Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,105
going to need when this is over. I just…I don’t have enough in me for that.”
“You’re not getting it, baby,” I told her. “If you’re not alone, it means you have me, too. It means I’m there to help you. Give you what I got. Feed you what I have.”
Now she was crying for real.
“Stop,” I said. “Baby, pull over and I will be there as fast as I can.”
“No, Max. No. I’m sorry. What you’re saying…it sounds so good. It does. Like…like a dream, you know. But this is me and my sister and I’ve got to fix all the stuff I did wrong. Please, I’m begging you, Max. If you care for me at all, please don’t call again.”
It took me a second to realize she’d hung up. That her silence had turned into a kind of buzzing phone silence.
It was all I could do to not put my phone through the wall.
This was the thing about me and Joan—I understood every word of what she’d said, like I’d said it myself. I understood how she felt like she didn’t have enough of herself to give to her sister and to give to me. Either-or. One or the other.
And I totally understood that she wouldn’t know how to trust me to be there for her. She didn’t even understand how that would work, or what it would mean. To have someone at her back, holding her up when she wanted to fall down.
Because I didn’t understand that, either, until she saved my life. Until she swallowed her pride and brought me to Aunt Fern.
I ran back into the bedroom and pulled on my clothes. I was wearing someone’s hand-me-downs, Eric’s, now that I put two and two together. The jeans were too big and so was the shirt, but my own bloodstained and torn stuff was long gone. I opened every drawer, making sure I didn’t leave anything behind and in the bottom drawer there was my leather cut. The skull patch, faded and frayed against the cracked leather—laughing up at me. I flipped it over so I could see the president patch, covered—obliterated really—with dried, flakey blood. An ugly rust that covered the whole thing.
Joan’s gun was there. She didn’t even take her damn gun.
I grabbed the gun and slammed the door shut, leaving the cut in there.
Someone—some future owner of the condo, a cleaning lady, I don’t know—would throw it out.
I tucked the gun in the back of my pants—its familiar weight was no longer comforting. Thrown off balance by the gun, I turned on my heel, turning my back on everything I’d ever known in my life, and headed out of the condo to find Joan.
Olivia. I grinned, thinking how well it suited her. She was such an Olivia.
First things first, I was going to need a car. Which meant talking to Fern. Shit, that was going to waste some precious time. I could boost one from the garage, maybe.
Nah. I discarded that thought from an old life I wanted no part of anymore.
I took the stairs down to Fern’s condo, the scuff of my boots loud against the cement. I was on the landing when I heard the door to the floor beneath me push open and someone started taking the stairs in a great big hurry toward me.
Eric turned the corner at the landing and stopped.
There was something in his expression, some military “the shit has hit the fan” face that made my blood run cold.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“We got a problem. The FBI’s informant is missing. Lagan moved out of the compound. He took the drugs and left a lot of bodies.”
“What?” The words fell down around me without making sense.
“Lagan has moved. He’s gone. Joan—”
“Joan’s gone, too.”
“What?”
“She got a call from her sister last night. Was gone by the time I got up.”
We stared at each other for one long, hard minute.
“Maybe Jennifer got out in the commotion,” I said, hoping with everything in my body that that was the case.
“You really believe that?” Eric asked.
“No. I think Joan’s walking right into a trap.”
“Me too.”
So did Joan.
I stepped away from Eric and dialed Joan’s number again. Voicemail.
“Listen to me, Joan. Listen. It’s a trap. Stop the car. Lagan has Jennifer.” I hung up. Dialed again. Voicemail, again.
“Text her,” Eric said.
“Good idea.”
I texted the same thing I’d left in the message but it didn’t go through. I looked back at the tracking app and the red dot was gone.