“Why not?” She asks, her hand reaching for my waist. We’re close to the sports bar. I can hear the cheers. Part of me wants to turn around and stop our plan just to go back home with Zayna and celebrate going to Florida or wherever the fuck she wants to take me. But I just stop walking and answer her question about South Dakota.
“Too many racists.”
“You’re terrible,” she replies.
“I’m serious.”
“I would hate to see what you consider racist,” she mutters… I kiss the top of her head. We can discuss my race problem after we kill all the men who attacked her, and her ex-boyfriend… and after we discuss the baby.
Reid is careless.He stumbles out of the bar about ten minutes after closing time. They must’ve had to show him out or he knows the bartender or some shit. There’s only one car left in the lot. I have Zayna watching everyone leave with me, counting people and counting cars, keeping track of who comes and goes from Mulligan’s.
I don’t know what type of fucked up parents get their kid a Mercedes-Benz after they commit a crime, but the sleek white sedan with the custom plate has to be his. He looks different from how I thought he would – more like a preppy university kid than the jock rapist I saw online. He has light brown hair, a slight frame – so he must have been a wide receiver. He wears glasses. But he’s drunk. His white shirt is buttoned up wrong with the collar popped and he can’t take three steps in a straight line. Good.
He unlocks the car. Zayna’s cue. I can’t see her, but I have to trust her and her unloaded pistol to create a diversion. I’m nevermore nervous than when she’s in danger. Reid shoves his hands in his pockets and starts singing some club anthem from the bar. We could hear every last one of those annoying fucking songs throughout our wait for him to leave the bar.
Reid shuts the door to the car. My cue. I race across the parking lot and enter the backseat. Reid yelps for what I presume is the second time because Zayna has his hand pinned to the center console as she holds her pistol against his head. It’s not loaded. But mine is.
“Reid Moreland,” I say to him. “That your name?”
“Take whatever you want. Take the car. I don’t care.”
Fucking idiot. Cars can be tracked these days about as easily as cell phones. It might be a nice ride, but it’s not better than an Indian Scout. Not as interested in this car as I am in Reid Moreland.
“Zayna, get out of the car.”
She hesitates.Then she gets out of the car and presses her back against the door of the car.
“You’re goingto drive this car into the harbor,” I tell him. “Understand?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Drive.”
“I-I’m too drunk.”
“Drive.”
He pullsout of the parking lot slowly. I keep a gun pressed to the back of his head. The Murray family has a warehouse near the harbor with a ramp that leads to their dock. Mr. Morelandwill be driving his car right off the dock. This is probably the slowest this car has ever driven, honestly.
When he gets a hundred feet off, I tell him what to do and tell him no funny business. He saw Zayna. He saw me. Maybe a part of him wants to kill himself because the kid doesn’t really put up a fight. He’s red in the face. Drunk as fuck. Maybe too drunk to think straight. I take his wallet before I get out of the car and watch the kid drive himself into the harbor.
I wait twenty minutes before I go back to the bike where I promised to meet Zayna. I almost think she ran off but when I get close to the bike, she emerges from her position pressed against the dark wall. She already has her helmet balanced between her arm and torso.
She looks at me expectantly.
“He’s dead.”
I toss his driver’s license to her. Zayna catches it with her free hand and gazes down at it. She looks sick to her stomach. But not sad. Not too disturbed.
“Good,”she says. “That’s good.”
We putour helmets on and ride back to the condo. Tomorrow, we go back home. We need to take stock and figure out how to get to Grant since tracking him down will require a little more finesse than hunting the others.
Tomorrow, I ask Zayna the dangerous question. The question that scares me more than anything. She never brings up this ex-boyfriend. We get intimate so much, I keep hoping it will soften her up.
The last man on my list is Grant. Once he’s dead, this will mean she has to make a choice and that choice might pull Zaynaaway from me forever.It most likely will, because I know I’m fucking crazy and everything I want is too much for anybody else.
My fear is simple. It’s understandable. I need him dead so I can have absolute certainty that every inch of Zayna’s heart and body belongs to me. I never want her to choose another man. I never want to think that any man has a piece of Zayna. I want her to belong to me entirely. She doesn’t understand how much I need that.