Page 77

I pulled the car into the hospital lot with a jerky stop that had my seat belt straining across my chest. Floodlights lit up the cars parked in neat rows, spotlighting the woman skipping from car to car putting papers beneath the windshield wipers. She twirled every few steps, like she was a damn fairy, sprinkling moondust instead of rape accusation flyers.
I got out of the car and jogged over to her. “Rebel.”
She flinched at the harsh way I said her name and spun around, her hand clutching her chest. “Jesus, Vaughn! You scared the hell out of me! What are you doing here, just sneaking up on a girl in the dark?”
I plucked a flyer from her hand. “You were supposed to wait for me to do this.”
Her cute face scrunched up. “That’s not how I remember the conversation going. I said I was doing it. You said you’d help. I never agreed to you standing there glaring at me like I’m doing something wrong.”
“I think the cops might agree with me, don’t you?” The words came out harsh, partially because I was frustrated over Harold, partially because what she was doing was dangerous.
She held a hand up in my face. “Nope. Not doing this with you tonight, Vaughn. Your grumpy ass can just go on home and quit raining on my parade.”
She resumed her twirling, dancing to some beat in her head only she could hear.
“You drunk?”
“Not even a little bit,” she called back gaily.
“High?”
“Only on revenge.”
I squinted at her. We’d been slowly working on her revenge plan for weeks. It had never made her dance in the moonlight like she was now. “There’s something else.”
She stopped and shoved her hand on her hip. “Fine. If you must know, I had coffee with my dad today.”
I stiffened. “Your dad? That guy you met at the movies?”
“Only one I got.”
“You called him? You didn’t tell me you decided to do that.”
She shook her head in confusion. “Since when do I have to tell you everything I do? And for your information, Brother, since apparently that’s what we’ve reverted back to, I didn’t call him. I ran into him when I was out plastering cars with these around Black Industries.”
I blinked at her, trying to digest all of that. “You went to Black Industries alone? Rebel! You could have run into Caleb or Hugh.”
“I did actually. Hugh walked right past me and didn’t even recognize me.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief. “Good.”
But that was apparently the wrong thing to say. “Good? No, Vaughn. Not good. I put all those beaten and bruised photos of me in his car, the same way I did to Leonn. Leonn nearly shit his pants. Hugh didn’t even react. Now he doesn’t even recognize me when I walk past him in the street? This revenge plan is pretty damn weak if he isn’t scared!”
Jesus, she was impossible. I was all for revenge. I would support her in whatever damn thing she wanted to do to make these guys pay. But doing it impulsively like this? Putting herself in danger instead of just waiting a minute until Kian or Fang or I could go with her was reckless. She was going to end up dead in a ditch somewhere. I knew Caleb had it in him to do that. She was playing with fire, and we were all going to get burned. My frustration bubbled over, my voice raising. “What about me and Kian and Fang? Do you care how we are with you doing all this shit alone? Fuck, Rebel! You weren’t the one who had to watch you drowning in the bottom of a pool.”
Her eyes blazed. “No, sorry, I was just the one drowning in it!”
Fuck, she was infuriating. She was so reckless with her own life. She never stopped to consider the consequences of anything, even after what had happened with Caleb at the party. I understood she didn’t want to admit she was afraid of him, but fucking hell. I was. She should have been. Now she was opening herself up to let another stranger take advantage of her.
“What did your dad want? Did he hit you up for money?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “Money? What, the seventy dollars I have left in the bank account from my last shift at Psychos?”
“You know you’re worth a lot more than that.”
“Am I? I haven’t seen any of the money from Bart’s business. Have you?”
She wasn’t wrong. If Harold was to be believed, none of us were worth anything. But I didn’t trust the man as far as I could throw him. “I’m working on it. For both of us.”