“And our women would make your toes curl.” Nate got a shit-eating grin on his face. “They like to keep a running tally of their kills. They have a club.”
It was more like a support group. Jesse had mistakenly walked in on it one time. It seemed to consist of drinking coffee, eating lemon cake, and talking through their feelings about being forced to kill in self-defense. Though he’d overheard Marie and Rachel giving tips on the best places to shoot a son of a bitch, as they called it. He’d tiptoed back out of that room right quick and prayed they didn’t notice him.
Paul’s eyes grew round. “Wow. I would not have guessed that. It seems so beautiful. Serial killers. Yeah, maybe I should go. I don’t need bad vibes. I heard there’s an alt-rock healing festival in Santa Fe. I’m thinking about spending some time there so I can study to become a yogi. I think I can heal hearts from the inside, you know?”
“So you’re not mad at Gemma anymore?” Jesse asked.
Paul’s face fell momentarily. “I signed a bad contract. I thought I was smart enough to get out of it. I wasn’t. She was smarter. She found a tiny little clause in my contract, and by playing off some of the vague language, she cost me millions, possibly billions of dollars. When I think about it, I get upset. Yeah, I get mad. But there’s not a thing I can do about it. I heard about what happened to her.”
Apparently everyone had heard. He needed to figure out a way to get that damn video down. Gemma had to hate the fact that everyone could see her lose control like that. “I’m sure that made you feel better.”
“No, it just made me sad, but it could end up being a good thing. She’s a great lawyer. Why do only the big corporations get someone like her? Why can’t the little guys have someone like Gemma Wells? So she pissed off her firm. Maybe she should start her own. I always thought she would make a great warrior. Maybe that sounds dumb, but there are so many people out there who need a warrior.” He shook his head. “Or a masseuse. You both seem so tightly wound. I can help with that. There’s healing in these hands.”
Nate put a hand on Paul’s shoulder. “Let’s get all the paperwork out of the way before you start healing people. Come on, Johnson. Cam should have some sort of report to make.”
They left, the door closing behind them and a silence falling.
Roger sighed. “Well, he seemed like a decent fella. Don’t much cotton to massage, though. I’m going to get some paperwork done. You boys let me know if you need anything.”
When the door closed behind Roger, Cade turned, his eyes stark. “We’re right back to square one.”
“No, we know who we’re looking for.” Patrick Welch had attempted to build himself a fall guy. He’d probably known damn well that Johnson was in the wind. But why try to set up an accident? Why not just kill her? It was an awfully complex setup for a little accident.
“Do we? I’ve thought about this. Can’t think of much else. Why does Patrick want her dead?” Cade scrubbed a hand through his hair.
“Maybe he wants her back.”
“He could have gone after her before now. And he couldn’t know she was getting involved with us. We weren’t actually involved with her when she got the first package.”
“Dear god, don’t point that out to her.” She was still arguing about the duties and expectations of being in a relationship. He was going to have to put a ring on her finger before she would acknowledge his right to protect her.
Fuck. He was going to marry Gemma Wells. He had to figure out how to keep her here because he truly believed this was the best place for her. Paul Johnson might be a weirdo, but he was right. Gemma couldn’t sit behind a desk at the station house for the rest of her life, but the crazy, high-pressure life she’d led before wasn’t right, either.
Cade took a long breath, his hands trembling a little. “You have to talk to her. I can’t seem to do it.”
“I saw her at lunchtime. She was coming in to see you. You should have talked to her then.” Jesse studied Cade. His best friend seemed even more stressed than before. Had the afternoon not gone well with Gemma?
Cade paced a little, walking back and forth from the Camaro to the work bench. “There wasn’t a whole lot of talking going on. She came in and showed me her breasts, and I pretty much just gave in.”
Then the plan had come together. He needed to check those security tapes. He would love to watch Gemma work her magic. “Then you had a good afternoon. I’m afraid I don’t see what the problem is. She told me Caleb cleared her. She’s fine. If she wants a little sex, isn’t that our job to give it to her?”
Cade stopped pacing and turned to him, his jaw set in a stubborn line. “You know I can’t do this long term.”
He didn’t want to have this conversation. He was actually really sick of the whole thing. “You talk to her.”
“I’ve tried. Man, you know how hard I’ve tried. She just turns those soft eyes up and asks me to stay.”
“And what the hell is wrong with that?”
“You know what’s wrong with that. Damn it, Jesse. I’m not good for her.”
“I’m sick of that argument, man. It’s a bullshit argument. It’s a pussy argument.”
“No, it’s not. I don’t want this. I don’t want a family. I had a family, and I fucked it up.”
“You were eight years old, Cade. You were a kid.”
“I knew what I was doing. I did it because I was a pathetic piece of shit who wanted attention, and they died because of it.” Cade’s face flushed, anger rising. “And I damn straight knew what I was doing when it came to Nancy. It doesn’t bother you? We were out partying while she was dying.”
Cade had the most fucked-up sense of guilt. It dragged him down every day. Jesse felt it necessary to point out a few of life’s brutal truths. “I loved Nan. She was the mother I wished I’d had, but she was stubborn and too proud for her own good.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He acted like she was a saint and he was the devil who’d led her to her death. Cade really liked to rewrite history. “We called her every other day. You think I don’t remember? Even when we were on the road, you would make us pull over to call her. We had to buy minutes every week because you would gab for hours. You kept in touch. I kept in touch. And she spent all her time talking about the neighborhood and what television shows she was watching, and not once did she mention she’d lost every dime she had in a scam and was in a rat-infested nursing home.”
“I would have known if I’d stayed with her.”
“We were adults. Were we supposed to live with our foster mother forever?”
“We were supposed to take care of her.”
“She didn’t let us, man. You aren’t responsible for Nan any more than you were the reason your parents and your sister died.”
Cade turned, his face shutting down. “You can’t understand.”
He was also sick of that fucking argument. He could feel his blood pressure take a leap. “You think you had it bad? My old man was killed in prison. I never met him. Probably a good thing since he was up for killing a man in a bar brawl. My mother was a trailer park prostitute whose life took a nosedive—yeah, there’s a place downhill from trailer park prostitute—when she got hooked on meth. I lived on the fucking street for years after she tried to sell my ten-year-old body to a john one night so she could get high. I ran. I kept running until I fucking found something good, so don’t tell me I don’t know how bad the world can get.”
There was a startled intake of breath from the vicinity of the door, and Jesse’s heart plunged to his feet. Gemma stood there with her friend, Naomi. She’d heard every word he’d said. He was honest, but he’d never intended to be that honest with her. His childhood had been a brutal walk on the razor’s edge. By the time he’d entered kindergarten, he knew more about survival than most people had to learn in a lifetime, and he didn’t want Gemma to see that part of him.