Couldn’t tell.
And then he was gone, leaving me to scratch my head and run for my bike, time ticking away too fast for comfort.
We hit the road and burned into town. People stared, like they always did whether we wore club cuts or not, but I was used to it. Whitness folk had gawped at us in this town since I was a kid on the back of my dad’s FXR. The only difference today was I didn’t have Cam and Rubi flanking me, and my old man was dead in the ground. The air smelled the same, though. Sea salt and petrol.
Axel rode a Fat Boy. Louder than my Softail, I felt him rumble to a stop behind me outside the big white building, but he said nothing as he came to my side, and that’s why I liked him so much.
I dug through the folder I’d crushed beneath my arm on the journey here, checked I had everything Axel needed for his part in a batshit plan I’d dreamed up more than a year ago. Rubi’s high THC skunk had a lot to answer for, but here I was, still shoving on regardless. “You got all the dates and shit down?”
“And the signature.” Humour danced in Axel’s hazel eyes. “How’s my hair?”
“Perfectly fucking minimal. You ready?”
He nodded, and we went inside.
Half an hour later, I emerged alone, leaving Axel to commit a criminal offence for no reason other than I’d fallen down a rabbit hole of doing this in the most fucked-up way possiblebeforeI’d known Viktor’s brother well enough to ask him to fix all this shit for me remotely.
Actually, I still didn’t know him well enough, but whatever. That wasn’t even the least complicated option, and I’d never felt it more than I did as I waited for Axel.
I kicked around outside, wishing I smoked cigarettes, ruing the day I’d quit ket to piggyback Rubi’s spectacular weed habit. This was a hundred percent his fault, and I was going to fucking tell him if I ever found the nerve to finish this.
It’s the beginning, not the end.
Heh. Right now, it felt like it was going to be the end ofme.
I shoved my hands in my pockets. My fingers hit the envelope Locke had passed me earlier, screwed up and squashed now, obviously. I was fucking lucky it was still there, a reality that had anxiety sweeping through me, the unnecessary chaos I’d created over the past few months squeezing my heart too tight.
Shit. I rubbed my chest. I’d stopped having panic attacks somewhere around the time me and Rubi had first banged in front of the fire, but the fear of them had never gone away, and it was the most fucked-up thing to be so scared of something that wasn’t happening.
I needed a distraction. I pulled the envelope out of my pocket and tipped out the contents. Two coins—an Irish copper penny and a silver sixpence—fell into my palm with a folded piece of paper.
The paper was a rough pencil sketch, but it was all I needed. I already knew what Remy Collins could do with old coins, though I was pretty sure he’d need two for Rubi’s giant?—
Movement in front of me had me jerking my head up. Axel emerged from the building’s main entrance and loped down the steps. Like we’d planned, he hugged me, his voice quiet at my ear. “Sorted, brother. Now you’ve just got to hope he doesn’t read the public notice board between now and then. Or no one he knows sees your names on there.”
For once in my life, I’d somehow thought of almost everything. “They’re not putting it up until tonight. I’ll break in and burn it before anyone sees it tomorrow.”
Axel pulled back and gave me a sceptical frown. “And get nicked before you get a chance to?—”
“Shh.” I slapped a hand over his mouth. “Enough with the logic. It’s too late for all that.”
It had been too late since the day I was born.
Axel had to go—his sister needed him at home. We parted ways and I zoomed back to the compound, hoping no one gave a shit where I’d been. And for once I got lucky. Cam was back, but he was holed up in the chapel with Nash, and I slipped back into the garage to face the work that had piled up while I’d been so distracted all morning.
With no one around to distract me, I fell into the single-minded focus I needed to vanquish the scratch in my chest. I missed dinner and probably a bunch of other shit I didn’t care about. It grew dark outside. People arrived. People went home. My playlist ran out and I didn’t notice the autoplay monstrosity that replaced it until someone turned it off.
I looked up so fast I hit my head on the car I was working on.
Saint didn’t blink. Just passed me a sheet of paper.
The same sheet of paper I’d planned to steal on my way home. “What the fuck is this?”
He tilted his head.
“Nah, you have to do better than that.”
Saint shrugged and pulled out his phone. He typed a message and held it up.