Laura screeches to a halt, a horrified look spreading across her face. “Jesus, Jamie.”
“Oh my god.” The little cellist scrambles back into her clothing, hanging her head as she wriggles away from me. “Oh my god, I am so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” I tell her, but she’s moving so frantically that she can’t hear me. Laura watches her hurry out of the room with her mouth hanging open like a swinging trapdoor. I’m still completely dressed, and thanks to Laura’s untimely entrance my hard-on has completely vanished, too. “Perfect, Lore. Just fucking perfect. Have you forgotten how to knock?”
“Are you kidding me?” She throws her hands up in the air, staring at me in disbelief. “You’re the one up here finger fucking some twenty-one-year old, and you’re giving me shit?”
It’s kind of hilarious to hear Laura say finger fucking, but I manage to keep the smile from my face. “What’s wrong? You never been caught in flagrante before, Laura Preston? Never been caught with your panties down?”
“No!” She looks like she’s lost for a second, and then she’s kicking off her monstrous golden skyscraper heels and she’s, shit, she’s throwing them at me.
The first heel misses me by a mile. The second one buzzes my head and hits the huge gilt-framed mirror hanging on the wall behind me, smashing the glass into a million tiny pieces. “What the fuck, Laura?”
“You! I can’t…” She clasps her hand over her mouth and that’s when I notice her eyes are filled with tears. “I can’t fucking believe you,” she whispers.
Oh, crap. This is not how someone reacts to busting their friend doing something questionable. This is not how they react at all. I cross the room, holding up my hands as I approach her, stooping slightly so I can look her in the eye. “Hey. Hey. I’m really fucking confused. Do you want to tell me what’s wrong, or should I go get Cade?”
“Don’t you dare go and fucking get Cade,” she hisses. “You and Cade, joined at the hip, twenty-four fucking seven. You and Cade vanishing off to fucking Afghanistan, leaving me here on my own. I waited here for you for four goddamn years, Jamie. Four years of waking up every single night in a cold sweat, wondering which one of you was going to die first. And then you come home and hardly even…hardly even look at me and…”
Oh.
Fuck.
Seriously?
Her hair, perfectly pinned back when she came charging into the room, has now come loose and is tumbling into her face like it used to when she was a little girl. I reach out, tucking it behind her ear. “Laura—”
“No. Don’t! Fuck, Jamie, you just had your fingers inside some girl’s vagina.”
I consider pointing out that that was my other hand, but then come to the swift conclusion that Laura will probably strangle me to death with my own necktie if I do. I slide my hands inside my pockets, clearing my throat. “Lore,” I say carefully. “Is there something you wanna tell me?”
“Fuck you, Jamie. I shouldn’t have to tell you. You should already know! Ahhh! Men! Why are you all so fucking oblivious? How can you be that completely blind to what’s been staring you in the face since we were kids, Jay. I just…I gotta get out of here.”
She’s a whirlwind of tense energy and clenched fists as she storms out of the bedroom. I go after her, grabbing hold of her gently by the wrist, trying to stop her, trying to figure this whole thing out in my head fast enough to deal with it right here and now, but Laura has other ideas. She turns on me, hand raised, and her palm makes contact with my face, slapping me hard. I can see from the pain in her eyes that she regrets it immediately.
“Shit.” She covers her mouth with her hand. “Shit, I’m so sorry. I just—”
“It’s okay.”
“I just can’t—” Tears roll, round and fat, down her cheeks, dangling like tiny little crystals from her dark eyelashes.
“It’s okay,” I repeat. “It’s fine. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
She nods, just once. “Tomorrow,” she says. And then she goes, running down the sweeping staircase in her bare feet, tiny sparks of light bouncing everywhere like silent fireworks as the sequins of her dress catch the light.
It’s not until the next morning that Cade calls to tell me his sister never made it home.
ONE
REBEL
War isn’t always a loud, brash thing.
Sometimes, it’s a car rolling slowly by the front of your house at night. Sometimes, it’s an anonymous call to the police. Sometimes it’s the head of a Mexican cartel showing up in small town New Mexico to make your life a living hell. And sometimes, it’s three men sneaking through tall grass with guns in their hands, ready to shoot you in the head while you sleep.
I’m bleeding fucking everywhere. One of Hector Ramirez’s perimeter guards cut me open with his knife and now the wound is pouring my DNA out all over the grass. I can’t be thinking about that right now, though. Honestly, I’m not thinking at all. I’m gripped with the same insanity that’s had hold of me since I walked into my father’s kitchen and found Leah dead on the floor, her throat slit from ear to ear, and that smug motherfucker toasting me from the other side of the room. There’s no room for sanity inside me now. Not after Leah. My uncle was one thing, but add on another innocent woman who I was supposed to be protecting, and there is no more Jamie. Even Rebel doesn’t exist anymore. There is only madness and fury, held together with the burning acid of revenge. It’s eaten away at everything else until there’s nothing left.
I feel a hand on the center of my back, grabbing hold of my t-shirt. It’s Cade, trying to tell me to slow the fuck down, but I jerk myself away, hurrying forward. Behind me, I hear him cursing me to hell. Carnie’s back there somewhere, too. Just the three of us for this job. As the newest member of the Widow Makers, I shouldn’t have brought Carnie along on this particular ride, but the guy’s keen as fuck. He totally busted Cade and me as we were leaving the compound. He would have followed us here, regardless. He’s had Margo, the gun he named after his mother, locked and loaded ever since he climbed on his Ducati.
The very day after Sophia and I returned from Alabama, Hector showed up with his entourage, walking the streets like he owns the fucking place, drinking coffee outside my fucking tattoo shop, sending out a very clear message: I am here to end this. And if that’s what the guy wants, who am I to argue with him?
I’ve had enough. I should have sent Sophia away the second I saw that body in my father’s kitchen and I realized this thing was never going to make it to trial. Never going to make it past pure, old school, knife-in-the-chest-while-you’re-sleeping revenge. Soph should be at home with her family, and instead I have her under guard back in my cabin, probably tearing the place apart, raging mad, and all because I’ve put her in this shitty position. Because where Hector Ramirez goes, so follows Raphael Dela Vega. And after what Sophia told me—that Raphael threatened to kill her whole family and do way worse to her—I’m not letting her out of that cabin until the fucker is dead and in the ground.
“Dude, slow the fuck down. They’re gonna see us coming,” Cade hisses behind me. Up ahead, the ground floor of the small, innocuous farm house Hector’s taken up residence in is lit up against the darkness, pouring yellowed light out onto the wrap around porch that skirts the property. Shadows move inside. I didn’t really think for a second I was going to be rolling up on a sleeping house but it’s frustrating that there are so many people flitting from room to room. I’m only interested in killing one person: Hector.