Forty Six

Forty-Six

Joel

“Y ou really don’t need to do this, Skip.” I’m kind of agitated that he feels the need to be a part of this. I get that he cares about Ana, but I can do this without his help. I don’t need or want it.

“Indulge me, Joel. Let me see the man who fucked Sofia over; the man who walked away from Ana, let me see him gone.”

I tuck my gun into the back of my jeans, drag a hand through my hair. I’m still not happy, I wanted to do this alone, but what can I say? Skip saved me. I owe him everything.

“You know where he is now?” Skip picks up his beer and takes a long draft.

“Yeah. Rik said he was seen in the bar of The Green Man hotel last night. Checked in yesterday afternoon, apparently.”

“Alone?”

“I doubt it. We can’t be sure how he’s tackling this, we still don’t know if he’ll take Ana himself or send his men to do it, once they find out where she is. Where we’ve hidden her. Because that will happen. We always knew it was only going to be a matter of time, and we don’t have a lot of it left.”

Yeah, I lied to Ana, told her she’d be safe in that house when I always knew there was a time limit on that. Thing is, she’s not stupid. She’s probably already worked that out for herself, which means I have to work even faster to end this shit. I know Ana, I know how headstrong she can be; how stubborn.

“Do we have eyes on the house?”

“Yeah. It’s all quiet so far, no sign of anything untoward.”

“Where’s Renard now? Right at this minute? Do we have eyes on him constantly?”

The fact Skip keeps questioning me like this is really starting to piss me off, but I’m going to suck it up and get this shit dealt with as fast as I can.

“We’re watching him as much as possible, Skip. That’s all we can do.”

We know he’s in town. We know he checked into The Green Man hotel, but we don’t know if that’s where he’s staying. He’ll do all he can to throw us off the scent, he’s smart. He’ll know that we know he’s in town. He’ll know that we know what he’s come here to do, he wants us dead as much as we want him gone. So we’re going to bring him to our door. We’re going to lure him here, and yeah, it won’t be easy. Like I said, he’s a smart son-of-a-bitch. He’s not stupid. But he loves his daughter, in his own warped way. He wants Ana, so we have to make him believe that she’s here, with us. That we’ve moved her to the clubhouse. We know he’ll find out where she really is, so we’re bringing things forward. Dealing with it head on. We’ll make him think we’ve second guessed him, and hopefully he’ll come to us, he has to. And it might backfire, no plan we could put in place in this situation is foolproof. But it’s a risk we’re willing to take.

“It’s all in hand,” I say, leaning back against the bar and glancing around the clubhouse. Everything’s calm. But there’s an underlying air of tension; of anticipation. Something’s about to happen, but this coming storm will be clean and swift, I’ll make sure of that. “All we can do now is sit tight, and hope he takes the bait.”