The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (11 page)

Gary had a wild side to him and a darkness that Reece understood all too well. The two of them played chicken with death and skirted the law like old-world gangsters. Two weeks ago, they’d taken their dirt bikes into the Superstition Mountains and ridden Graybel’s Pass, trails no sane person would attempt. For good reason. The pass hugged the ragged edge of the mountainside so close that Reece had skidded off a drop that had come damn close to killing him. Again.

He hadn’t told Roxanne about that. He hadn’t told anyone.

He and Gary had had a good old laugh after he’d recovered, but really, Reece hadn’t thought it was so funny. Dying was scary business, even for him, and he didn’t like to fuck around so close to its edge. And honestly, hadn’t some part of him wondered whether Gary had given him a little push just to see what would happen?

It hadn’t mattered enough for him to say something, though. For the first time, Reece actually felt like someone
got
him. A friend in a world where he had few.

Now he didn’t know what he felt. Seeing
Chancellor
attached to Gary’s name sent a cold chill down Reece’s spine, the first inkling that Gary was more—or
less—
than he’d led Reece to believe.

Chancellor. The officious title didn’t bode well. Nor did it fit the rebellious fuck-you attitude Gary wore with the same negligence he did his clothes. Reece glanced over his shoulder, weighing the pros and cons of knocking or simply walking away. But he doubted the two
escorts
who’d brought him here would let him go. They said he wasn’t a prisoner, but he sure didn’t feel like a guest.

The door opened before Reece could make up his mind, and Gary stood on the other side. “Cold feet?” he asked with a smile.

Reece entered the room, pretending that he wasn’t freaked out by this meeting. He still felt foggy when he
thought of how he’d come to be here. Death had a way of clouding his memory and making him doubt what he recalled.

“Sit down, Reece,” Gary said now.

The first time Reece had ever seen Gary, his brain had coughed up an unlikely comparison: Colin Farrell meets Brad Pitt. He had all the rough edges of a shattered whiskey bottle with the smooth charisma of a consummate player. He could coax a smile out of you an instant before he cut your throat. He seemed to operate under a very strict code of principles—the likes of which Reece still didn’t understand.

They’d met during a pickup game of hoops, and at first Reece had thought him a kindred spirit. Gary had seemed dangerous, wild, troubled. But here, behind that door marked
Chancellor,
he seemed disturbingly mild and frighteningly controlled. The contrast of the two impressions made Reece feel like a tightrope walker, poised over a bottomless pit.

Gary crossed his arms and leaned against a battered desk, flexing his tattoos—Christ bleeding out on a cross. The Virgin Mary sobbing over her slain, bloody son. Jesus looking heavenward with an expression of sorrow and betrayal as scarlet drops oozed from the puncture marks made by his thorny crown. Not exactly badass, but against Gary’s pasty white skin, the three holy tattoos gave an impression of menace.

Reece slouched into the chair on the other side of
the desk, feeling like an errant schoolboy in the principal’s office—trying to look cool when his insides burned like they were on fire.

“A bit on the pissed side, are you?” Gary said. He had a distinctive voice, gravelly and overlaid by an unidentifiable accent. At times it sounded Irish, but at other times it took on a peculiar quality that gave it a harsh and atonal inflection.

“Pissed?” Reece asked, lifting his chin in challenge. “Why the fuck did you bring me here?”

Gary’s eyes crinkled at the corners, too benevolent to be trusted. “Well you sure as hell couldn’t have walked, could you, now?”

“Maybe because you put a bullet in my chest.”

Gary threw back his head and laughed. For reasons Reece would never understand, Gary’s laughter always made him want to join in. Even now. Now, when it scared him.

At last Gary’s amusement died down and he wiped a tear from his eye. “If you could’ve seen your face when I pulled the trigger,” he said, shaking his head. “You were all,
whatthefuck
?”

His voice rose an octave and he burst into a fresh bout of mirth. Reece sat very still, waiting. Afraid. It was a new emotion for him. Never dying had a way of making scary things seem like no big deal.

So why was he terrified out of his fucking mind right now?

At last, Gary gave a final chuckle and exhaled softly. In a mild, almost musical brogue, he said, “I wasn’t trying to kill you, Reece. I was protecting you. Do you see that?”

“No. No, I don’t fucking see that. I see a lunatic laughing his ass off over planting a round in my fucking heart. That’s what I see.”

Reece lurched to his feet. His wound had already begun to heal, but he was still sore, still felt as if a cast-iron skillet had passed through his chest instead of a bullet.

“You shot the
dishwasher,
Gary. Manny was harmless. Innocent.”

Gary nodded sympathetically. “That was a tragedy,” he agreed. “But I was only trying to save you, Reece.”

“From a disabled dishwasher?”

“I didn’t intend to shoot him, but he caught me by surprise. Don’t worry, though. He’s doing fine.”

“He’s alive?”

“Yes, yes. I’m no murderer. That would be a sin, wouldn’t it? Your boy is upstairs in the infirmary.”

“He’s
here
?”

Gary smiled. “The other two as well. What are their names? Jim, Sal? I couldn’t leave them behind, defenseless, any more than I could
you.
”

“What about my sister?”

Gary gave him a look from the corner of his eye. “What about her?”

Reece’s blood felt thick and cold. He chased this question around in his head, trying to peer through the veil of his unconscious self that night, trying to see what had happened after he’d been shot. But he got nothing—nothing that made sense anyway. Just before he’d slipped away, he’d thought he’d seen . . .
ogres
. Huge ones, hunched and hideous, coming through the door in single file. He knew he couldn’t really have seen them, but the images stuck with him, as if burned into his retinas. And they rubbed against something deep in his subconscious—something dark and sequestered. He couldn’t imagine what it might be, but it added an edge to the jittery angst in his gut.

“Did you hurt my sister?” he asked, his voice low, shaking. His lips stiff.

Gary shook his head, then spoke the word “No” so there’d be no misunderstanding.

Reece wanted to stand tall. To look imperturbable. But his knees gave a desperate wobble of relief and he sat again. He’d been convinced his stupidity had finally caused irreparable harm to his sister. Gary watched him with those pale eyes, noting his every move. Cataloguing Reece’s weakness.

“I want out,” Reece managed at last.

“Sure, sure and didn’t I expect that?” Gary said. “But first let me explain.”

Reece glared at him.
Explain?
He thought he
could
explain
the clusterfuck that had happened in the pub’s kitchen?

“You were supposed to rob it, Gary. Nothing else. Get the money, get out.”

“Aye,” Gary said. “That I was.”

Reece raised his brows and waited, his heart beating hard and fast. The feeling of standing at the brink of something both great and terrible swelled up in his chest, making it difficult to breathe. Goose bumps raised on his arms and a shiver wanted to dance down his spine. Gritting his teeth, Reece fought it.

“But you see,” Gary went on after a pause that felt so much longer than the second that passed. “I wasn’t after the money, was I?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve known me now for a month or two. Isn’t that right?”

Reece nodded warily.

“In that time, have you ever known me to give a flying fuck about
money
?”

“You said you needed it,” Reece insisted stubbornly.

“No, my boy.
You
needed it.
You
dug yourself an early grave with your bookie, didn’t you now?” Gary leaned in, threatening. “Answer me. Did you really think I’d steal just to turn a buck?”

“Ten thousand bucks,” Reece said.

“Oh, it was quite a bit more than that.”

Surprised, Reece asked, “How much more?”

Gary gave him a cryptic shrug. “It doesn’t matter. Not to me.”

Reece wanted to press, but he kept quiet, flicking his gaze over the three bulging Christs inked on Gary’s white skin. He’d seen Gary kick the shit out of a man who’d been fingered as a rapist, but not convicted. He’d seen him stuff a hundred-dollar bill into the collection bucket in front of St. Mary’s. And he’d seen him smile when he’d pulled the trigger and shot Reece dead center. But no, he’d never seen him steal, and he’d never seemed short on cash, though Reece had no idea what he did for a living. Something connected to
Chancellor,
evidently.

“So where’s the money?” Reece asked.

“Someplace safe.”

“I want my cut.”

“So your bookie doesn’t decide to chop you into tiny pieces.”

Yeah. Because of that.

Gary’s smile was knowing. “I’ve taken care of your problem with that man and his associates.”

“Taken care of it, how?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

When Reece opened his mouth to say,
It matters to me
, Gary stopped him.

“Why do you think I shot you, Reece?” he asked.

“Fuck if I know,” Reece mumbled.

“Do you remember when we met? You asked me what I did and I told you I search.”

But he hadn’t said what he searched for.

Reece stared at him, unsmiling. “Is there a point to this?”

“You know I’m a religious man.”

Reece’s snort of breath was his only answer.

“Yes, I’m supposing that’s obvious. But perhaps you don’t fully grasp just how strong my faith is or what, exactly, I believe in.”

Reece felt his breath catch as he watched Gary. There could only be one reason why Gary would bring up his faith. He was one of the psycho assholes who’d been stalking the Love family with their pointing fingers and their condemnations. As angry as Reece was, as confused and uncertain, the realization hurt all the same. He’d trusted this man. He’d called him a friend—and Reece didn’t have many of those. Now he realized the full range of his own idiocy.

Reece pushed out of the chair again. Furious. Gary waved him down with a casual flick of his fingers.

“Hear me out. You might be interested in what I have to say. I told you the truth. I’m here to protect you, Reece.”

“By shooting me? Fuck you, Gary.”

“I knew you wouldn’t die. You’ve survived worse, haven’t you, Reece? But I had to get you out of there.”

“Out of my family’s restaurant because . . . why? It’s a hotbed of terror?”

“There’s someone coming for you, Reece,” he said. “Someone a hell of a lot more dangerous than I am.”

“What the fuck are you smoking?”

Gary gave him a tight smile, reached for a remote, and turned on a small television/VCR combo—the kind that used to be popular ten or fifteen years ago when people still recorded things on VHS. Reece watched with angry disinterest as a grainy newscast came on the screen. Numb, he watched it play out.

Roxanne. Gunshots. Gone, with a cop named Santo Castillo who wasn’t a cop anymore. The guy who’d sat in the back and smelled of trouble.

Stunned, he looked at Gary as he clicked the remote and turned the recorded newscast off.

“Who is he?” Reece demanded.

“A more appropriate question would be,
What is he
?” Gary answered calmly, crossing his arms and flexing all his Jesuses at Reece. “He’s not a man at all. He’s a hunter and he’s got your sister right now. Sit down, Reece. It’s time to talk about monsters.”

S
anto realized the confession had been coming since he’d looked into her startling eyes and filled his senses with her elusive scent. He’d come to her world to deceive and devour her, but after meeting her in the flesh, all of his preconceived assumptions had been destroyed. His purpose had changed so drastically that he didn’t even understand it himself. All he knew was that he didn’t want to add fresh lies to the old. He’d turned a corner when he’d kissed her, when he’d touched her. But he’d turned it blindly. He didn’t know what happened next.

Was that disappointment he saw on her face or disbelief? Would one be better than the other? How could he navigate from this perilous point back into her arms? He zipped his duffel, so far out of his depth that
he didn’t know what to say. He’d thought there would be more time before he had to explain. Time to dice the information and dole out only the bits he thought vital.

No, that wasn’t true. He hadn’t expected to explain at all. He was a reaper. He didn’t give explanations. He came. He took. He left.