Nine Page 7

  Trig wags his eyebrows once, and points ahead for me to walk. I groan and march forward.

  “This is us,” he says, as we reach a door. “Open it.”

  I turn the knob and push against the weight of the door. As soon as my eyes set sight inside, I’m blown away. The room is beautiful. It has that woodsy touch all around, from the wood bed frame, to the chairs and table, to the couch. Every accent in here gives me that wholesome nature feel. I walk over to the sliding glass door. There’s a small patio outside that overlooks the lake, and if it weren’t for circumstances, I would have flipped my shit at how amazing this place is. Instead, I keep cool. I drop my bag on the floor.

  “I’m not keeping you hostage,” Trig says. I remain quiet as I keep my back to him and look out over the water. “Can you please just stay here? I don’t want to chase you, but I will if it means that I keep you safe.”

  I turn to him. “Why?”

  He squints at me. “Why keep you safe? Is that what you’re asking?” He runs his hand over his shaved head as if he’s frustrated.

  “No. I mean, why save me at all. You could have shot me in the hotel room and saved yourself all this chaos. You could have shot me in that damn basement. You know what? You could have let The Savior kill me. Why save me?”

  “If you were me and you saw what I saw in that hotel room, you’d save yourself, too.”

  “Well, if you were me, you’d know that nobody in this world has ever done anything for me, unless they wanted something. What do you want, Trig?”

  “I don’t want anything,” he responds.

  “Really? Everybody wants something,” I say.

  I take off his T-shirt that I’m wearing and throw it across the room. I point to my body.

  “Is this what you want? Do you want to use and abuse me just like the rest of them? Oh, I know. You probably think you own me now. You walk around with a gun giving me orders. Hell, you might as well be a pimp.” I saunter up to him and unbutton his jeans. “You’re exactly like every man I’ve ever met, and don’t say you’re not.” I unzip his pants.

  He looks away. He’s avoiding eye contact with me. He suddenly exhales, grabs my wrists, and looks straight into my eyes.

  “Put some damn clothes on. I told you I don’t want anything.”

  He releases my wrists and walks past me. I watch him walk to the patio screen door. He opens it, steps outside, and then slams it closed hard. The glass rattles, which makes me jump. I stand there feeling like an idiot, even though I shouldn’t. Am I wrong to assume that he wants something from me? Is it bad to think that every person in the world will hurt me at some point? That mentality is the one thing that’s kept me alive. Fuck it and fuck him!

  I quickly push the incident out of my head and pick up my black gym bag from the floor. I know there is nothing in that bag I can wear to bed, so I grab Trigs T-shirt off the floor as well, and then I head to the bathroom. I close and lock the door once inside. I put my stuff on the counter top and look up. This is the first time I’ve looked into a mirror since the hotel beat down. My stomach sinks when I see the bruises that mark my face and neck. My left eye is slightly swollen and my lip is busted. I run my fingers gently over my face and I can’t help but tear up. I’m reminded of what my dad used to do to me. I frantically take off my bloodstained bra and panties and drop them on the floor. I can’t even bother to look at the rest of my body. It’s too sad.

  I can clean this off. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll wash it away, just like when I was a kid. I pull out a shaver and a few small bottles of shampoo and conditioner from my bag and jump in the shower. I begin to scrub off the dirt and blood from my skin and hair. With the hot water steaming up the room, an odor fills the shower. My whole body smells like medicine. I’ve been sweating out the Ketamine and I reek. I wash my hair and body and shave everywhere before I get out of the shower. I throw on Trig’s T-shirt because the clothes in my bag are too tight to sleep in. I glance in the mirror one last time. Jesus. I can only imagine what the people at the gas station thought.

  I expect to see Trig inside the room when I come out, but he’s not. He’s still outside, sitting in a chair on the patio. I decide to make a run for it while he’s distracted. I jolt over to the bedroom door and open it. Bones is standing directly outside the doorframe, shaking his finger at me.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he says.

  I jump for a second. My hand falls across my heart.

  “I was just checking to see if you ever found that cactus.”

  Bones smiles and points me back to the bedroom. He takes the doorknob and pulls it closed. Unbelievable. Trig has a goddamn watchdog out there. I turn and walk toward the sliding glass door. Trigs still in the same spot. He’s sitting in a chair at the edge of the patio. I slowly slide open the door. He glances over his shoulder at me, and then back to the water.

  “Can I come out and sit with you?” I ask, as I hover around the screen door.

  He stays silent.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Take it how you want,” he says.

  I can’t imagine that what I said would have offended him. He’s a big bad killer. He can take it. He looks over and squints his eyes at me, just like he did in the elevator that night. I walk over and sit in the chair next to his.

  “Look. I’ve had a shitty few days to say the least. I’m mentally fucked up. I don’t know what to feel. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore. I keep replaying what happened in the hotel in my head, and I can’t understand for the life of me, why you’d save a girl like me. None of it makes sense, especially in the line of work that you do.”

  “It doesn’t have to, Nine.”

  “It does to me.”

  “You’re stubborn, you know that?” Trig says.

  “In my profession you have to be,” I respond.

  I look up into the night sky that’s filled with bright stars. It’s pretty. The water, the moon, the cabin. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I take a deep breath. It’s peaceful.

  “This cabin. Is it yours?” I ask, and turn to him.

  He gives me the look that says don’t ask questions, but I challenge him back with my eyes.

  “What? I can’t ask about property either?”

  He looks back to the water.

  “It used to be my mother’s. She gave it to my brother right before she passed away from cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shakes his head.

  “It was years ago.”

  Suddenly I have this urge to know more about the man behind the gun.

  “Were you and your mother close?” I ask. Trig nods. “How about you and your brother?” Trig nods again.

  “My mom used to bring us out here all the time when we were kids. We’d run and jump off that dock into the lake like idiots and tear up the place.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “I don’t know. I never met him. He left my mom after I was born.”

  “I’m sorry for that, too,” I mumble.

  “Don’t apologize. He’s a tool for leaving. It was his loss.”

  I awkwardly look away when I think about my own parents. They were too damn high and too selfish to take care of me. I would have been so lucky to at least have a good mom. I find myself a little jealous of Trig for that very reason. He had what seems like a happy childhood, and yet the look on his face tells a darker story.

  “What happened to your brother?” I ask, remembering that Bones said that he had died. The Savior also mentioned him a few times when speaking to Trig.

  “You sure ask a lot of questions.” He side-eyes me.

  “I could say the same about you. Are you going to answer me?”

  “If it shuts you up.”

  I wave my hands about.

  Trig licks his lips and takes a deep breath.

  “Victor happened,” he says, as he pulls a pack of cigs from his back pocket. He takes a cigarette out and
lights it up. I can see his hand is unsteady.

  “Victor killed your brother?”

  Trig sits up straighter.

  “Those drugs we were looking for, they belonged to The Savior. My brother used to work for him. He was doing a big delivery one day and Victor ambushed him. He shot up the car my brother was in, and then he stole all of the drugs. The Savior lost a lot of money and I lost my only brother.”

  “Oh my god. That’s terrible.” I pause to think about it. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  “There’s nothing to say. He’s dead now. An eye for an eye, right?

  I look down at my legs. I’m not sure if I agree with the whole eye for an eye logic, but then again, I didn’t have a brother who was murdered.

  “Why work for somebody like The Savior? He wasn’t a good person.”

  “And you think I am?” Trig chuckles.

  “I don’t know. I guess you could be if you wanted to,” I reply.

  “I told you I had to work for him.”

  “If you’re going to be a killer, why not work for yourself,” I question.

  He snaps his neck to look at me.

  “Do you think I really liked murdering people? I didn’t used to wake up in the morning and say, you know what would be fun? I’d like to slice someone’s throat today, or put a bullet in their head, or better yet, suffocate them with a pillow.”

  “I’m just trying to get you. That’s all.”

  Trig takes a few puffs from his cigarette as he looks up at the sky.

  “When you say you had to, what do you mean?” I push.

  “You don’t stop, do you?” he says, as he exhales a cloud of smoke.

  “Give me a break; you’ve had me locked up in a basement for three days. And being here isn’t much different. I see you’ve put Bones on security duty outside the bedroom door.”

  “That’s because you’ll run,” he says, as he puts out his cigarette.

  “Keeping me against my will. That sounds like a hostage situation to me.”

  “I’d like to think of it more as protective custody.”

  I stare out over the water. I can feel him looking at me, but I don’t turn my head.

  “So, are you going to answer my question or do you plan to keep on evading it?”

  I finally look at him. This time he looks away. I feel like this is the beginning of a game of cat and mouse, but in this scenario we’re both trying to be the damn cat.

  “The question was what? Why I had to do the things I did for The Savior?” He places his hands on his knees.

  I nod.

  “I have a sister out in Virginia. She’s happily married, with two little kids. She has the whole white picket fence life.” He pauses. “After my brother died, The Savior came looking for me. He said I was obligated to fulfill my brother’s debt and come work for him as his personal executioner. I resisted, but he had my sister’s address. He threatened to kill her and her babies. There wasn’t much to think about. I didn’t sign up for this willingly. I was forced into it, but I did it to protect her. I spent every day looking for Victor just so I could make it all end. So when I say I had to do it, that’s what I mean.”

  I catch myself staring at him like he’s some kind of angel. Trig is not what I expected at all. He’s totally a dark hero. Here he was working off his brother’s debt, while protecting his sister and yet he still made time to come to my aid.

  “So, how long have you been doing this whole hitman thing?”

  “Eight weeks, more or less.”

  I look surprised. “And how many people have you—”

  “What? Have I killed?” He licks his lips. “Fifty-six.”

  Oh my god. My stomach is sick. Fifty-six. He’s killed fifty-six people in eight weeks. I don’t know why, but hearing an actual number makes me feel uncomfortable. Today alone, he took out three men.

  “I told you not to ask questions you can’t handle.”

  I slide away from him and take a deep breath.

  “I want to know how it goes. The Savior would what, just call you up and say kill this guy, and you’d do it? No questions asked?”

  “I didn’t get to ask questions. I didn’t have that luxury when my sister’s life was at stake.”

  “What if the people you killed were good people?”

  “They weren’t.”

  “You don’t know that,” I argue.

  “Look,” Trig says, and reaches for my hand. I pull away on instinct.

  He stares. He’s definitely reading me. I look away. As much as this topic bothers me, I still have to know more.

  “Is it hard? Is it difficult to take someone’s life away?”

  “Not anymore,” Trig answers. “I don’t think about it. I just do it.”

  He sounds like me when I describe escorting. It’s such a numb sensation. As much as I want to reach out and touch him, I don’t. He scares me. My dark hero’s hands are those of a murderer.

  “We should go inside,” he says.

  I nod and stand up. We both trail into the house. He waves to the bed as we step inside the room.

  “All yours.”

  I sit down on the mattress as he plops down on a nearby sofa and picks up a magazine.

  “Do you ever sleep?” I question.

  “Rarely.”

  “Care for nightcap?” I ask, hoping he’ll partake and pass out so I can make a run for it.

  “Go to sleep, Nine.”

  I climb over the bed and into the covers as Trig dims the lamp next to him. I lay on my right side, looking out the window to the lake. It takes me hours, but eventually I fall asleep. I begin to dream of everything that’s happened to me lately, and of painful things I’ve packed away in my memory. I’m in the hotel with Victor and I can’t move. He’s choking and beating me. I see the knife and then it enters my side. I cry out in pain and all of a sudden, I look up to see my Uncle Fred, not Victor. I’m no longer in a hotel. The dream has changed and now I’m in a dark bedroom. I’m just a little girl and my uncle’s touching me in places he shouldn’t. He grabs me by my throat and laughs.

  I wake up from my nightmare drenched in sweat. I’m choking and crying. In confusion, I jump out of bed and try to run for the door, but I have no idea where I’m at. I’m frantic and disoriented, and this room is pitch black. Suddenly I feel hands grab me from behind. I’m kicking and screaming when my body is twirled around.

  “Nine, It’s me. Look at me,” Trig yells. “It’s just me,” he repeats.

  I collapse in his arms. I’m sobbing, as we both fall to the floor. He scoots me up into his lap and cradles me. We stay like that for a few minutes until I calm down. He suddenly moves and picks me up, carrying me back to the bed. He gently places me down and covers me up. He’s about to walk away, when I grab his hand.

  “Lay with me.”

  He looks at me with uncertainty.

  “Please,” I beg.

  He climbs over the bed and lays down next to me. I need to touch him again. There is something soothing about it. I don’t even care what he is or what he does at the moment. He makes my demons disappear and I need that right now. I turn on my back and inch my hand closer and closer to his. Our fingers are now slightly touching. I move my hand entirely inside of his. He wraps his hand around mine, and that’s where I find my peace. I close my eyes and fall back asleep.

  Chapter 5. Breaking My Heart

  The heat from the morning sun warms my back as it shines through the patio door. I open my eyes to see something worrisome. My arm is thrown over Trig’s chest, and my leg is thrown over his thigh. Trig’s arm is wedged under my neck and his hand seems to be comfortably resting on my backside. The setup alone freaks me out. I panic and quietly slide away from him. I pull myself up from the bed and stand there. What the hell is this, I think, as I stare down at him? This is cuddling. I don’t cuddle. I grab my gym bag off the floor and run to the bathroom. I sit down on the toilet and collect myself. I’m falling apart. I’m seeing things. I�
��m having nightmares. This is me, destination: crazy house.

  I pull out a pair of blue jean shorts, a tank top, and a short white vest and put them on. I rummage through the bag and take out my makeup. I have to do something about this face. I feel like a victim, and I don’t want to feel this way. I get to work by applying concealer, primers, and foundation. After forty to fifty minutes passes by, I’ve applied eyeshadow, mascara, and put lip-gloss on these cracked lips. I pull out some white high heels and slip into them. This is about as good as I’m going to look. I can still see the bruises under the makeup, but I look better than I did before. I start looking through the bag to see what else I put in here. I stumble upon a small toothbrush and toothpaste in an inner pocket. With my morning breath, I’m glad to see it. I brush my teeth and then I stuff Trig’s shirt into my bag. I take one last look at myself in the mirror and then walk out to the bedroom.

  Trig is wide-awake and sitting on the edge of the bed. I notice he’s wearing a shirt. It’s probably one of his brother’s. He looks me up and down and then his mouth gapes open.

  “I clean up nice, yeah?” I spin around.

  “Very nice,” he says, still eyeing me.

  “You’d be surprised what makeup can do,” I joke.

  “You don’t need the makeup. You’re beautiful without it,” Trig says.

  We stare at each other for a few seconds before the door opens.

  “Are you two hungry?” Bones interrupts. “Goddamn, woman,” he says, as his eyes fall upon me. Trig’s eyes shoot over to him almost in warning. I politely smile and look away.

  I feel like myself now. I could fall back into line and not even think about what happened again. “I’m hungry,” I say, as I walk straight to Bones. He grabs my hand and escorts me out to the kitchen. I look back to see Trig. He looks a bit bothered, and for whatever reason, stays in the bedroom.

  I jump up on the kitchen counter and sit down. I spot an open box of doughnuts. “This is breakfast?” I ask, as my heels swing back and forth.

  Bones takes a joint out of his shirt pocket and lights it up. “Yup,” he says, as he takes a puff.

  “Screw the doughnuts. I’ll have what you’re having.” I smile.