I turn and Adam is already out of view. I have no idea how that’s possible, but with a knot balled in my belly, I climb inside the vehicle and shut the door. Almost instantly, Smith sets us in motion, driving me away from Rick and I can’t help but wonder if that’s exactly what Tag and his men wanted. What if they’ve decided Rick is too dangerous to let live?
CHAPTER THIRTY
Savage
With each step toward the bar, I slide into that headspace that I go where it’s me against my enemy and yank the mic out of my ear. Walker doesn’t have the stomach for killing, not my kind of killing. Not the Tag way of killing. And they don’t need to come to my damn rescue. They’ll end up dead.
Country music continues to blast through the doors, where guards try to push a crowd of about twenty back. I bulldoze through the clusterfuck pretty fucking easily, which proves the “guards” are hacks who need to be folding their panties at a laundromat, not protecting a door. Any door. Even the door of their dog’s house. Once I’m inside the bar again, the party is still operating as usual. Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” has the energy humming, bottles tilted, and feet dancing. This tells me that either the hacks I just blew past haven’t informed management of the rumored troubles inside, or they have and management is avoiding lost revenue and/or chaos. Whatever the case, thank fuck for business as usual because I’d have zero chance of catching Tag’s men in a stampede. Which could still happen at any moment and probably will.
That in mind, I take long strides toward the loft stairwell, scanning for anyone familiar, anyone who needs a bottle broken on their head before I kill them. I’ve yet to find that someone and I’m just passing the dance floor when a blonde chick, with her breasts all but hanging out of her shirt, plasters herself against me. I don’t remember a day in my life since meeting Candace that I had a moment like this and didn’t wish it was Candace instead. Tag’s not fucking up my re-entry into her life, but I’ll thank him for making it happen right before I kill him. Maybe I’ll use a beer bottle and tell him Garth Brooks inspired me. I untangle myself from the woman and keep moving, eyeing the crowd that has gathered at the stairwell that is my destination, then past them up to that loft where I took Candace the night I proposed. Way to fuck up a perfect memory.
I cut through this next clusterfuck of people and reach the bottom step, when a redheaded girl who looks about twelve and is probably using a fake ID, comes running down the stairs crying. I step in front of her and catch her arms. “What’s up there?”
“They dared me to go up!” she shouts. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it!”
“What’s up there?” I repeat, my tone cutting, a sharp command of a question.
“His throat,” she sobs, grabbing her own throat. “His throat. Cut.” I set her away from me, the silent kill method proof that Tag’s got at least one man here. Or he did. There’s nowhere to hide upstairs. The killer is gone, but I need confirmation. Sirens sound in the near distance and I shove aside several bodies, double-stepping the staircase. I reach the top level to find Gordan laying against a wooden beam, blood pooled around his body. I scan the room to find no one else present before my gaze returns to the body. There’s a note pinned to his body that reads: For you know who.
That would be me.
I walk around the blood, scan for a weapon I don’t expect to find, nor do I find. I then grab the paper, and shove it into my pocket, wasting no time reading it. Not when the police could find me up here. “Holy fuck!” At the sound of a man’s voice, I turn to find a couple of college-aged guys gaping.
“Holy fuck!” the other one calls out. “That girl screaming about him dying was right.”
“Yeah, man,” I say. “We need to get out of here now. What if the killer is still here?” I run toward them. “Hurry. Hurry.” Both men look shocked and turn and scramble down the stairs, one screaming like a little bitch-ass baby. Holy fuck is right. He causes the panic that had been avoided until now. The entire place becomes a charge and a chorus of screams. It’s what I wanted. I’m now lost in the crowd, before the police can single me out, before anyone can remember I was a guy who was upstairs, bursting at the seams otherwise known as the walls.