But there was no going back, was there?
If he put me in rehab, he’d find out damn fast I never had an addiction. There would be no withdrawals, no shakes, and no friggin’ nothing. I couldn’t fake through that. Shit. Shit. Shit. I’d played it too good. Deck thought I was a pathetic alcoholic who nearly killed herself.
Deck’s cell rang and he passed me off to Tyler. Smart, both of them knew I’d make a run for it. The nurse stood there a little stunned and then she slipped past both of us, ran to the nurses’ station and picked up the phone.
“Why are you calling, Kai?”
My breath hitched, and I quickly smothered it by pretending the wound on my back hurt as I put my hand to it and winced.
Deck locked eyes with me and then walked away a few steps. Holy shit. Panic gripped my lungs with each breath. I was still fucked up from my annual purge, waking up in the hospital and then having Deck question me about things I had no way to answer unless I told him the truth.
“You could’ve died, sweetie,” Tyler said. I yanked away from Tyler’s grip and propped myself against the wall, but he stayed within inches of me. “You didn’t see him.” He kept his voice low as he leaned into me, arms on either side, palms against the pale-blue walls. “He was scared, Georgie. Getting that call from Vic and he was ten hours away …” Tyler lowered his head, shaking it slowly back and forth. “What if we’d been on a mission? What if he couldn’t get here? Sweets, if anything ever happened to you … Jesus, I don’t know what he’d do.” I looked to the side, avoiding his eyes. He wouldn’t let me and cupped my head with both hands. “Don’t know what’s going on with you, but you need to get better.”
This was me better. I had no better. No overhaul, renovation or restoration job was going to fix me. But I learned to accept it and live with pieces of me undecipherable and stained.
I LOOKED OVER my shoulder and saw Tyler standing far closer to Georgie than I liked. “Why are you calling?”
“I heard Georgie got herself into some trouble.”
“I’m not going to ask how you know about that. But I do want to know why she cares if I’m talking to you.” I saw the look on her face when I said his name. She’d met Kai when he’d helped kill the sex trafficker. Was Georgie nervous of Kai? She must have known I’d never let him near her again.
“She okay?”
“I don’t have time for idle conversation with a guy I don’t like. So, why the fuck are you calling?”
“Ah, so Georgie is idle conversation?”
“Georgie and anything to do with Georgie is off-limits to you.” The bastard had the gall to chuckle and I clenched the phone harder. “I told you never to call unless it was an emergency.”
“It is.” I waited. “I need the girl found.”
“Jesus. Like I told you in New York, it’s not happening. I don’t have time for that shit.” London, the girl I rescued from the sex-trafficking auction a number of years ago. She’d stayed at Georgie’s place until I found out who she was and where she came from. Found out she’s from a very wealthy family. She has been a constant runaway ever since she came back. Last I heard, she’d been missing for nearly a year … longest yet. Kai was interested in finding her. Wealthy family probably was paying him a shitload to bring her home. Thing was, it didn’t fit with the type of work Kai did. According to what little I could dig up on Kai when I’d first met him, he stayed low. Meaning no high-profile shit. London was high profile.
“It’s a time issue.”
I coughed on my half-laugh. “Why? The parents paying you extra if you find her before a year is up?” When he dragged my men and me to New York, I was under the impression it was something big—it wasn’t. But I owed him a favor, so we went and checked out the area London had last been seen. Then the call came in about Georgie from Matt and we flew back.
“The favor was for two days.”
“Yeah, well you got one.” I had enough problems with wondering what to do about Georgie. Vic knew a place she could go to sober up, get help, but no matter what I said two minutes ago, I was following my instinct and backing down. Something wasn’t right. It was like a tickle in the back of my throat constantly niggling me. Her cuts. Her disappearing act. That self-defense move she pulled. Shit, the bottle of Scotch she drank somewhere other than Connor’s grave, because Vic had sworn she wasn’t there all day. But suddenly she shows up there, passed out with some guy calling an ambulance.
Who the hell was the guy? A coincidence that he finds her lying unconscious and convulsing at Connor’s grave. I didn’t believe in coincidences.
I looked over the moment Tyler put his hands on either side of her head as if he was going to kiss her. I knew he wouldn’t, but still, I didn’t like it. I had to end this conversation fast. I kicked at the orange plastic chair in front of me and it toppled over. Both Georgie and Tyler looked at me, he dropped his hands from her and a nurse behind the desk scowled at me.
I felt like a fuse had been lit inside me and was slowly burning. Soon I was going to lose it, and losing it in front of strangers didn’t happen. But my thread was pulled so tight right now it was going to snap any minute. I couldn’t get out of my head the look in her eyes after she drove her elbow back into my cheek. It was an expert’s move. When the hell did she ever take a class to learn that shit? Georgie was too busy partying to take a class. It didn’t make sense.