Page 53 of Exhale
“Yeah, it laid me up for a few months.”
If it were months, then Black must have been seriously wounded, but Jordan didn’t pry. They would tell him in their own time what had happened.
“I got rescued,” Jordan admitted, feeling guilty all over again for not being able to find more of the street kids he’d hung out with back then.
“That’s good,” Black said with a smile.
“And you ended up with Genesis?” Jordan couldn’t keep the amazement out of his voice.
“I did. I was killing people for money anyway. It was a lot more profitable than being a thug.
“Or like me, selling my ass,” Micah said.
“Hey…” Jordan squeezed Micah’s hand. “We were not thugs. As for selling our asses, we were doing what we needed to, to survive.”
“Yeah, well…Micah did it long after he should have quit,” Black cut in.
“We’ve been over this. You needed meds, and that was the quickest way to get money.” Micah shrugged as if it were no big deal, but Jordan could see the sorrow in Black’s eyes, and his heart hurt for both men.
“But you don’t do that any longer, right?” Jordan asked, appalled at the thought.
Micah snickered. “No, not any more, but I make my marks think they’re going to get lucky. That’s how I get them alone.”
“Ah, okay…but you’re not an assassin,” Jordan said, rubbing at his chin.
“Not technically,” Micah admitted.
After a moment, Jordan spoke again. “I went back for you guys several times that year, but that whole camp had beendismantled and I couldn’t find any of you,” he whispered roughly.
“Yeah, I heard they were trying to re-home a lot of people. Some group came out with funding and started getting people settled elsewhere in affordable homes and shit,” Micah said.
“That was Phoenix. They’re the ones who rescued me.”
“Ah, okay, yeah, so that’s what happened. I wondered. We split when all that started,” Micah said.
“How come?”
“Well, first off, Chase got shot and second…” Micah tossed Chase a glance and then continued. “You remember Remy?”
“I do.” Jordan felt his skin crawl at the mention of the fuck-wad from their youth.
Remy Andrews was the scum of the earth. He took young boys and sold them for sex. He himself had worked for the guy for about a year. It was either work for Remy for shit money or get taken and be forced to work for Remy for free. Jordan chose to earn money, and so had Micah.
“Well, he wasn’t letting any of us go, so…” Micah said, glancing away. “He’s the one who shot Chase.”
“Whatever happened to that asshole?” Jordan asked, hoping Remy was still alive so that he could personally kill him.
“He was stabbed and killed about eight years ago,” Black said flatly.
“You said he died of cancer.”
“I lied.”
“Okay, we’ll talk about that later,” Micah glared and then continued. “Remy wasn’t the one in charge, you know that, right?” Micah turned to Jordan.
Jordan blinked. He hadn’t known that. “Who was in charge?”
“Some former senator guy, Nix, out of Virginia,” Micah said, taking a sip from his paper cup filled with soda. “We can’t get to him no matter how hard we try.”
