The Condemned (40 page)

     
‘Hm?’ She had been craning her neck to try and see, try and get a glimpse of him again and she hadn’t heard a word of what Amato had said.

    
She looked back at him questioningly.

     
‘You ok?’

    
She took a deep breath and then nodded.
‘I think so.’

    
Amato smiled at her.

     
‘Of course you are, you’re my girl, you’ll do just fine.’

    
For the first time it didn’t really bother her when he called her that, it actually felt sort of nice and she smiled back at him, allowing his calm and composure to infect her, ease her. If she lost it now she could kiss goodbye to her dreams of vengeance, she was smart enough to know that this was probably the only chance she would ever get. If things went wrong and the men were alerted to her interest in them she would never find any of them ever again.

    
It was now or never.

     
‘Ok, listen to me. You’re going to stand up, nice and casual, and walk on over there, you with me?’

    
She nodded and he carried on.

     
‘When you see him, you get close enough to see if the others are with him, then you come straight back to me,
alright?’

    
Leci nodded again.

     
‘Do you think they’ll all be together?’ She asked.

     
‘Yeah. I’m pretty sure of it. They’ve done some nasty shit together, rape, murder, God only knows what else. Assholes like that, they stick together, like a pack or something, for their own protection too, if one decides to go against the group they’d turn on him all together. It’s kinda like security, if one goes down, they all go down.’

    
Leci tilted her head slightly. She sort of understood what he was saying, hoped he was right. If they weren’t all together it might be a lot harder to find the missing pieces of the puzzle. It would be a whole lot simpler to just get things over and done with all in one place, one night, and go back to living the rest of her life.

    
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze beneath the table and then let go. Leci stood, smiled nervously at him and he winked back.

     
‘Stay casual
,
baby, don’t draw any attention.’

    
And then she slipped into the crowd and was gone.

Chapter 37

Amato strained to see her but couldn’t, so he waited, his impatience growing, for her to return.

    
He knew that she was afraid and was trying to deal with that fear as best she could, he knew that she was relying a lot on him for strength and he knew that he needed to keep letting her see that he could hold up enough for the both of them.
He was trying very hard to ignore his worries that something might go wrong, he didn’t want her to see that he had doubts or concerns
,
because then that would cause her to fret and become anxious, more so than she already was.

    
He had to give her credit
,
that the ploy to throw the Officials off their scent had been a pretty good one
,
but he still figured they’d be best keeping a low profile for a little while, at least a couple of months of seclusion.

    
Besides, what was so wrong with the idea of being all isolated and alone, just the two of them up in the cabin
,
once this business was all dealt with?

    
Nothing at all, it sounded like a damn fine idea.

    
The two of them?

    
Ok, the four of them, but the Clones were alright, they kept to themselves and knew how to be discreet, they weren’t all that much of a hindrance.

    
Hell, they were a good pair of allies, all things considered. Amato didn’t tend to trust strangers readily, and most certainly not ones that he had only helped to escape from prison a week or two before, but they were good people and he knew they could be relied on, knew
that
they were friends.

    
He tapped the tabletop impatiently, drained the last of his whiskey, the stuff was weak as cat piss and almost certainly watered down. He cast the small glass aside in disgust, watching the milling throng for any sign of her returning to him, rewarded, finally, after what felt like a really, really long wait, by the sight of her squeezing between an overweight dude and a skinny hooker who was trying to pick his pocket.

    
Leci slipped back into the seat opposite Amato. She looked pale, and frightened, she felt as though she might either be sick or faint.

    
She struggled to make sure that neither happened and he didn’t push her, waited until she was ready to talk.

    
When she had stopped shaking she nodded slowly to him, Amato raised an eyebrow.

     
‘All of them?’

     
‘No...’ She let out a breath she’d been holding. ‘Three of ‘em though. The one who I robbed, he’s the one who had the knife, the one who cut Xavian, he’s there, and two of the others, but the last guy ain’t.’

     
‘Did they see you?’

     
‘Yeah, they did. Didn’t say nothin’ though, just acted like I wasn’t there.’

    
He was nodding slowly, looking very thoughtful
,
and he had a small smile on his face as though the information was pleasing to him, which, of course, it was, if they didn’t know who she was then all the better.

    
Either they did that type of thing a lot and didn’t bother remembering the faces of their victims
,
or she had changed enough in five years to not be easily identifiable, especially along with the cap shielding half her face.

    
She suspected it was some kind of mixture between the two. In the time since she had last seen them she had grown up a bit, filled out in places, the things she had seen and done had lent a haunted quality to her eyes that seemed to hang there permanently and the lines of her face, her features, were sharper, more defined than they had been.

    
She still looked young but she was now at the point where she was starting to develop into the woman she would later become, rather than the child they had known her as.

     
‘Ok, that’s not a problem, we can find out if they know where he is when we get down to it. You ready?’

    
Was she ready?

    
Was she
ready?

    
She didn’t know.

    
She felt kind of numb, a little sick, sort of excited, and very nervous.
A quarter of her life spent waiting for this moment and now it was here... Was she ready?

     
‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’ She forced a smile.

    
Amato stood, leaned down and kissed her forehead.

     
‘I’ll be waiting. I love you.’

    
She turned her head away slightly, maybe embarrassed for him that she couldn’t say it back, maybe ashamed of herself for not even trying. If he noticed he didn’t show it,
he
turned and headed for the stairway, headed up to wait in their room.

    
Leci sat for a few minutes, taking deep, even breaths, trying to force her nerves to settle
,
but not really doing a very good job. A part of her pushed
at
her, urged her to go, get on with it before it was too late! Another part of her was glued to her seat and couldn’t pry her hands from where they rested on the arms of the chair, her fingernails digging very slightly into the brittle wood.

    
It was almost a relief when Amato’s vacated chair was suddenly occupied. The man in front of her wasn’t halfway bad, he certainly wasn’t repulsive, overweight, missing teeth, greasy skinned, like the majority of the men in here seemed to be. He looked about Leci’s age, maybe a little older, he had a pleasant smile and under any other circumstances she might’ve accepted when he offered to buy her a drink.

    
Instead she threw a hasty ‘no thanks’ his way and stood quickly, making her way through the tightly packed bodies towards the table where the three men were seated.

    
Hesitantly, and still not sure whether or not it was an integral part of the whole them not recognising her aspect, she removed her cap and shoved it into a pocket of her pants, fluffed out her hair as best she could. The dust from the three days of riding had turned it from blonde to a light, mousy brown, she hadn’t had a chance to wash it clean and realised now that even that might be a good thing.

    
She let the thin strap of the tank top slide from one shoulder, it didn’t really expose any extra skin but she figured it was a cute touch.

    
Sidling up to the table, Leci took a deep breath, swallowed her nerves and sat down on the edge, facing one of the men, the least gross one of them all...

Ok, he was still pretty disgusting and looking at him would always make her insides shrivel, make her want to run away crying
,
like the frightened little girl within was begging her to do...

    
But she had to make this believable, right?

    
Right.

    
And that meant hitting on the one of them who was most likely to expect it.

    
Of the three
,
he was the least overweight, greasy, hairy,
smelly, loud... All round least offensive to every sense, with maybe the exception of taste, but she didn’t want to get close enough to find that out.

    
When she sat in his eye line he frowned up at her for a moment, she held her breath, waiting for the flicker of recognition in his eyes, it didn’t come and his annoyance passed, was replaced with a cocky smarm that she instantly hated.

    
She smiled down at him sweetly.
‘Hey there handsome, looking for a good time?’

    
The man sat back in his seat, arms fo
lded across his chest as he eyed
her up and down.

     
‘What you chargin’?’

     Leci licked her lips;
she desperately hoped that her nerves wouldn’t give her away. Her heart felt to be beating too hard and fast, far too loud, couldn’t they hear it? Surely they could... Her palms were clammy, sweaty
,
and she resisted the urge to wipe them on her pants. When she spoke she was careful to control her voice, keep the waver out of it.

    
She glanced over her shoulder at the other two men who were watching with interest and she smiled again, then looked back at the guy in front of her.

     
‘Nothin’ for you, sugar, I like the look of you, but if your friends want a turn too I can maybe play along for a couple of copper coins each.’

    
Such a pitifully low amount was barely worth a thing
,
but she hoped it would be enough to entice them in without allowing them to become too suspicious
,
if she just offered to fuck the lot of them for free
they might wonder what her motive was
.

    
He raised both eyebrows at the offer and looked around her to his buddies for their reactions. Leci almost flinched as a hand reached for her from behind, pinching her ass, accompanied by a grating laugh. She managed to keep still, managed to keep the smile on her face.

    
She heard another voice from behind her, the voice of the one who had cowered in an alleyway at the wrong end of her gun all those years ago. The one who had killed her brother.

     
‘Yeah, why not eh? We ain’t had a better offer so far tonight, though fer the record, sweetheart, yer a little too scrawny for my tastes, I like a little somethin’ to grab onto, bit of meat on the bones.’

    
She very nearly commented that he hadn’t been all that picky the last time
a
round
,
but caught herself before snapping it out and spoiling everything.

    
She slid down from the table, held a hand out to the first one.

     
‘Come with me, I got a room upstairs.’

     
‘La dee dah, upgradin’ from an alley like the usual sluts?’ Laughed the third guy, the one who had caught her
attention at the bar earlier.