Lie Like a Villain

Chapter 12 || Bought and Paid For

Once they got into New York City, Rachel was lost. Her entire life, she'd never made it out of the Hampton Roads area. She'd hardly even made it across the Chesapeake Bay into the next town over. She remembered driving through the underwater tunnel a couple times with her dad when she was really little, before he'd gotten too badly in debt; he'd taken her to the beach, and to get ice cream. But that didn't last long. And after she'd turned thirteen, she'd definitely been stuck. Rafe didn't like anyone to get too far away.

So when Jason started handing out directions rather than her having to frantically search road signs, she'd been grateful—quietly so, at least. For the last three, painstaking hours, exits and turns had been the only conversation that passed between them. Thick clouds loomed outside, and it felt like they'd pressed their way into the car too.

They would have gotten into the city quicker, except for their backroads route and her vehicle hobbling along like a grandmother. She'd considered pressing it harder, if only so the thoughts in her head would stop spinning with the wheels of the car.

She wished she remembered shooting the cop. Or maybe she didn't. But the blank spot nagged at her. As if rising to fill it, all she could see now was the only other time she'd ever shot someone—Rafe, higher than the stars, during a desperate scuffle over what she 'owed' him for taking her in. He'd flirted with her before that—roguishly so, insufferably so—but he'd never touched her. And even as young, and enamored at times, as she'd been, she knew better than to encourage him... too much. He was only a few years older, but he was trouble with a capital T. She felt that in her bones, even as he brought her presents and smiled at her like the sun and made sure none of his Lost Boys ever bothered her.

But that night, he'd come into her makeshift infirmary, with its fold-up card table for surgeries and her little cot in the corner. That night, he'd wanted something she wouldn't give. And so she'd shot him. And then she'd sewn him up. He didn't touch her after that.

But the cop on the road... Her hands tightened on the wheel. That man didn't have anyone to sew him up. She'd run and left him to bleed. Her stomach churned like the ocean.

She slammed on the breaks at a redlight. Buildings towered around her, the bright windows leering, the advertisements painting moving lines on everything. The streets were clogged like an obese man's arteries. Rain, which had misted over them for the last several hours, fell in earnest now.

She very suddenly did not want to be here. This was not home. It was not the magical escape she had conjured in her mind. And it was definitely—she honked at the mass of sluggish cars in front of her—not freedom. "Got a place in mind?" she snapped. "Or am I just kicking you out on the curb?"

"Flatbush Gardens Apartments. In Sunset Park."

Right. Because she knew where that was. She could just tell him that, take her money, and wish him well. One of the half dozen taxis in front of her could take him easy. But her lungs twisted in her chest, and she took a breath to unknot them. Her ten-thousand dollars could buy her a cushy room and a hot meal, but the room would be empty and dinner would be for one.

Wimp, she scolded herself. You have to leave eventually. But she didn't have to leave yet. Psycho Boy might not be great company, but he at least knew what had happened today. She wasn't sure she could bear to face a world full of strangers who looked at her and just saw a normal, innocent girl. When traffic finally dislodged itself, she found a gas station to turn into.

"Pay up," she said, turning around and holding out her hand. "I'll take you to Sunset Park, but I want my money now."

"Of course. You've earned it." He nodded at her with an expression hard to read. She frowned. She had earned it. She'd played nurse and put up with his creepy sister and hauled his butt up the coast. She'd helped him lose a tail and shot a man to keep them both from going to jail. So why did she feel vaguely guilty as he counted it into her hand?