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So, in point of fact, I was sending this girl back to her criminal parents to be imprisoned for the rest of her life.
Well, fuck.
I scowled at her in the mirror again, my attention divided between the dark highway dotted with headlights and her worried expression. “Why are you just now telling me this?”
“Because you’re an asshole,” she said like that was obvious. “I didn’t figure you’d care… at first.”
“At first?”
Another quick look revealed her discomfort. “You haven’t actually hurt me. Like, you’re rude as fuck, and you threaten me every five minutes, but you haven’t hurt me. I know what cruelty looks like. It’s not you. I guess I figured it was worth trying to appeal to your… human nature.”
A distinctly human emotion melted in my chest like butter on a pancake. “You had it right at asshole.”
She huffed a laugh. “Yeah, but you’re an asshole with a code. Like Geralt from ‘The Witcher.’”
I quirked a brow. “‘The Witcher?’”
“Yeah, you’re all gruff and shit, but you don’t hurt innocent people.”
I thought about that for a second. It wasn’t entirely true—I’d hurt innocent people plenty of times. But when I had, it had never truly been intentional. Most often, it was an innocent who got caught in the crossfire. Anyone I had intentionally maimed, tortured, or killed had deserved it. And I’d go back and do it again—every one of them. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but your sad story doesn’t change anything,” I replied with soft callousness.
She slumped in her seat. “Yeah. I figured. What’s my commission up to?”
“Two mil,” I said quietly.
Mattie sniffed thickly, like she was trying to smell something. “I can smell their desperation from here.”
“You know what I smell?”
“Two million crisp dollar bills?” she guessed.
“And a yacht, maybe.”
Mattie coughed, nodding in resignation. “Yeah.” After a pause, she added, “I could pay you more.”
I felt my brows lift in surprise. “What?”
“Even if I succeed in doing what I want—in taking down my parents and sending them to jail where they belong—I’m still an heiress. The properties they bought me after my eighteenth birthday, my stock holdings, my assets, they all belong to me. I can pay you double what they’re offering if you help me.”
I chewed on her words, digesting what she was saying. She was offering me four million dollars to switch sides. I scratched my upper lip, thinking. “As interesting as that is,” I replied slowly, cautiously, “I’m not sure I believe you.”
Mattie glared. “Right. Why would you?”
“Right,” I agreed mildly.
It was better to disappoint her now than to give her false hope. I needed to think this through—I needed more information and a clearer look at whatever was going on with the Thornes and Mattie. I wasn’t going to just shove her into her parents’ arms without knowing the facts, but I wasn’t about to pull over and let Mattie go, either. There were other links missing from this chain, and I wanted them all put together before I made a decision.
I took Exit 63 toward Sunnyside and made my way through a dark, sleepy town toward the pharmacy I had pulled up on my phone. She needed medicine and I needed fresh air to think. If what Mattie had just told me was true, then I needed a moment to think and talk to Tabitha about digging into the truth of Mattie’s accusations. Then again, Tabitha was en route with a van to meet us in Salt Lake City, so she was a bit tied up herself.
I spared Mattie a look in the mirror and found her forehead leaning against the passenger side window in the back seat as she stared at the pitch black around us. She looked pale, and her cracked lips were parted as she breathed a little too quickly. Whatever virus she had, it wasn’t going easy on her. “That’s what you get for dragging me through the river,” I muttered to myself.
“I heard that,” she replied sourly.
I fought a smile. She kept doing that—pulling amusement out of me when there should have been only steely resolve with a hint of resentment. I had crafted that mask so perfectly, it felt real most days. But strangely, with Mattie around, it felt more suffocating than protective.
I navigated the mostly dark, small town, passing a few fast-food restaurants with muted lights casting neon halos around the abandoned streets, and finally found the pharmacy. There were only ten minutes until closing, so I pulled into a parking spot as I asked, “Can I trust you enough to come in with me quietly?”
She nodded, rolling her head against the window. “Yeah, whatever.”
