“Thenwhat?” he asks again, scoffing when I angle my head over my shoulder. “Oh, I see. You wait for someone to catch you while you are fumbling about with the window.”
“It’s really not a concern,” I tell him.
“Because?”
“Because I am not the type thatfumbles about,” I say, holding his gaze until his cheeks start turning pink. “Are you?”
In response, Aiden clears his throat, adjusts his hat again. “Always so fucking arrogant.”
“I prefer self-assured,” I reply, putting my back to him as I turn once more toward Tom.
“Wait.” Aiden is suddenly at my side, all my focus moving to the spot where his hand grips my upper arm as soon as he places it there. “Don’t.”
“Don’t?” Once the word has a chance to sink in, I meet the intensity in his eyes. “What do you meandon’t?”
“I can’t—” His jaw tenses, teeth grinding together. “We can’t kill him.”
“Why the fuck not?” I ask, sounding more like him than myself, though it does nothing to help me understand his reasoning. “He and his friend followed Lula up here. Who knows what they would’ve done. What they’ll do to someone else.”
I almost start to move again, but Aiden’s grip holds firm. “Cypress, I can’t…”
“You don’t have to. I’ll do it.”
He looks down, refusing to meet my gaze now. “Please.” He huffs out a breath. “I’m asking you not to either.”
Slowly, I nod as I reholster the gun, his single plea far more persuasive than the many that came from Tom. “All right, then what’s the alternative?”
“I’m thinking,” Aiden replies, still not releasing my arm as his other hand reaches for the knife. Without concern, I let him take it, let him wipe it clean with a handkerchief from my pocket and slip it into his boot.
“He’s seen our faces,” I remind him. “So has his friend, if he’s still breathing.”
“Pretty sure he isn’t.”
“But notentirelysure…”
“I know what dead looks like, Cypress.”
“Fine, but Tom is a danger to others. We can’t simply take him downstairs and let him loose.”
“No,” Aiden replies, tone thoughtful. “Suppose we can’t.”
I quirk an eyebrow at him. “So, any ideas?”
“As it so happens,” he says, glancing once more in John’s direction. “I think I do. Although, I think you might have to replace more than one of Dolly’s rugs.”
Tom, or whatever the fuck his name is, finally comes to, about ten miles outside of Renas. Taking long enough that I stopped to check twice if he was still on this side of living.
Fortunately, he was. Or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it, and to be honest, I wasn’t looking too kindly.
“Welcome back,” I say, crouching in the dirt near his head as he slowly blinks up at me. “We’re going to have a little talk and then I’m going to be on my way. Sound good?”
The man starts to respond before he realizes his predicament, the rag in his mouth and the fact he can’t move on account of the rug he’s rolled up in, as if he were the makings of a tobacco cigarette. If I were in a better mood, I’d probably find it funny.
“I want you to take a moment to consider how you are still alive,” I tell him. “And then I want you to take a moment to decide if you want to stay that way before you answer my questions.”
He blinks at me again, but finally nods.
“Now, you know why you’re in this position?”