At least, not anymore.
“Let’s go,” I grumbled as we swung open our doors. We moved into the shadows quickly, where Katie didn’t have to be told to follow close behind me. She let me lead without question, like she knew our places in this.
I wondered if she knew her place with me when it came to our personal relationship. Because I was starting to think I needed to know it more than ever before. Starting to think we needed to lay some boundaries.
Bombs needed to be secured.
“He shouldn’t be home,” I whispered once we were in the elevator. “Be quiet in the hall. I’ll pick the lock, and we’ll move in and get out.”
She nodded and whispered back, “There’s a security system right when you walk in. I have the code.”
Who knew she’d be handy? We moved well together down the hall and into the apartment when I got the door open. She went straight to his bedside where the laptop sat in a drawer. We were about to get out of there with no issues when we heard a key in the lock.
“I got this,” she whispered as she shoved me into the closet. “Let me handle it.”
I shook my head that it wasn’t a good idea, but she’d already spun around to stand in front of the door.
Fuck me.
She tried for nice; I heard her pleading with him that she’d missed him, that everything was a misunderstanding.
But Georgie had smartened up. He was done falling for her. “You think you can keep lying to me and playing with my emotions, girl? Your mom was just as much of a bitch right before we killed her.”
He’d gone off in an emotional rage and thrown out the one thing I had needed to tell her.
“What?” Katie whispered, but the sound wasn’t meek. It flew from her mouth like a demon ready to wreak havoc.
I was across the room, hidden in that closet, but my body felt hers. The way she punctuated the T, the way the air whooshed from her lungs and then hung there. The room was pregnant with her pain and anger.
I winced at my missed opportunity to be the one to tell her.
“Your mother had her little side piece.” There was a pause. “Dougie. Douglass, to be exact. What a proud name for a proud man. I remember your dad’s way, how he walked around with his head held higher than God, like he thought he could tame her, like he thought their love would transcend her bloodline. Pride had him cutting lawns, breaking his back like his fathers before him. And for what? You?”
“Georgie, my dad—”
“Oh, baby. Don’t look like that. I didn’t know much of you then. And you had me fooled real good up until a little while ago. Damn, I almost thought I loved you. Maybe it was my love for your mother. She was hypnotizing, I tell you. And I may not have got a taste of her, but I like to think you tasted just as—”
I lunged for the closet door just as I heard the guttural sound leave Katie’s mouth. As I whipped it open, her arm was swinging so swiftly around, I knew Georgie would be too slow to stop her momentum. The small knife she must have hidden on herself was pointed directly at his throat.
He saw it too late, tried to dodge, but she outmaneuvered him like she did most people in her life.
The knife punctured the side of his neck, hitting the arteries and larynx. Georgie’s eyes widened, and the gun I didn’t know he was holding clattered to the ground as he grabbed at his stab wound.
Katie wasn’t done, though. She twisted and then shoved the knife away from her, slicing his back.
He mouthed “Katie” as they stared at one another.
“Oh, no, Georgie. You of all people seem to know that my real name is Katalina. Let it be the last name you say as you bleed out on the floor. I wonder if you’ll like the taste of my name on your lips mixed with your blood as you choke on it.”
“Fuck, woman.” I grabbed her wrist and pried the knife from her hands. “We were just supposed to get the laptop.”
Eyes of gray mist filled with questions and pain glanced up at me. “Did you know?”
I took a breath, pulling my phone from my pocket. “Doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“It does. You knew. You all knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
I threw her knife just out of reach from Georgie and turned to dial Dante’s number. “We need a cleanup at Georgie’s.”