My teeth are grinding together, and it’s taking everything in me not to break his nose. It’s within reach. I’m not restrained, and I want nothing more than to get my hands on him. But I don’t let him have that. I won’t give him something to pin on me. And I can see how furious my patience is making him as his eye twitches just a hair.
“My business with Marty Chandler is good, but it isn’t even my biggest paycheck, you know? Just a side gig. Maybe it’ll pay for a vacation to TJ next year, and I’ll get to fuck some of the relatives of the people I’ve shipped over, all while you’re rotting in jail for the next few years. If you make it that long, mind you — I’m sure there was someone underage at that party, and you know how well statutory rapists fare in prison.”
My face is stony as I stare him down, and it finally breaks him. He brings his fist around and right into jaw, and I feel blood in my mouth as he leans forward, grabbing hold of the scruff of my collar.
“Maybe while you’re gone, I’ll have that cunt of yours shipped down to Mexico in return for being so nosy. I can’t believe you’d go through all this shit for her. All because her old man stuck his nose into our business and had to be taken care of?”
With one hand, I seize Agent Charles Doyle by the arm and hurl him over the table, slamming him down and leaping up on top of him.
One of my fists connects with his nose before he knees me sharply in the stomach, shoving me off onto the floor, but before he can fumble for his gun, I leap up and turn the table over, knocking him back and sending him into the wall with a thud as I hop over the table.
We grapple as I reach him, his hands around my neck and mine on his collar, slamming him into the wall behind him as his weak arms try to squeeze the breath out of me. His glasses have fallen off, and I can see the nothing but hatred in his beady eyes. One of his hands lets go of my neck to go for his gun, and once again, I hurl him around, sending him toppling to the ground into the overturned table.
Before he can get his bearings, though, this time I dive on top of him, and my hand goes straight for his gun at the same time his does.
I’m faster.
In the span of a breath, I snatch Doyle’s gun from his side and point it at his head as I slip the safety off and cock it.
44
Cherry
Despite how dire this situation is, I can’t help but stifle a giggle at how ridiculous Genn looks hunched over in the passenger seat of my Ford Focus. The tiny car suits me just fine — and it’s appropriately sized for most normal people, too. But Genn is roughly the size of a grizzly bear, and he has to fold his arms inward and bow his head slightly just to fit, even after scooting the seat back as far as it can go. He’s rolled down the window, gazing out at the passing trees and highway signs as we blow down the road toward the county lockup.
I don’t exactly know what to expect when we get there. After talking to Ellen Hardy a little more, she advised me to take on this story myself. She called me last night while I was meeting up with Genn, Vasily, Lukas, and a couple other Club members at the Glass.
To my infinite surprise, she informed me that she’s been charting my progress, following my career ever since my internship with her paper ended. At first, I was embarrassed to find this out — after all, I haven’t exactly been taking on the hard-hitting, breaking news articles she printed all the time. The idea of Ellen Hardy, the powerful and influential mentor I idolized for months, reading my frilly fashion pieces was enough to make me want to crawl into a hole and never come back out.
She revealed to me that she’s actually been hoping I would come back and apply for a position on her team for awhile now, and that despite the frivolous nature of my work, my strong voice manages to shine through.
“I know you’re not living up to your full potential,” she told me, “but I wanted you to know that your talent has not gone unnoticed. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing in Jersey, or how you’ve sniffed out a scoop as big as this one, but I do know that your passion and your eye for detail qualify you as the best journalist to follow it. I will give you any information, any resource I can possibly provide, if you promise to write this article for me. This will change everything, Cherry. People need to know what’s going on down there in New Jersey. And when you’re done… just know there will always be an open slot for you back here in the Big Apple.”
I had just sat there in silent disbelief for a minute, letting all of this sink in. Here, I had assumed Ellen would sic one of her star journalists on the story, fly them down here to badger the everloving shit out of the cops until they gave up enough information for a sellable story.