Savage Things (Chaos & Ruin Book 2) (16 page)

Zeth proceeds to describe in intricate detail how he restrained the guy after breaking his nose and drove him across town to the docklands, where he had some guy he knows seal the Italian’s car with him inside it into a shipping container back to New York. It’s going to take three days for the container to reach it’s destination, by which time the mafia guy inside the corrugated metal is going to have lost his fucking mind. I can’t see how this is going to end well. On top of everything else? Jesus, it’ll be a wonder if any of us make it through the next month.
 

“I didn’t want to tell you.” Zee pushes away from the wall, yanking his blood stained t-shirt over his head in one rough, incredibly sexy move. “But…y’know. No secrets,” he says gruffly. I love that he wants me to know everything. Being kept in the dark so much back when we first met, along with more recently, when he was hiding Lowell’s arrival, was infuriating and also very dangerous, and so the fact that he wants me clued in these days is reassuring. But damn if the guy doesn’t know how to make a girl feel like utter crap.
 

He says no secrets, and I have the biggest secret of my life nestled up, snug and warm in my uterus. Fuck. I should tell him. I should tell him right fucking now. I’m going to do it. I have to. I can’t
not
tell him. I—

He cups my face in his hands, and his knuckles are covered in
blood
. I can smell it on him, thick, coppery, overpowering. My stomach heaves. “Okay, angry girl? You look…kinda pale,” he says. I love the look of concern he wears. Those deep brown eyes are brimming over with it as he rubs his thumbs over my cheeks. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work today?”

I shake my head, touching my fingertips to his wrists. If he doesn’t remove them soon, the smell of the blood is going to make me vomit. “I was meant to. I still didn’t feel well, though.”
Please, dear lord, don’t let him think it’s weird that I’m still sick. Please!
“I have plenty of unused vacation time, so I figured why not take the rest of the week off. HR were threatening to make me take enforced leave, so this kinda works out for everybody.”

Zeth studies me for a moment with sharp, intelligent eyes. Slowly, so painfully slowly, he leans down, his face getting closer and closer as the seconds pass. I imagine him calling me out on my half-truth. It feels so shitty not telling him what’s going on after I gave him hell for not telling me about Lowell only a few days ago. Is it obvious that I’m hiding something? Is my fear and panic sitting there on my face, out in the open for him to see, plain as day? It has to be; I don’t know how I could possibly hide it.
 

Zeth’s lips part. He’s going to say something. He’s going to say something…

He kisses me.
 

I’m so surprised by the soft, gentle pressure of his lips grazing mine, barely making contact, that I feel all power draining from my arms and my legs. I melt into him, my chest meeting his, and he wraps his arms around me, crushing me against him. My breath leaves my lungs in a long sigh. I can feel Zeth’s lips form the shape of a smile as he grins savagely against me. The tip of his tongue flicks out between his teeth, tracing it gently over my lips, and then deeper, over
my
teeth. It’s ridiculous how quickly my body betrays me. My head swims as he envelops me, and the anxiety of the last few moments, hell, of the entire morning, is drifting away like so much smoke.
 

Worlds are miraculously created and come to catastrophic ends in the brief minute where Zeth Mayfair holds me in his arms. The universe sighs at the beauty of it all. When he pulls back, Zeth’s irises are flashing, filled with steel. “You have nothing to worry about, angry girl. You know that, don’t you? The Italians are just stretching their legs, pushing to see how hard I push back. If they want Seattle, they can come and take it. They’re not going to get any trouble from me. I told them I’m done. I won’t ever be someone else’s whipping boy again. And I won’t involve myself in shit that might ever take me away from you. Nothing in the world is worth that.”

So he has seen my panic. He’s mistaken it for something else, though. Makes sense that I’d be upset about how his day has panned out so far; I don’t correct him. I smile weakly, feeling like I’m betraying him as I turn away, reaching under the sink for the small first aid kit I keep there.
 

I unzip the small red bag and reach for the alcohol wipes inside. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be worried. I know everything’s going to be okay. I guess—I guess I’m just being stupid. Here, let me clean those hands up.”

Zeth grunts as I apply the alcohol wipes to his split knuckles. This part of our day is practically routine now, given how often he messes up his hands at the gym. It doesn’t escape me that somewhere leaving Seattle, a shipping container is headed for New York with an irate Italian trapped inside, though. That part of our day is definitely different.
 

Zeth is quiet, watching me with a quiet, all too familiar intensity as I go about my task. I may have told him a moment ago that I know everything is going to be okay, but from my shaky delivery down to the tremble in my hands, I know I didn’t do a very good job convincing him that I’m okay. His body takes on that strange, intimidating stillness that always arrives when he’s thinking too hard. I look up at him, smiling, trying to ease the tension around my eyes some, but I know it’s too late for that now. He folds his arms around me, drawing me into a long hug. Trying to hide this thing is going to be difficult, and it’s only going get harder.
 

He knows something is up.

Chapter Fifteen

MASON

Lack of sleep really fucks up my schedule. I spent all night trying to locate Ben, calling around everyone I could think of, trying to track him down, but the bastard’s disappeared from the face of the earth and no one seems to know where the hell he is. If they do, they’re not telling, anyway. Millie had a coughing fit in the night which scared me half to death, so I spent the remainder of the dark hours sitting in a chair beside her bed, watching her sleep, watching her little chest rise and fall, the soft sounds of her breathing filling the room, which explains why I feel like a goddamn zombie as I pull up outside work in the morning. I’m on time—a minor miracle in itself—but I can tell Mac’s still pissed at me when I climb out of the truck.
 

“What’s up, Mac?” I slam the car door, bracing for the stream of abuse he’s obviously about to hurl at me. I know things are serious when Dave appears from out back and plants himself against a workbench, arms folded across his chest, jaw locked, with a severe look on his face. Dave used to work on engines like me, but recently he’s spent less and less time turning up for morning shifts, instead appearing as the sun is going down, picking up tools when I’m putting them down. I have no idea what Mac has him doing, but it’s not legal and it’s bound to get him into serious shit some point soon.
 

When he reaches me, Mac slaps his palms against my chest, grabbing hold of my t-shirt. “Get your ass out back, you little punk. You an’ me are gonna have a little chat.”

Fuck. What the hell is this about? Any number of scenarios flash through my mind. Maybe he did see Kaya show up yesterday. Maybe he’s heard about me training over with Zeth. I quickly discover it’s neither of those things, though. It’s way, way worse. Mac corrals me through the narrow doorway and out into the yard behind the shop. The ground is littered with spent cigarette butts and shattered pieces of brick. Mac picks up one of the larger pieces of brick at his feet and tosses it up in the air, catching it in the flat of his palm. “You had an early morning visitor today, Mason. Someone who seemed very interested in catching you before you started work.”

“Oh?” I try not to eyeball the brick. I get the feeling I’ll be getting a very close look at it soon enough.

“Yeah.
Oh
. This early morning caller said she was a friend of yours. I saw you talking to her a couple of weeks back, talking to her outside the shop, and you told me she was just asking for directions. Remember?”

Of course I remember. I remember all too well. The very first time I met Lowell, she pulled up in her bland sedan with the tinted out windows, and she spent the next five minutes explaining in great detail how she was going to fuck with my shit if I didn’t help her. Mac had asked me about it the next day, suspicion deeply engrained in every line of his body, and I’d told him she was just some tourist, asking how to get to the Pacific Science Center. “No. No, I can’t say that I do,” I lie.

“Well, she seems to know you, Mason. She said she’d been trying to get hold of you for a couple of days now. Said she hadn’t had any joy. And this woman, she said something really interesting before she left, Mason. You wanna know what she said?”

I keep my tongue in my head. Nothing I can do or say is going to make this situation any better. The wisest course of action is to seal my mouth shut and wait it out, see what happens. Mac throws the brick. It launches through the air and impacts with the wall just behind my head, exploding into tiny chunks of debris and a cloud of red dust.

“She said you weren’t holding up your end of the bargain. That you hadn’t
given her anything interesting
in days.” Mac shrugs, his palms turned up to the early morning sky. It looks like it’s going to rain. Why the fuck I’m noticing something so arbitrary as the weather when Mac looks like he’s about to cut my fucking head off is beyond me, but I can’t help it. “Why the fuck would this woman show up here, talking about you
giving her something interesting
? Tell me, Mason, ‘cause I am all out of ideas over here.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
 
Probably shouldn’t have said something so patently untrue. Mac snarls under his breath, reaching down to pick up another brick. This time it hits home. Pain blossoms like a firework in my head as the chunk of stone smashes into my left shoulder.

“You lying little shit. You’ve been informing on us this whole fucking time!” Mac screams. “I kept asking myself over and over, why the fuck won’t this kid pick up any extra work? Why won’t he just give in and fucking take the easy route? And now this…
this
makes everything so much clearer. Can’t be blurring the lines between right and wrong, picking up extra work, if you’re already working for the
cops
now, can you?” Another brick flies through the air. Dave stands off to one side, watching on with grim satisfaction as Mac volleys missile after missile at my head. “She even left her fucking card for you in case you’d lost her number, you ungrateful little
cunt
!” Mac rips a rectangular flash of white card from the top pocket of his shirt and flicks it at me; it falls at my feet in the bare dirt, but I can see all too well the blocky black print on its surface:

Denise Lowell

Drug Enforcement Agency

Why the fuck would she do this? Coming here? To the shop? She must be furious with me if she thinks betraying me to Mac, letting him in on the fact that I’ve been feeding her information, is going to make me comply with her wishes. Her actions are more likely to get me fucking killed. Lowell knows Mac’s up to all sorts of shady shit here once the roller shutters are pulled closed each night. The stolen cars that get shunted through Mac’s are innumerable. She has to know he would assume I was informing on
him
if she did this; it must have been her plan all along.
 

Fuck that fucking bitch.
 

If I ever see her again…

But, no. I probably won’t see her again. The likelihood of me seeing
anyone
ever again is pretty fucking slim. Mac has this look in his eye—pure hatred, so intense and so raw that it looks like it’s gripped him whole. I won’t be walking out of here today. I’m going to be bundled into the trunk of one of Mac’s cars, and he’s going to have my body dumped on the stairs of the downtown police station. A message to those who think they can snitch on someone like Mac and get away with it.
 

“I haven’t told her anything about you, Mac. What the fuck could I have told her? I don’t
know
anything. Please, Mac. Just think this through.” It’s barely worth wasting my breath, but I have to try. I’m a proud guy. I hate to make myself look weak, hate begging, but a responsibility like mine will make a guy do all kinds of things. Millie is the only thing that matters. If I’m not there to take care of her, who the fuck will? She’ll be placed into the foster care system, and what family is going to want to take care of a six-year-old who suffers from grand mal seizures? No one, that’s who.

Mac snorts, looking at Dave. “Can you believe this shit? It’s fucking pathetic. Why else would a fucking DEA bitch show up here, spouting shit like that, if it weren’t true?”

Mac is many things, but smart is not one of them. “Why the fuck would she show up here, spouting that shit, if it
was
true? God, Mac! If I were an informant, working for her to try and bring you down, she would have just blown my cover and ruined her whole operation by talking to you. She would never have done it!”

A shadow of doubt flickers over Mac’s otherwise angry features. I’ve got him thinking, but it won’t be enough. I know it won’t. Men like Mac don’t spare another man’s life on the off chance they could be wrong about them. They kill them with their own bare hands in case they’re
right
.
 

“Then you deny knowing her?” he spits. “You’ve never met her in your entire life?”

“I’ve met her. She’s blackmailing me into helping her. It has nothing to do with you, though.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s the truth. They found some dead body up in the mountains. They’re trying to pin the murder on the guys across the street.”

“On Mayfair?” Mac looks dubious. No doubt he has a fair few bodies of his own buried in the mountains that border the city. His mind is probably screaming at him, trying to recall when and where the other victims of his rage were all disposed of. “No one would be stupid enough to fuck with Mayfair. Not even the DEA,” he snaps. “If you’re gonna lie, you little fuck, you’d better come up with something slightly more believable.”