She hasn’t answered that question the first two times I asked, so I’m not expecting her to now.
But she straightens up and wipes away her tears, smudging her eyeliner all over her cheekbones. “I tried to leave, OK? I did. But I couldn’t just go… not with Hunter the way he is… I just couldn’t.”
Figures. Each time she’s left town in the past, she always came back because for all her big talk of wanting to break it off with him, she can’t do it either. Just like he can’t. It’s a mess.
“The Riders want you dead too after what happened the other night,” I say.
She nods and steels her back some more. “I am leaving. Now that I know he’ll make it. I saw him last night and he looked dead already and I… I…”
She starts sobbing again.
“You saw him? How? When?”
“Melody helped me to sneak in,” she says harshly. “She understands what it’s like for us. None of the rest of you do.”
I understand Hunter can’t quit her while she’s around all the time.
“Cross said to bring you in if I found you,” I say more calmly than I feel. “We’ll protect you.”
She scoffs and wipes away her tears again, making an even bigger mess of her face. “I don’t want anything from him. Or any of you. I never did. I can take care of myself.”
The wind is picking up, making her ponytail flap this way and that, and causing strands of hair around her face to come loose. I still think we’d all be better off without her, but she looks so damn heartbroken, I can’t really stay angry with her.
“Good,” I say, but I’m not sure I mean it. “Is you being here today taking care of yourself?”
She widens her eyes at me. “I’m selling that woman some information so I can get out of town. That’s why I’m here.”
“What kind of information?”
“Just everything I know about the Riders’ operations, all the sex-trafficking and everything else they do. She can take it to the cops.”
That is not a good idea. At all.
“I’ll give you the money just don’t tell her anything,” I say, glancing at the Veronica’s office. She’s standing in the open doorway looking at us, the light coming from the room behind her framing her in a soft glow.
“Too late, I already did,” she says and my stomach clenches into a tight painful ball.
“Fuck, Trixie! Why?” I say. “We’re taking care of it. Didn’t you think we would?”
“I’m doing it for Hunter,” she says defiantly.
I shake my head, biting my tongue to keep from yelling at her. “The last thing we need is the cops sniffing around the Riders while we do what we do.”
“Won’t it be easier if they’ve got the cops to worry about on top of it?” she asks smugly.
“No, it won’t,” I bark. “It’ll be a million times harder.”
“Some of them might get away from you.”
“They won’t,” I assure her. It’s not even a boast. We’ll hunt every last one of them down, no matter how long it takes or how far they run.
“If they’re all in one place, like, say, a prison, they’ll be easier to get to,” she insists.
Clearly, she’s given this a lot of thought. Too bad she drew all the wrong conclusions.
“And I wanted to do my part in the revenge,” she adds.
“Jesus, where do you get off?” I snap unable to control my anger anymore. “You spent years whoring for those guys, refusing any kind of help, refusing to get your life in fucking order so the two of you might have a chance, almost get Hunter killed in the process, and now you’re talking about getting revenge? And screwing everything up in the process. As fucking usual.”