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I did, however, hear voices coming from the offices.
Tony appeared from up top, to look down on me, while the door opened and Nickie stepped out, flanked by two of Tony’s men, including the one who had first questioned me. I saw they were all armed, and I felt weak and defenseless for not having a gun of my own.
I caught Nickie’s eye and smiled, but she didn’t return the expression. I shouldn’t be surprised. I guessed this new experience hadn’t warmed her to me at all.
“I’m here to talk, Tony,” I called, keeping my hands in the air. “I’ve come alone and unarmed. Please don’t shoot, and I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I warned you what would happen if you came near me again,” he said.
“I’m here, at your mercy. Do whatever you want with me, but I couldn’t just give up on my sister. She’s the only family I have.”
“Does that mean you want to take me up on my deal?” he called back.
I nodded. “Yes. I want my sister safe, and my father behind bars. This seems like the only way to make those things happen.”
To my surprise, Nickie appeared to wilt in relief. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “I thought you’d never stop fighting.”
I blinked in surprise. “What?”
“It’s always the same with you, Verity, railing against the world, thinking everyone is your enemy. I thought you’d keep fighting this, and then where would we be?”
Her words left me baffled. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I was the one to contact Tony and tell him where we were.”
My mouth dropped. “You did what?”
“I wanted to come home. I was sick of living in that goddamned backward town, where no one even knew who I was. I figured doing it this way would mean Pops would still be sent down and kept in his place at the same time, and I could go back to my old life.”
I stared at her in amazement. “And what about me? Tony was going to have me killed!”
“No, he wasn’t. You just assumed the men were there to kill you.”
“I got a message on the phone from Tony that said, ‘is it done?’ What the hell else was that supposed to mean?”
“It was referring to picking us up, not killing us. You were the one who went all maverick on everyone and killed Tony’s men.”
I could barely believe what I was hearing. “Tony threatened you, Nickie, and he shot at us on the road.”
“What else was he supposed to do? You killed two of his men back at the house, and there are four men dead now.”
“I didn’t kill them,” I muttered, but I knew I was an accomplice, at least. We’d planned to shoot Tony’s men on the road, and that was exactly what we’d done, though we’d only done it to get Nickie back.
Turned out, she hadn’t wanted rescuing anyway.
“Why didn’t you just tell me what was going on? You had enough opportunities!”
“I tried to,” she said. “I tried to tell you I was sorry for not explaining everything, but you kept shooting everyone! You didn’t exactly make things easy.”
I turned to Tony. “If this is all true, why all the sneaking around? Why not just offer us protection from the start?”
He walked down from the platform, taking the stairs to the ground floor and stopping beside Nickie. “It was rumored that your father knew where you were—someone snitched, possibly someone in law enforcement. We wanted to get you away from the house in secret, and there’s no way we could trust the cops.”
He was right. Our father had known where we were. In fact, he’d sent someone to kill me that very same night.
I knew all of this, but didn’t say it.
This revelation of the truth made my mind blur, my heart skipping. My whole view of the situation had been skewed. If Tony the Hound and his guys were only there to help us, and X had killed his men, and then we’d killed more of them on the road when Tony had only offered his hand of protection, they weren’t the bad guys.
