Page 58 of Ordinary Girl

She wants to know more, of course she does. It unnerves these people when I’m vague but, right now, they have nothing to worry about. I’m not going anywhere. Not yet.

“Okay.”

She wants me to elaborate, but I’m not going to. It really is nothing important, I’m not lying to her.

“You sure everything’s alright, Ana?”

I nod, coming out from behind the counter. “Everything’s fine.”

Cady leans back against the counter and crosses her arms. “How are things between you and Joel?”

That wasn’t a question I was expecting. “There’s nothingbetweenme and Joel.”

“But you want there to be. Right?”

I can stand here and kid myself that I don’t want to feel the way I do about Joel, but the thing is, I feel everything for that man. “I don’t know.” I’m just not ready to admit it, yet. And I’ve tried: forced myself to think of every reason why Joel Madsen is a really bad idea, but I’m choosing to ignore them all. And I don’t know when it changed, when I stopped thinking of him as an irritation and started to actually want him around, but it happened. And now I can’t stop thinking about him. Can’t stop wanting him to notice me. See me. Wantmethe way I want him.

Cady just throws me a look that tells me she’s not convinced, and I’m too tired to argue. Let her think what she wants to think, I know she won’t say anything, to Joel. To anyone. I hope.

“Can I trust you, Cady?” Because I need to know that. I really do.

“Of course you can.”

We lock eyes. She smiles. It’s genuine.

“And you’re sure you’re okay looking after things here tomorrow?”

“I’m sure. You do whatever it is you have to do, kiddo.”

“Thank you.” I head into the back room. The least I can do is make us some fresh coffee.

“Ana?”

I glance back over my shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

I’ll try. That’s all I can really promise her.

Twenty-Four

Joel

“Anything going on?”

Kit nods. “Someone came to the clubhouse, about half an hour ago. They’re still in there.”

“This man?” I show Kit the photo of the man we now knowisEmil Renard’s lieutenant. Linus Bagdonas. A one-time member of a well-known but now disbanded Lithuanian crime family. He’d been their underbosss, second in command, making him one of the most powerful men in that organization. But now it would appear he’s shifted his allegiance to the Balke family.

“Yeah. That’s him.”

“Okay. Go back to the compound. Fill Skip in. I’ll take over here.”

Kit heads off down the street, to his bike parked around the corner. I lean back against the dark blue Peugeot I drove here in, an unremarkable, ordinary car that is going to look a whole lot less suspicious if I need to follow anyone, and look out across the street, at the Blackhawks’ compound. The metal gates are wide open, they’re obviously feeling pretty safe right now. Maybe they think they have less to fear, and this sudden involvement with Emil Renard might have made them feel even more secure, but they’d be foolish to think they can rest on those laurels. Skip’s serious. He wants us to wreak some kind of revenge on this rival club, and I still have no idea how or when he wants that to happen, I just know he won’t settle until it’s done. And then what? All that talk of leaving the Vikings: giving up on this life, I’m still confused as to how seriously I should take that. Hecould, after all, feel better about things once we take that revenge he’s so desperate to inflict on this place. I don’t know.

The Hawks have built their compound in a quiet part of town, not a lot of people come around here. It isn’t somewhere anyone would want to hang out, that’s why we choose these places to set up our bases. But the Hawks, they’ve really isolated themselves. So I’ve got to be careful, I can’t be seen. Can’t be noticed. Hence the choice of car, rather than my slightly more imposing Harley.

Lighting up a cigarette, I take a drag and glance around, the starkness of this area, it’s quite jarring given that not five minutes away is a bustling town with shops and bars and countless cafés, including one of ours. It’s where Ana and Cady are setting up shop, a business Skip gave them without a moment’s hesitation. He wants Ana to stick around, so he’s doing anything he can to keep her here. But if he’s got every intention of walking away from all of this, what happens to Ana then? Does he take her with him? Skip wants a normal life, isn’t that what Ana wants, too? All of a sudden I feel my chest tighten, and for a second I struggle for breath. Any chance she gets to leave this life, she’ll take it, surely? But then, I gave her the option to walk away, to take back her freedom, and I’d meant it, at the time. Yeah, to some extent I was calling her bluff, I didn’t think she’d have the bottle to actually do it, but there’d been something in her eyes that, for the briefest of moments, told me she’d thought about it: just a flicker of hesitation, one she might not even have realized herself, but it was there. If Skip gave her that option now, would she take it this time?

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