The Liberator dw-2 Read online

  I glare at his hand until he pulls it back and shoves it into his pocket.

  “Look, my brother is harmless,” he says, rolling his shoulders. “He was in a car accident a couple of years ago, and it’s messed with his head.”

  Salem’s jaw works like he’s upset, but I’m not sure he is. Glancing over my shoulder, I ensure Charlie is nowhere in sight.

  “Before the accident, Easton had a girl,” Salem continues. “And sometimes he gets confused. But he won’t be a problem. I swear.”

  I look the guy, Salem, up and down. “Six foot one, I’d say. Dark hair that falls below the ear.” I lean forward a bit. “Green eyes that seem shifty.”

  “What are you doing?” Salem asks, and I see a spark of anger in his stance. It’s the spark I knew he was hiding.

  “Memorizing your face,” I answer. “So that if I ever see you or your brother near her house again, I can welcome you back.” I punch the word “welcome” so he gets my point.

  Salem smiles, but there’s a flash of darkness in it. “You won’t be seeing us again.”

  I stare at him for a long time, then nod, because what else can I do? And if I’m wrong that this guy is bad news, then I really am morphing into a paranoid sociopath. Spinning around, I head away from him. I try my damnedest not to turn back and glare. Turning back would imply I’m insecure, and I need this guy to know I’m not afraid of him.

  When I near Charlie’s house, I notice she’s standing in the doorway with a spatula in her hand. Despite being on edge, I can’t stop myself from grinning. I feel like such a chick around her sometimes, like I’m seconds away from buying a tiara and starting my period.

  “What’s going on?” she asks. I expect her to look worried, but instead she looks strong. Her head is tilted back, and her shoulders are squared. It’s like she’s been ready for this. Like she’s been waiting to step in and take control. Charlie must weigh a buck twenty, but right now she looks fierce.

  Her body language is so freaking hot; I want to eat her alive.

  I contemplate not telling her about the guy. I don’t want to upset her, but the assurance in her eyes tells me she can handle it. “There was someone out here,” I say. “He was standing in the street looking up at your window.”

  “Did you sense anything? Another cuff?” she asks. I shake my head, and her shoulders relax. “Then come inside and eat some damn bacon.”

  My eyes widen. “You just cursed. That was very unladylike.”

  “Get inside,” she says, a hand cocked on her hip.

  I’m trying hard to look unconcerned, but I can’t forget what I felt around Salem—like something was off about him and his brother. But Charlie’s got a point. I didn’t sense a cuff, and collectors can’t survive without them. So chances are, it’s just some jerk who saw a pretty girl and wanted to stop and stare. Still, as I’m walking by her to go inside, I turn and look back over my shoulder to double-check that they’re both gone.

  “It’s fine,” she adds softly. “I’m fine.”

  I stop suddenly and take her face in my hands. “I’ll never let what happened to you that night—”

  “I know,” she says.

  I let go of her and move inside, but before I can get too far, she pops me on the butt with her spatula. In a flash, I sweep her into my arms. She squeals, and I dip her close to the floor and kiss her long and deep on the mouth. When I finally pull my lips from hers, my blood pumping hard, she looks at me and says, “We have company.”

  I look up and see Valery and Max standing near the kitchen table. Righting Charlie on her feet, I take a couple of steps toward the redhead. Then I hook my thumbs under my new kickass red belt with the skull belt buckle. Said belt is supposed to take the edge off the fact that Rector stole my favorite kicks. It doesn’t quite work. “Your timing is perfect, Val,” I say. “Too late to be of any help.”

  “Help with what?” she says, readiness overtaking her stance.

  I jab my thumb toward the door. “Two guys. One staring up at Charlie’s window. The other claiming it’s just his nutcase bother.”

  As Max watches, Valery races to the doorway and looks out. Then she glances back at me, her face creased with worry. “Did you sense a cuff?”

  I steal a look at Charlie. She raises her eyebrow as if to imply she’s not alone in thinking I’m overreacting. “No,” I admit. “No cuff.”

  Valery swings around and saunters back toward the kitchen. Max never takes his eyes off her. “We can’t afford to draw attention to ourselves right now, Dante.”

  “There was a guy watching my girlfriend,” I say, spitting each word.

  “Are you so surprised by that?” she asks, and for the first time, I feel a little like an idiot. Before, I wondered if maybe I was visiting Looney Town. Now it’s like I know I did.

  “Still don’t want random dudes hanging around like dogs in heat,” I mumble.

  “Something tells me you took care of it,” Red says, checking herself out in a nearby mirror. “Besides, you’ve got bigger things to think about. Like your assignment.”

  “Come to strong-arm me, Red?”

  “No, came to confirm you’re intoxicated again. Imagine my surprise,” she says in her typical slow, even way. “Must be strange with all that blood in your alcohol stream.”

  I look to Max for back up, but he’s biting his lower lip and looking at Valery with such intensity that I wonder if he’s stroking out. “Max?” I say.

  “Hmm?” he answers, eyes still on Valery.

  “A little help?”

  He finally manages to look at me. “Sorry, D-money. You’re on your own.” Max stands up and leaves the room.

  I glance at Valery. “What’d you do him, Red? Threaten to withhold your parasitic love?”

  She straightens. “When are you leaving for your assignment?”

  “This again,” I say, sighing.

  Valery sits down at the table. “I understand your reservations for leaving.”

  “Do you?” I growl.

  She looks me dead in the eye. “Yes, I do.”

  As much as I tease Red about her relationship with Max, I do believe the two care about each other. So yeah, maybe she does get how I don’t want to leave Charlie. But what I don’t tell her is that there’s more than just leaving Charlie that makes me hesitate. Being a liberator—pretending to be someone who does good—doesn’t feel right. I’ve never been good, and I don’t play nice. So the idea of my being this person who saves people doesn’t fly.

  Just thinking about it turns my stomach, though I can’t put my finger on why exactly.

  I need a drink.

  I head to Gram’s stash and pull out a bottle of dusty champagne. “Mimosas?”

  Valery’s chest deflates, and for one moment, I feel guilty. I may pretend to hate Valery, but she helped save Charlie’s soul, and I’m grateful for that. But I can’t be who she’s asking me to be, so I pop the cork off the bottle and listen to the fizzle of the happy juice inside. Pouring myself a glass, I risk a glance at Charlie. She’s putting syrup and butter out on the counter and shoots a smile my way. I recoil seeing the faith in her eyes. A part of me feels like I’m just waiting for that faith to fade, like I’m testing it. But somehow, she never stops believing I’ll be the person she thinks I am.

  If only I could be like her.

  It’s easy to admire Charlie. But how she’s able to accept me so easily, so freely—that’s something I’ll never understand.

  Max returns to the room. “Not that I was eavesdropping—okay, maybe I was, but Val’s right, D. You’ve got to do this assignment.”

  I look at him, fight setting my muscles ablaze.

  “You’ll be back before you know it,” he adds. “And really, what else can you do? If you don’t go, Big Guy will give you the slip.”

  I glance from Max to Valery. She nods. I’d wanted to avoid this conversation, figured if I kept myself in a haze for the next few days, the topic would somehow disappear. But apparently t
his is an intervention, and I’ve got to get on a plane or pick out a cemetery plot.

  “Who did you even get the assignment envelope from? I’m sure Big Guy handed it to you himself, right?” I say it mockingly, but I’m half hoping Valery says that she did get it from God himself. That he has that kind of interest in me. But even as I think this, I know I’m kidding myself.

  “Kraven gave it to me,” she answers.

  Pow! My interest is piqued. “Home boy with the white wings?”

  She shrugs like it’s not a big deal, like we all haven’t been beating our brains as to how a liberator sprouted wings the night Blue died. Valery, Max, and I have spent many nights trying to figure out how to do the same thing, yet we’ve gotten nowhere. Our objective might be a lot easier if Valery would do what we’ve been asking her to do, which is to ask Kraven about how he summoned his wings.

  I hang my head and groan, rubbing my temple with the hand that isn’t holding the champagne bottle. The answer on what to do about this assignment should be easy. I know it should. But it isn’t. When I look up, Charlie is standing before me. “Charlie?”

  “Do what you think is right, and don’t worry about anything else,” she says.

  I squeeze my eyes shut against the sound of her voice. It’s so sure, so soothing. I don’t want to be away from the sound of her voice. I don’t want to be away from her. Charlie is my happily ever after.

  When I remember this, that this assignment is only a blip of time, and that it’s the only way to ensure we aren’t apart for the long haul, I know I have to go. I wanted to ignore my new placement as Big Guy’s soldier. I wanted to live my life as Dante, not as a liberator. Not as something I will never really be.

  But for Charlie, I’ll pretend to be anything.

  I squeeze the ivory horns in my pocket and pull in a long breath. “I’ll go,” I say. “But only if we have one hell of a send-off.”

  Max pulls out his new phone, the one he hasn’t shut up about for the last six days, and pushes a few buttons. Pulsing music fills my ears, and I raise the bottle in the air. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  Max dances in place, Charlie hands me a plate of bacon and waffles, and Valery comes to stand beside me. She takes the champagne from my hand, holds it up even higher, and says above the music, “To Aspen.”

  Then she puts the bottle to her lips and drinks.

  4

  Connection

  The day flew by in a blur.

  Grams woke up a few minutes after our makeshift party started. She didn’t seem too upset, though. Just came downstairs, sat in her nearby oversized love seat, and nursed her water bottle. Of vodka. Max and I acted like morons and insisted Valery, who was now sober, chauffer us around in her Mercedes. We hung our heads out the window and howled at the afternoon sun, and later, the moon. Charlie sat between us as we cruised Peachville, Alabama, stopping here and there to complete dares, and capturing the idiocy with Max’s new phone. We also stopped at The Wireless Hut so Valery could buy herself a cell and, in a moment of coolness, buy Charlie and me phones, too. I would have done it myself, but I couldn’t since I was now cut off from my hell-issued AmEx Black Card.

  When we get back to Grams’s place, I say good-bye to Max. He hugs me, slaps me hard on the back, then pulls on his shadow and vanishes from sight. I turn to Valery. “Thanks for the phone.”

  “I enjoy helping the needy,” she says.

  I scrunch up my nose. “I am many things, but needy isn’t one of them. Though speaking of, when am I getting my new card? Is it all blue and sparkly to represent the heavens?”

  “You’ll get it tomorrow, once I get you to the airport.”

  Groaning, I hook my arm around Charlie. “What time?”

  “Seven in the morning,” Valery answers.

  I shake my head. “You did that on purpose.”

  Valery smiles and waves before she disappears inside her Mercedes. As she drives away, her windows down, I can hear the clatter of empty bottles clinking against one another in the backseat.

  Charlie squeezes me around the middle. “I had fun today.”

  My eyes close as I breathe her in. Whoever said “like attracts like” had their head stuffed up somewhere dark and stank-like.

  I bury my head in the side of her neck and lay my lips on the warmth there. My stomach tightens as I feel her hands roam over my back and across my sides. She moves them farther down until her fingers dig into my pockets. Then she pulls me closer. “Stay again tonight?”

  I raise my head. I’m not sure how she can even question this. There’s no place I’d rather be. When I even think about how I’ll be away from her—in Denver—my insides revolt. I can’t imagine spending my days wondering where she is at any given moment and questioning whether she’s safe. “Course I’ll stay.”

  I expect her to smile, but instead her eyebrows pull together in confusion. “What’s this?” she asks, wiggling her fingers deeper into my pocket.

  Restraining myself from saying the dirty thing that’s on my mind, I step back. She withdraws the ivory horns my father gave me. In all the talk of whether I was going to Denver, and then celebrating—err, mourning—my decision, I’d forgotten to tell her what else was inside the assignment envelope.

  A rush of excitement races over my skin at the chance to talk about my father. “My dad sent them for me.” Charlie’s mouth falls open. “My thoughts exactly.”

  “What are they?” she breathes, her full pink lips stretched into a smile.

  “Beats me.” I pour both of them into her outstretched hand. It’s a difficult transaction considering I’m hopped up on enough bubbly to intoxicate a tractor.

  Charlie rolls them around in her palm. “Kind of heavy,” she says, rubbing her thumb over them. “And so smooth.”

  “I just don’t understand why there wasn’t anything about them in the assignment,” I say. Charlie drops the horns back into my hand, and we both stare at them, bewildered. “You know what might help me figure it out?” I add in a whisper.

  Charlie leans close, her eyes widening slightly.

  I nod my head toward her room. “Taking you upstairs.”

  She throws her head back toward the night sky and laughs, and I can’t stop myself from staring at her throat. At the soft, sun-kissed skin that travels from her jaw, to her collarbones, to her chest. “You’re bad,” she coos.

  “The baddest.” I circle one arm beneath her shoulders and the other behind her knees and pull her up into my arms. It’s a Don Juan move, if I do say so myself, but it’s not quite perfect, because I end up dropping one of the ivory horns in the process. I try to lean over to grab it while keeping hold of her, but Charlie insists I don’t have the proper motor skills to do both. Finally, in an attempt to help a dude out, she reaches her arm down and snatches it.

  “Success,” she yells, punching her fist into the air.

  And then something happens.

  Something electric.

  A current fires through us, and I drop Charlie to the ground. She hits the driveway pavement.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. “I didn’t mean—”

  But then I stop, because there’s this sensation between us that I can’t wrap my head around. Charlie gets to her feet slowly, her eyes locked on mine as she moves. We stare at each other, breathing fast.

  “Can you feel it, too?” she murmurs.

  I lick my lips and nod.

  “Are you doing it?”

  I shake my head but don’t speak. I can’t. I’m too overwhelmed by what’s happening.

  “I can…,” she starts. “I can feel you.”

  Closing my eyes, I try and gather myself. But even with my lids clamped tight, nothing changes. I can sense Charlie. It’s like I know where she is without even seeing her. “How is this happening?” I ask, finding my voice.

  “Maybe we drank too much,” she offers, though when I open my eyes again, I can tell she doesn’t believe that.

  “It feels the same way
it does when I sense a collector or liberator nearby.” And suddenly, understanding pours over me. I open my palm and look down at the ivory horn in my hand. Charlie sees me eyeing my horn, then looks down at her own.

  “Amazing,” she says. I meet her eyes, and she smiles. “Your dad did this. Maybe he meant for you and me to share them.”

  My eyebrows knit together as I try to process this.

  “So that even when you’re gone,” she continues, “we’re together.”

  I grip the horn like it’s a lifeline, because it is. I fight the emotion rolling through me. My father did this for me. He knows how I feel about her. I take Charlie’s face in my hands and pull her mouth to mine. I may be leaving for Denver tomorrow morning, but in a way, I’ll always be here with her.

  And as long as I have that, this assignment will be cake.

  5

  A Little More Like Me

  When Valery calls from outside Charlie’s house at the crack of dawn, I am not pleased. She, on the other hand, looks like a kid on Christmas morning. Like she can’t wait to see the angry look on my face.

  Throwing the strap of my Louis V. bag over my shoulder, and rolling a matching suitcase behind me, I head toward her Mercedes. My Escalade is still parked out front. I hand the keys to Charlie, who’s walking beside me.

  She grips them in her hand. “No way.”

  I laugh despite feeling like the sun is trying to karate kick my brain. “All yours until I get back.”

  Charlie throws her arms around my middle, making me grunt. I turn away because I don’t want her to see how I feel like screaming. How getting on a plane to Colorado makes me want to tear my damn eyes out.

  “Hey, sunshine,” Val says after I put my bags in the trunk and crawl in the backseat. I nod and refrain from cussing her out. It’s too early for cussing, even for a gangster like me. Charlie climbs in beside me and lays her head on my shoulder.

  “Max still asleep?” I ask.

  “Like a hibernating grizzly,” Valery answers, and I’m glad she knew the answer to my question.