Chapter 30: Ruger

Chapter Thirty

Ruger

I can trust Zayna with the plan this time. Her calm reaction to watching Brooks Astor die got me hornier than a rooster in a henhouse. It’s hard to make sense of how I feel for Zayna, but the more I keep fucking her and scheming with her, the more a deeper plan takes shape in my mind. I kill her ex. We get married.

Each twist of the knife will prove my loyalty. Bring us closer together. I can feel it.

She doesn’t have any nerves around this part of the plan, which makes me feel a lot better about this shit going down. Laguna Grove is more closed off than McGraw, with large walls and gates surrounding campus. Would make it a lot harder to catch Reid Moreland in his dorm room, but I’m lucky because Reid Moreland has a problem.

It’s not an uncommon problem with student athletes. Or with men in the Shaw family. It’s hockey season and he’s a rich private school kid at Laguna Grove. There’s one sports bar in Somerville that caters to the type and Reid Moreland drinks alone.

I don’t bring it up with Zayna, but I find it interesting that all the men who worked together to hurt her have ended up out on their asses. But Brooks… That bastard showed no remorse. Watching him die was easy. Hunting this one down might be more difficult.

We aren’t entirely alone tonight, something I keep out of Zayna’s awareness. Club business brought me in touch with one of the Murray brothers who attended McGraw. Odhran Murray lets me park my bike at his warehouse, a half mile away from the sports bar. We leave our helmets behind and walk down the streets as if we’re just regular Boston people.

Zayna looks so damn tiny when she walks next to me that I almost want to put her up on my shoulders. I doubt she would like that very much.

“How do we know when he’s going to leave the bar?” She asks. Fair question. My plan was to be patient and wait. Would be easier if we scored but… Considering how Zayna responded to my suggestion with the baby, I don’t want to bring up meth. The back of my teeth grind together with a hint of anxiety at the biggest unknown in the equation.

“He’ll leave after the game most likely.”

“Have you ever met a Bruins fan?” Zayna asks. “They’re crazy. If they win the game, they’ll riot.”

“Guess we better bet on them losing…” I mutter, throwing my arm over her shoulder, hoping the warmth and closeness will calm Zayna a little.

“Okay. You definitely haven’t met a Bruins fan.”

“What?” I reply.

“They riot when they lose too.”

“These men should enlist, like I did. They wouldn’t care so much about games if they did…”

Zayna laughs and then leans against my chest. “Yeah. The only sport I ever liked was football until…”

She trails off. I pull her closer. That pain will be gone soon. At least the pain of knowing that they got away with it. I can’t take all her pain away, no matter how badly I want to do just that.

“What football team did you watch?” I ask, like this is a walk back home after a first date and not a potentially dangerous hunt for a college football player.

“Patriots.”

“You’re terrible.”

“I know.”

“I can’t believe you ended up out West.”

“Neither can I,” she says. Still so close. Still tempting me to give up every dangerous fucked up thing in my life just to be hers.

“Where do you want to end up, Zayna?”

Her name sounds pretty. It also sounds special. Like there’s no other Zayna in my world and the only one that exists belongs to me. She’s not an Emily or a Sarah, replicated by the dozens out in Missouri.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I barely thought I would survive Vegas.”

“But you did.”

“Yes,” she says, glancing around for landmarks. I’m keeping track of exactly where we are, so I don’t need her to look. I pull her close to me, trying to keep Zayna here in this moment and not in the past or the future.

“So what can you imagine now? I’ll take you anywhere.”

“Anywhere?”

“Yes.”

“Even Florida?”

I laugh. “Weird way of saying it. Yes. Even Florida.”

“What about South Dakota?”

“You don’t want to go there.”

“Why not?” She asks, her hand reaching for my waist. We’re close to the sports bar. I can hear the cheers. Part of me wants to turn around and stop our plan just to go back home with Zayna and celebrate going to Florida or wherever the fuck she wants to take me. But I just stop walking and answer her question about South Dakota.

“Too many racists.”

“You’re terrible,” she replies.

“I’m serious.”

“I would hate to see what you consider racist,” she mutters… I kiss the top of her head. We can discuss my race problem after we kill all the men who attacked her, and her ex-boyfriend… and after we discuss the baby.

Reid is careless. He stumbles out of the bar about ten minutes after closing time. They must’ve had to show him out or he knows the bartender or some shit. There’s only one car left in the lot. I have Zayna watching everyone leave with me, counting people and counting cars, keeping track of who comes and goes from Mulligan’s.

I don’t know what type of fucked up parents get their kid a Mercedes-Benz after they commit a crime, but the sleek white sedan with the custom plate has to be his. He looks different from how I thought he would – more like a preppy university kid than the jock rapist I saw online. He has light brown hair, a slight frame – so he must have been a wide receiver. He wears glasses. But he’s drunk. His white shirt is buttoned up wrong with the collar popped and he can’t take three steps in a straight line. Good.

He unlocks the car. Zayna’s cue. I can’t see her, but I have to trust her and her unloaded pistol to create a diversion. I’m never more nervous than when she’s in danger. Reid shoves his hands in his pockets and starts singing some club anthem from the bar. We could hear every last one of those annoying fucking songs throughout our wait for him to leave the bar.

Reid shuts the door to the car. My cue. I race across the parking lot and enter the backseat. Reid yelps for what I presume is the second time because Zayna has his hand pinned to the center console as she holds her pistol against his head. It’s not loaded. But mine is.

“Reid Moreland,” I say to him. “That your name?”

“Take whatever you want. Take the car. I don’t care.”

Fucking idiot. Cars can be tracked these days about as easily as cell phones. It might be a nice ride, but it’s not better than an Indian Scout. Not as interested in this car as I am in Reid Moreland.

“Zayna, get out of the car.”

She hesitates. Then she gets out of the car and presses her back against the door of the car.

“You’re going to drive this car into the harbor,” I tell him. “Understand?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Drive.”

“I-I’m too drunk.”

“Drive.”

He pulls out of the parking lot slowly. I keep a gun pressed to the back of his head. The Murray family has a warehouse near the harbor with a ramp that leads to their dock. Mr. Moreland will be driving his car right off the dock. This is probably the slowest this car has ever driven, honestly.

When he gets a hundred feet off, I tell him what to do and tell him no funny business. He saw Zayna. He saw me. Maybe a part of him wants to kill himself because the kid doesn’t really put up a fight. He’s red in the face. Drunk as fuck. Maybe too drunk to think straight. I take his wallet before I get out of the car and watch the kid drive himself into the harbor.

I wait twenty minutes before I go back to the bike where I promised to meet Zayna. I almost think she ran off but when I get close to the bike, she emerges from her position pressed against the dark wall. She already has her helmet balanced between her arm and torso.

She looks at me expectantly.

“He’s dead.”

I toss his driver’s license to her. Zayna catches it with her free hand and gazes down at it. She looks sick to her stomach. But not sad. Not too disturbed.

“Good,” she says. “That’s good.”

We put our helmets on and ride back to the condo. Tomorrow, we go back home. We need to take stock and figure out how to get to Grant since tracking him down will require a little more finesse than hunting the others.

Tomorrow, I ask Zayna the dangerous question. The question that scares me more than anything. She never brings up this ex-boyfriend. We get intimate so much, I keep hoping it will soften her up.

The last man on my list is Grant. Once he’s dead, this will mean she has to make a choice and that choice might pull Zayna away from me forever. It most likely will, because I know I’m fucking crazy and everything I want is too much for anybody else.

My fear is simple. It’s understandable. I need him dead so I can have absolute certainty that every inch of Zayna’s heart and body belongs to me. I never want her to choose another man. I never want to think that any man has a piece of Zayna. I want her to belong to me entirely. She doesn’t understand how much I need that.

The more I hurt people for her. The more I spend time with Zayna in my bed. The more I watch her hold and care for Eden, I want to have her forever. I can’t imagine my life without her – and I don’t want to. I’ve already lost so much. My fucking mom was a piece of shit. The only dad I ever knew died. Doc is dead.

And his sons have never quite liked me. I never quite fit in. But with Zayna, I think if we do this together, if we know that it’s just her and me, we’ll have a proper, normal family. That might make fitting in a little easier. Plus, it’s just what I always wanted and never thought I could have.

It’s only possible if she says ‘yes’... and I don’t think she will.