Assassins: Slow Agony Part 5

There wasn't any.

Sure, I knew that I my reunion with Griffin wasn't under ideal circ.u.mstances. People were trying to kill us. That afforded us a certain amount of leeway to ignore our feelings. But seeing him again was tearing me up inside. Didn't it matter to him at all?

I folded up the piece of paper. I put it in my pocket. I pretended to peruse the menu. I wasn't expecting anything overt from Griffin. He couldn't do anything that would jeopardize us. But I knew him pretty well, and if seeing me meant anything to him, I couldn't tell.

I got out of the booth I was sitting in, picked up my duffel bag, and walked to the back of the restaurant, where the bathrooms were.

There was a woman inside, sitting on the sink and dangling her feet. "Leigh?" she said, smiling.

I shut the door. "Who are you?"

"I'm Sloane," she said. She had dark hair and a wide grin. "I used to be Op Wraith like Griffin. I'm helping out."

"Oh," I said.

She pushed me into one of the stalls. "Change into these." She handed me a backpack. It was unzipped and I could see clothes inside. "Give me your clothes."

"Why?" I said.

"Quick," she said.

I yanked my shirt over my head and dangled it over the top of the stall. "Here."

I changed as quickly as I could. When I emerged from the stall, Sloane was wearing my clothes. She had on a long blonde wig. "I'm going to be you."

I nodded. This was starting to make sense. "Do you think he'll go for it?"

"It should throw him off for long enough," she said. She gestured to my duffel. "You should move your stuff into that back pack. He could have seen you come in with that bag. We wouldn't want to tip him off."

"Right," I said. I took my clothes out of my duffel and shoved them into the backpack.

"Almost forgot," she said, digging out a baseball cap. "Put your hair up under this."

"Okay," I said, taking it.

"Wait in here until you hear a knock on the door. That'll be Griffin," she said, slinging my duffel bag over her shoulder. She swung out of the bathroom.

I waited. I'd never met this Sloane person before, but there had been a lot of a.s.sa.s.sins at Op Wraith. I couldn't have met them all. I tucked my hair into the ball cap, adjusting it in the mirror. Did I look like a different person?

There was a knock. I opened the door.

Griffin was there. He was no longer wearing his waiter uniform. "Come with me."

And I followed him.

"So did we lose him?" I asked. Griffin and I were in a car, cruising down I-68, away from c.u.mberland. We hadn't spoken once. Not when he led me to the car, not when he started it up, not when we sped out of the D'Atri parking lot.

"I don't know if he was even there," said Griffin. "The Marcel I knew wasn't exactly great at surveillance."

"You know him then."

Griffin's mouth twisted into something like a smile. "Oh I know him. I know him very well."

"How?" I said. "Knox said he didn't think he was Op Wraith. Marcel said something about jail, and I thought maybe..." Oh. Jesus.

Griffin's jaw twitched. "Yes, Leigh. I know him from jail." He turned to me for a second, his expression blazing. "You want to guess how?"

I swallowed. I turned to look out the window. Griffin had been imprisoned as a juvenile, when he was only sixteen years old. Because of the way he'd been tried, he'd been put in adult prison, and he'd been raped and abused while there. "I'm sorry."

"Whatever."

"Look," I said, "you may have left, but that doesn't mean I stopped caring about you."

He didn't respond.

I looked down at my hands, not sure what to say.

"I'd rather you didn't," he said.

"Didn't what?" I said.

"Didn't act like that. You and I both know that you don't give a d.a.m.n about anything except yourself. You proved that."

I bit my lip, tears threatening. "That isn't true."

"Oh," said Griffin sarcastically, "now she's going to start crying. Great."

"f.u.c.k you," I muttered, swallowing my tears. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"Crying about it doesn't fix it, you know," he said.

I took a shuddering breath. "Griffin, that Marcel guy wants you for some reason. He killed my friend, and he threatened me, but it's because he wants you. So maybe it wouldn't kill you to be a tiny bit nice to me. I've had a h.e.l.l of a day."

He turned back to me, fury in his eyes. But then it seemed to drain out of him, and he turned back to looking at the road, defeated. "Sorry. I don't mean to be a d.i.c.k. Hearing his name though... It's not exactly making it easy for me to be in a good mood."

"What does he want with you?"

"I have no idea," said Griffin. "He's probably the sickest person I've ever met. When we were locked up, he liked to control things. People. I was one of the things he controlled. The things he owned. But if he's out of jail, then I don't get it. I don't see why I'd be important to him anymore."

I tangled my hands together in my lap, still unsure of how to respond to something like that. The things that Griffin had been through in his life were horrible. When I tried to think about them, to really comprehend them, I always had to stop. Horror reared up inside me, and I couldn't think about it any longer.

Griffin reached over and turned on the radio. Music poured into the car, too loud for either of us to talk.

We drove without talking for quite some time. The radio station we were listening to was cla.s.sic rock, and eventually, it started to fade out as we got too far away to get reception. Right in the middle of Janis Joplin, it dissolved into static.

Griffin hit the seek b.u.t.ton on the radio.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked.

Country music blared as the radio switched to the next station. It drowned me out.

"What?" said Griffin, hitting the seek b.u.t.ton again.

"Where are you taking me?"

But this time I was interrupted by an easy-listening station. I turned the radio off.

Griffin glared at me, then turned back to the road.

"Where are you taking me?" I said. "We're still on I-68. We're going west. What's out here?"

"I'm taking you to my place," he said. "In Morgantown."

My jaw dropped. "Morgantown? This whole time, you've been an hour and a half away from me?"

"I'm trying to go to school," he said. "Or had you forgotten that?"

I had gotten Griffin to take cla.s.ses in Thomas. He was older than most of the freshmen, but he'd seemed to enjoy collegiate life. Last fall, we'd had a lot of fun. We'd been normal. No one had been after us. And back then, all the s.h.i.t that tore us apart hadn't happened yet.

Still, I hadn't expected him to continue with his schooling for some reason. I'd expected him to be somewhere far away from me, spending his days shooting guns at targets or something.

"I'm going to be living in Morgantown in the fall," I said. "I'm going to grad school there."

"Grad school?"

"There's not much else I can do with an English degree," I said. "I thought I told you this. I told you I was applying, didn't I?"

He shrugged. "I don't see why it matters."

"Right," I said. "Marcel could kill us both, anyway, before fall." I slumped in my seat. "Dammit, I'm going to miss graduation, aren't I?"

He made a face. "I'm sorry I'm such an inconvenience to your life."

I stiffened. "That's not what I'm saying."

"Whatever."

So, three and a half months, and he was still as angry with me as the day he walked out of my life. He was never going to forgive me. But I didn't need to think about that, did I? I needed to focus. "You don't think it's a bad idea to take me to your home? What if he's following us?"

"I'm pretty sure we lost him," said Griffin. "Besides, he wants to meet me in Atlantic City in two weeks, right? That was the message he wanted you to give me?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't there already. He probably didn't follow you at all. He figured you'd get word to me. We'll lie low for two weeks, but I don't think we'll see him. No, the real s.h.i.t's going to go down when I don't show up at the meeting place. We'll see what he does then."

"Meeting place?"

"Yeah, I know exactly where he's talking about in Atlantic City. He knows I'd know."

"So, that's your plan? Hide and do nothing?"

"He obviously doesn't know where I am," said Griffin. "You were his only link to me. I've taken you out of the equation. He'll have to give up."

I thought about the man who I'd seen that morning. He didn't seem like the kind to give up. But maybe Griffin was right. "So, we're spending two weeks together? You going to be able to handle that?"

He squared his shoulders. "We just do our best to be civil, okay? Be polite."

"I have been polite," I said. "You're the one who-"

"And don't do that. No blaming," he said.

I closed my mouth.

"In fact," he said, "it's probably better if we don't talk."

He switched on the radio again.

I sighed and lay my head against my headrest.

Griffin's apartment was one of four carved out of an old house high on the top of a hilly street in Morgantown. Everything in Morgantown was on a hill, so Griffin's apartment was fairly typical. It was a one-bedroom. The door opened into a s.p.a.cious living room which had unfortunate carpet the color of pea soup. It was spa.r.s.ely decorated and immaculately clean. Griffin was a stickler for stuff like that. It was one of the many things we'd argued about.

There was a bedroom to the left of the living room. It was tiny, containing only a bed and Griffin's dresser.

To the right were the kitchen and bathroom. Both were spotless.

The apartment was nice, but it was small. If I was going to be here for two weeks, I had a feeling that Griffin and I were going to have a hard time not talking to each other. We were going to be practically on top of each other.

I headed into the bathroom to change out of the clothes that Sloane had given me, because they were too small, and they were uncomfortable. I was relatively tall, five feet nine inches, and I had trouble finding clothes that fit properly anyway. It was tough to find pants that were the right length and weren't also enormous at the waist. These clothes were at least a size too small. I peeled out of them and put on something I had in my backpack.

The shower curtain was open, and I could see inside. Griffin's shampoo snuggled up to a can of Lady Bic shaving gel. I picked it up. It was lavender scented. That didn't belong to Griffin.

I explored the shower a little further. Not only was there girly shaving gel, but there was a woman's shaver, fruity scented shampoo and conditioner, and a tube of Bikini Zone.

I stared at all of it for a few moments. Then I jammed the clothes I'd been wearing back into my backpack and left the bathroom. "So, um, that Sloane girl that helped us out?"

Griffin was crouching in front of the television, sorting through a stack of video games. That had been his plan, I supposed. Race fake cars instead of paying attention to me. Wonderful. He looked up. "Oh, yeah, she's great. Her and her brother Silas. I met them on the ex-Op Wraith Facebook group.

I raised my eyebrows. "There's a Facebook group for a.s.sa.s.sins?"

"Yeah," said Griffin. "Helps us all keep in touch. By chance, Sloane, Silas, and me were all in Morgantown. We hang out sometimes."

"Hang out," I said. "Right. You shave her pubic hair for her, or does she do it while you watch?"

He wrinkled his brow in confusion.