Tyler took a deep breath. Opening her eyes, she looked around the large room they were in. Hell had visited this place. Well, hell in the shape of Billy's gang. Her gang, now.
She turned around, pushing those two words out of her mind. The guys were all gathered at the door, watching her. She was standing in the middle of the room, and her voice echoed around them when she spoke. "You're sure this is all of them?" she asked.
Bodi nodded.
Spink pointed to a body in the corner and said, "He was their latest. Initiation happened two weeks ago."
Tyler nodded. "Good," she said. Then she walked towards the guys, and they parted, allowing her a path to walk between them. She walked through the door, leaving the building and walking down the stairs. The gang followed her in silence. When they got down the street to their parked cars, she turned to face them yet again. "If you need anything, I'll be at Billy's apartment."
Heco stepped forward as soon as she'd spoken. "Your apartment," he said.
But he was hardly done speaking when Baggy took a step forward and lifted his hand to silence the other man. His eyes didn't leave Tyler's face.
She didn't wait for him to say anything. "Bones has a job for us tomorrow. We meet at the abandoned church at nine."
"No," Baggy said.
Tyler raised an eyebrow, silently questioning his opposition. She gave a half nod, signaling for him to explain himself.
He turned a bit, glancing out of the corners of his eyes at the men behind him. Then he turned back to face Tyler. "After you joined," he said after a long moment, "Billy met all of us one night and made us swear an oath. An oath I don't intend to fuckin' break."
Tyler frowned. She tilted her head to the side. "An oath," she repeated. "To do what?"
Baggy hesitated for a moment, and then he said, "You gotta go. You go back to Billy's, you get cleaned up"—he glanced at the blood spattered on her dark grey shirt—"and then . . ." he paused, as if he wasn't sure whether he should go on, but he continued, "then you go the fuck home."
The crease in Tyler's brow deepened. "Billy's place is home," she said.
But Baggy shook his head. "Your real fuckin' home," he said, "home with your family. Your real family. You go back wherever the hell you came from and you live with your parents and you let your daddy know that you aint dead."
Tyler's frown had melted away as he spoke. She opened her mouth to speak, but for a moment no words would come. "What?" she asked, her voice hardly a whisper.
Bodi stepped forward. "You go back to your life before you was kidnapped," he said. "This is your fuckin' chance to get the hell outta here. Finish school. Go to college for some fancy degree. Find a boyfriend who's a dentist or a doctor or some shit, get married, have babies."
Tyler's voice was still a whisper when she spoke again. "Billy made you swear . . ." she trailed off.
"Made us swear to let you go," Bodi picked up.
"Make me go," she corrected him. "I'm free to go when I want. I have been for more than a year."
But the guys shook their heads. "That aint true, and you know it," Baggy said.
"He wanted to make sure that if anything happened to him and he couldn't be here to make sure you didn't get into any fuckin' trouble," Spink said, "you'd go home and get outta here and be safe."
Tyler's head was spinning. She could go? But no, she couldn't. Just because Billy was gone didn't mean she had no obligations here. "Gang wars are dangerous things," she said after a moment.
Bodi threw his head back and laughed. "We'll do just fine without you, Angel. Don't you worry about us."
But she was adamant. "I'm not leaving you to finish what I started!"
The guys smiled. "We know how to clean up this kind of thing," Jake said.
Tyler smiled, but it was a smile full of pain, and her lips trembled. "Yes, but you'd be cleaning up after my mess."
"You didn't kill The Hall all fuckin' alone," Heco pointed out. "We're just as responsible as you."
Tyler shook her head. For the first time in a very, very long time, she was close to tears. "No, no, no. I can't ask you to do that."
The guys smiled wider.
"You aint askin'," Bodi said. "And we're tellin' you. You go back to Billy's. You get cleaned up. Then you go to the fucking cops or whoever the hell you need to go to and you fucking get home to your family."
Tyler took a deep breath. Her thoughts were a whirlwind of chaos. "I . . . Fine," she said after a minute. Then she looked up at them all, tears brimming in her eyes, and said, "And don't you bastards worry about the cops, either; I won't set 'em on your trail."
"What you gonna tell 'em, then?" Baggy asked.
Tyler sniffed, blinking away her tears. "There are a couple of advantages of living in this part of town," she said. "I know exactly who the fuckers are that kidnapped me. I'll tell the police it was them. They kidnapped me and they kept me even though they sold the other girls."
The guys nodded. "You gonna be alright, Angel?" Bodi asked.
Tyler nodded. Then she looked up at him again. "I know my way around this part of town. And I haven't forgotten my way around the part I used to live in before everything happened. I'm gonna stay at Billy's tonight. I'll leave in the morning. And I'm gonna walk. I can't drive up to the police department in a pimped out car. It'll be in the parking lot in the morning. You can come and get it then."
Bodi nodded once.
Tyler took a deep breath, biting her lip. "Well," she said, wondering at the sudden lack of tears in her eyes, "I guess this is goodbye?"
The guys nodded silently. Then Bodi took a step closer and said, "Damn. You're like that little sister none of us wanted."
"Little sister who could whoop your ass," Tyler said.
Bodi grinned. "I don't fuckin' doubt it," he said.
She smiled sadly as she took a step forward, closing the gap between them to hug him.
He held her for only a moment, and before he let her go he said quietly, "You done us proud, Angel."
She was smiling as she pulled away. Then she went through the rest of them, sharing short-but-sweet embraces of farewell. When she'd hugged all of them she went to her car. After she'd gone around to the driver's side and opened the door, she looked up at them one last time. "Don't do anything stupid," she said after a short pause. "And you boys take care of each other."
Baggy nodded. "Yes, ma'am," he said.
Tyler looked away.
"See you around," Bodi said after a moment of silence.
Tyler had been looking down, but her eyes found his face and she lifted an eyebrow. "No you won't," she said, flashing a momentary smile.
Then she got into the car and shut the door. She started the engine and pulled away from the curb, glancing in the mirror to catch one last glimpse of the group of men who had been her older brothers, her family, for so long now. Then she turned a corner and they were gone. And so was she.
She parked in the same parking lot that she and Billy had parted ways in that very morning. He'd been teasing her, and before he'd gotten into his car she'd punched him on the arm and said, "Screw you."
Those had been her last words to him. But that didn't bother her; the way she'd said them hadn't been maliciously. In fact, if Billy had read between the lines—as she knew he wouldn't—he would have discovered the subtext and realized that she was saying "I love you" in the only way she could.
She sighed as she stood on her tiptoes to reach the key above the door. She unlocked it, setting the key back in its hiding place before she entered their apartment. His apartment. She flipped on the lights and looked around, marveling at how quiet everything seemed, even though she and Billy probably wouldn't have been talking if he'd been there. The rooms felt strangely vacant and hollow without Billy's presence there to fill them up.
Tyler had always tried to blend in, even since she'd learned how to live in this part of the sewer. She was always the quiet one until she needed to be loud, the one who nobody suspected could be dangerous. But Billy had always been loud. Even when he was quiet and entered a room in silence and without drawing attention to himself, his presence filled the place. It was just something that could be felt, something that often caused people to look up when he walked in.
And Tyler missed it.
She licked her lips as she went to the kitchen, but she had no appetite. So she drank a glass of water and wondered what to do with herself for the rest of the day, as it was only three o'clock. Realizing that she probably shouldn't show up at the police department wearing dark skinny jeans and dark-looking clothes, she went to the bedroom. She went through the closet and their dresser, searching through her clothes for something that looked innocent, something Tyler Williamson would have worn before she became Angel.
But she could find nothing.
Sighing, she left the apartment with a wad of cash in her pocket. And for the first time in an incredibly long time, she drove herself to the mall. It was weird, walking in and wondering which store to go to first. She hadn't been in a shopping mall in she didn't know how many years. And in her entire life, she'd never been to the mall intending to change her look completely. She went into several department stores, finally settling for a pair of faded blue jeans and a simple, dark grey t-shirt with short sleeves and a neckline that didn't even show her collarbones. Then she bought a pack of socks. She needed those but didn't need to buy new shoes; she still had the same shoes that she'd been wearing when she was kidnapped, and they still fit her feet. Then she had to go and find a pack of simple panties and a new, plain bra, knowing that her mom would throw a fit if she found the frilly, lacy lingerie she was wearing. Then she left the mall and went home.
Home. The word held several meanings for her. Once upon a time she'd thought of home and immediately thought of her parents' house. Then, a couple of years before, she'd come to think of home as the ancient building that she and Billy had first lived in. And then, almost two years before, she and Billy had moved to his apartment, and now when she thought the word home, she thought of the apartment.
When she got inside she set all of her new clothes on her dresser and went to the bathroom. She showered, taking special care to remove any and all makeup she was wearing. When she got out of the shower she dried off, wrapping herself in a towel and brushing her teeth in front of the mirror. She finished and set her toothbrush down, and then she looked at herself in the mirror. She tried to picture herself three years before, tried to remember the reflection she used to see when she looked in the mirror. She used to have long, curly blonde hair, big brown eyes, and a few freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks. She looked like that now, but her eyes seemed darker and her hair was longer and her freckles were usually covered by makeup. She couldn't properly remember who the girl in the mirror used to be.
She shouldn't be there. Standing on her feet, having shopped and showered and now perfectly stable. She should be lying on the floor, crippled with grief, unable to move. But instead she only felt a terrible numbness, and a burning, aching pain in her chest as if a hole had been blown through her. She sighed, looking away from her reflection. They would have burned Billy by now. She took a deep breath. The thought of Billy should bring some kind of emotion out of her, but she just felt an emptiness. A crushing, lonely emptiness that seemed inescapable.
She knew the emotions would come. There would be tears. Now it was just a question of when.
And the time came later that night. She got into bed, sliding under the sheets. She wasn't going to think about Billy. She was going to roll over and she was going to make her mind go blank and she was going to get some sleep.
But that was where she went wrong.
She rolled over, and there was his pillow. Her face brushed it and she could smell him on it. It was that perfect mixture of his cologne and his natural smell, and it took the numbness in her and it crushed it. She shut her eyes tight, and in a moment she was reliving everything that had happened since she'd been kidnapped. Images flashed before her eyes, there for a split-second and then gone, replaced by a newer picture. But that split-second was enough. The gas station. The men that came in. Timmy, dead in her arms. The pulsing pain when they threw her into the shelves. And then, later. Her first look at Billy. Her first look at their room in the old building. Their first night. The sarcasm and the bantering. And then, more recent things came. She was getting her wings. She was joining the gang. She was working for bones. She was making dinner for Billy. She was curling up against him at night. She was getting his name inked into the wings. She was punching him in the arm that morning. She was kissing him goodbye for the last time. And then, all at once, the images stopped and were instead replaced by an actual memory. More like a nightmare, she relived walking into the old place and finding the guys sitting around, looking somber. She relived the entire day.
She had kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, but at last she could take it no more; the last image that flashed in her mind, fading slowly, was that of her lying alone in the bed. She opened her eyes and sat up suddenly. And then she realized that she was crying. She didn't know when it had started, but the liquid was flowing freely down her cheeks and dripping off of her chin and onto her shirt and the comforter on the bed.
And that was when the real tears came. There were so many that her vision blurred and she couldn't see. The next half hour was spent with her blindly rolling around in the sheets, clutching at the pillows and the blankets on the bed, trying to find something to hold on to that would comfort her. But she found nothing.
Eventually, she cried until she could cry no more. Some three hours later she was lying in the bed, tangled in a mess of sheets and blankets, too exhausted and drained to move. She was curled up, with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, lying on her side. She lay there in silence for a long while, occasionally sniffing or sucking in a quiet breath, followed by whispering his name.
She must have fallen asleep at some point, because she woke up in the morning. Funny, she'd always thought that when she lost someone she would wake up, having forgotten that they were gone, and then she'd wonder about it for a moment before she remembered. But that night it was like she never fully fell asleep and was aware of Billy's death even as she slept. It was the thing that roused her in the morning, and when she woke up she stared blankly at the ceiling for a while, lost in thought about everything that had happened, because she knew right away. She didn't need to sit there and think back to realize it all. She just knew.
Then she roused herself and managed to find the strength to get out of bed. Today was, after all, a very big day. It was June twenty-sixth. She should see her parents within the week, maybe even her brothers. She would have to go to court to testify against the men who had kidnapped her and the two of them who were in charge of the trafficking system. But she wouldn't think about that now. She was going home, for good.
But she wasn't, not really. Once upon a time home had been where her family lived. But that was no more. More recently, home had been wherever Billy was. But Billy was gone now, and it seemed that he'd taken her hope, and her home, with him.