Page 82 of Waging War
“Hazel,” Jackie greets her. I’ll be damned if he doesn’t sound a little nervous.
“You’re lucky I don’t gut you where you stand,” she spits.
Loose brown hair waves over half her face, exposing a single eye, and in the dim light, she looks menacing and powerful.
Their strengths are well matched, but now’s not exactly the best time to put them to the test.
Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he considers her for a moment. “Your father is alive because of me, hoodlum. A thank you would be appreciated.”
I blink at him. “Have you lost your mind?”
Eyes wide, she clutches the comforter to her body before bounding across the room with a war cry reverberating her chest.
“Wait!” I snag her, narrowly avoiding the knife she wields as I snag her arm and pull her to me.
My hellraiser thrashes against me, barely covering her body as I try to restrain her.
“Fuck you,” she seethes at Jackie.
He grins. “You two are a match made in Heaven.”
“How did you find us?” I ask.
Jackie casually flicks a piece of lint from his coat. “I drove past Lucky’s on my way here and saw that the bar’s been burned down. I know you stay at this motel occasionally, so I thought I’d check here first.”
So much for the clerk keeping quiet.
“That, and you left her motorcycle beside your truck.” He pauses. “Are you honestly that stupid… or just that desperate?”
Hazel sneers, “You’re a bastard.”
“Never pretended to be anything but, sugar.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask. “I find it hard to believe that you’d go out of your way just to threaten me.”
“Oh, this,” he says, motioning between me and Hazel, “is the least of your worries, Benjamin.”
I lean down to grab Hazel’s shirt and hand it to her, followed by her pants and boots. She glares at Jackie for a moment before brushing past us to the bathroom, donning the clothes quickly.
“What’s wrong?” After sliding my shirt on, I begin adding weapons to the straps inside my boots and the holster around my jeans.
“Bruce called. He wants us to report to the precinct.”
Interesting that he called Jackie, but not me. Does that mean he doesn’t trust me as much as I need him to?
The hammer’s finally dropped, shattering every perfect dream I’d been having before he showed up. “Why?”
He clicks his tongue. “I don’t know, but something doesn’t feel right.”
“Fuck.”
Dread coils as my sleeping demons wake. Their whispering cackles rise to the point that I’m forced to cast my eyes away. How stupid of me to believe I might be rid of them for good.
I cram my hands through my hair. “Whatever this is, it’s not good.”
Jackie nods, and the fact that he agrees does nothing but unsettle me further.
“I’ll be waiting outside. Say your goodbyes and let’s get a move on,” he says with a pointed finger.
