Whatever the Cost (31 page)

“Sure, Pidge,” Clay calls back.

Liam checks over his shoulder, glancing all around and even up at the windows along the various stories of their building. No one is watching from what he can tell. He jogs through the alley, out the other side and in the direction of the convenience store across the street. Five minutes later he has a prepaid, disposable cell phone in hand. Once he’s back in the alley, he dials a number from memory and presses the cheap phone to his ear, praying silently to himself while it rings.

Not actually expecting it to be picked up, as much as he wants it to be, Liam is shocked when Ryan answers his phone.

His groggy, rough sounding voice says, “Yeah. Who is this?”

“Ry, it’s Will. Are you okay?”

“Will?! Holy shit! What happened to you, man?”

“What happened to
me
? What happened to
you
? Everyone’s freaking out, thinking you’ve been offed and tossed in a river somewhere.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve heard. Nah, nothing so dramatic. One of my clients got a little carried away. I ended up in the ER and, Christ, Della was losing her
shit
, you should’ve seen it; it was kinda priceless, man. Completely worth the stitches and rectal exam, just to see her freaking out to that extent. I thought her head was gonna pop right off. She was so freaked over having to lose another client and scaring all the employees once they found out how bad I got hurt, thinking of all the money they’d lose.”

“She kept it quiet, didn’t she, what happened to you? She didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Bing! Right on the nose. You’re a smart cookie, Willy baby. It was sweet. Private medical treatment in this suite downtown, and I’m on some
exquisite
meds right now, got everything I could possibly need, right at my fingertips. It’s fantastic.”

“So they didn’t threaten you. You’re okay?”

“Of course I’m okay! Della’s so desperate to keep me shiny, she’d do
anything
, man, and I do mean anything. Got her wrapped around my little finger.”

“What about your injuries? You’ll heal? What happened?”

“Oh, someone got a little too friendly with the knifeplay, but nothing either of us haven’t dealt with before. It’s been handled, like I said. No worries. But enough about me, what the fuck happened to you and Jacen? The higher ups, they figured you two long gone. Weren’t sure if Patrick did something nasty or what. They were going through your whole client list, investigating everyone. They tried to track you down, had absolutely no fucking clue what happened. Are you and Jacen okay?”

“I can’t talk about it. Let’s just say I’ve made some changes and I’m far enough away that no one needs to worry about me anymore, but I’m happy. I really am. But listen, Ry. I’ve gotta go. You take care of yourself, ya hear?”

“You too. If you see Jacen, tell him I said howdy.”

“Not too likely, but roger that,” Liam says before hanging up.

Breathing out a profound sigh of relief, a wide smile curling his lips, Liam sags back against the brick wall of the building. He begins to try to decide the best way to smash the phone and which dumpster to toss the remains in.

“What the hell is going on? Who did you just call?”

Liam turns with a start, cursing, “Fuck! You scared me!”

Jacen stands wide-eyed and breathless just a few feet away. “Clay said you took off down here to call somebody, but who in the hell would you have to call, Lee?”

His face burning with embarrassment at being caught, Liam tries to decide what to say. Jacen stares at him, takes a few steps closer and backs Liam up to the wall.

“Come on! Talk to me! You look guilty as hell and I don’t like it. You’re scaring me.”

“I took a chance. I had to. For us. I had to know, and I’m the only one he’d talk to.”

“What are you talking about?” Jacen demands. “Who?”

“Ryan,” Liam admits. “I called Ryan.”

“Are you
out of your fucking mind
?!” Jacen exclaims, throwing his arms wide, his mouth hanging open.

“Maybe. But it was worth it. I think I called at the perfect time. It was a miracle he answered at all, they probably have him guarded and well-secluded. Probably was the drugs that made him forget he’s not supposed to talk to anyone right now.”

“Liam Timothy, you explain to me what the fuck you’re talking about, right now,” Jacen rasps, his voice ragged from shouting and from fear. He looms large over Liam, a massive hulk of a man.

Shrinking in on himself at the way Jacen is trying to physically intimidate him into answering and at the unexpected use of his full, married name, Liam sinks into the guilt. It chews up his guts with sharp, needle-like teeth, making him wince. “Baby, I’m sorry....”

“Tell me,” Jacen growls, his eyes blazing, his breath quickening, like he’s getting ready for a fight, or maybe, rather, trying not to lose himself to the panic. “Now.”

“I called him on a prepaid phone, not my phone. I’m not that stupid.” Liam holds it up for him to see. “We’ve been getting all of our information third- or fourth-hand through Yasha, and not that I don’t trust Yasha, I just needed to know, right from the source, what’s going on in L.A. Ryan has been a friend for years. I
know
him. Just like I know how quickly rumors start circulating in our former circle of acquaintances. So I took a chance and called him. I didn’t stay on the line long enough for the call to be traced, and I’m not even paranoid enough to believe they’re equipped to do such a thing if they wanted to... but anyway, I found out the truth. The actual truth, Jacen. They didn’t bump off Ryan out of some malicious desire to make an example of him and scare everyone. They were discreetly getting him medical attention after a bad job and trying to pamper his ass to make nice and keep him happy. They don’t want to lose any more employees or clients. That’s all that’s going on. And Ryan said they have given up on us.”

“What about when they hear that Ryan talked to you on the goddamned phone? Huh?”

“He was way too high for it to even be believable, even if he did say something. And so what if he does tell them? They know we’re gone. They’ve moved on. They don’t want to come after us when they’ve got plenty of other shit to handle. We’re done, don’t you see? They’re done with us. It’s okay. It’s really going to be okay.”

Jacen battles with himself, processing Liam’s words, his own storming emotions. His face twists, as he fights with holding back everything that threatens to bubble up—anger, betrayal, confusion, fear, relief.

“You should’ve talked to me first. We should’ve talked about this, as a couple, before you did anything so stupid.”

“We should’ve talked about a lot of things,” Liam says coldly, feeling very small and alone.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

At first, the words won’t come. Then, they do. Meekly, Liam says, his voice soft and low and rattled, “Y-you should’ve listened to me when I asked you to slow down. With everything. A-all....” He sighs shakily, gesturing around at their surroundings. “All of this. It’s too much. It’s too much for me, and you should’ve waited until you had my permission. You didn’t wait. You just
took
. Just like
they
do. Just like they’ve always done. You took from me the only thing I had left to keep me sane. You knew I wasn’t ready and
you took it anyway
.”

With a hand clapped tightly over his mouth, muffling a moan of pure horror, Jacen shatters into a million pieces.

Liam pushes past him, away down the alley, away from the building and Jacen.

Before he disappears out of sight, Jacen finds his voice and cries with devastation, “Liam! Liam, please! I’m sorry!
Liam, I’m sorry
!”

But it’s too late. Liam is gone.

The whiskey burns its way down Liam’s throat and loosens up some of the tension knotting nearly every muscle in his body. The drunker he gets, the more relaxed and steady he feels. Everything around him, the ghosts of Jacen and everyone else in his “new life”, the ghosts of his old life too, it all recedes more and more, chased by the strength of the amber liquid in his glass.

He hunches over the edge of the bar, his booted feet hooked on the rungs of his barstool. Swirling his whiskey, savoring the heat and dark, crowded atmosphere of the pub, Liam feels like he could stay right where he is for hours. Which is handy because he hasn’t got anywhere else to go.

The wedding ring on the third finger of his left hand glints in the low light, reminding him coolly of his responsibilities. He tucks that finger in, to hide the gleam, and then runs the pad of his thumb over the band’s slick metal. Through the din of conversation and the clinking of glasses and the shuffling of boots, a raspy, southern drawl sings mournfully through the speakers playing a local radio station. Recognizing Tucker’s voice instantly, skin pebbling with a chilly crawl of goosebumps, Liam feels pulled strongly in two opposing directions. He falls easily right back into the persona of the cowboy that he had with the man—the whore that seduced the singer, before the singer set him free—but he’s also far beyond that. He’s now someone that he doesn’t even recognize or know how to be. Tucker’s voice is Liam’s past—sinful, indulgent, and gone. With a large swallow of whiskey, Liam burns the memories away.

The place is fairly crowded, and he feels inconspicuous. Someone walks up to the bar from farther back in the darker recesses of the room and calls to the bartender for a lager. He takes the stool to Liam’s left. With a subtle glance, Liam measures the man—an inch or two past his own height, an impressive build and tan, weathered skin hinting that he’s a laborer of some type.

“How’s it goin’?” he says in a gruff murmur to Liam.

“Not bad. You?”

“Can’t complain.”

It happens quickly, and discreetly. With nothing more than a sweeping, lingering look down the length of Liam’s body, the dark-eyed newcomer communicates his interest, letting Liam notice, leaving it up to him to acknowledge it or not.

Liam responds instinctively, ducking his head to sip from his glass, smiling faintly with just a slight curl of the corner of his lips.

The man clears his throat and draws something from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. With a sly shift of his fingers, his hand curled and resting on the bar top, a fold of bills is revealed. The two of them lock eyes and the exit is indicated with a nod of the stranger’s head.

God, it would be so easy
, Liam realizes.
He’s cute. It’d be nothing to me to turn my head and go through with it. Money in my pocket, maybe enough to buy a bus ticket out of here. It could all go away. Just keep moving, keep running, keep changing. He’d forget me eventually. He’d be safer without me. Happier too.

As if in a daze, Liam stands, gulping down the last swallow of his whiskey, gritting his teeth against the burn. With hunger in his eyes, the dark-haired man at Liam’s left finds his feet and starts toward the door. The over-loud music thumps through Liam’s skin, seeps into his brain like a heavy cloud, covering over and muting all rationality. A moment later they’re outside, around the building. A thick hand wraps Liam’s waist. Another wraps the side of his neck. He’s pushed back against unyielding brick.

“I don’t kiss,” he warns as strange lips lean in.

The questing rub of someone else’s fingers over his body, something Liam has experienced so often for so long that he’s become easily numb to it, surprises him in the way it sends a dull, queasy tickle writhing deeper and deeper into his stomach. Shame floods his system. Bile rises in his throat which quickly closes up around a horrified groan.

“Look. I’m sorry,” Liam protests, finally. “I thought I could. I. I can’t. I can’t do this. Sorry.”

He pushes the guy off of him and sprints away, getting swallowed up in the dense shadows of night before he’s able to be tracked and followed.

Seated behind the wheel of his squad car, Clay rolls up beside Liam, who is hunched over and sitting on a bench by the side of a downtown park. It’s fully dark out. The only illumination is an orange glow from a nearby streetlamp. Leaning out of the window in his t-shirt and jeans rather than his uniform, Clay says, “There you are. Your boy’s crawling the goddamn
walls
, you know, looking for you.”

“I’m not hiding,” Liam sighs, well past exhaustion. He hunches forward even more and holds his face in his hands. “I’m not even really mad at him. I just said things that I shouldn’t... and now....”