seen his eight-pack, unfortunately. Now I couldn’t stop thinking about it. But it seemed the men in this room saw what I saw, too—there was more to Raize. Not about the eight-pack. He had the quiet power of a killer, and these guys looked at him as if somewhat and reluctantly impressed.

The woman definitely wanted to fuck him. I was waiting for her to lick her lips.

“Stop looking at them.” Raize was busy setting up our guns.

I snapped my eyes to the front, forgetting how Raize could see everything. He had eyes on the sides of his head and in the back.

“You should have a blind spot, like a freaking car,” I hissed before I stopped myself.

He motioned for me to stand next to him. His next words were soft, and not what I’d been expecting. “You need a comfortable stance. There’ll be kickback after you shoot.”

“Huh?”

“Stance.”

“Stance?”

He didn’t shoot with a stance. He just shot. Sometimes running, sometimes not even looking.

“You need a stance.” He patted the inside of my leg, and I jumped, feeling that touch shoot all the way to my chest. “You’re new to this. Stop fucking around this morning.”

I scowled. “I’m not fucking around.”

It’d been a long time since I’d fucked around.

I’d had a boyfriend when I was a junior in high school, the year my sister was taken. He’d been my escape until I decided to actually escape and start down the path that had brought me here.

“I used to have sex regularly.”

Raize went still. “What are you talking about?”

Oh boy. He didn’t like hearing that from me. That was his motherfucker voice. I hadn’t heard that tone since the motel room when he killed Bronski’s man.

Bronski. I couldn’t suppress my shudder.

I moved, putting my feet in some form of stance so I’d be comfortable for the kickback, but Raize was right. I was fucking around. “I have a list, you know,” I heard myself say.

He’d been reaching for my gun, but stilled once more. “A list?”

I took the gun from him and raised my arms.

“Wait.”

“Huh?”

He slid the gun’s magazine to me. “Load it. Press down, then slide it underneath.”

I did as he said. He pulled out some noise-canceling equipment and eye protective gear and shot me a frown. “You have a sex list?”

“What?”

He handed me the gear. “You said you used to have sex regularly, and then you said you had a list.”

“Oh!” Oh, gosh. That was kinda funny. I bit my lip, not understanding why I was in this mood this morning. “No. Sorry. I meant I have a list. Everyone who’s hurt me or someone I cared about, or done someone wrong—their name goes on it.”

Raize showed me the right way to hold the gun after I put the clip in it. He moved my finger to rest against the frame, moving my right thumb to lock over my left hand. “What’s the point of the list?” he asked.

“They’re people I’m going to destroy if I get the chance.”

His body froze as his eyes shifted to mine. “Where do you have this list?”

“It’s in my head.”

He stepped back, putting my shoulders in the right position. Then he stood behind me, and I could feel his breath against my face. “Am I on the list?”

“No. If you were, I wouldn’t be telling you about it.”

“Who’s on the list?”

My attention went back to the gun. “Am I good to shoot?”

“Keep your left hand on the gun. Don’t break your hold. Keep your stance. Be ready for the kickback. Shoot when you’re ready.”

I shot.

I didn’t need to go through the steps he’d just given me. I was always bracing for the worst in this life, and because of that, I didn’t move. Not an inch. I felt the kickback. It reverberated up my arm, my shoulders, my chest. I felt the wave of pressure slam against my face, but I was ready for it. I’d been around enough guns being shot.

But I had not been ready for the emotions that surged through me.

I’d gone over my line. I’d just shot a gun. I was a step closer to making that list a reality. Maybe that’s why I’d told Raize about it.

“Bronksi’s on the list,” I said softly.

His dark and penetrating eyes found mine. “We can make that happen.”

Yes. Right. I told him I wanted to kill a man, and he said “we can make that happen.” I was so far over the line now that I wondered why I’d ever drawn a line. It didn’t make sense. I couldn’t start on my list with that line being there.

“That last building, Oscar’s, it’s on the list, too,” I confessed, my voice quiet. “I want to blow it up.”

His eyes narrowed. I knew he was remembering my freak-out. “We can make that happen, too.”

A wave of emotion swept through me, and I braced myself. I didn’t know what I was feeling, but it was so much right now that I couldn’t move a muscle. Not. One. Muscle.

Raize’s hand went to my hip, and his fingers flexed there. “What’s going on in your head?”

I went back to remembering that boyfriend. “I was thinking about the sex I used to have. That was a long time ago.”

His fingers dug into my hip as he aligned behind me. I could feel him from my shoulder to my ass. He fit against me, almost perfectly.

He used to have sex regularly, too. I’d seen the women who left his room in the mornings. And his stint was a lot more recent than mine. Mine was years ago, probably three years ago. That would make me… “I should be in college.”

Raize tensed behind me. I could feel his breath.

“If I hadn’t decided, well, you know—another life, another world, and I’d be in college by now. Maybe a sophomore even.” But I wasn’t, and there was no point in dwelling on it. “You said you were going to destroy his operations. What are you going to do about the women?”

“That’s important to you?” His forehead went to my shoulder, barely touching me. I don’t think he realized.

My tongue felt heavy. I blinked a few times, and there was a wetness there I didn’t want. “It is.”

His voice got rough. “It have to do with why you started this life?”

Oh, damn. He went there.

This morning was just so weird.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“We can take them to a shelter, wear ski masks so they can’t identify us.”

My knees almost gave away. I had to release the gun, grabbing for the table so I didn’t fall.

Raize caught me, holding me in place with his front pressed against my back.

I could feel how long it’d been since he’d had sex. I don’t know if he meant for me to feel it, but I was. I remembered how it felt when my boyfriend used to slide inside of me. So damned good, so distracting.

A slight growl left him as his fingers dug in one more time before he peeled himself away from me. “Shoot some more. I want you to feel comfortable.”

Comfortablewasn’t how I’d put it, but I raised the gun, turned my mind off, and kept going until I’d emptied the clip. Then he refilled it, and I did it all over again.

We went to eat lunch after both of us had shot all of our weird emotions away—or that’s what I hoped I’d done.