Monster (34 page)

Breaker's eyes slanted
to mine, the light blue looking angry. “The creep?”

“Creepy Bob,”
I said with a nod. “I was pretty sure if Lex's guys didn't bust
in and steal me that he would have used his spare key to come in and
roofie me. He was disgusting.”

“Well, now we got
ourselves a party,” Shooter said, winking at me with a huge
white-tooth grin that made my belly do a weird little flip-flop. I
could see him being dangerous if I wasn't already a little too
enamored by his best friend.

Turns out, we were
pretty bad at the whole 'bug out' thing. It was supposed to happen in
a matter of like twenty minutes. That was the whole point. But we
drove into town, pulling off in front of Shooter's place. He
disappeared inside and came back twenty minutes later, freshly
showered and dressed, with two huge duffel bags and a backpack. He
threw the two duffels into the flat, pulling a cover over the top so
nothing would fly out, and bringing the backpack into the backseat
with him.

He saw me eyeing it
curiously and unzipped the side, showing me an amount of money I
paled to even consider. Then he grinned. “Just to get us
started. Got some more stashed in some other places we can hit along
the way to wherever we are going.” He paused, then patted
Breaker on the shoulder. “We should say goodbye to Paine.”

This got a grunt from a
very impatient Breaker. But he pulled the truck down the corner from
the abandoned warehouse he had originally kept me and all three of us
rushed inside a tattoo shop and was met by a huge (meaning even
slightly larger than Breaker) absolutely gorgeous light-skinned black
guy covered in black and gray tattoos. I wondered, fleetingly, if all
hot guys just like... ran together. Because, really, between the
three of them... holy hell.

“So this is her,”
Paine said after grabbing the back of Shooter's neck and hauling him
into his body, the relief evident on his face. “You worth all
this trouble?” he asked, but his tone was teasing.

“Not at all,”
I said, giving him a smile, “but they're stuck with me now.”

He gave me a
spine-tingling grin. “You guys involved with all the bombings?”

“All?” the
three of us echoed at the same time, making Paine's brows go up.

“Yeah. Lex's,
Hailstorm, the Henchmen compound, even Chaz's,” he said, naming
off the Mallick family's bar.

Shooter and Breaker
shared a look. “Don't know what the fuck is going on around
here,” Breaker said honestly. Because while we did know about
Janie's part in Lex's house going up in smoke... the rest... yeah
that made no sense. “But we have to get out before people start
asking questions.”

Paine nodded. “Keep
in touch?”

“Yeah. We'll want
to know the lowdown as info starts trickling onto the streets,”
Breaker said. “Don't go asking for shit and make yourself
suspicious, but keep your ears open for us. I'll call you on a new
burner soon as we get somewhere.”

“Sounds good,”
Pain nodded, clamping a hand on Breaker's shoulder in a show of
badass masculine affection. “Take care of yourselves.”

Forty minutes later, we
were parked outside of Breaker's. And then we all were heading in. I
wanted a change of clothes, Breaker wanted to gather supplies, and
Shooter wanted to get a drink.

So, all packed up we
drove to the motel. I got my stuff out of my room seeing as I still
had the key on me. And I walked out to see both Breaker and Shooter
scaring the piss out of Creepy Bob. And I mean that literally. He
peed himself. Which might have been funny, but the fact of the matter
was, just witnessing them being all badass and scary... well... I was
close to wetting myself too.

No joke.

They were terrifying.

“Right,”
Breaker said, jerking his head at me, “let's go.”

The car was dead silent
for a long time, each of us staring off out the windows, lost in our
own thoughts.

Finally, about an hour
into the drive, the darkest part of night almost behind us already, I
turned slightly in my seat so I was fully facing Breaker and asked
him the one thing that had been nagging at me since he had said it.

“Why did you tell
Lex I was his daughter?”

I felt Shooter's face
snap to me, but ignored him.

“Doll...”
Breaker said, his tone implying that I was asking something stupid.

“No. Seriously. I
want to know.”

“First, you told
me yourself what your mom went through at Lex's hands. How she
finally got away to raise you. How terrified she was of someone
getting their hands on you. How she killed herself when she saw Lex
again so she could protect you both. And, I mean... you look alike.
And...”

“And?” I
prompted, feeling my heart skip around wildly.

“And your names,
doll. His name is Lex. Your name is Alex.”

Holy. Shit.

I never... Jesus
Christ... I never even thought of that before. That was weird. But
still...

“He's not my
father, Breaker,” I said quietly.

To this, his head
turned fully to me, his light eyes boring into me, sending shivers
down my spine. But, well, the good kind. The kind that kinda made me
want to tell him to turn back around so we could pay by the hour at
the sleep-and-fuck motel.

“What?”

“He's not my
father.”

“You can't know
that,” he insisted, barely giving the road a glance as he
watched me.

“I do. I know
that,” I insisted. “Remember when I said my mom went to
the hospital that night and she found a detective who helped her get
away?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I mean...
I never got confirmation because it was a touchy subject for my mom,”
I said, thinking about the time I was seven and asked about my daddy
because everyone else talked about theirs and I didn't have one and I
was curious. She cried all night asking why she wasn't enough for me.
I felt so guilty, I never asked again. But as I got older, I started
to see things. “He never stopped coming around. As I was
growing up, he always stopped by. Sometimes dropping off groceries
because he knew Mom was going through a bad spell. Sometimes he just
came by for dinner. Once, he dropped by on Christmas morning. He
brought me a pink stuffed piggy. Then he left. Weird things like
that. Things that didn't mean anything to me when I was little, but
as I got older... it started to make sense. I looked like
him
,
Breaker. Not Lex. I have his same hair. His long legs. His earlobes.
And, I mean... his investigative drive,” I said on a small,
private smile.

I didn't think about
him often. He was a fuzzy childhood memory that made me sad if I
really mulled it over.

“Why didn't you
ever ask
him
, honey?” Shooter asked, his voice soft,
sounding like he genuinely wanted to know.

I felt myself shrug.
“He always looked at me like it hurt him to do so,” I
said, cringing at the memory. “And then when I was ten... he
was gone.”

“Gone?”
Shoot prompted.

“Mom wouldn't
tell me. She just said he was gone. When I was a little older, I
looked him up in computer class. He died. Heart attack. His obituary
said he was survived by his wife and two sons.”

“Aw, sweetheart,”
Shoot said, resting his hand over mine.

“It's no big
deal,” I said, shaking my head. “But you... you really
thought Lex was my dad? Why didn't you say something about it
earlier?”

“Didn't seem like
a subject you'd want to talk about,” Breaker shrugged. “How
do you explain the name thing though, doll?” he persisted.

“Honestly? I
don't know. Mom was weird like that. Maybe she thought it would be...
empowering? To use something ugly and make it something...”

“Beautiful,”
Breaker supplied and I felt the word settle with a fluttering in my
belly.

“I guess,”
I said, ducking my head to cover the heat I felt in my cheeks.

“Hey why don't
we... call it a night?” Shooter cut in, sitting back. “It's
late. We've all had a shit week. We're far enough out of town now
that we won't be suspicious. So long as no one gets a look at her
face,” he said, wincing slightly as he looked at me.

“It's that bad?”

“You're still
gorgeous,” he said, smiling at me.

“It's that bad,”
I said with a wry smile, shaking my head. I was still too wired to
really feel it yet. Things had been so crazy for such a long time. I
wasn't convinced I would come down until I got some sleep.

Twenty or so minutes
later, Breaker pulled the truck up to a small motel that looked
reasonably less skeezy that Creepy Bob's motel. Breaker hopped out of
the truck, going into the office with a wad of cash he had taken out
of a safe in his house.

I tried my best not to
gawk at the sheer mass of money the two of them seemed to possess. In
cash. I knew that the underground jobs paid well. And that Shooter
and Breaker were apparently well known in their circles. But still.

That was crazy.

But then again, most
days I barely had two nickles to rub together.

“Alright,”
Breaker said, opening my door. “They only had one room with two
queens,” he said, looking regretful.

I shrugged, hopping out
to help him haul bags out of the bed of the truck. Shooter joined us
and followed as we let ourselves into the room.

And the inside was
leaps and bounds better that Creepy Bob's. In fact, it looked
recently redone. Fresh pale blue-gray paint on the walls, dark blue
still plush looking comforters on the beds, a flatscreen, white
curtains, new tile in the bathroom, unstained carpets.

I took a deep breath,
smiling a little. “I won't have to sleep sitting up here,”
I said out loud.

“What?”
Breaker asked, watching as I went into the bathroom.

I flicked on the light,
grimacing at my reflection. I had the start of a black eye, dried
blood around my nostrils and in the cracks of my broken lip. I ran
the water warm, dipping a washcloth, and gently wiping away the
blood. “You saw Bob's place. No way was I lying down on one of
those beds,” I said to my reflection.

I rinsed the washcloth
and left it on the counter before going back into the bedroom to see
the TV was already on and the bags were all piled in a corner
furthest from the door.

Shooter gave me a small
tight-lipped smile before turning to Breaker. “Keys,” he
said, holding a hand out.

Breaker reached in his
pocket, produced the keys, and threw them at Shoot.

Shooter nabbed them
then walked over to me, his hand sliding across my jaw, then kissed
the tip of my nose. “I'll be back in a couple of hours,”
he said, then walked to the door and disappeared.

“Where's he
going?” I asked, looking over at Breaker.

“Getting lost
for a while,” he said on a shrug.

“But... why? This
was his idea...”

“Come here,”
Breaker said.

“It's really not
a good idea for him to be all out and about when we just...”

“Alex, doll,
come
here
,” Breaker's voice called, both soft and firm at the
same time, making my belly flip flop. So I went there. And his hands
reached out, cradling my face for a second, his thumb brushing over
my lips.

“Oh,” I
said, smiling a little as I realized Shoot's plan.

“Yeah,”
Breaker smiled back, “oh.”

Twenty-two

Breaker

I tried to keep my eyes
on the road while I drove. Because anytime I looked at her face and
saw the damage Lex had done, I was equal parts furious and wanting to
go back to Lex's place, drag him out of that panic room (if he was
still alive in it) and rip all his appendages off, or also, pull the
car over, wrap Alex up in my arms and tell her I would never let
anyone lay a hand on her again.

Unable to do either of
those things, I just looked ahead and kept driving.

But we were in the
motel room. Shoot was gone. I had her bruised and bloodied face in my
hands. And I didn't want to fight it anymore.