Page 11 of Wicked Things
Oliver’s eyes double in size, surprise transforming his features. “You’re kidding, right? You haven’t done it yet? Why not?”
“Because. We just haven’t. Things have been crazy here at the hospital, and…” And I pushed the ultrasound back. I’m just not ready to do it yet. Honestly, I’m afraid. I work in a place where pregnant woman get told their unborn children have heart defects, genetic disorders, tumors, and other malformations every single day of the week. This knowledge is bearable normally. If we catch things during the early stages of pregnancy, occasionally problems can be fixed. But sometimes that’s not the case. I’ve been panicking for weeks about the moment the technician lays the ultrasound wand against my belly and that small, barely-there frown potentially forms between her eyebrows. The one that signals there’s a problem. I’m not ready to face that yet.
“You’re crazy!” Oliver shakes his head, as if trying to clear it. He takes hold of me by the hand. “Come on. No more of that bullshit. Let’s go do it now. I’m patient-free for the next hour or so, and—” He’s already pulling me down the corridor toward the elevators.
“Oliver?”
“Sloane. You’re being fucking weird. I know you. I know what this is about, and I can promise you now—”
I jerk my hand free from his, anchoring on the brakes. “No. No, youcan’tpromise me now,” I say, my voice flat. “You can’t make promises. That’s not in our job description. And besides…” I sigh, looking the other way, back down the corridor, not wanting to look him in the eye. “Zeth’s going to be with me the first time we see the baby, Oliver. Imagine how you’d feel if your girlfriend went and had an ultrasound and saw your baby for the first time without you.”
Silence prevails for a second. Oliver’s sneakers squeak as he shifts his stance, then he clears his throat. “Well, damn. You’re right. I wasn’t even thinking. I’m sorry.”
It takes me a moment to face him again. I’m a coward. I hate conflict, and more than that, I hate hurting people. I can see by the look on his face that Oliver is hurt by what I’ve said, and it makes me feel sick in a whole new, even more uncomfortable way. “I’m not trying to be a jerk,” I whisper. “ It’s just…”
My friend closes his eyes, flaring his nostrils. “Sloane, I get it. Of course you’d want to share that with Zeth. I clearly just haven’t had enough coffee yet today. My synapses aren’t firing.” His lips pull into a tight white line. “Just don’t put it off forever, okay. Everything will be fine. You’re missing all the fun developmental stuff.”
“Thanks, Olly.”
He raps his knuckles against his clipboard, nodding. “All right. Well, I’ve just remembered I have some paperwork to catch up on. So…I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Sure.”
He walks away, head bowed, his shoulders tensed. He hurries off, and I get the feeling he’d actually break into a run if he thought I wouldn’t notice.
FIVE
ZETH
The Italians aren’t like normal crime bosses. Their loyalties and family connections are complicated, confusing, and as changeable as the wind. One second a player will be sided with one family, willing to steal, kill, fight and die for them. One perceived, ridiculous slight later and they’re defecting to pledge their allegiance to another family—a family that, until only days before, they would have burned down half the city to avoid or outright attack.
In the same vein, their bosses can sometimes sleep with their wives, kill their children, raze their businesses to the ground, and still nothing can cause them to deviate from their paths. They’re a strange, incestuous bunch. You’d need a series of fucking venn diagrams to even begin to understand Italian politics. I don’t hold for charts and hearsay, though. I have Michael. Over the past few weeks, he’s been watching… waiting…
I’ve been preoccupied with Sloane and the baby, so I haven’t been riding him for information every five seconds like I might have done otherwise. But still… I haven’t forgotten. You don’t come into my city and attack me without consequence. You don’t burn down my home without there being a price to pay. I have no idea who the Barbieri family sent to Seattle to do their dirty work, but I aim on finding out exactly who lit that match. I’m just hoping it was one of the sons. Both Theo and Sal are bad news. Worse than bad news; they’re ill omens. Harbingers of chaos and ruin. It would suit me down to the fucking ground if I got to take both of them out on this trip. I’d sleep better at night knowing they weren’t out there, even on the other side of the country, plotting and planning, generally causing trouble.
I stand in the arrivals lounge of JFK airport, questioning my own sanity. Is it madness to go and collect this bag from Sandra? She was on the flight—handed me scotch on the rocks at regular intervals with a benign smile on her face, until I told her to leave me the fuck alone—so I know she’s around here somewhere. I can picture it now, though: Sandra approaching from the other end of baggage claim, inappropriately high heels making obnoxious, loud clicking sounds on the polished flooring as she bee-lines straight for me, airport security flanking her like the motherfucking Gestapo. And my response? I couldn’t turn and run from the bastards. I’d rather fucking die. I don’t even know if I’m lying to myself at the moment. Things have changed so much for me in the past few months. There was a time when I would have grabbed Sandra, sliced her neck open from ear to ear for fucking with me. Just to make a point. But now… Sloane’s changed everything. I used to wake up, covered in sweat, panicking, my heart pounding out of my chest from fighting off the demons in my sleep. These days I wake up, my heart barely beating at all, paralyzed, pinned to the mattress. Fear used to be something I embraced. I knew it intimately. I could use it to my advantage. The adrenalin fear brought would sharpen my senses. I could see better, hear better, think faster, react so quickly I wouldn’t even realize I’d made a decision to move until the action was complete. Now I second-guess everything, because there are consequences I have to live with. If I slit Sandra’s throat, it won’t be as simple as me heading directly back to Chino, or whatever hell on earth equivalent they have here on the east coast. It won’t just be the loss of my freedom I’ll have to endure.
There are two other people I have to consider.
Sloane on her own…
My child, without my protection…
The prospect of either of those eventualities is enough to fuck up my sleep pattern altogether.
“Mr. Mayfair?”
I jump, my nerve endings alight, my fists ready to swing. Sandra Wilder is standing next to me with a bottle of Bruichladdich scotch in a clear plastic duty free bag swinging from her index finger. She grins at me, baring her teeth in the weirdest way. I still maintain that there’s something fucked up about this woman. She’s not quite right. She’s…unhinged.The photos of her kids that were taped to her computer monitor were a little odd, too, though. Three bland looking children wearing horrible Christmas sweaters, all with the same buck teeth and vacant, glassy eyes. They were carbon copies of their mother, robotic-looking and bizarre. Maybe it’s in their genes. How unfortunate.
I don’t know how she snuck up on me, but I’m not fucking happy about. I growl under my breath, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. “Someone needs to put a fucking bell on you, woman.”
She laughs. She laughs like I’ve just told a joke, and the sad part is that I’m deadly serious. “Come on. Your bag’s being kept to one side in oversized luggage. If I go with you, they’ll hand it over without a fuss.”
“Let’s just get this over with.” I’m beginning to regret not just buying a new gun here in New York. The inconvenience would have added an extra day, but there would have been none of this bullshit creeping around the airport, holding my breath. I love that goddamn Desert Eagle, though. I feel like I’m administering righteous justice every time I pull the motherfucking trigger.
I follow Sandra across the airport. A short, olive-skinned guy grunts unhappily as he hands over my bag. Like the baggage he handles, he is oversized and oddly shaped, wide-hipped and narrow shouldered, squeezed from the top like a tube of toothpaste. His hair is abnormally thick and perfect—definitely a hairpiece. I mean, why bother with vanity when the rest of you looks like that?
I sling the duffel bag’s strap over my head, resisting the urge to check inside and make sure everything is where it ought to me.
