Page 371 of Vicious Saint
“She completely lost it,” Archer adds with a shake of his head.
“Flipped out?”
“No. The complete opposite,” Bex replies for him. “And that’s what’s worrying us even more.”
“Just get to the fucking point already!”
“Hendrix didn’t flip out, Saint. She went dark. Distant unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. She was in the room with us, but not at the same time. It’s like the second she realized there was a fraction of truth in Annalie’s words, a switch went off in her head.”
A chill runs down my spine as I note every single detail of what Bex is saying. Seeing and knowing it all too well.
“It was really scary,” she continues, not skipping a beat. “Hendrix ended up knocking out Annalie. But when Arch and I kept trying to talk to her, she was just…gone. I mean, she mumbled some stuff walking over to the bed but I could barely understand it.”
“What could you understand?”
“I don’t know…” Bex chews on her bottom lip. “Something about a list?”
“And then what?”
“That’s it. That’s all I got.” She shrugs. “Right after, Hendrix pulled out some gift box from under the bed and took off. Locking us in here without a way to get in contact with anyone.”
The chill I felt earlier turns into a full on ice storm, freezing my back straight. “Did you just say…agift box?”
“I know, right?” Archer furrows his brow. “Who wants to play an angry Santa?”
Bex slaps Archer in the arm, then looks at me again.
“It was in a safe under the bed.”
“Rebecca.” The way I grind out Bex’s full name has her shoulders locking as tight as mine. “I need you to think long and hard about whether or not you heard Hendrix say anything else before she left.”
Bex withdraws into herself as she thinks but doesn’t have to long before Archer says something useful for once.
“Wasn’t she muttering something about honor?”
“Yes!” Bex snaps her fingers. “About needing to honor her loyalty to someone.”
Given everyone in Hendrix’s life she deemed worthy of loyalty has not only lost it, but is standing in the same room, tells me two things:
One—Hendrix hit the point of running.
Two—She’s looking to get even.
If I had to wager a guess…it’d be with the people who took the man she loved away from her.
Or better yet…who took thefathershe loved away from her.
And what more poetic way is there to deliver revenge on his behalf than with his gun?
48
Hendrix
Imay not have been able to get much info on the Salvinis thanks to Vic, but as for the Ivanovs? I guess he underestimated my ability to think quickly on my feet when left no other choice.
Names, addresses, places of business, were all found in less than two minutes before I crushed my cell phone under my sneaker and took off on my journey to the Ivanov stomping grounds. Which happens to be a Russian restaurant called Valeriya’s in the Upper West Side.
I could’ve gone for his house since it’s closer, but my guess is there’s a lot more security to shoot through than a store front.
