CHASE

 

With one hand on the wheel, my eyes are focused on the road ahead. Streetlights cast pools of light on the night highway while the city lights fill the rest of the sky with dim lights. Clouds hang high in the sky, blocking out any view of the stars, like it’d ever be possible to see them in this city anyway.

Silence. Always silence between the both of us. So much on my mind, so much on hers. It’s easier right now to not talk, I suppose. Though she said that we were going to have a serious talk in the car, it hasn’t yet begun. Perhaps she’s waiting for me to start the conversation, but I don’t exactly know how.

She deserves the truth though, deserves so much more than this.

I draw my thumb to my mouth and chew on the fingernail nervously before saying lowly, “His name is Mason Cartwright.”

“Who?”

“Not the men in the garage. Those are mere henchmen or cronies.” I clear my throat and exhale. “Mason is the guy at the top.”

“What did he do to you?”

Her eyes peel sideways, her head fixed against the strong glass window of the stolen SUV.

“To me? Nothing.” I shrug, not because I don’t care but because, well just because. “To others? A lot.” I nod and run a coarse, cracked hand through my hair. “He’s power-hungry and driven by money and nothing else. Most people in this world are good. They have a heart and a soul, but his heart is as hard as a diamond.”

She clutches the pendant hanging from around her neck.

“Back when the other boys and I had just gotten out of the service, back when Ford Security didn’t yet exist, we were just a ragtag band of friends with an eye on helping people. We didn’t quite know what we were doing, or what would end up becoming of us, but there was this woman—young, jaded, and married to the wrong man.” I catch a quick glimpse of her, listening with full attention though her eyes are fixated on the floor. “She was his second wife and she had no idea of what he did behind closed doors. When she found out, she tried to escape. He wouldn’t let her go, so she came to us battered and bruised and we managed to save her from him just in the nick of time. He had lawyers out the ass and nothing ever stuck. She was terrified of him to the point she faked her own death, and we helped her do it.”

She’s back to looking at me, and in the darkness of the front seat, I can’t discern what kind of look she’s giving me.

“Mason pointed the finger of blame at us, said we had instigated things that ultimately led to her death. For what it was worth, I think he loved her. But that’s the thing—Mason Cartwright doesn’t understand love. He has a dark soul and he always said he’d make us pay for what we had done to him.” I pull the wheel to the right, crossing over two lanes to hit an exit ramp. “Over the years, I kind of just forgot about him. His primary income was driven by the theft of high-valued items such as diamonds. I still thought nothing of it until the car exploded in the parking garage.”

“What about that made you remember?” she questions dryly, and in the lights casted by the red streetlight at the end of the ramp, I can see something in her eyes. Something scary. Something curious.

“That was how his wife died.” I meet her gaze directly. I want to watch her watching me. I want to know what she’s feeling when I’m telling her about this terrible thing we did. I shouldn’t feel guilty. We saved that woman from her husband, but on some level it’s always felt wrong, like we stole something from Mason. That’s the difference between good people and bad people, I suppose. Good people are able to feel remorse even when it’s not earned. Bad people only care about their own selfish needs.

“We rigged her car to blow in a parking garage just a few blocks away from the one we were in earlier. She was so desperate to escape him that she provided us two teeth to place in the explosion along with a corpse we stole from the morgue.” The light turns green, I let off the brake and we take a left onto my street. “When that car exploded, my mind instantly went back and I feared the worst: that he was finally coming for us for what we did to him.”

“That doesn’t make sense though.” She shakes her head, trying to understand. “Those men didn’t attack you in the parking garage. They attacked me and my sister.”

“It doesn’t mean it’s not him, and now that he knows of my involvement, things are going to escalate.” I pull as close to the curb as possible, parking outside my home. There’s a parking garage with reserved parking, but I’m not about to drag her back into another one of those. I put the car in park, kill the ignition and throw an arm over the back of her seat. “It was because of Mason that Ford Security came into existence. He knows this, and all this time later, he’s still looking for his revenge.”

She gulps. “Why wait so long?”

“He’s an opportunist.” I sigh and kick my head back against the seat. “Maybe this began as one thing and it’s become something else and for that, I apologize.”

“No,” she stammers, twists in her seat. “You don’t need to apologize about anything. You didn’t do this. He did.”

“It’s a cycle of harm and it’s never going to end.” I chuckle nervously. “Not unless he’s dead.”

Her head rises, her eyes too until she’s staring directly into my soul. “Would you?”

“Kill him?” I arch a brow. “It’s a heavy burden to take someone’s life, but I would. I should have done it all those years ago, but I wasn’t that type of man.”

“And what kind of man are you now?”

A smile curls across my lips, but I don’t know why. This isn’t enjoyable for me. Not even close. It has to be her, something about the way she looks at me. Something about the way she grounds me. Something about the way she makes me want to be a better person.

I reach across the short distance between us and caress her cheek softly, and then trail my fingers to the edge of her hairline to comb my hand through tangled curls.

I half expect her to jerk away from me, but she doesn’t. She does the exact opposite—leans into my touch. Her skin is so soft, so fragile, but she’s a fighter. I know this to be true even if she doesn’t know it about her own self.

If I were in her shoes, I’d be a damn mess. I’d be crying all the time, too weak to stand. It took me forever to become strong and in the span of two days, she’s become a tough-as-nails warrior while still possessing traits of vulnerability and softness.

“What are you doing?” she whispers to me, shifts slightly in her seat as her chest heaves to a gentle beat. “We shouldn’t…”

“It’s okay,” I reassure her and thumb my finger across the surface of her flushed cheek. “We should go inside,” I say and retreat from her, straightening myself out in my seat in the process and leveling one hand on the door handle. “Are you ready?”