Behind Your Back - Cameron Chelsea M. (читать книги полностью без сокращений бесплатно .txt) 📗

I meet each set of eyes on me.

“I can do this,” I say again.

There’s a collective exhale.

“Okay,” Cash says, clapping me on the shoulder with his enormous hand.

“Just… hurry,” Row says, looking up at me.

“That’s my plan. I need the apartment this week.” That causes lots of eye rolling. It means that no one else can use it and they need to clean their shit out of it. I know they use it as a storage facility and sometimes crash pad, even though they’re not supposed to. I don’t bust them on it because it’s such a little thing.

“She’s asking me to let her come to my place. What am I supposed to do?” I ask.

There’s more moaning and groaning.

“So get your shit cleared out and I swear to God, if that shower is broken, I’m going to garrote whoever did it.” That had been a problem in the last apartment we’d had.

“Hey, it wasn’t my fault,” Baz says, putting his hands up. “She grabbed onto it. Wasn’t my fault.” If he hadn’t brought the girl in the first place, it wouldn’t have happened.

I try to get everyone back on track as Hardy gives us the facts and figures. He’s been treating me the same way he always does, but I know he’s probably going to want to collect his favor relatively soon.

The guys are out of control and busy talking about other things, so I give up. My burner phone vibrates in my pocket and I freeze.

“That’s the burner,” I say, looking at Cash.

“See what it is,” he says as I pull the thing out of my pocket. Another picture message. It’s dark, but there’s no mistaking it’s me, walking down the street with Saige. Probably after we left the club.

“Shit, shit, shit, motherfucker,” I say as Cash looks at the thing and swears.

“Another message from your stalker?” Row asks with a grim face. I nod. “Are you sure you want to keep going with this? You really don’t know who you’re messing with.” No, but that doesn’t matter. I’m not giving up this job.

“I’ll go back to the club and if I can figure out the angle the picture was taken from, I can do a search and see if he left anything behind.” Cash hands the phone around so everyone can take a look.

“Shit, that’s a sexy girl,” Baz says, completely ignoring everything but Saige. I want to punch him for a second, but just snatch the phone back.

“I’ll go with you, Cash,” Hardy says. He’ll be able to pinpoint the exact location, no problem.

“Time for a new phone,” Cash says, but I don’t want to hand it over. I look again at the picture. Saige and I are walking together, my arm around her shoulders, her arm around my waist. She’s pressed into my side and laughing as if I’d said something funny. And there’s a smile on my face.

I hand the phone over to Cash and he collects everyone else’s before breaking out a new set and handing them around.

“We should probably go now, because the light will match,” Hardy says and he and Cash depart together.

“Are you sure you can do this?” Row asks. He looks odd without his twin by his side. Like he’s missing something.

“Yes,” I say. “I just need a few more…” I don’t know. Days? Weeks? I’m not sure. “I’ll get it done.”

He nods as if he doesn’t believe me and chucks his empty beer bottle in the recycling before heading out. Track is next, telling me to be careful and then it’s just Baz and me.

“Look, we bailed you out, no questions asked,” I say in case he’s going to tell me to stop.

“I know, I know,” he says, his face getting tight. He’s not one to be serious, but he’s got his serious face on right now.

“Just let me do this,” I say, and I realize I’m begging. We’re not supposed to let our personal whims get in the way of the work we do, but I can hear it in my voice.

“You’re getting too involved,” Baz says.

“I know,” I say. No matter how many times I tell myself that this is just another job, it’s not. This one feels like a personal quest that has been sent to me. I have to slay the dragon or else the entire kingdom will be held hostage by the monster. It doesn’t make sense and I can’t even explain it, but I need them to trust me. Trust me to do this and get out alive.

“Just be careful,” he says. I nod and he leaves, and I’m the last left. I sit on the couch for a few minutes and crack open another beer. The place is quiet. I close my eyes and lean my head back.

Before I started this particular job I remember being bored. Wanting something to happen. Something to set me on fire like I was when I first started. It was so easy to turn my young vengeance into something constructive. But I was alone until I met Cash. He shared my views for his own reasons and we made a plan, but we knew we were going to need help. He found Hardy and by extension Row, then Track and finally Baz. We asked them to join us, to work for something more than just a paycheck.

Rage boiled in us when we first started. We made a rule to never talk about our reasons for wanting to do this and we’ve respected that rule for the most part, but when you spend years with other people, you learn things about them without them having to tell you.

Row and Hardy are both gunshot wound survivors, with identical bullet wounds on their chests. Baz’s back is covered in cigarette burns. Not all our scars are visible, but we all have them.

Cash has never talked about his own, but I figured them out anyway.

He’s a refugee from the foster care system. His parents had made investments with someone who betrayed them and stole all their money. His father was so devastated he fell into a deep depression and only came out of it to shoot his wife and then himself. Cash was spared because he was sleeping. I know that part of the story, because that man who stole his parents’ money was one of the first jobs we did. Back then, Cash wanted to kill him. To seek vengeance that way, but we’d calmed him down and showed him that an eye for an eye was all we needed. Money for money.

We’ve all been dealt shitty cards in our past and are trying to undo it. To break even somehow.

I sigh and stand up. I need to go home and feed Leo.

I’m still in a nostalgic mood when I get home, so I go into the small safe that’s in the back of my closet and undo the lock with a combination of my fingerprint and a code. Leo follows me into the dark closet, curious.

I pull out the few pictures I was able to save from the fire. They’re not much, but they’re something. My mom saved hundreds of pictures in albums. I remember them being stacked side-by-side in the living room, their spines with years on them facing out and in order so she could find what she was looking for.

The first few years were filled with pictures of me and both my parents, and then with all four of us with Lizzy, but the pictures weren’t as happy. Sure, the adults were smiling, but there was a tightness around my mother’s eyes and my father seemed distant. And then it was the three of us.

The ones I was able to save were in a few picture frames she hung in the hallway. I almost grabbed the picture of my parents on their wedding day that my mother would never take down, but I let it burn. I let it burn with the rest of the house. I’d found my mother’s body on the kitchen floor only the day before and I had the feeling they’d be back for the house.

I’d sent Lizzy to stay with neighbors, which was a blessing. We’d both been at school when my mother was murdered. I discovered the body because I’d walked into the kitchen first. I was able to grab Lizzy and hide her eyes so she didn’t see. It was the one good thing that happened that week.

In the pictures my mother is radiant. Happy. I didn’t save any that had him in them. He was the reason they killed her. He’d gotten involved with things he shouldn’t have gotten involved with and they killed her for it. They kept him alive though, and sent him to prison. I don’t even know where he is. I don’t care. I got custody of Lizzy and we left. I changed our names as soon as I could and then I met Cash. It was so easy, how things fell together for us. Easy then. Not so easy now.