Page 34 of Road to Ruin
I wait.
David calls, but I don’t answer. I text him instead, keeping it brief.
I’m alive. Can’t talk now. Everything’s okay. I’ll be back at the house later.
He’s going to be furious that I let West give him the dust off before. He’s going to be even more pissed that I went to see Alex without him. West was right, though. David does tend to run his mouth in tense situations. It was better that I saw him by myself, even if the whole meeting was a waste of time.
Nikita pulls into her driveway at around nine thirty. Pretty late to be getting back from work, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve used my time sitting in the dark well. I now have a number of reasons for us to keep seeing each other, all of them valid, all of them irrefutable. A key turns in the lock. I get up from my seat and walk toward the door, ready to let her know I’m here immediately. I don’t want to surprise her and have her fucking shoot me with her—
What the fuck?
My mind goes blank.
A guy hurries inside the house, a guy I don’t know, and then Mitch Davis, the C.O. from the prison hurries in after him. Nikita is slung over his shoulder, lifeless, like a ragdoll. Mitch sees me first, and his eyes grow wide.
“Tommy.”
“Mitch. What the fuck is going on?”
“Uhhh… Nikki wasn’t feeling well. We were out having a few drinks and she asked us to bring her home, so—”
Lies. He’s lying to me. I can see it all over his face. I can fucking smell it on him. I can also smell something else: excitement turned sour. I know the look of a guilty man. I know the tremble in a scared man’s hand, and I know the look of panic in someone’s eye when they’ve been caught doing something bad. Something very, very bad. “Why don’t you put her down on the sofa,” I say calmly. “I can take it from here.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. If you’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. If she’s sick, someone should be here to take care of her.”
“Fuck this,” the other guy says—the guy I don’t recognize. “There are two of us and one of him, man,” he hisses under his breath. I pretend I didn’t hear him, turning to face him, squinting at him.
“I don’t know you. What’s your name?”
“I’m Manny Barrows. What’s your name, motherfucker?”
“Me? My name is Thomas Kendrick. Tommy to some, but other people have been known to refer to me as Havoc from time to time.”
The mouthy bastard pales. He knows, then. He’s heard of me. He doesn’t sound like he’s from New Orleans, but if he’s been here long enough, he’s probably heard my name whispered quietly in certain circles.
“Oh,” he says.
“Yeah. Oh.”
“Look, we don’t want any trouble,” Mitch says. “Let’s just leave Nikita here with you and we’ll go.”
“Okay. Sounds like a good idea.”
Mitch doesn’t make a move to put Nikita down, though. He looks like he’s about to bolt back out of the door with her. “Look, Tommy, this really isn’t what it looks like…”
“What does it look like?”
Mitch shifts from one foot to the other. “Like…I don’t know. Like something untoward.”
“Put her down on the sofa, Mitch.”
“Fuck.” He cautiously makes his way to the sofa and he tips Nikita over his shoulder, letting her fall onto the cushions with zero care. Motherfucker. Her eyes are open. Her pupils are shot to all hell, blown way bigger than they ought to, obliterating her unique irises altogether. She looks at me, and I can see how panicked and how angry she is. God knows what these punks have given her, but looks like she’s completely paralyzed. My muscles twitch and jump, adrenaline spiking high in my blood stream. My breath is coming in quicker and quicker with each inhalation, but I do my best to hide my agitation. Turning to Mitch, I hold out my hand.
“What?” he asks.
“Her keys. You did just drive up in her car, right? You did just let yourself into her place? So you’ve got her keys.”
