Valkyrie

Chapter 9

With nothing else to do while I waited for Spike to contact me, I went to the grocery store and bought a hot, rotisserie chicken, a tub of potato salad and a bottle of Jameson Black Barrell from the liquor store next door to the supermarket. A pricey splurge but I didn't care. I was going to do some selfcare and expensive whiskey was part of that plan. I'd do anything for the kid and loved him as much as I was capable of loving anyone. I was just so damned tired and a little sad since my life of the past two years was going to come to a screeching halt very soon.

When I got home, I changed into a pair of old cutoffs, ditched the bra and basically inhaled the chicken and the potato salad while standing at the counter, not bothering with a plate. I did use a fork on the potato salad. I'm not totally uncivilized. The whiskey was poured and was being savored, one glass quickly following the other as I went outside. I hopped up on the picnic table under the awning, sitting on the table part and putting my bare feet on the bench. I reached over and turned on the rainbow-colored twinkle lights that hung underneath the awning just as the sun gave up the fight and dropped out of the sky, leaving it washed in shades of pink and violet and indigo and grey. One thing I can say for Arizona is that it does have stunningly beautiful sunsets. Something about all the dust and the pollution in the air. The first few stars were up there sparkling away, not a fuck to give about what was happening miles and miles below them. I envied them.

I sipped the whiskey, savoring the liquor before swallowing it down. The night was silent, the other campers far enough away that I didn't hear them as anything more than a general buzz in the background if I heard anything from them at all. I'd learned to tune out and ignore their almost constant noise and thankfully, this was a pretty quiet RV park. A slight breeze had come up, bringing the familiar scents of the desert around me to my nose and cooling the sweat on my skin a little. I let my head fall back and closed my eyes, sipping the expensive Irish whiskey and trying to not think. Thinking: bad. Whiskey: good. No more thinking. There would be plenty of time for that later. These last two years had been quiet and peaceful. I knew that was going to come to a screeching halt soon enough once my mother got word that I was on the hunt because she would somehow. She always did. I'd enjoy the last of it while I could. Maybe I'd go up north when this was done. Montana or Wyoming or something. I'd never been to either of those states but I'd heard they were beautiful and empty. I'd lay low for a bit before I came back. She'd eventually get bored and move on to torturing someone else.

My phone rang, the sound pulling me out of the pleasant, empty headspace I'd been in for the past three minutes. I wasn't planning on answering it. Spike would text me, not call, since he didn't really talk much so it wouldn't be him. But then I thought maybe it was Alexi or Whistler with an update on Mischa. Or maybe it was Trey. I glanced at the screen, my heart thudding hard once when I saw it was none of the above. I answered, forcing a smile on my face even though a ball of sick concern took up residence in the middle of my chest. It was not anyone that should have been calling.

"Hallo, opa," I greeted my grandpa. "Isn't it a bit late for old men to still be up? It's almost ten o'clock there."

"Ja," he said with a tired sounding sigh. "It's late."

"What's up?" I sat up straight, setting the tumbler of whiskey to the side, a shiver of foreboding running up my back from the base of my spine to the top of my head.

My grandpa was an early to bed, early to rise kind of guy. Always has been. It was way past his bedtime so the only reason for him to be calling was because something bad had happened or was about to happen. I did not need anything else bad happening around me. Mischa getting attacked and what I had agreed to do for Alexi was enough. But just like that asshole Murphy had said: when it rains, it pours.