Blood to Dust (30 page)

“Bring me Nate again,” she pleads and bites into my skin, trying to claw the mask away from my face, but I don’t let her. Every attempt to peel the mask off is rewarded with a loud spank. She comes hard, tightening with a force that almost traps my cock in her pussy. “I need to tell Nate something important.” Her mouth almost drips with ecstasy.

I wait for our releases to subside, throw another look to our audience and yank her off the windowsill. She trips into my chest and finally peels my mask away, almost tearing the rubber in the process.

“Nate?” her uncertainty almost makes me laugh.

I’m drenched in sweat and bliss, but I know I need to get my ass into this shower and bolt out of this room before the police end up nailing us for indecent exposure. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

“Yeah?”

Her face battles surprise, her eyebrows knitting together.

“I love you. All of you. Your perfect face. Your beautiful soul. Your ugly deeds.”

“Say it,” I demand, collecting her hair into a ponytail I let loose over her left shoulder. “Again.”

No mom. No dad. No siblings. I need it. I’m getting it. I’m going to take everything she’s willing to give me before we say our goodbyes.

“I love you, Nate Vela. And it scares the living hell out of me. Why’d you have to go and steal my heart like this?”

I don’t answer her with words. They won’t do justice to what I have to say. I kiss her sweet lips that are just starting to heal from splitting open again yesterday. A deep kiss that’s not at all sexual. I wouldn’t call it romantic or soft, either. But it’s intimate. Lazy. Content. Happy. And it’s got our names on it.

I pull her into the bathroom with me, and after a quick shower together, we’re out of the room and back on the road. We still have a few hours to burn until show time, but we won’t spend them like sitting ducks in the apartment where Godfrey’s people found us and a bunch of horny bastards watched us having sex. I stop outside a Walgreens and Pea jogs in to buy some stuff for our operation tonight. The automatic doors swallow her but I can still see that bright red mini dress as she walks up and down the aisles.

While staring at her through darkened windows, I come up with a plan. Something that will help us out of the quicksand we’re drowning in. It’s going to be even harder to face myself after I do it, but I have to do whatever I can to make sure that we’ve got the best chance of getting out of this shit alive. When Pea is done getting the syringes and nail polish remover, she walks straight out of the Walgreens and inside a neighboring Dollar Store. I punch the steering wheel and curse her silently for making a stop she didn’t inform me about.

They think we’re dead. Nobody knows what we’re up to
, I keep reminding myself. But I don’t know that for a fact. Wanting to chew my nerves away, I grab the backpack she left here to look for my peach-flavored gum. I find it buried at the bottom of her bag, along with something else I didn’t even know still existed. Something I forgot I even had.

I pluck out my red notebook and stare at it, moving it in my hands like it’s some sort of magic fucking wand. My prison diary. My words. She always says they’re so pretty, but these are my ugly words, the ones she shouldn’t be exposed to.

Has she read it? Of course she’s read it. Goddammit. She knows my story through and through. The horrid bits and the painful parts. My jaw clenches so hard it almost snaps and pops out of my mouth. I don’t even notice when she gets back into the car, falling into her seat in a fit of wild, youthful laughter. The giggles die down quickly the second she sees the diary in my hand.

“Shit,” she gulps, swiveling her whole body to face mine. I don’t look at her. I’m still staring at my old diary. Violated is not the right word for what I feel. Disgraced comes close, but it’s still not quite there.

Her hand grips the door handle, ready to run away, but I dig my fingers into her thigh.

“Five seconds to explain. It better be good.”

“I’m sorry I took it without your permission. I tucked it into my dress when you carried me from the basement before we. . .”

Before we fucked like animals. She knew everything about me. And she still wanted to do it.

I love her.

“It didn’t feel right to leave a part of you back in that awful place. Your words deserve freedom, not that dingy basement. Besides—” She hesitates.

“Besides?”

“That red diary made me fall in love with you,” she finishes.

A few seconds pass before I hand her the notebook and motion with my chin to the nylon bags she’s holding.

“Got everything?”

She nods. “Can I take your diary with me when we’re done? You were going to leave it behind anyway, and I want to carry your words with me everywhere I go,” she says quietly, not meeting my eyes.

“Take whatever you want.” I rub my face in frustration before looking away. I mean it too. If she wanted my balls, I’d hand them over in a heartbeat. But man, it’s hard to talk about the day after we part ways. “Just keep it safe.”

“It’s yours. Of course I’ll keep it safe,” she says. I believe her.

In a lot of ways, she’s already saved me.

When night falls, our guards go up.

It didn’t surprise us that Seb arrived at the club clad in a dapper, checkered gray and red suit, accompanied by two bodyguards.

Sebastian may believe we’re dead, but he knows there’s still a chance we’re after him. And him? He’s after young boys. Sex is a drive just as powerful as revenge. Tonight, he is going to find that out.

We sit low inside a white Tacoma Nate broke into earlier tonight. He said Seb might recognize the Beatmobile and besides, he missed Stella. We made a stop in West Oakland, where he strode into an alley, yanked an antenna from one of the parked cars, wedged a space in the door and effortlessly hit the unlock button.

“Looks like you’re an expert when it comes to breaking into cars,” I said in hushed disdain when he slid into the driver’s seat.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t look out of your element yourself when you broke into your apartment.” Touché.

We watch Sebastian breeze through the doors of Think Pink, a gay nightclub just on the curve of Mission Street, without even coming face to face with the bouncer. I recognize the two muscle men who plucked me out of that Oakland alley the night he found me and handed me to Nate.

I don’t feel too bad about hurting his soldiers—they didn’t shed a tear when they handed me over to death row—but I hope Seb doesn’t come out of here with an innocent, unsuspecting one-night stand. That would be a complication we don’t need right now.

Beside me, Nate is flicking a Zippo lighter absentmindedly, moving his jaw from side to side while chewing on his peachy gum. The fire engulfed by his huge palms is dancing on his irises, revealing the complete peace behind them.

He doesn’t look like boyfriend-material right now, despite his good looks.

He doesn’t even look like Beat, the scary masked man who takes violently but with consent.

He looks. . .like a killer.

And Godfrey told him about my child. He knows.

“How come you’re not nervous?” I ask, shifting with discomfort that has nothing to do with the small space we’re sharing and eyeing the entrance to the club religiously. We can’t afford to lose Seb. With little means and barely any intel, tonight is our only clear shot.

Nate shrugs, rolling his gum with his tongue. So serene. So sickeningly serene.

“He rapes young men. He took a piece of my girl’s soul. He’s a bad guy and he deserves to die.”

“Are we good people?” I swallow visibly, ignoring his remark about me being his girl. I can’t allow myself to drown in fantasies right now.

“We’re better than good,” he flashes a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “We’re fair.”

Three hours after he walked in, Sebastian leaves the nightclub with his two bodyguards in tow, sans an innocent male companion. My palms are sweaty. I’ve been constantly wiping them over my bare thighs. Who the hell shows up in a dress to kill someone, anyway? I bet there’s a sensible dress code for these kinds of occasions. Well, at least it’s red, so I got the bloodstains part covered.

Seb and his men disappear into a flashy silver Cadillac and head out of the city and into the playground where everything, both bad and good, happens. The East Bay.

We follow them silently, careful to have at least two cars between us at all times. Nate is wearing his hoodie and I’m wearing a Raiders cap. Luckily, it’s Saturday night and the roads are pretty busy, despite the late hour.

The Cadillac stops outside a glitzy apartment building in Dublin, not too different from the one I was living in just a few weeks ago. Seb steps out of the car, and it’s almost too good to be true—I’m literally rubbing my eyes in astonishment—when I see him saluting a curt goodbye to his bodyguards before disappearing through the reception doors.

Jesus Christ, they’re not even guarding his apartment from inside.
He’s just leaving them there,
on the street, sitting in their car, in the unlikely case we show up. The driver folds his arms over his chest and closes his eyes, while the guy in the passenger seat takes out an iPhone, playing a game, the glowing screen highlighting his broken nose and a jaw the shape of a rock.

My gaze meets Nate’s, and he’s already grinning from ear to ear. A lucky break that fell from the sky and right into our laps.

We wait for a few more minutes, looking up, watching the light on the second floor of the building as it switches on. Nate slides the car past the crosswalk, making sure there’s an easy getaway route in case we need to make a move quickly, and once the engine is off, he turns to me, grabbing my shoulders so that I’m facing him.

“Sure you wanna do this? I won’t hold it against you if you pussy out. No shame in changing your mind, Baby-Cakes.”

I snort, shaking my head. These men are going down. I appreciate him giving me an opening to back away, but I wanted to kill them before he, and his golden dick, marched into my life.

“I’m good,” I say.

He angles forward, grabbing me by the back of my neck and placing a kiss on top of my head. “You’re not good, you’re the fucking best.”

Taking out the syringes from the Walgreens bag and the tin with the drugs, I mix a deadly cocktail of cocaine and nail polish remover, shaking it together into something that’ll leave his bodyguards begging for their deaths. I know this powdered crack, and it’s full of the worst ingredients the market has to offer. If the ammonia and rat poison straight to the veins don’t kill them—the nail polish remover will finish the job.

All I need to do is make sure I hit the right spot. But years of dealing with junkies who resorted to sticking needles in their feet and genitals made me somewhat of an expert on human anatomy when it comes to where to stick a needle—even in battlefield situations.

Sliding out of the car first, Nate—clad in his mask and hoodie—walks in the direction of their car, hands shoved in his pockets. When he stops in front of the driver’s window, he taps it with his gloved knuckles. I watch from the Tacoma as the window rolls down and a meaty hand darts in his direction, trying to stab him in the stomach with a sharp object. He dodges the knife elegantly and twists the guy’s arm out of the window, breaking it against the door with a popping sound that makes me swallow back a lump of puke. The arm dangles limply. Nate’s mask lifts and his eyes zero in on me. It’s my cue. I open my door and run in his direction, clutching the syringes in a death grip. He nods toward the broken armed man, and I jam a needle into a nice, blue vein in his neck. Nate is already dealing with the Candy Crush guy, who had time to round the car with a gun at his waist, a gun he is clutching on to but doesn’t pull out. Shooting someone on Main Street is not a stellar idea. Even he knows it.

“Put the gun down.” I hear Nate’s low growl dripping authority and immediately come to the depressing realization that I needed someone like him all this time. If he were by my side when I first tried to take my enemies down, they’d be long gone by now. “The chick behind me has two Magnums, and she won’t hesitate to make Swiss cheese out of your saggy ass if you point that shit at me. Pull your sleeve up and gimme your arm.”

“And why the hell would I do that?” The muscle man panics, waving the gun in the air but not at anyone in particular. “Whaddaya’ need my arm for?”

“Baby-Cakes,” Nate signals for me to come closer. The broken armed guy foams out of his mouth, gagging as my lethal cocktail fills his blood stream with pure venom, but Candy Crush can’t see it, since his friend’s upper body is spilling out of the window in the opposite direction. I eat up the space to Nate and the armed muscle guy. “Tell the man why you need his arm.”

“So I can poison you,” I smirk. The guy turns around and tries to bolt for the apartment building, but Nate hooks his fingers into the back of his collar and swings him effortlessly into a back alley behind a local restaurant. Muscle Man is slammed against a trash dumpster and crashes to the ground. Nate picks up his gun and unloads the revolver, throwing the weapon into the trash.

We could have used that gun.