“Your knight in shining armor didn’t show,” Fang taunted me. “I guess my guys back at the hideout must have taken care of him.”
I could see his dark eyes in the rearview mirror now. He glanced away from the road to meet my stare in the reflection. I could see his smile in the corners of his eyes.
“You bastard.” I spat my words at him.
He laughed in response.
“Have you figured out where we’re going yet, Sasha?” he asked me.
I looked around the highway again in the quickly fading light.
“We’re heading north?” I checked.
“Last time I looked, we were,” Fang told me.
“We’re heading up to your hideout upstate,” I said, nodding. I knew about his upstate hideout deep in the woods. From what I’d been told, it was an old cabin, nothing special, but he used it as a retreat or a place to take people who weren’t coming back. I was pretty sure I knew my place in that equation.
“Yeah, we’ve got to get out of Dodge for a little while, let things cool down a bit before we go back,” he said with a smile. He was cruel. Everything he said was intended to taunt me now.
“And you and I have to talk, right?” I said, looking out the window.
“Right.” He laughed.
“Do we have to have an audience for our little discussion?” I asked him. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I couldn’t believe I was playing along with his twisted little fantasy about me.
“We don’t, unless you want one.”
“Up to you. You’re the boss,” I reminded him.
“Yes, that’s right. I am,” he agreed.
I knew we were just playing at this point, though. He didn’t want me to work things out with him some other way. I’d been kidding myself with those thoughts of him wanting me the way he wanted those other girls, or wanting to work out a deal where he took whatever frustrations he had out on my ass. If we were heading towards the cabin upstate, it meant that my time was up. I was going to be one of those people who didn’t come back.
The air in car grew heavy as the realization weighed on my conscience. It seemed that Fang could also sense that I realized what we were doing. He grew quiet and stared at me with a thoughtful look in his eyes. We rode in silence for a few minutes as the air hung over us. The only sound was the wind outside as we sped down the interstate.
“I’m very disappointed in you,” Fang said to me after a few minutes of dark silence. His tone was even heavy at this point.
I knew he was talking about more than just my getting caught by Cole. I could hear it in his voice. He was being serious with me now. The whole mood of our ride had changed. He wasn’t just messing with me now, taunting me with his words. If things went the way he had planned them to go, this was very likely to be our final conversation. It was time to air things out.
“I expected more professional behavior from you,” he continued. “Even after getting caught, I expected you to continue treating this business with the Overlords as a job.”
“But I was,” I argued. “From the moment I walked in that room and saw that it was empty except for Cole standing against the opposite wall, I could tell that he desired me. So I decided to use that desire against him, and that’s what I’ve been doing.”
He kept his eyes straight ahead as the light beyond his headlights faded almost completely away.
“I was trying to seduce him to get intel out of him. I knew the best way to get him to open up to me was to play into his desire for me, and that’s what I’ve been doing. He didn’t want to torture me. He barely even tried to interrogate me. He took me under his wing almost immediately,” I explained.
“What does that mean to me?” Fang asked me.
“That means I played along so I could find out that he was coming after you. That meant I knew he’d moved his drugs elsewhere. I knew where he was at all times. I knew who was at their headquarters at all times. I’m in, Fang. Or I was. Now that I’m gone—”
“Now that he’s dead, you mean,” Fang interrupted.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m no longer in. I ran away to try to get back in with you, but it seems like you’ve got other ideas,” I told him.
“I do.”
“I figured as much. When I realized where we were going, I realized what you were planning. I’m not going home, am I?” I asked finally, getting straight to the point.
“Well, Sasha, you tell me what you would do. Put yourself in my position. You’ve got someone who’s been working for you for years. Normally, they do a damn good job. Occasionally they get off track a little to make things work faster, better. Like they might let themselves get caught so they can get information that wouldn’t otherwise be available. Maybe they sleep with a mark to get what they want out of them. Stuff like that. Now people know who your person is, and they can keep an eye out for them, making it harder for them to do their job. Sound familiar yet?” he asked.