Page 24 of Freaks
“Motherfucker! You broke my damn nose!” the guy roared.
“I did warn you.” None of the guy’s friends intervened as I stepped over the asshole, holding out my hand to Sera, firing a lethal warning gaze around the group just in case they got any ideas about touching her. None of them were that fucking stupid apparently.
“We paid for this entire space tonight, man,” one of them spat. “This is a private party.”
“Five guys standing around a bottle of Cuervo with your dicks in your hands? Not much of a party if you ask me.” I didn’t stop to argue with them further. I knew where Rabbit was, and by the whirring of that security camera up on ground level, he knew where we were, too. Right now, he was either armoring up or he was trying to flee the fucking building, and neither of those were good options. I didn’t bring Sera here for her to get blasted in the stomach by a shot gun, and I wasn’t wearing the right kind of footwear to go chasing after someone through a network of winding catacombs, either.
We left the black suits behind, and I lead the way to Rabbit’s private booth, keeping an ear out for anything that sounded like a weapon being primed. My ears pricked just before we reached the velvet rope that had cordoned off Rabbit’s booth. The sound that snagged so aggressively at my attention wasn’t that of a gun being cocked. It was a voice. A voice I knew really fucking well.
“Seriously. Just let me do the talking. He won’t get mad atme.”
I stopped a couple of footsteps away from the arched entrance to the booth. “What…the…fuck?”
Sera paused right behind me; obviously she’d heard the same voice. “Why would she be here?” she asked.
I had no idea. I literally hadnofucking idea, but it complicated matters. I ground my teeth together, stepping into the room, already horrified and prepared for what I knew I would find. Rabbit sat at the same booth he’d occupied when he asked me to go to The Barrows, and next to him sat a woman wearing a pair of blue nurse’s scrubs. Last time I’d seen her, she’d been wearing a nun’s habit, eating a slice of pizza.
She looked at me, defiance shining in her eyes, her blonde hair wound up in a messy knot on the crown of her head. “Monica,” I said tightly, flaring my nostrils. “Guess I should have expected something like this. You two seem to have grown close of late.” I’d overlooked it until now—she’d had my invite to Rabbit’s party in her possession the other day. She’d known he was angry with me back in her apartment. And Rabbit had let slip that she’d told him of the predicament Sera and I faced, too. These separate pieces of information had been clues, clear indicators that Monica had been spending an unusual amount of time with Rabbit, and I was only putting those pieces together now. How fucking stupid of me.
I hadn’t been paying attention to her. I’d dropped the ball as far as she was concerned. I’d taken my eye off her, and this is where she’d ended up.
Monica shifted awkwardly in her seat. She lifted her chin, angling her jaw, preparing for war. “I know why you’re here, Felix, and—”
“Youdo?” I couldn’t hide my incredulity. “You know he sent someone to worm his way in with me, to get inside my home? To fucking kill the woman I’m in love with?”
Pain flickered in her eyes, a brief shadow, there one second, gone the next. “I did what I thought was right,” she said quietly. “This girl’s been screwing you up from day one. Youdon’tlove her. She’s manipulating you. You read that file. She is not the innocent party. She saw a way to bargain for her life and she took it. Don’t be stupid enough to think—”
“You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about,” I hissed. Sera had been standing behind me since we entered the room, but now she stepped around me, her expression transformed from wariness to outright fury.
“Who the fuck do you think you are? You don’t know me. You know nothing about me. You read a bunch of fabricated bullshit some psychoemailedto you, and you decided it was enough to sign my death warrant. This is the biggest pile of horse shit I’ve ever heard!”
It didn’t take much to send Monica spiraling into the depths of a complete breakdown on a normal day; Sera’s verbal assault was like pouring gasoline onto an already out of control forest fire. Monica picked up the empty glass in front of her, swung back her arm and launched it at Sera, screaming at the top of her lungs. “You’ve ruined everything! He’s supposed to be helpingme, not you!”
I’d considered Monica might worry that I was no longer going to try and find the son of a bitch who attacked her, but I’d summarily dismissed the thought out of hand. We’d spent the better part of five years trying to hunt the fucker down. It made no sense to me that she’d think I’d stop looking now, foranyreason. I hadn’t taken into account the fact that Monica wasn’t exactly rational most of the time, and didn’t think rationally either, though.
The glass sailed passed Sera’s head, shattering against the wall by the bar. Sera surveyed the broken glass on the ground, then slowly began to walk toward the table where Monica and Rabbit were sitting.
Oh shit.
If there was one thing I generally tried to avoid, it was watching a woman getting her hair ripped out at the fucking root. I placed a hand on Sera’s elbow, but she shot me a look that could have stripped paint. “I’m not going to hurt her,” she said.
I believed her. I couldn’t say that Monica wasn’t going to try and hurt, Sera, though. I took the cups of coffee from her, moving beside her until we reached the table, where I placed them down in front of Rabbit. Sera folded her arms across her chest, glaring at Monica with the intensity of a thousand burning suns. “I would never take him away from you,” she said harshly. “I’d help you, too, Monica, if you gave me the fucking opportunity. But you’ve been rude, aggressive and shitty to me since the moment we met. I’mnotevil. I didn’t do the things it said I did in that dossier. When my mother died, I lost everything.Everything,” she said, her voice cracking. “And I would never hurt my sister. She’s the only true family I have left. I love her more than you will ever know. I’ve done some terrible things, and I’ve had equally terrible things done to me. I understand the living, breathing pain that exists inside you more than you realize. But if you ever throw anything at me again, I will make you fucking regret it. Do you understand me?”
The fight evaporated from Monica’s eyes. She looked at me, and then back at Sera, her chin wobbling.
“Jesus Christ,” Rabbit spat. “What is this, a fucking Hallmark Special? Mentally damaged girls learn to love and trust one another? Get the fuck out of my house, Fix, and take both of your bitches with you. I think they’re menstruating or something.”
A cold, steely fist clenched in my stomach. Now wasnotthe fucking time to be ironing out relationship kinks with Monica and Sera, I was well aware of that, but Rabbit had run out of hall passes with me. If he’d known any better, he would have kept his fat mouth shut and prayed to whatever deity he held dear that I’d forget he even fucking existed. His arrogance knew no bounds, though. He had friends in high places, had more money than god. In short, he thought he was fucking invincible.
I smiled at him tightly, and Monica’s face turned the color of ash. “I came to have coffee with you, though, Rabbit. You wanted it so fucking badly. You put me through hell to punish me for forgetting, right? Now you don’t want it?” Pulling out a chair for Sera, I sat myself down in front of Rabbit, then I slid one of the coffee cups across the table toward the hacker. He blinked at it, as if trying to process what was really happening here. Taking hold of the coffee cup, he lifted one of his shoulders in a blasé, off the cuff shrug.
“Might be a little too late now, don’t you think?” He took a sip and wrinkled his nose. “It’s fucking cold, man.”
“Just drink it,” I snarled. I took a sip myself and made a show of enjoying it a little too much. “Mmm, that’s a fucking delicious beverage. While I’m here, Rabbit, you’ll be happy to know I procured that item you were looking for.” Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the thumb drive and slapped it onto the table. I laughed, the sound tinged with a hysteria that even I recognized as borderline insane. “Care to tell me what’s on this, now that we’ve dispensed with the subterfuge?”
Rabbit looked at me closely, narrowing his eyes. “My guys aren’t far, yknow. All I have to do is shout for them, and they’ll come running.”
“I doubt either of those fat pieces of shit can run,” I said airily. “Go ahead, though. Call them if you think you need their protection. I’m just sitting here, enjoying a coffee and a conversation with a friend.”
