Page 35 of Dirty
“You know pointing a gun at someone is still a criminal offence, even if it isn’t loaded?”
“Like you care about the law!” She laughed, hard laughter, full of anxiety and worry, devoid of any humor. “Just give me a gun, Fix. I’ll give it back to you in a couple of hours, I swear.”
“I don’t want a weapon handed back to me after it’s been used to commit a felony. I’d rather you threw it into a lake or a quarry, like every other half-witted would-be murderer in this country.”
“Whatever! I won’t give it back, then. I’ll get rid of it. Just…give me the damn gun, Fix!”
“Do you even know how toholda gun?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s got a handle and I trigger. I think I’ll figure it out.”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on instead? Maybe I can help.”
“If, by help, you mean put a bullet in the back of someone’s head for me, then yeah. Maybe youcanhelp.” She said this flippantly—an off-the-cuff remark that didn’t mean anything to her. She wasn’t serious in the slightest. If only she knew…
Sera’s eyes unfocused, her body stiffening as she looked out of the window over my shoulder. I followed her gaze; an old red Chevy was pulling up the driveway, rust pockmarking the paintwork, and a considerable dent in the driver’s side door panel. The car had seen better days, and so had its driver. A guy in his mid-fifties sat behind the wheel, his dark hair slicked back, thinning on top badly enough that the top of his shiny head was easily visible. When he got out of the car, handing his keys off to the valet slash bellboy with a flourish, as if his ride was a brand new Tesla, I made a quick assessment of him. Scuffed brown leather shoes. Yellowing shirt underneath a faded blue suit that looked like it last saw the light of day in the seventies. The man, of course, was Sixsmith Lafferty, Sera’s father. I knew as much, but I kept my mouth shut.
Sera had turned a deathly pale white, her face bleached of all color. “Shit.” She took a step back away from the window and nearly knocked over a small walnut side table that was laden with flowers and a large bowl, containing chocolates wrapped in gold foil. I grabbed hold of her by the arm, steadying her.
“Time to tell me what the fuck’s going on,” I said. “Does that man mean something to you? Is he the reason you want a gun?”
Sera looked like she’d shrunk to about half her regular size. There was so much fight and fire in her when she was confronting me, but right now, she looked like she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. Gareth had said Sera’s father had touched her. The slice on her jaw wasn’t confirmation of that, but it was almost certainly confirmation that he’d been violent with her. I had to turn myself to stone as Sera let out a ragged breath, scanning the hallway from left to right; it looked like she was searching for an escape route.
“That’s Sixsmith,” she said, her voice three octaves higher than normal. “He’s my father. We don’t…we don’t see eye-to-eye.”
From what I knew of Sixsmith Lafferty, he didn’t see eye to eye with many people. He was the lowest of the low. Scum of the earth. A worthless, violent, disgusting piece of trash that needed putting down. “You’re sweating, Sera.” I reached out and touched her forehead, contemplating the wet pads of my fingers before I carefully slid them into my mouth.
“God, now really isn’t the time, Fix,” Sera panted.
I angled my head to one side, studying her. “I’ve tasted your ecstasy. I’ve tasted your anger. I wanted to know what your fear tasted like.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Then why are you shaking?”
Sera opened her mouth. She had something to say, but…nothing came out. I wanted to scoop her into my arms and press her into me. I wanted to hold so her tight, she didn’t need to breathe anymore. I wanted to protect her, even when protecting her would only cause more hurt and anguish. “If you really want a gun, I’ll give you one,” I whispered. “But you threatening him…do you really think you could do it?”
Sera’s expression hardened, turning to molten steel. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“I can guess. But, when you take on that kind of violence… it taints you. It transforms you. You think you’ll just point a gun at him and he’ll go away? That’s not how men like him work. They love confrontation. They love seeing the terror in their victim’s eyes. They’re excited by it. Violence begets violence, Sera. If you’re not willing to actually follow through and pull that trigger, to make him go away for real, he’ll know. He’ll see it in your eyes.”
“Then…urgh!WhatamIsupposedtodo?” Her words ran into each other, frustration and panic rearing their ugly heads. Her chest was rising and falling too rapidly; she was on the brink of an anxiety attack, and it was within my power to stop it. I didn’t need to hand her a weapon and allow her to face her Sixsmith alone. I could take care of him for her easily enough, but then there’d be no closure for Sera. The whole thing was complicated, and growing more and more complicated by the day. If I were smart, I would take the bastard out to the small copse of trees at the rear of the hotel, and I’d dig my thumbs into his eye sockets until he was dead. No noisy gunshots to alert the hotel patrons of something untoward. No real mess. There’d be a bit of blood, but not as much as there had been with Franz back in Liberty Fields. Killing Sixsmith with my bare hands would feel like justice. It would be a brutal death, and yet it would still be far kinder than that sick, depraved motherfucker deserved.
“Just…let me take care of him, Sera. You don’t want him here? Fine. I’ll make him leave. You should go and get ready. The ceremony’s going to start soon, right?”
Sera inhaled sharply, her eyebrows rising up her forehead. She hadn’t expected me to make an offer like that. Making a joke out of me killing her dad was one thing, but apparently the concept that I might handle the situation in another way hadn’t occurred to her.
“You can’t,” she whispered. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“Why not?” I smirked. “Haven’t I made your life miserable since we met? Don’t I owe you a favor or two?”
Suspicion flared in Sera’s eyes, but the tension that had been radiating off her dissipated a little. “You think telling my father to leave a party will absolve you of your guilt, then fine…go ahead. Make him leave. But…”
“But I’m still an evil piece of shit, and you’re never going to trust or forgive me. Don’t worry. I got it.”
Her smile was wobbly as I left her standing there by the window. Lafferty had probably entered the building by now. The valet had immediately moved his car from outside the hotel, probably so no one would see the broken down beater, so he’d been free to enter and make himself comfortable. Only, when I lapped the lobby, squeezing through the crowd, handing out tight-lipped smiles to everyone who tried to say hello or stop me, I couldn’t find Sera’s father anywhere.
I slipped out the front, searching for him, but he was nowhere to be see—
