Page 75 of Mayhem

He eventually asked why I was helping her, and that question interested me enough to give him the real answer. “Because you don’t matter, Nichlas. Whether you make it through tonight matters to you and probably no one else in this car. Echo matters to me. She wants something, and for once it happens to be something I’m very good at giving her.”

His face tightened. “So this is what, some kind of gift?”

“Courting gift, actually.” I turned onto the long private drive while the main house appeared between the trees ahead. “Flowers die, jewelry is boring, and buying Echo something expensive would probably end with her asking what I wanted in return. You already belong to her. Giving her the right place to enjoy you seemed more thoughtful.”

Nichlas looked sick.

I liked that expression better than the drugged one.

“Maybe she’ll appreciate the effort enough to be generous afterward,” I continued while pulling around the side of the house. “I’ve been thinking about that too. Maybe she’ll let Ronan and me take her apart when she’s finished with you. Maybe Ronan will fuck me while she watches. I’m not particularly attached to the order as long as everybody interesting is involved.”

Nichlas looked toward the house instead of me, his face stricken enough that I could almost see him realizing Ronan was part of this too. Whatever hope he had been holding that one of us would become reasonable once we were away from Hunter disappeared when he noticed the lights through the lower windows.

Ronan had the dining room set up by the time I brought Nichlas inside.

Two laptops sat open at one end of the long table with feeds cycling through different sections of the property. Another screen showed the grounds divided into zones, the house near the center and the roads marked beyond the tree line. Ronan had pushed most of the dining chairs aside except for three and left a black tracking band beside a glass of water where Nichlas could see it.

He looked up when we entered, took in the way Nichlas was leaning on me and the amount of weight he was keeping off the injured leg, then pointed toward a chair near the middle of the table. “Sit him there. The medication should be mostly out of his system by the time she gets here, but he needs water now if you expect him to make it farther than the yard.”

Nichlas resisted when I guided him toward the chair, although there was not enough strength behind it to qualify as a real attempt. I got him seated and put the water within reach before joining Ronan at the screens.

Ronan walked me through what he had already done while Nichlas listened. He had shifted one camera near the creek after finding a blind stretch behind the first position, covered both approaches to the service road, and placed additional feeds near the old shed and the southern tree line. There were still pockets of property without direct camera coverage, which was exactly why he had brought the tracker.

“We’ll know which direction he moves even if we lose the visual,” Ronan said as he picked up the band and crossed back toward the table. “The outer road is covered from both ends, and nobody has come onto the property since I got here. Echo can have the trees without us wondering whether he slipped through them.”

Nichlas drew his legs back when Ronan crouched in front of him, but Ronan simply caught the uninjured ankle and secured the tracking band above it. He checked the fit, stood, then looked toward the map until a new marker appeared inside the house.

“You have a little while before you need to move,” Ronan told him while nudging the glass closer. “Use it to drink, get the rest of those drugs out of your head, and catch your breath. You’re going to need all three.”

Nichlas finally picked up the water with both bandaged hands. The glass shook badly enough that some spilled across his fingers before he got it to his mouth, while Ronan returned to the screens and I took the chair directly across from him.

Echo would be here soon. Until then, we had time to enjoy the anticipation.

Nichlas finished the water slowly because the bandages around his hands made even that difficult. Ronan had wrapped a dish towel around the glass so he could hold it without dropping it, but the tremor in his fingers still sent a little water over the rim. He kept glancing toward the windows while he drank, as if the dark tree line might give him some better option than the two men sitting in the room with him.

The drugs were wearing off. I could see it in the way his eyes tracked things now, quicker and more focused than they had been in the car. Fear was doing the rest. He had stopped looking like someone who might fall asleep at the table and started looking like someone who finally understood why Ronan had spent the day covering several hundred acres with cameras.

Ronan came back from the far end of the table after checking another feed and sat beside me. He angled one of the laptops between us, showing the property divided into sections, camera markers scattered across the trees and the tracker sitting steady inside the house. “North side is fixed. I moved the creek camera far enough back that we won’t lose him if he drops into the bed, and I put another one beyond the old shed. The western service road is covered from both directions. He can pick whatever path makes him feel optimistic.”

Nichlas lowered the glass and looked at the screen. “And if I make it to the road?”

Ronan did not bother turning toward him immediately. He checked the feed near the gate, adjusted one setting, then finally looked across the table. “You can try. The road is farther than it looks from here, and the tracker will tell us which direction you take even when the trees block the cameras.”

The answer left Nichlas staring at the black band around his ankle. He tested it once with the heel of his other foot, probably deciding whether there was any chance of getting it off without using his damaged hands. Ronan noticed and did not stop him. That was almost generous. Letting Nichlas discover his options for himself would keep him occupied until Echo arrived.

I stretched one leg beneath the table and looked through the nearest window. The last light was disappearing behind the trees, leaving the open yard pale compared to the woods beyond it. Echo would like that. Enough visibility to watch him leave. Enough darkness under the canopy to make him believe hiding mattered.

“You know,” I said to Ronan, still watching outside, “you and Hunter haven’t let me kill anybody in almost a year.”

Nichlas stopped worrying at the tracker.

Ronan leaned back in his chair and looked at me with the expression he reserved for complaints he had heard before. “Because the last three people you wanted dead were more useful alive.”

“That doesn’t make it less rude.” I turned toward him, resting my arm across the back of the chair. “I’ve been very patient.”

“You broke Mercer’s jaw in February.”

“He survived.”