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“Hasn’t been cleaned in a while,” he concluded.
Tommy snorted again. “This isn’t fuckin’ Martha Stewart.”
“Any gun owner would know that cleaning a gun ensures its accuracy and gives it longevity.”
Pitch stepped up. “Do you want it or not, Cupcake?”
The boys and I shifted closer to Sam. “How much?”
“Nine hundred.”
Sam reassembled the gun and fired a dry shot, making sure to point it at the ground. “I can buy a brand-new one for a thousand.”
“Then go buy a brand-new one.” Tommy hitched up his pants. “Something tells me you need that gun tonight, or you know you’ll fail the background check. Whichever it is, it means you ain’t getting a brand-new one, now are ya?”
“Four hundred,” Sam said, ignoring the goading, even though Tommy was right.
“Seven,” Tommy countered.
“Five apiece. I’ll take four.”
“I ain’t got four the same, but I can give you something close to it for twenty-two. That a deal?”
Twenty-two hundred dollars for guns?
“Ammunition included?” Sam asked.
Tommy shrugged. “Sure.”
“Deal.” Sam handed over the money.
Pitch selected three other guns and a few boxes of ammunition. He passed one of each to Trev, Cas, and Nick.
“Pleasure doing business with you, boys,” Tommy said.
I let out a breath once the bookcases were locked behind us, the guns put away. I wanted out of there. The whole place felt off, and a discomforting sensation crept along my skin like spider legs.
We passed Tommy, Cas leading the way. I stayed in the back, close to Sam, but we had to go single file through the door and Pitch came up behind me, slinging an arm around my shoulders.
“So… Anna… you staying close by here? Can I get your number?”
I tensed beneath his touch, assaulted with the smell of cheap cologne and stale cigarette smoke. Pitch’s flannel shirt rasped against the back of my neck and I moved to shove him off.
“Pitch!” one of the girls called. “Keep your goddamn hands to yourself, and try to remember who you’re engaged to.”
The bottle-blond woman stood next to the card table, cigarette smoke curling around her face, her mouth tense with fury. My hands started to sweat.
“Shut up, Debbie!” Pitch yelled.
Sam hung back. “Anna.”
Pitch cocked his chin. “Is she your girlfriend or something? I don’t see your name on her.”
“Pitch,” Tommy said, the warning ringing out loud and clear.
“Pitch, goddamn it!” Debbie said again.
“You broke up with me last night,” Pitch shouted. “Far as I’m concerned, I’m a free man.”
Debbie gave her metal folding chair a shove. She dropped her cigarette, ground it out with the toe of her boot, and stormed in our direction.
“You little piece of shit,” she said, slamming Pitch in the chest. Pitch stumbled back. She turned to me.
“Get your people in line,” Sam said to Tommy.
“Don’t tell me what to do, kid.” Tommy flicked his ponytail off his shoulder. “Maybe if your girlfriend wasn’t a whore—”
In one quick move, Sam slammed the bigger man to the floor, getting in a punch before one of Tommy’s friends jumped between them.
I backpedaled and held my hands up. “I’m not going to steal your boyfriend!”
“You’re damn right you’re not!” Debbie slapped me across the face. The shock hit before the heat did, and I went motionless.
Nick reached for me, but a burly blond guy grabbed him by the forearm and swung him around. Pitch sidestepped us and dove for Sam. Tommy’s other men swooped in. They cornered Cas near the poker table and slammed Trev up against a freestanding toolbox.
Debbie hooked a leg around mine and pushed, slamming me to the floor. The air rushed from my lungs and I gasped to get it back.
“Anna!” Sam yelled.
Debbie climbed on top of me, pinning me. Her eyes were bloodshot, like she was drunk or high or both. Air trickled into my lungs. I gritted my teeth. I was not going to be bested by a sleazy hick.
I bucked, dislodging her, and got to my feet. She wrapped her arms around my legs and my knees hit the concrete. I threw back an elbow, cracking her in the sternum. I found my footing again, twisted, grabbed a hunk of frizzled blond hair and rammed her face into my knee. Something snapped. Debbie screeched as blood poured from her nose.
“I don’t want your stupid boyfriend!” I yelled.
“Anna?”
I whirled around.
Tommy and Pitch and all the others lay scattered, unconscious. The boys were bloodied and bruised, but looked all right.
“That was effing hot,” Cas said. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Anna.”
I looked at Debbie, who was curled in the fetal position, her friend cooing at her side.
I didn’t know I had it in me, either. I knew the moves, I knew how to defend myself, but I never thought it’d feel so… satisfying.
Sam was staring at me when I turned back to him. There was a slant to his green eyes, a question on his face. Like he was finding it difficult to read me. Little Anna, so predictable. Until now.
“It might be best if we’re gone when they wake,” Trev said.
I wiped the blood from my face with the sleeve of my coat and led the way out the door.
21
WITH EVERYTHING THAT’D HAPPENED, Sam decided it’d be best if we ditched the Jeep and stole something new. Cas was the one who was good with hot-wiring, or whatever it was he had to do to start a vehicle without keys. He, Trev, and Nick dropped Sam and me at the cabin first.
When I protested that I was fine, that the boys didn’t have to make a special trip home for me, Sam silenced me with a look that said otherwise. And then Cas added, “I’m not going home for you, Banana. I want to start up the generator now that we have gas. Get that water heater going.”
Once we were inside, Sam lit a small candle and left it on the kitchen counter. The room filled with pulsating light.
Sam tore off his coat with a wince, and nodded at the table. “Sit.”
I pulled out one of the chairs and fell into it. I was too exhausted to even think about arguing anymore. Apparently fighting made for hard work. Sam sat next to me, turning his chair so that we faced each other. He reached over, grabbed the bottom of my seat, and dragged me closer. So close that I was practically wedged between his legs.
A shiver threatened to rock my shoulders, but I tamped it down. I didn’t want to show Sam what his close proximity did to me. Though I suppose he probably already knew. And maybe on a subconscious level, I wanted him to know.
He ran quick, gentle fingers over my jaw, then my forehead. I hadn’t had a chance to examine the damage Debbie had doled out, but my face hurt all over. I must have looked like a mess.
“Your eye hurt much?” he asked.
“The left one? Yeah. It’s throbbing.”
“Close it.”
I closed both eyes and breathed in deeply when his fingers inched up the side of my face, tilting my head at different angles, examining me in a way no one ever had.
“Stay right here,” he ordered.
He crossed into the kitchen. I noted the way he favored his left leg, the stiffness in his back.
He returned a minute later with a dampened washcloth.
I winced when he pressed it to my face. Not only did it hurt, but the cloth was freezing cold from the water. Without Nick to tend the fire, the cabin had gotten considerably chillier in the hours we’d been gone. And Sam didn’t like to use power unless he needed it, despite the far-off chugging of the generator.
“You’re just bruised, and a little cut.”
“So I’ll survive?”
“Of course.” He pulled the rag away. “I’m sorry that you had to go through that. It’s my fault. I should have left you in the car with one of the others.”
I tsked. “No, it was Debbie’s fault, and Pitch’s. Don’t blame yourself. Really. I mean, look at you. You’re in worse shape than I am. Your eye is bruised, and your lip is split, and you keep hunching over funny, like your ribs hurt. How are you?”
He stood up, the wet rag still in his hands. “It doesn’t matter. What does matter was your reaction in there. What were you thinking?”
“What do you mean? Why did I fight back?” He didn’t respond, but I didn’t need him to. The look he’d given me as Debbie lay in a ball at my feet came back to me. Like I’d changed into something else right in front of him.
I rose, hands on my hips. “Is it so far-fetched to believe that when I needed to act, I acted? I’m not going to let you admonish me for it. I liked it. I felt strong. You’re not going to take that away from me. I finally put all those combat lessons to good use.”
“That was more than basic fighting, Anna.” He leveled his shoulders, pointed at his chest. “You could feel it here, couldn’t you? Something more than instinct.”
I hadn’t taken the time to label exactly where the feeling had come from, but he’d described it perfectly.
“That worries me,” he said, knowing my answer before I spoke it. “Because that’s how I feel it.”
“What?” I tried to make sense of what he was implying. “Do the others…”
He nodded.
“But…”
He threw the rag in a bin near the door and started to pace. “Did you ever meet with Riley or Connor outside the lab?”
I frowned. “What kind of question is that? No. Never.”
He sighed, another crack in his hardened exterior, a tiny and barely perceptible tell on his emotions. “Did they ever approach you about anything outside the lab?”
“No.”
“Think, Anna.”
I thought back to all the times Riley and Connor had come to the farmhouse. We saw Riley maybe ten times a year, and Connor even less than that. They usually sidestepped me, rushing down to the basement to check in on the boys—or, as they called them, the “units.”
The only time I’d been alone with one of them was…
“Wait,” I said.
Sam stopped.
“The first time I found you guys, Connor showed up unannounced, three days later, while Dad was at the store. He sat me down at the kitchen table and told me I couldn’t be allowed in the lab until you guys were ready.” Bits and pieces came back to me. “A few years later, he came out for a regular check, and I remember hearing him and Dad whispering outside in the driveway. They were arguing. I heard Connor say my name.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know for sure. I was too far away to hear the whole conversation. That was the same night Dad asked for my help in the lab.”
Sam thought for a second. “Or Connor ordered your father to allow you in.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
A vehicle pulled up the driveway, and Sam moved to the windows. “It’s Cas,” he said, relieved.
When Cas walked in a few minutes later, I was shocked to see how terrible he looked. In the hour since we’d left him, a bruise had darkened around his left eye, another on his right cheekbone.
Nick and Trev had fared better, but then Cas was the kind of person who leapt into things without fully thinking them through. I wasn’t surprised he’d taken a few more hits than the others.
“I hope that water heater is full,” he said. “I want a shower. I’m so effing sore.”
“Let Anna,” Sam said.
Trev’s gaze immediately went to me. “You all right?”
I nodded, but I was not all right. Sam was calculating something, trying to put the pieces together into a working theory. That’s why he’d questioned me about Connor and Riley.
Tommy snorted again. “This isn’t fuckin’ Martha Stewart.”
“Any gun owner would know that cleaning a gun ensures its accuracy and gives it longevity.”
Pitch stepped up. “Do you want it or not, Cupcake?”
The boys and I shifted closer to Sam. “How much?”
“Nine hundred.”
Sam reassembled the gun and fired a dry shot, making sure to point it at the ground. “I can buy a brand-new one for a thousand.”
“Then go buy a brand-new one.” Tommy hitched up his pants. “Something tells me you need that gun tonight, or you know you’ll fail the background check. Whichever it is, it means you ain’t getting a brand-new one, now are ya?”
“Four hundred,” Sam said, ignoring the goading, even though Tommy was right.
“Seven,” Tommy countered.
“Five apiece. I’ll take four.”
“I ain’t got four the same, but I can give you something close to it for twenty-two. That a deal?”
Twenty-two hundred dollars for guns?
“Ammunition included?” Sam asked.
Tommy shrugged. “Sure.”
“Deal.” Sam handed over the money.
Pitch selected three other guns and a few boxes of ammunition. He passed one of each to Trev, Cas, and Nick.
“Pleasure doing business with you, boys,” Tommy said.
I let out a breath once the bookcases were locked behind us, the guns put away. I wanted out of there. The whole place felt off, and a discomforting sensation crept along my skin like spider legs.
We passed Tommy, Cas leading the way. I stayed in the back, close to Sam, but we had to go single file through the door and Pitch came up behind me, slinging an arm around my shoulders.
“So… Anna… you staying close by here? Can I get your number?”
I tensed beneath his touch, assaulted with the smell of cheap cologne and stale cigarette smoke. Pitch’s flannel shirt rasped against the back of my neck and I moved to shove him off.
“Pitch!” one of the girls called. “Keep your goddamn hands to yourself, and try to remember who you’re engaged to.”
The bottle-blond woman stood next to the card table, cigarette smoke curling around her face, her mouth tense with fury. My hands started to sweat.
“Shut up, Debbie!” Pitch yelled.
Sam hung back. “Anna.”
Pitch cocked his chin. “Is she your girlfriend or something? I don’t see your name on her.”
“Pitch,” Tommy said, the warning ringing out loud and clear.
“Pitch, goddamn it!” Debbie said again.
“You broke up with me last night,” Pitch shouted. “Far as I’m concerned, I’m a free man.”
Debbie gave her metal folding chair a shove. She dropped her cigarette, ground it out with the toe of her boot, and stormed in our direction.
“You little piece of shit,” she said, slamming Pitch in the chest. Pitch stumbled back. She turned to me.
“Get your people in line,” Sam said to Tommy.
“Don’t tell me what to do, kid.” Tommy flicked his ponytail off his shoulder. “Maybe if your girlfriend wasn’t a whore—”
In one quick move, Sam slammed the bigger man to the floor, getting in a punch before one of Tommy’s friends jumped between them.
I backpedaled and held my hands up. “I’m not going to steal your boyfriend!”
“You’re damn right you’re not!” Debbie slapped me across the face. The shock hit before the heat did, and I went motionless.
Nick reached for me, but a burly blond guy grabbed him by the forearm and swung him around. Pitch sidestepped us and dove for Sam. Tommy’s other men swooped in. They cornered Cas near the poker table and slammed Trev up against a freestanding toolbox.
Debbie hooked a leg around mine and pushed, slamming me to the floor. The air rushed from my lungs and I gasped to get it back.
“Anna!” Sam yelled.
Debbie climbed on top of me, pinning me. Her eyes were bloodshot, like she was drunk or high or both. Air trickled into my lungs. I gritted my teeth. I was not going to be bested by a sleazy hick.
I bucked, dislodging her, and got to my feet. She wrapped her arms around my legs and my knees hit the concrete. I threw back an elbow, cracking her in the sternum. I found my footing again, twisted, grabbed a hunk of frizzled blond hair and rammed her face into my knee. Something snapped. Debbie screeched as blood poured from her nose.
“I don’t want your stupid boyfriend!” I yelled.
“Anna?”
I whirled around.
Tommy and Pitch and all the others lay scattered, unconscious. The boys were bloodied and bruised, but looked all right.
“That was effing hot,” Cas said. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Anna.”
I looked at Debbie, who was curled in the fetal position, her friend cooing at her side.
I didn’t know I had it in me, either. I knew the moves, I knew how to defend myself, but I never thought it’d feel so… satisfying.
Sam was staring at me when I turned back to him. There was a slant to his green eyes, a question on his face. Like he was finding it difficult to read me. Little Anna, so predictable. Until now.
“It might be best if we’re gone when they wake,” Trev said.
I wiped the blood from my face with the sleeve of my coat and led the way out the door.
21
WITH EVERYTHING THAT’D HAPPENED, Sam decided it’d be best if we ditched the Jeep and stole something new. Cas was the one who was good with hot-wiring, or whatever it was he had to do to start a vehicle without keys. He, Trev, and Nick dropped Sam and me at the cabin first.
When I protested that I was fine, that the boys didn’t have to make a special trip home for me, Sam silenced me with a look that said otherwise. And then Cas added, “I’m not going home for you, Banana. I want to start up the generator now that we have gas. Get that water heater going.”
Once we were inside, Sam lit a small candle and left it on the kitchen counter. The room filled with pulsating light.
Sam tore off his coat with a wince, and nodded at the table. “Sit.”
I pulled out one of the chairs and fell into it. I was too exhausted to even think about arguing anymore. Apparently fighting made for hard work. Sam sat next to me, turning his chair so that we faced each other. He reached over, grabbed the bottom of my seat, and dragged me closer. So close that I was practically wedged between his legs.
A shiver threatened to rock my shoulders, but I tamped it down. I didn’t want to show Sam what his close proximity did to me. Though I suppose he probably already knew. And maybe on a subconscious level, I wanted him to know.
He ran quick, gentle fingers over my jaw, then my forehead. I hadn’t had a chance to examine the damage Debbie had doled out, but my face hurt all over. I must have looked like a mess.
“Your eye hurt much?” he asked.
“The left one? Yeah. It’s throbbing.”
“Close it.”
I closed both eyes and breathed in deeply when his fingers inched up the side of my face, tilting my head at different angles, examining me in a way no one ever had.
“Stay right here,” he ordered.
He crossed into the kitchen. I noted the way he favored his left leg, the stiffness in his back.
He returned a minute later with a dampened washcloth.
I winced when he pressed it to my face. Not only did it hurt, but the cloth was freezing cold from the water. Without Nick to tend the fire, the cabin had gotten considerably chillier in the hours we’d been gone. And Sam didn’t like to use power unless he needed it, despite the far-off chugging of the generator.
“You’re just bruised, and a little cut.”
“So I’ll survive?”
“Of course.” He pulled the rag away. “I’m sorry that you had to go through that. It’s my fault. I should have left you in the car with one of the others.”
I tsked. “No, it was Debbie’s fault, and Pitch’s. Don’t blame yourself. Really. I mean, look at you. You’re in worse shape than I am. Your eye is bruised, and your lip is split, and you keep hunching over funny, like your ribs hurt. How are you?”
He stood up, the wet rag still in his hands. “It doesn’t matter. What does matter was your reaction in there. What were you thinking?”
“What do you mean? Why did I fight back?” He didn’t respond, but I didn’t need him to. The look he’d given me as Debbie lay in a ball at my feet came back to me. Like I’d changed into something else right in front of him.
I rose, hands on my hips. “Is it so far-fetched to believe that when I needed to act, I acted? I’m not going to let you admonish me for it. I liked it. I felt strong. You’re not going to take that away from me. I finally put all those combat lessons to good use.”
“That was more than basic fighting, Anna.” He leveled his shoulders, pointed at his chest. “You could feel it here, couldn’t you? Something more than instinct.”
I hadn’t taken the time to label exactly where the feeling had come from, but he’d described it perfectly.
“That worries me,” he said, knowing my answer before I spoke it. “Because that’s how I feel it.”
“What?” I tried to make sense of what he was implying. “Do the others…”
He nodded.
“But…”
He threw the rag in a bin near the door and started to pace. “Did you ever meet with Riley or Connor outside the lab?”
I frowned. “What kind of question is that? No. Never.”
He sighed, another crack in his hardened exterior, a tiny and barely perceptible tell on his emotions. “Did they ever approach you about anything outside the lab?”
“No.”
“Think, Anna.”
I thought back to all the times Riley and Connor had come to the farmhouse. We saw Riley maybe ten times a year, and Connor even less than that. They usually sidestepped me, rushing down to the basement to check in on the boys—or, as they called them, the “units.”
The only time I’d been alone with one of them was…
“Wait,” I said.
Sam stopped.
“The first time I found you guys, Connor showed up unannounced, three days later, while Dad was at the store. He sat me down at the kitchen table and told me I couldn’t be allowed in the lab until you guys were ready.” Bits and pieces came back to me. “A few years later, he came out for a regular check, and I remember hearing him and Dad whispering outside in the driveway. They were arguing. I heard Connor say my name.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know for sure. I was too far away to hear the whole conversation. That was the same night Dad asked for my help in the lab.”
Sam thought for a second. “Or Connor ordered your father to allow you in.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
A vehicle pulled up the driveway, and Sam moved to the windows. “It’s Cas,” he said, relieved.
When Cas walked in a few minutes later, I was shocked to see how terrible he looked. In the hour since we’d left him, a bruise had darkened around his left eye, another on his right cheekbone.
Nick and Trev had fared better, but then Cas was the kind of person who leapt into things without fully thinking them through. I wasn’t surprised he’d taken a few more hits than the others.
“I hope that water heater is full,” he said. “I want a shower. I’m so effing sore.”
“Let Anna,” Sam said.
Trev’s gaze immediately went to me. “You all right?”
I nodded, but I was not all right. Sam was calculating something, trying to put the pieces together into a working theory. That’s why he’d questioned me about Connor and Riley.
