The Sword and the Scythe

Chapter 11: Tennessee Whiskey

This trip was not going at all the way Leroy had planned. He felt bad for freaking Charlotte out with the revelation that he wasn't human. The way she'd looked at him left a pang in his chest—all the trust he'd built over the last four years gone in an instant. The murder and felonies didn't help anything. And to top it all off, he'd dashed her newfound hopes of ever speaking with her father again and bummed her out so bad that she hadn't spoken to him in hours. All he'd wanted to do was to help her get out of whatever trouble the P.I. would have caused, not turn her world upside down and cause her even more problems.

The question of who had hired the P.I. still lingered in his mind. Mallory's client saw the pictures of him and recognized him. They'd been looking for her before they knew he was involved. But what would one of his enemies want with Holly Barnes? The whole thing left a bad taste in his mouth, and an unsettled feeling in his gut.

Not to mention the fact that he distrusted the instinct to protect her. He had already gotten far too attached to her than he should have—though admittedly that boat had sailed the moment he'd met her. He hadn't felt this way about anyone in a long time—it made him nervous. He couldn't bear to lose her, but his caring for someone always ended badly. There was a part of him that wondered if she'd be better off on this road trip without him.

"Now that we've put some distance between us and the scene of our kidnapping, I was thinking I'd change course to like, Kansas or something." Charlotte broke the silence, and he turned to look at her, blonde curls ruffling in the artificial breeze of the AC blasting in the car.

Clearing his throat, he shrugged. "We could go there if your heart is set on it. I've also got a safe house in Arizona if you'd rather go there."

"Really? Arizona? You don't strike me as someone who'd like it there."

"Oh, I don't. Not even a little bit. Much too hot for me. But in the winter, they can still get snow? That's borderline inhumane. No thank you. That's why it's a safe house. No one who knows me would ever think to find me there."

Despite the air conditioning, he was sweating so much that it felt like every inch of his body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Even his goddamn eyelids were sweating. With a sigh, he pulled his flask up out of the center console and shook it. He hadn't had anything to drink since he'd woken up from the gunshots. Every tremoring cell in his body was begging him to drink the rest of the whiskey in the flask—but he was trying to keep a clear head for Charlotte's sake. Even if a clear head meant he had to sweat out decades' worth of alcohol.

"Where are you from? Not Arizona, I take it."

"New York City, baby," he said in a bad imitation of Austin Powers which he regretted as soon as the words had left his mouth. He'd lived with Charlotte for four years; she was the only real friend he'd had since the nineties. Somehow telling her the truth about him made him uneasy, like telling her the truth had opened up all the doors he'd intentionally left closed. But now, he kept saying the first thing that came to mind, word-vomiting more information than he wanted her to know. And the uncomfortable jokes? For the love of God why couldn't he knock it off with the bad jokes? He couldn't remember the last time he had a problem talking to someone he found attractive. He hoped it was the withdrawals having the effect on him and not Charlotte herself—at least he knew that withdrawals would eventually subside.

"You know it snows there, too, don't you?"

He rolled his eyes, "Believe me, I know. I almost froze to death in it more times than I care to remember. Why do you think I've lived in Southern California for so long? Can't stand weather; I much prefer to live where it's the temperature stays around eighty degrees and it rains less than fifteen days a year."