The crew is still too fragile for another wave of problems so soon.
“It feels like we’re involved in this, even though she keeps promising we’re not,” Drex says, still keeping his tone too quiet to be overheard.
“Because we are involved. Have been since Phillip rolled into Halo,” I point out, feeling an inexplicable sense of defensiveness on Maya’s behalf. “At least we know it now. Herrin is involved too, but he’s completely unaware. That might be the only good thing that comes out of this. It’s not just Halo where Phillip is ciphering women. It’s Herrin’s town too, and if the feds somehow linked him to all this…”
I let the words trail off, planting the seed in Drex’s head. A slow smile spreads across his face when he gets it.
“Then Pop would go down with Phillip if the operation finally gets some federal attention. But what happens if it doesn’t get attention?”
“We set him up and let the cards fall however they fall,” I say with a shrug. “We’ve already made him look like a fed rat to a lot of different crews.”
He nods distractedly, as though he’s thinking it over. His gaze once again flicks up to the room’s closed door. I know it’s closed, because I keep looking over my shoulder every five seconds.
“How’s she taking the loss of her crew?” he asks me.
Apparently I’m a prick for not thinking about that. “I don’t know,” I answer tensely.
“Don’t piss off Blackbird,” he tells me pointedly. “You’re the only person in here she seems to give a damn about. We need her to survive so that we can get through this shit storm.”
“I’m not using her for survival purposes,” I say in a clipped tone that has his eyebrows raising and that stupid smile of his spreading.
“Alright then,” he says, still fucking smiling. “Then go do your thing. My bad.”
“You sound a lot like Drake when you talk and smile at the same damn time,” I grind out.
His smile only spreads. Bastard.
“The guys are going for a ride, but they’ll be back in a few days. We’re going to throw a party. Our morale game needs to be strong,” he says, shifting the subject but not losing that damn grin.
“And?” I ask, wondering why the hell I care about a party. I always show up, but it’s not like I care to be there.
“And you should bring Maya. Let her get to know people.”
I tense again. “You mean some of the other guys?” My tone is flat, but for some reason, the fucker is grinning even bigger.
I’m going to kill him. Or at least remove his legs.
“I mean let her get a feel for the club. You know. In case she decides we’re worth letting survive and wants to continue to hang around. She’d make a nice old lady, and you could always clear out some of the furniture to give her more skating room.”
Ah. Got it. The dick is mocking me.
I turn around, flipping him off as he laughs to my back, and I stalk back to my room. When I fling open the door, I pause, once again finding myself in a stunned state.
Happens around Maya too often.
She’s singing along with a song on her phone while dancing like…a spaz? I’m not really sure if she’s dancing, considering I know she knows how to dance. Right now, she’s shaking her entire body like a wet dog, screaming the lyrics as loud as she can, and I shut the door behind me before anyone comes up to investigate the ear-brutality going on in my room.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun is apparently the song she’s trying to butcher. At least I think. She’s louder than the music.
And she’s still in her panties and T-shirt.
Scrubbing a hand over my face and groaning, I clear my throat loudly. Then realize the Thrashing Song Butcherer can’t hear that. So I walk over and press pause on her phone, killing the music.
She sings—or whatever that noise is called—for a minute longer before she seems to register the music is gone.
Her wild hair is shoved out of her face by one of her small hands, and she glances over at me, panting for air as the thrashing comes to an end.
“Care to tell me what the hell you’re doing? I thought you’d be a little more upset over your guys that you just lost.”
Drex saying that she had her boyfriend tortured and killed didn’t worry me until now. She just lost her crew, yet she’s jamming out like it’s the eighties and school’s out for summer.
Now I’m worried I fucked a sociopath.
This girl is a bucket of issues every time I turn around.
She rolls her eyes at me.
“They were hired guns and knew the high stakes coming in. They took the very large salaries and the assumed the risks. I had no personal attachment to them,” she tells me callously. “It’s not like these were the types who contribute to society. They were expendable.”