I might not have been as perceptive as he was, but I still knew he wasn’t talking about me anymore. He was talking about himself.
“Landon isn’t going to fuck me over,” I said. Everything Arden was saying rang true, aligning with my own thoughts, but I refused to agree with him. “I know him. He told me this was it, and he wouldn’t go back on his word. He’s like my fucking father.”
Arden chuckled.
“Yeah, I got one of those, too. He’s the reason I’m here, retirement or not.”
Arden pulled his arm across his chest and placed his hand under his head to get it off the snow. He looked into my eyes again. For a second, he didn’t look quite as emotionless as he had before. His eyes tightened a bit, and his jaw flexed as he spoke.
“We’re too good for them to just let us go,” Arden continued. “Even if they really want to, they’re always going to need us for something one last time.”
I stared at him as the words sank in, and I knew deep inside that he was right. If I did get out of this, Franks and Landon would let me off on my own for a while, but eventually there would be something else—just one more thing they needed for me to do. One more favor. One more fight.
“Fuck you,” I grumbled through clenched teeth. “I’ve got bigger priorities now.”
Arden nodded slightly, sniffed against the cold, and looked back to me.
“I got a girl, too,” he finally said. “Lia. Never thought that would happen.”
“Heh,” I chuckled, “tell me about it.”
The statement was rhetorical, but it seemed to put Arden in a more talkative mood.
“She doesn’t know where I am,” he said. “I sent her off to visit her mom for a couple of weeks. She’s going to come home, and I won’t be there.”
My mind played through the scenario he described, only with Raine and myself as the subjects. I pictured her coming into the condo and finding it empty. I thought about what she would do when it stayed empty through the night. I wondered at what point she would start looking for me and what she would do when she couldn’t find any trace of where I had gone.
She’d freak out. She wouldn’t know what to do, and there wouldn’t be anyone she could call to get any information. How long would it be before she gave up? Weeks? Months? Years?
“Lia came after me once before,” Arden said. “I ditched her in Arizona, but she still managed to find me again. She’s stubborn.”
“That sounds familiar,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone as stubborn as Raine.”
“Raine?”
I tapped the edge of the picture.
“That’s her name.”
Arden huffed a breath through his nose.
“At least she’ll have her kid,” Arden said. “Lia’s stuck with the dog.”
“He’s not her son,” I said quietly.
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
I remembered his words from our first meeting with all the families when he’d threatened to come after Alex when this was over.
“You knew that,” I said accusingly. “You knew his mother was dead.”
“Yeah,” Arden said. His eyes were blank again. “Forgot. My mind’s a little preoccupied.”
His eyes flashed over to the side, narrowed, and he shook his head slightly as if to clear it.
“Did you kill her?” I asked bluntly.
“No,” he said. “Franks put the hit on her. Rinaldo told me about it.”
I didn’t see any trace of a lie on his face. I clenched my teeth a bit. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Franks would choose profit over family, obviously.
“Fucker,” I muttered.
“He won’t be on his own,” Arden said as he nodded toward the picture.
“Yeah.” I shrugged though I wasn’t sure he could see the movement from where he lay on the snow. I stared back at the drawing for a minute. “She treats him like he’s hers.”
“Well, you got that at least.”
I didn’t want to go into the detailed story about Jillian and all that shit. He didn’t need to know any more than he already did, and I didn’t want to spend my last few hours thinking about that woman. I wanted to keep the image of Raine in my head, so I kept talking about her.
“She’s a fucking saint,” I said. “I suck at being a boyfriend. I can’t even get along with her friends.”
Arden nodded his head, and his eyes darkened.
“Lia doesn’t really have any friends,” he said. “That’s my fault. To keep her safe and away from all this shit, I had to isolate her. I did it to protect her, but…yeah, well, she doesn’t have anyone but me. Once she figures out I’m not coming back, she’ll probably move back to Arizona with her mom.”
Raine would at least know what had happened to me. Landon would tell her I was dead, and she could move on with her life. Lindsay would be there for her, and she’d have a shoulder to cry on if nothing else. I couldn’t even imagine how she would deal with it all if she didn’t have Lindsay around, and I felt like a shit for being nasty to her and Nick all the time.
At least they could take care of her and help with Alex.
“I don’t know if Lia is a saint or not,” Arden said, “but she puts up with me. Even when I’m…well, when I’m not the friendliest person around, she still hangs in there. It doesn’t seem to matter how fucked up I am in the head, she always stands by me.”
“Raine’s like that, too,” I replied with a nod. “I can be a total asshole, and she still has my back.”
“Lia knows just when to back off and when to be there,” Arden said. “She knows I’m fucked up, but I guess she just…I dunno…ignores it? She doesn’t like it, but she never gives up on me. She also thinks I don’t do hits anymore, but I do.”
“How do you do that without her knowing about it?”
“She’s in school,” Arden said. “It’s mostly online, but sometimes she has to go to conferences or meet with her professors in person. I plan my hits around those.”
“So you hide it from her?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re crazy.”
Arden laughed.
“Yeah, I’ve got the diagnosis to prove it.”
I stared at him a minute. It didn’t seem like an off-hand remark; it seemed like he meant it. He looked back at me and nodded.
“PTSD,” he said. “I’m a certified nut.”
“From being in the Marines?”
“From being a POW, yeah.” He was silent a moment. “Why are you such a dick to your girl?”
“I just…have a nasty temper. I used to drink to make up for it.”
“Not anymore?”
“That’s the one thing she’d leave me for,” I admitted. “If I drink, she’s gone.”
“And that’s enough to keep you off it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, mostly. I’ve fucked up but just once.”
“She forgave you?”
“She did.”
Arden pondered a minute.
“I don’t think Lia would be so forgiving if she knew I was still in the business.”
“If she’s anything like Raine, she’d have your balls.”
Arden laughed.
“Sounds like they are a lot alike,” Arden mused.
I had the feeling we were both thinking it, but neither of us said anything about how that probably meant he and I were a lot alike as well. I thought about how he fought—as if none of the blows I’d made to his face mattered. Arden really believed that as long as he was alive, there was still a chance.
If we were so much alike, why wasn’t I thinking the same thing? I wasn’t dead yet, dammit. I was just in a totally fucking hopeless situation with no conceivable way out. I’d been in similar situations before.
“Fuck that,” I muttered.
“What?”
I didn’t answer him.
Reaching down with my hand, I dug at the space near my hip. It was nearly frozen solid, and I couldn’t get much of the ice awa
y from my body. I placed both hands against the frozen ground and tried to push myself out of the hole, but I couldn’t get enough leverage, and my legs wouldn’t budge.
Pain rippled through my left calf as I tried harder. As I attempted to move, it became clear that my leg was not only broken but also turned backward at a nasty angle, further securing itself inside the bank of ice and rock below.
Exhausted, I dropped my head back in the snow and tried to breathe through my nose. I could hear Arden behind me, shuffling against the ice, but he wasn’t trying anymore either.
He kept thinking about giving up; I could see it in his eyes.
Normally, that would have been good news for me, but I didn’t feel particularly happy about his predicament. Maybe I was just too tired to give a shit anymore, but the idea of beating his head in wasn’t as attractive as it had been an hour ago.
“I want a fucking cigarette,” Arden said suddenly.
I laughed. I paused for a moment and then dug through my pockets. I had three smokes wrapped up in a plastic baggie—my usual emergency supply—and I pulled two of them out. Moving my torn facemask to the side, I stuck both Marlboros in my mouth. I grabbed one of the matches from the bag and leaned down into the hole and away from the wind to strike it against the rock. I ran the flame across the ends of each cigarette until they blazed.
Reaching out over my shoulder, I handed one to Evan.
“Damn,” he said, genuinely surprised. “Thanks.”
I inhaled deeply and watched the smoke flow out around my face.
“If I get out of this, I’m going to end up running that whole organization when Rinaldo retires,” Evan said. “I don’t want it, but the war has made it clear that his daughter can’t handle the pressure. Lia wants nothing to do with it. I’m going to lose her over the whole thing, and there’s no other path before me. I think I’d rather die on the edge of a mountain than lose her over that. I’d rather she just wonder why I never came home.”
“That’s fucked up,” I replied. “Raine would go bat-shit if I just didn’t come home one night. She’d drive herself to an early grave wondering what happened to me. I may be a dick, but I wouldn’t do that to her.”
“I don’t know what Lia will do,” Evan said softly. “She’ll be upset, but she’ll get over it eventually, right?”
I looked over my shoulder at him and raised my eyebrows. I didn’t know this chick, but she did sound a lot like Raine. Raine wouldn’t just get over it. I knew that much. I figured Evan’s girl wouldn’t either.
“Fuck,” Evan muttered. He took a long drag off the cigarette and stared out over the ledge. “I can’t leave her like that.”
“Well, why don’t you help me get out, and then I’ll make sure to let her know you’re dead when I’m done with you.”
“Thanks a lot,” he said as he glared over the burning tip of the smoke. “I’m sure having the dude who killed me tell her all about it would be a great comfort to her.”
“Just tryin’ to help,” I snickered.
“Yeah, I can do without that type of assistance.”
“Wouldn’t Moretti tell her what happened?” I asked.
“He doesn’t know where she is.”
“He knew how to find you, though,” I said after a moment’s consideration. “Are you saying he can’t find her?”
“Rinaldo has people who could locate her,” Evan said with a deep breath. “She’d be able to move on then, I guess.”
He didn’t seem convinced as I watched him drop his eyes to the ground. He blinked his frozen eyelashes a couple of times, and with a shiver, took another long drag off the smoke. I might not have been as perceptive as Evan was, but I could see it in his face—he didn’t have any hope left. He was done. I wasn’t even sure he wanted to survive.
The knowledge should have spurred me on. It should have encouraged me to listen to Landon’s voice in my head and get my ass moving, but it didn’t. For some reason, I didn’t want Evan to give up though I wasn’t sure at what point he became Evan in my head instead of just Arden.
“Landon’s always told me that victory is in your head first,” I said. “If you decide that’s how it’s going to be, then that’s how it will be.”
Evan took another hit on the smoke and tried to shift himself into a more comfortable position. He looked straight at me.
“Let’ go over the possibilities, shall we?” he suggested.
“Okay.”
“Most likely—we freeze to death right here,” he said. “No winner. I don’t know how this shit works when there’s a tie, but it won’t matter to us because we’ll both be dead.”
I didn’t agree with him—what happened to Raine and Alex mattered a fucking hell of a lot regardless of how things turned out for me, but I didn’t feel like arguing the point.
“Next option—one of us manages to get free, and the other one is still trapped,” he continued. “Easy enough kill for either of us.”
I had to concur with that one.
“They don’t know where we are at this point,” Evan said. “Neither of us has our cameras anymore, and they’d have to come looking for us. My guess is they’ve already decided to do that but are probably waiting until the wind dies down. I don’t know what the protocol is. Rinaldo only filled me in on standard procedure, not exceptions.”
“There aren’t usually any exceptions,” I said. “The tournament goes until there’s only one player left. I’ve never been in the situation where the investors don’t know what’s happening, but I can guess. There was a tournament once—not one I was in—where the last two people were fighting with knives. They both cut each other fatally. The investors waited to see which one died first and declared the other guy the winner even though he died a few minutes later.”
“What if they find us both dead at the same time,” Evan asked, “or if they find us both alive?”
“As far as I know, that’s never happened.” I thought about it for a minute. “They might decide to start the whole thing over again.”
My stomach churned a bit. The idea of having to do it all again actually sounded worse than losing. It would mean breaking one more promise to Raine. She’d never trust me again.
“How about we make a deal?” Evan said quietly.
I turned a little farther to get a better look at him. He was watching the cigarette burn as opposed to looking back at me, but his expression was quite serious.
“A deal?”
“Yeah,” he said. “A deal where we both end up retired for real with the women we fight for.”
“The only way that happens is when one of us dies,” I reminded him. “There isn’t a prize for second place.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Arden rolled his head to the side and stared into my eyes. “You can have the trophy—I don’t give a shit about that. I just want to walk away with people thinking I’m dead.”
I knew exactly what he was suggesting. Normally, it wouldn’t be an option because the audience would be aware of any allegiances formed between tournament players and would put a stop to it. This time, they had no idea what we were doing. I still didn’t see how it would work—they’d have to have a body to prove I’d won.
“Don’t you think that kind of alliance has been tried before?” I asked. “They watch for that shit.”
“Not if they think I’m buried on the side of the mountain. They’ll only look for me for so long before they have to take your word for it”
“You’re crazy.”
“Already established.”
“I mean really crazy,” I countered. “You’re living in some kind of fantasy world.”
He glared at me a moment.
“Look over there,” Evan said. He pointed with his finger out near the top of the ridge. “You see anyone?”
I glanced over for a second then looked back at him with narrowed eyes.
“There’s no one for miles,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, I know,” he said softly, “but I st
ill see him.”
“Who?”
“A kid I killed in Iraq. He follows me everywhere. He’ll go away for a while—sometimes for months—but he always comes back when shit gets real.”
I stared at him for a moment until I realized my mouth was hanging open. I closed it quickly.
“Dude—there’s no one there.”
He shrugged.
“I know. I still see him. I have nightmares about killing him all the time. Not just him, but being in the desert, tied up in a hole for months. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about it, and when I do, I can’t sleep at all—sometimes for days.”
I could certainly relate to the nightmares. Before I had met Raine, I could only avoid them with alcohol. With her around, I slept better than I had since I was a kid. She drove the nightmares from my head.
The next phrase out of Evan’s mouth would have knocked me to the ground had I been standing.
“When I’m with Lia, I sleep better.”
I looked over to him quickly, trying to figure out if he had somehow used his skills of perception to know what I was thinking, but he seemed completely inside of his own head.
“Fuck,” I muttered. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he said. His eyes darkened as he looked at me.
“It’s just…well, Raine helps with my nightmares, too.”
Our gazes locked as we both considered this. I thought it was just me, and from the look on his face, Evan had thought the same thing about himself. Knowing we had such an odd similarity struck me right in the gut. I didn’t know what to make of it.
“I couldn’t deal with it if it wasn’t for her,” Evan said quietly.
“Me either,” I said. “With Raine, I mean.”
“All the more reason I should stay away from Lia,” he said. “She deserves better, but I can’t let her go. I also can’t get out of my debt to Rinaldo. At some point, it will become either her or him, and I can’t choose between them.”
“You are fucked up.” I took in a long breath and thought about it for a minute. Evan was fucked up because of a war and whatever happened to him over there. None of that shit was his fault. What was my excuse? Crappy childhood and a woman running out on me? It all sounded kind of lame to me now.