But it didn’t matter that she couldn’t find the words to say anyway.
Because Gunner had tore out of the office, slamming the door behind him.
She lowered herself down into her seat, taking a deep breath, trying to fight the frazzled feeling on her skin, the same sensation she remembered feeling all through her childhood and adolescence when an elder scolded her.
But while Gunner was surely a few years older than her, he was not her elder.
And he was not her boss.
And he had no right to speak to her that way.
She’d be damned if she let him do so again.
“Was Gunner yelling?” Kai’s voice asked, moving out into the reception area with her, his hair down where it had been up when she’d seen him a few minutes before.
“Yes.”
“At what?”
“Me,” Jules told him, standing again, her spine set to steel, determined not to let his little outburst ruin her night. Or her love of her job.
“He was yelling at you?” Kai asked, voice taking on an edge she hadn’t heard before. Almost, maybe, like anger.
She looked over at him, wondering if maybe Gunner was right. He was sweet on her. She’d figured he had just been sweet. It was possible she was wrong. She hadn’t ever been great on the picking up on subtle signs thing.
“Yeah. We had a disagreement.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Kai insisted, already moving toward the door, intent on catching up with him.
“What? No. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” he insisted, turning back, giving her an almost hard look. “It’s fine if you two disagree, but it is not fine for him to yell at you loudly enough for me to hear it in my office. Case closed, Jules.”
With that, he stormed out as well.
Things with Gunner never really recovered.
And because she didn’t know quite how to handle the idea of Kai being sweet on her, she chose the easiest option.
Denial.
EIGHT
Jules
Kai was having not-Gary killed.
Those words didn’t seem to go together. Not even in my mind.
Kai was all love and light and goodness.
And while the stories of Bellamy could say the same, everyone else knew the truth. There was a well of darkness inside that went deep.
Maybe the truth could be said of Kai.
Even if that made my stomach feel swirly and uncomfortable.
I had no right, of course.
I worked with killers.
Quin, Smith, Lincoln, Ranger, Finn. They’d all been in the military, had all killed people. Likely many people. And while she never went as far as to say it, Miller had most likely done so as well.
I don’t know why I figured Kai would be the exception to the rule in the office.
Maybe there was blood on his hands.
In this case, of course, the blood wouldn’t be directly on his hands.
He was bringing in Bellamy.
He was contracting the job out to an expert.
“Kai…” I heard a mix of worry and maybe even a hint of disbelief.
“He was planning to kill you, Jules,” Kai told me, closing his eyes for his exhale, like he was trying to push an image away. “He had been pulling out all the items in the kitchen when I came by. If I was so much as five minutes later…”
“You weren’t,” I comforted him, placing my gauze-wrapped hand on his arm, watching as his gaze went there, held for a long moment before coming back to my face. “How was he going to do it?”
“Jules… no.”
“Tell me. How was he planning on killing me?”
“It doesn’t…”
“It does,” I cut him off. “It matters.”
“He beat you over the head with a pipe. He slammed you into a wall. From the looks of your wrists and throat, he choked you and bound you. Why does this one detail matter after all of that?”
“Kai…”
He sighed at that, and I knew I had gotten what I wanted. “He was going to suffocate you with a plastic bag.”
I felt those words land, sink slowly in, swirl around a bit while I mulled the implications of them, while I swallowed back the terror of them.
Five minutes.
If he had been five minutes later, I would have had a bag over my head, desperately trying to fight as my air got lower and lower.
“He must really have resented me,” I mused aloud, somehow feeling the need to share the thoughts – not something I was overly prone to doing. But with Kai, I guess it was different. Because he had been on this crazy ride with me. Because he had seen me at some of my lowest lows. Because I knew I could trust him not to share this with anyone else.
“Jules, no. He’s just a sick…”
“No,” I cut him off again, shaking my head slowly. “He did. He really despised me, Kai. The way he talked to me,” I went on, swallowing back the bitter coating on my tongue. “He wasn’t cold and detached, just annoyed that I was a loose end he had to tie up. He wanted to hurt me. He wanted his words to cut me. And he knew me, so he knew exactly what to say. He threw me in the dirt-floored basement soaking wet because he knew how much I hate being dirty. On top of all that, he wanted me to suffer to death. Not just die. Death doesn’t have to be slow and agonizing. But he wanted that for me. This was personal to him. He really hated me.”