He regarded me with an empty gaze. “You can try. We own the police here. And I think Hansen educated you on what happens here if he finds you can’t keep your word.”
Ah, so John couldn’t carry on a normal conversation, but he seemed very capable to regurgitate his president’s death threats.
After they gave me back my phone, it took an hour to get through all my voice messages, texts, and emails. A few were from my family, checking in, though they were obviously worried about the lack of response since they were used to such things when I was on a story. They were used to months of silence and the only way they could find out whether I was alive or not was to watch me reporting the news.
So they were lulled into a false sense of safety thinking I was covering some benign story in Arizona. When in reality, I was likely in more danger, or at least comparable danger, here as I was in a war zone.
I texted them all back, choosing not to inform them that I was being held hostage by a biker club and the man they’d welcomed into their family and expected to marry their daughter. A man they’d mourned like he was their own. I know they mourned for a daughter that was their own too. Because I’d died. Not all of me. But a big part. An important part.
I lingered on a photo my sister sent me, she was smiling with her hand over her large rounded stomach. She’d be due in two months.
Where would I be in two months?
Would I be alive?
Would I be able to face my family, my home, with the knowledge I had now?
Would I be able to face myself?
The appearance of a new message shook me from that morbid contemplation. It was Emily. She was my contact for the story, and I’d been calling her nightly to update her on what I had. She was beyond interested in the story and already had big plans for it.
Unlike my family, she knew how much danger I was putting myself in. Hence why most of the calls and messages were from her.
The latest read:
If I don’t hear from you today, I’m calling the police. I don’t care if it blows your story. No matter what you think to the contrary, you are more important than your story.
I sighed and dialed her number.
“Holy fuck!” she screamed through the phone after barely one ring. “I thought you were dead. That the bikers found you out as a rat and that you were swimming with the fishes.”
I smiled. The familiarity of the voice was welcome. It was a comfort in a place where nothing was comfortable. Familiar. “We’re in New Mexico, Emily,” I said, trying to keep the tears out of my voice. “Not many places for me to swim with any fishes, and that’s more of a mafia thing. This isn’t the mafia.”
“It’s almost the same thing,” she scoffed.
I rolled my eyes.
It wasn’t almost the same thing. If I had been found out to be trying to infiltrate the mafia, there would be no conversation, I’d have had a bullet in the back of my skull without so much as a conversation.
The Sons of Templar at least gave their enemies somewhat of a conversation before putting a bullet in their brains.
I thought about the gray matter on the concrete.
Well, half a conversation.
“Okay, since you’re not swimming with the fishes, care to tell me where the fuck you’ve been the past week?” Emily asked pleasantly.
Sirens and horns echoed through the phone and I imagined her shouting at her phone while pounding the streets in six-inch heels. She was one of the busiest agents in New York, she was always rushing somewhere, swearing into her phone. “Because I’m on my way to my doctor to get some fresh Botox for the wrinkles you caused me worrying about you being buried in a shallow grave.”
“I thought it was swimming with the fishes? You’ve got to stick to your metaphor, Em,” I teased.
I only got a growl at the end of the phone.
I smiled again. “You were not worried about me, it’s not in your schedule.”
Emily was religious about schedules, to the point of OCD. She had bathroom breaks in there. No joke.
“When my best friend makes her living by almost dying daily, I put worrying about you in my schedule, written in blood. Don’t worry about that. Right before my morning celery juice and after my morning orgasm.”
It wasn’t a surprise she even had her orgasms scheduled.
I wondered if this one was from a new girlfriend or a battery-operated device. One thing she didn’t have a schedule for was women. She was all about flipping stereotypes and feminism, but she was also acting like the classic toxic male when it came to womanizing. She was afraid of commitment, except when it came to her job. And me.