Run This Town 03 - (Watch Me) Unmask You (16 page)

FBI.

“Y-Yeah.” Lucky grimaced at the weird taste on his dry tongue. “Water.” Embarrassment burned his face, but he managed a “Please.”

“Of course.” The agent poured him a glass from the jug on the rolling table next to the bed and helped him upright.

After a couple sips, Lucky asked the most important question. “Where is my daughter? Is she okay?” Already the machines they’d hooked him up to were going crazy. He couldn’t help it, he had to make sure Maddie was okay. “Where is she?”

“Your husband has your daughter.”

“Who are you?” Lucky eyed him up and down.

“Dane Hutchins, FBI.” His eyes were cool, his face expressionless. “How are you, Lucky?”

“You know me?”

“I do.” He pulled up a chair and sat next to Lucky.

“You know what happened last night?” Could this man help make sense of what the hell was happening?

“I do,” Agent Hutchins said again.

“I was attacked,” he said in a shaky voice. “In my house last night. Masked men—” He broke off to breathe. Why was it so fucking difficult to breathe? “Masked men broke in and they—” The tremors started, his body flashing from hot to cold and back.

“Two of them were killed when the local P.D. rescued you,” Agent Hutchins said. “The other two got away.”

“My husband is a killer.”

The words on his tongue, they felt wrong, tasted wrong. Everything about them was wrong, but he’d admitted it, hadn’t he? When that man had put a gun to Lucky’s head and had hands on their daughter, when Lucky had been beaten down and terrorized, Elias had admitted it. Earlier, he’d admitted it. To Lucky’s face.

“My parents.” His eyes burned, but he blinked away the moisture. He hadn’t cried last night, after all they’d done to him, and he wouldn’t break down now. “He killed—”

“Lucky— Can I call you Lucky?” Agent Hutchins leaned in close, his gaze intense, cold eyes missing nothing. “Lucky, are you sure you want to do this here? Now?”

“What?” His headache kicked up five notches. “What are you asking me, Agent?”

“Are you ready to send your husband to prison, Lucky? Is it that easy?”

Lucky looked at him, really looked at him. “You’re not an FBI agent, are you?”

Agent Hutchins smiled. “Oh, I am very much an FBI agent.”

“But you don’t want to hear that the man I married is a contract killer who admitted to killing my parents and countless others for money, on video.”

Agent Hutchins shrugged. “I just want to make sure you understand what’s at stake.”

This shit was too fucking much, wasn’t it? “Where’s my daughter?”

“She’s being taken care of.”

“Who has my baby?” Lucky shouted. “I want my child, Agent Hutchins. I want to see her now.”

The door opened. “Lucky.” He was there, at the door, face all composed, eyes so shattered. And he held their daughter. Elias was there. “Calm down, Maddie’s with me.”

Lucky tore his gaze away from the doorway, brought it back to Agent Hutchins. “I want my daughter. And I want him gone.”

Footsteps shuffled and more people piled into the room. Lucky turned to look. Two other men besides Elias. Men he didn’t know, but one with skin the color of dark chocolate and equally dark eyes, he seemed familiar. Way too familiar.

“Look at me. Please.” Elias was begging. “Lucky, I’m so fucking sorry. Talk to me.”

Talk. Huh. Ten years and Lucky could literally feel it all slipping away. Dropping away like nothing. Ten years. He lifted his gaze to the man before him, the man he’d married. His eyes were so sad, his complexion pale as he watched Lucky watch him. Lucky realized he knew nothing about him. Nothing.

Lucky held up both hands. “Give her to me.”

“Lucky, let me just—”

“Give me my fucking child.”

Elias flinched and Lucky had nothing for that, no sympathy. Nothing. He bent, Elias, hair brushing Lucky’s fingers as he placed a sleeping Maddie into his aching arms. She looked so peaceful, sucking lightly on the pink pacifier between her lips.

Lucky stared down at her, inhaling her scent, loving her weight even though his wounds protested loudly. He leaned down, brushed his lips over her forehead, and the whisper-soft strands of hair on her forehead tickled him. The most tender feeling.

And it broke him.

The tears fell then, fast, splashing onto her cheeks. His shoulders heaved, chest burned as he tried to contain it. A room full of strange men—including Elias—and he fell apart.

“Lucky. Baby, please. I’m so sorry. So fucking sorry.”

Rough, cold fingers touched Lucky’s nape, and he shrugged away from that touch. He sniffed and wiped his chin on his right shoulder before looking up at Elias.

This man. This man he’d married. This man who’d captivated him completely. This man was a stranger to him. His anger, Lucky couldn’t feel it. It was as if he was broken. He felt nothing when he looked at Elias.

“When we met in that house on Long Island, I was in chaos,” Lucky said softly. “My life, everything was so messed up and even though I’d tried to be this tough kid on the outside, I was just as chaotic on the inside. I had not a moment’s peace, not a moment where I wasn’t wishing I had died with my parents, that I’d been on that boat with them.”

Elias looked as if Lucky had kicked him in the gut, but he didn’t speak nor did he look away.

“I wanted to feel calm, to feel like I belonged, to feel like I did when I had them in my life.” He gazed down at Maddie then went back to gazing into Elias’s red-rimmed eyes. “One moment I was a fucking mess and the next you were shining your flashlight into my eyes and talking to me. Just like that I had it.” He snapped his fingers. “I had comfort, I had calm. I had you.”

“Mijn schat.”

“Nothing made sense until you held out your hand and urged me to take it, to come to you and out of the dark closet. Nothing felt more right that sliding my hand into yours and feeling you grab me, lift me up, pull me away from my pain.”

Elias swallowed.

“You became everything. Everything. And it only took me ten years to realize that there’s a flipside to that.” He cleared his throat. “Because today I’m finally getting the true picture. Was I that gullible? That easy to fool, to manipulate?” The questions killed him. That he had to ask them, that he had to wonder at his judgment. “Was I that fucking blind and in need of love that I didn’t see you playing me, lying to me, destroying me?”

“No.” Elias grabbed his knee, and Lucky jerked away.

“Don’t you fucking touch me again.” He looked at Agent Hutchins who was watching them with a blank expression, but his eyes were filled. With some kind of emotion Lucky was too exhausted to try to figure out. “I want him kept away from me, from my daughter.”

“What? Lucky, you can’t—”

“Did you kill my parents?” Lucky asked Elias.

His husband drew back, face a contorted mask of pain and anguish. Maybe Lucky should have felt some type of way about it, but he didn’t. Maybe later.

“Yes.”

Lucky pursed his lips. “Why?” It hurt to ask. “Why?”

“Elias.” One of the other men in the room, dark skin with the familiar face, stepped forward and touched Elias’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, Is.” Elias kept his gaze on Lucky. “It was my job.”

“And how long have you been killing for money?”

“A very long time.”

Lucky nodded. “You killed them, my parents. Slashed my father’s throat and you shot my mother?” That’s what the guy from last night had said, wasn’t it?

Elias rubbed a hand over his face. “Yes.”

Something hot ignited in Lucky’s chest and he was shaking so bad, he could hardly hold his sleeping daughter. “I was there,” he whispered. “I was in the house, but you spared me.”

“Yes.” Elias’s voice was just as soft. A conversation between the two of them that three other men were witnessing.

“Why?”

“You’d been sleeping.” Elias’s voice cracked then. “But then you woke up. You lifted your head and you looked at me, directly at me.”

“You spoke to me.” The realization choked him, horrified him. “You told me you had me.” 
I’ve got you, little fella.
 “So you decided instead of killing me you’d make me fall in love with you. You’d marry me, build a life and family with me. Why? Afraid I’d identify you, tell someone?”

“I love you.”

“You’re a monster.” Those three words, they burst from deep within Lucky, hitting Elias.

His body jerked back and his heart surfaced in his eyes then, this man he’d married, shattering while Lucky watched, but then it disappeared. The emotion wilted away, and a hardness came over him.

“Yours.” The word was punishment, hitting Lucky as Lucky had hit him. Elias dropped to his knees next to Lucky and stared up at him. “I am yours. The monster you married. The monster you’re raising a child with. The monster you love.”

Lucky shook his head, but Elias grabbed his chin, held him still.

“Yes. You wanted this, so you don’t get to walk away now that the curtain has been pulled back and you don’t like what you see.”

Lucky had to smile at the audacity. “Oh, but I am walking away and I’m taking our daughter with me.”

Elias reared back, mouth open, but Lucky didn’t give him the chance to speak his bullshit.

“If you try to stop me I will make you regret every minute of the last ten years. Everything you stole from me. Every lie you said to me. Try and stop me, Elias,” he murmured, “and I will fucking bury you in a hole so deep your FBI friends will never find you.” He motioned with his chin. “Now get the fuck out, every-Goddamn-body.”

Two weeks Lucky spent in the hospital. He had the one gunshot wound in his arm, a concussion, a bump on the back of his head, and a cut above his temple that bled like a son of a bitch. He’d been beaten up, took some kicks to the ribs, but nothing was broken.

They just hurt like a son of a bitch.

Of course, they didn’t come close to that other pain.

Dane Hutchins had explained to him what happened, how he’d ended up in the hospital instead of the morgue. The local PD had come in blasting, getting into a firefight with the four men. Two died at the scene, but two were still out there. He’d taken over the investigation, Dane had told Lucky. Pissing off the local PD in the process. No one came to question Lucky in the hospital, so he had to guess that Dane Hutchins had done a helluva job explaining and covering shit up.

The question was why.

Shouldn’t the FBI be eager to arrest someone like Elias?

Did Lucky want that? For the man he’d married and had a child with to be thrown in jail for killing his husband’s parents?

How fucked up was his life, though? How fucked up? 

Two men whose identities they didn’t know were probably still hunting Lucky. Because of Elias. He’d asked Dane for his help in going somewhere to hide, to think, to deal with this thing he didn’t know how to start understanding.

When he finally felt up to it he’d had to call his employees and tell them he’d be out of pocket for God knew how long. He’d put Pia, now his assistant and good friend, in charge. He hadn’t explained anything other than he wasn’t well because really, who’d believe him?

Elias came by every day, bringing Maddie since Lucky couldn’t have things his way and keep her with him in the hospital room. The hardest thing was dealing with seeing his husband, having Elias hovering around him with that concerned look on his face while Lucky was trying to put on a brave face for Maddie.

He didn’t know how everything would affect her and arguing in front of her was not something he wanted to do. So he opted to ice out Elias, never speaking to him. They had to talk, of course they did, but on Lucky’s timetable. He made his plans and only when he was discharged did he voice them to Elias.

“Lucky, think about what you’re saying.” They were in the car in the driveway, the electric gate already closed behind them. The house, their house, loomed large, a ghost Lucky didn’t want to encounter right then.

He wasn’t ready for any of it.

“I’m not staying with you,” he told Elias firmly. Soft, but firm. He hadn’t lost his temper once, hadn’t lifted his voice after that episode when he’d awakened in the hospital. It was strange feeling so empty, feeling so numb. He missed the emotions, but he was glad they were gone. He couldn’t deal with them. Not if he wanted to continue to function. “I’m just here to pack my bags and pick up Maddie.” He didn’t wait for Elias’s answer. He grabbed the door handle to open it.

Elias caught him by his elbow. “Listen to me, Lucky. There’s still a lot you don’t understand. You can’t leave. Not now. Not yet.”

“Remove your hand from my body.” Lucky didn’t bother looking at him. He stared out of the car window until Elias did as requested, albeit grudgingly. “I’m not sure what you think I don’t understand, but you can explain it to me while I pack.” And he exited the vehicle.

Another car was in their driveway. The friends Elias had told him were watching Maddie. The same friends who’d been at the hospital with Agent Hutchins. These people he didn’t know. A gang leader from Queens and God knew who else. All these people suddenly in his life, in his daughter’s life.

Everything had turned upside down and Lucky was barely keeping his feet on firm ground.

He let Elias lead the way up the front steps and unlock the door. When he pushed it open and stepped back for Lucky to go in first, Lucky froze. Unable to move. That night came rushing back. The fear. The absolutely mind-numbing fear. He’d been violated in his own home.

The thought had his body shuddering in cold panic.

“I should have been here,” Elias spoke over Lucky’s shoulder. “I should have protected you, Lucky. I’m so sorry. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”

Lucky sniffed. “Maybe I don’t want to know.” He stepped into the house even though his limbs resisted him with every move.

Two men were on the couch, Elias’s friends, with Maddie in her musical swing next to them. They were watching TV, talking in low tones, heads close enough for Lucky to know they were more than friends.

The house had been wrecked the last time he’d seen it, when the cops had burst in that night. Front door kicked in, windows shattered, but right now everything was fixed, put back to rights.

So easy. Was it really that easy? What about his life, his family? They couldn’t simply sweep up the broken glass and repaint the wall with a fresh coat of paint.

“I don’t know who these people are,” he said as he stopped to pick up Maddie from her rocker. “I don’t want them around Maddie.”

“Jesus, Lucky.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” the light-skinned one—Elias had said his name was Reggie—said. “He’s right.”

Lucky ignored them and made his way up the stairs. It hurt, lifting his legs to climb, but he hid the wince and did it anyway. In the hallway leading to the master bedroom and Maddie’s room, he halted, body freezing. It became too much, the memories, and he collapsed against the closest wall with Maddie in his arms.

Hyperventilating. He was hyperventilating. Lucky clung to Maddie as she wiggled, making those sounds he usually loved to hear, her attempts at speaking.

“Dah. Dah. Dah.” She touched his face, tugged on his hair.

He loved his daughter, but right now he just wanted her to be quiet, wanted to escape, wanted to run away.

“Breathe.” Elias was there, touching Lucky even though he’d told him not to. Talking to him when Lucky didn’t want him to. “Breathe, Lucky. It’s okay.”

Another lie. It would never be okay again.

“Take her.” He thrust Maddie at Elias and went directly to their bathroom to wash his face. Meeting his own eyes in the mirror was an impossibility right then so he dried his hands and face and hurried back out.

Elias sat on their bed while Maddie crawled along the carpeted floor, trying to pull herself upright by holding on to the edge of the mattress. She was chatty, their daughter, bubbly, mouth going a mile a minute. Lucky tore his gaze away from them, from the sight of Elias smiling at her, tweaking her nose and smoothing her hair away from her face.

He went to his drawers and started pulling clothes out. Underwear. Socks. T-shirts.

“Listen to me. Please.”

In the utility closet next to the bathroom he yanked down a large traveling bag from the high shelves and shoved clothes into it.

“Lucky, talk to me.”

Lucky never thought he’d ever tire of Elias begging, but here? Now? He was so fucking tired of Elias begging.

“We have to talk,” Elias said. “You have to let me explain, Lucky.”

One pair of jeans. Two. Three.

“We always talk. It’s what we do.”

Lucky barked a laugh. “Do you hear yourself?” He spun to look at Elias. “Do you hear just how incredibly stupid you sound? It’s what we do?”

“Tell me what you need.” Elias got up from the bed and walked toward him. “Whatever you need.”

“Well, that’s easy.” Lucky turned his back to him and went back to shoving another pair of jeans into the bag. “I need to erase you. I need to not feel for you. I need for you to mean nothing to me.” His hands got all fucked up, making it difficult for him to do anything so he kicked the bag and spun. Elias stood there with that anguished look on his face, eyes bleak. “I need for you to be nothing. Nothing. Nothing.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Lucky took so much pleasure in letting him know, “You can’t possibly know how much I mean that.”

Elias lunged and grabbed him, both hands on Lucky’s shoulders. “Everything I’ve ever done is for you. For Maddie. Every lie I’ve ever told has been to protect you, to protect our family.”

Lucky punched him. Elias blinked and stumbled back.

“Mijn schat.”

“Save the words for someone who wants to hear them, for someone who can be comforted by them.” He shrugged. “That’s not me.”

“I love you, Lucky.” Elias bent and picked up Maddie who’d crawled over to him and was trying to stand by holding on to his legs. Her chubby legs kicked up when Elias cradled her to his chest. Lucky looked away.

“Our life— these past ten years, they’ve been perfection,” Elias said in a tremulous voice. “The fights. The make-ups. The tears. The laughter. Our daughter.” He glanced down at Maddie, her tiny fists flying as she chatted to herself, blessedly oblivious to how suddenly her life had tragically changed. “Our daughter, Lucky. All of that happiness balanced precariously on a foundation of lies and bloodshed. Flawed perfection, mine and yours.”

“I never wanted perfection,” Lucky told him. “I wanted what you couldn’t give. Honesty.”

“Our love is not a lie. Our daughter, the life we built, none of that is a lie.”

“You killed my family, you destroyed my life. Everything that’s ever happened as a direct result of losing my parents…” Lucky shook his head. “Twice. You destroyed me twice.” He needed to get out of the house. He turned and went into Maddie’s room, swallowing the bile in his throat as he packed her clothes.

He had no idea where Dane and his FBI people were taking him, he just needed to get out. Away from Elias.

“Don’t leave me. Lucky, please.”

Lucky hardened himself, tried to drown out Elias’s presence and his words as he packed Maddie’s things. Clothes, toys, diapers. Her bottles and food were downstairs.

“I have to find who did this, they’re still out there, Lucky. You can’t take Maddie.”

“The first time I ran away from my aunt and uncle’s place I did so with exactly five dollars in my pocket,” Lucky told him. “I wanted to get to that house, my family home, but I didn’t have enough money. So do you want to know what I did?”

Elias’s eyes flashed. “I don’t need to know.”

“You do,” Lucky shot back. “You fucking do.” He lowered his tone. “I got on my knees in a bus station bathroom.”

Elias face tightened.

“The man was old. Way old.” He shuddered at that image he’d tried so hard to forget. “But he offered me fifty dollars to suck him. So I did.”

Elias looked like he wanted to be sick. His face was red and his arms tightened around Maddie.

“I threw up the second he handed over that money. And it was only when he left me there kneeling in my own filth that I realized he’d shorted me by thirty. My first time sucking cock and I earned twenty dollars.” He managed to twist his mouth into something not quite a grimace. “That feeling, of being worthless and used, of violation and helplessness. Cheap. I felt it then.” A headache began behind his eyes. “I feel it now.”

“No.” Elias snarled the word. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect. I am sorry, but this is not the same thing. I love you. I’d go to my grave for you.”    

“I am taking my daughter,” Lucky said through gritted teeth. “That is not up for debate.”

“Our daughter, Lucky. She’s our daughter.”

“And you should have thought about that when you were out there, killing people for fucking money!”

With Maddie’s bag filled, Lucky marched out of the room and down the stairs. The men were gone, he hoped for good, but somehow he doubted that. In the kitchen he put Maddie’s formula, milk and bottles in a grocery bag. Everything else he’d have to figure out later.

The tender bullet wound on his arm hurt. His head, too. He wanted to get out of there, take a pill to wash away the pain, and sleep until he woke from this nightmare.

“Where are you going?” Elias asked behind him.

“The FBI didn’t tell me where we’re going, but it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters, Lucky. You’re my family and there are people out there looking to hurt you. I need to know. You can’t just—”

Lucky rounded on him. “I fucking dare you to try and tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“I know you’re hurt. I know you hate me right now, but think, Lucky.” Elias glared at him. “There are people out there gunning for you.”

“And why is that, Elias? Care to share with the class?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”

“And when you do—” Lucky hefted Maddie’s bag onto his injured shoulder, gingerly, “I’ll listen to what you have to say, but until then…” He held out his hands. “Give her to me.”

Elias’s cold expression cracked at Lucky’s words and his hold on Maddie tightened. “Don’t. Lucky, please. Don’t ask me to do this.” He hauled Maddie to his chest, a large hand cradling her head, the other holding her back. “She’s mine, too.”

Watching him hold Maddie broke Lucky down and he kept swallowing to get rid of the emotion strangling him. “You asked me what I needed. This. I need you to prove what you said, prove that you love me. Let us go.”

Elias’s head came up, brow furrowed. “I prove how much I love you by letting you go? Is that a test?”