Page 112 of Ordinary Girl

“For doing this. For being here. I’m sure there are a hundred other places you’d rather be right now. A hundred other things you’d rather be doing.”

“Not really.” She gets up and heads for the door. “I’m quite enjoying the chance to catch up on some TV and read some books. Do you want lingonberry sauce with those meatballs?”

I smile again and nod, even though my appetite is non-existent. “Please.”

She returns my smile and heads off to the kitchen. I resume my position facing the window. It’s still all quiet out there. Still peaceful; calm. And all I wish for now is for my life to be the same…

They still want me dead, of course they do, and that’s something we share: the need to see each other gone. A mini war only one of us can win, and I fully intend to be the victor. And it isn’t going to take long, I’m not playing a long game now. I have a business to run, I’m not messing around. I suspect they feel the same, so, there’s no time like the present…

Forty-Six

Joel

“You really don’t need to do this, Skip.” I’m kind of agitated that he feels the need to be a part of this. I get that he cares about Ana, but I can do this without his help. I don’t need or want it.

“Indulge me, Joel. Let me see the man who fucked Sofia over; the man who walked away from Ana, let me see him gone.”

I tuck my gun into the back of my jeans, drag a hand through my hair. I’m still not happy, I wanted to do this alone, but what can I say? Skip saved me. I owe him everything.

“You know where he is now?” Skip picks up his beer and takes a long draft.

“Yeah. Rik said he was seen in the bar of The Green Man hotel last night. Checked in yesterday afternoon, apparently.”

“Alone?”

“I doubt it. We can’t be sure how he’s tackling this, we still don’t know if he’ll take Ana himself or send his men to do it, once they find out where she is. Where we’ve hidden her. Because thatwillhappen. We always knew it was only going to be a matter of time, and we don’t have a lot of it left.”

Yeah, I lied to Ana, told her she’d be safe in that house when I always knew there was a time limit on that. Thing is, she’s not stupid. She’s probably already worked that out for herself, which means I have to work even faster to end this shit. I know Ana, I know how headstrong she can be; how stubborn.

“Do we have eyes on the house?”

“Yeah. It’s all quiet so far, no sign of anything untoward.”

“Where’s Renard now? Right at this minute? Do we have eyes on him constantly?”

The fact Skip keeps questioning me like this is really starting to piss me off, but I’m going to suck it up and get this shit dealt with as fast as I can.

“We’re watching him as much as possible, Skip. That’s all we can do.”

We know he’s in town. We know he checked into The Green Man hotel, but we don’t know if that’s where he’s staying. He’ll do all he can to throw us off the scent, he’s smart. He’ll know thatweknow he’s in town. He’ll know that we know what he’s come here to do, he wants us dead as much as we want him gone. So we’re going to bring him to our door. We’re going to lure him here, and yeah, it won’t be easy. Like I said, he’s a smart son-of-a-bitch. He’s not stupid. But he loves his daughter, in his own warped way. He wants Ana, so we have to make him believe that she’s here, with us. That we’ve moved her to the clubhouse. We know he’ll find out where she really is, so we’re bringing things forward. Dealing with it head on. We’ll make him think we’ve second guessed him, and hopefully he’ll come to us, he has to. And it might backfire, no plan we could put in place in this situation is foolproof. But it’s a risk we’re willing to take.

“It’s all in hand,” I say, leaning back against the bar and glancing around the clubhouse. Everything’s calm. But there’s an underlying air of tension; of anticipation. Something’s about to happen, but this coming storm will be clean and swift, I’ll make sure of that. “All we can do now is sit tight, and hope he takes the bait.”

Forty-Seven

Ana

“We need to stay away from the windows. Keep our heads down. We need to make him believe this house is empty.”

Cady’s explained what’s happening. Told me we need to play our part and now, once again, the cold, harsh, dangerous reality of this fucked-up world I chose to come back to is something I have to face head-on.

“They think this is going to work?” I ask as we hunker down on the top floor, a space I didn’t even know was there; a secret second floor with a tiny kitchenette, an even tinier bathroom, and a couch that pulls out into a bed. A floor accessible only through a secret door housed in a cupboard on the first floor, and a set of stairs that nobody could ever have known was there. There are no windows on this floor. No skylights. From the outside this space doesn’t exist.

“It’ll work,” Cady says as she spoons coffee into the machine. “I trust those men. You should too.”

It’s not that I don’t trust them, I do. But I’m scared, about so many things. This is all so surreal, like I’m living in a never-ending movie, and I want to be strong, I don’t want to be scared, but this still isn’t my world. But I’m beginning to realize it might be the one I have to live in, if I want to be with Joel.

“He’ll be okay, Ana.”

---