Watching them debate our situation and Dess’s part in it brought the pang back into sharper clarity. I couldn’t decide if it bothered me or if it was kind of a relief to know I was capable of that kind of emotion.
I didn’t need to feel things. I got by just fine in my usual unaffected state. A lot of guys would have scoffed at the idea of feelings and acted as if they were a weakness anyway.
The ache for Dess didn’t seem like a weakness, though. It felt like a sense of direction, propelling me forward.
Despite Julius’s determined words, Garrison’s snark, and Blaze’s frustration, I got the sense that this wasn’t just about loose ends for them either. No, we didn’t want to deal with the fallout if we couldn’t contain what she knew… but she’d intrigued all of us in different ways.
“We never should have brought her to the penthouse to begin with,” Garrison said, tipping his head back with a groan.
A growl came into Julius’s voice. “Don’t you dare say ‘I told you so.’”
Garrison glowered at him. “Fine, I won’t say it. I’ll just think it very loudly. We have a loose cannon running around—one who knows our address, our occupation, and the fact that we killed her friend. If she tells even one person, any person, our job just got a hundred times harder.” He paused, and his mouth twisted. “Also, I liked that apartment.”
“We might still get to keep it,” Blaze said, always the most optimistic of us.
A haze of pre-dawn sunlight was beginning to glaze the horizon beyond the windshield. Blaze stayed ready for his facial recognition program to kick in, not daring to look away from his laptop. “It didn’t seem like she had anyone to tell. Maybe we can…”
He trailed off, obviously knowing there weren’t many solutions that involved us finding her and ensuring she didn’t talk that wouldn’t involve her as dead as the drug dealers we’d just mowed down.
“I don’t think she’ll go to the police,” I said slowly. Julius and Garrison looked at me, seeming surprised that I’d jumped in. I continued, expanding on my reasoning so they knew I wasn’t just shooting my mouth off. “She stole a car when we first met her. She was running from something, and she was trying to avoid leaving a paper trail at a hospital. When she thought we were cops, she held herself back from telling us anything.”
Garrison grimaced. “Considering the stuff her boyfriend was mixed up in, if any of that was even true, she might tip off some other criminal crew instead. That’d be a whole different kind of headache. I think I’d rather deal with cops. At least they’re a little more predictable.”
“None of that matters until we find her and—and see what she has to say,” Blaze said, as if she was likely to say anything at all and not fight us tooth and nail.
We all fell silent, the others possibly thinking the exact same thing I just had. Julius sighed. “We can’t know for sure how it’ll play out until we get to that point. The one thing I’m sure of is that we definitely don’t know everything there is to know about Dess. I don’t think we’ve even scraped the surface.”
Nobody could argue that claim.
He looked down at his hands, the knuckles marked by a few small scars, and flexed his fingers before going on. “If she has ties to a criminal syndicate, we’ll use her as a message. She can’t be left alive if she’s with one of our enemies. If we decide she’s a risk in other ways, we’ll deal with it appropriately. I think we can all agree on that. But we have to wait and see.”
The ache inside me dug a little deeper at the thought of ending Dess’s life. An image flashed through my mind from one of the movies I’d watched—secretly in my room on the small TV I had in there, studying the actors’ faces and body language as they played out some heartbreak. Trying to understand the pain they were going through that was unconnected to any actual wound. My hand rose to my chest, putting the slightest pressure there, like I’d seen the characters do sometimes.
I couldn’t tell if it helped.
I thought back to sex with Dess—to how hungry she’d seemed for the physical connection once we’d collided. There’d been nothing artful or scheming about our coming together, just pure bodily lust, so much it’d seemed to unnerve her in brief moments when I’d caught a flicker of uneasiness in her eyes. And yet she’d kept going. She’d clung to me, urged me on. And when she’d come apart, it’d been like she’d ascended to the heavens.
She’d lost something too—and not just her friend. There’d been an emptiness inside her she’d been longing to heal. And for just a little while, I’d been able to fulfill that need.
I’d fucked bad people. I’d talked to them and worked with them my entire life. Dess was wounded in a way I couldn’t explain, but she wasn’t like those people at all.
“I don’t think she’d be out to hurt us vindictively,” I said. “She’s scared, and who wouldn’t be after what she saw?”
Julius looked at me, studying my expression. Maybe picking up on the fact that I had experiences with her I hadn’t shared. But he didn’t prod me about them.
“We can’t know that for sure,” he said, “but I hope you’re right.”
Blaze’s demeanor changed like the flick of a switch. He sat up straighter and pointed to his screen. “I’ve got her. She’s on the move.”
We all peered at the grainy image of a figure striding into what looked like a city park. There was no denying it. That was Dess, and she walked with purpose.
“Let’s go round her up,” Julius said, and slammed the car into drive.