The silence that hit as soon as I struck the Xavier twins and their two idiot helpers with the reality of their situation was more welcome than I cared to show them all. Honest to God, no whimpering, squealing, drying heaving, or bitching (at least two of these were from me) made the entire tied to a chair while dealing with a hangover almost manageable. It also helped that Alex wasn't twisting my hair around his fucking fist anymore, so I wasn't in danger of being fucking scalped any longer.
I was contemplating a nap, because the silence was nearly making the blinding light bearable, when the peanut gallery felt the need to talk over the likelihood that I was blowing smoke up their asses.
"She could just be lying to get a reprieve," Alex muttered, and a glance up showed me that he was still looking down at me with the same amount of trust that I would have shown him under the same circumstances. His eyes narrowed and I steeled myself for another round of scalp torture, but was as shocked as him when Carrie spoke.
"She's not," her voice was hoarse from the cries she'd been forced to utter through whatever the assholes had hit her with and I shut my eyes at the thought of what she would look like after this. I could hear her inhale deeply and then she went on, since the quiet descended when she spoke. "Jensen came to my house after she texted them and got that confirmation."
My eyes opened to witness a look pass between the twins and I felt a smirk tug at my lips. "Ut oh." Alex's eyes met mine and I couldn't fight it anymore. "Are you trying to decide if the two of you can fuck off fast enough to avoid a bullet?" I tilted my head, which reminded me that his fingers were still tangled in my hair. "Or are you thinking that Dumbass One and Dumbass Two could work well as a distraction, kind of like whoever got flambeed in the building that got torched?"
The chuckle fucks who had signed on to be minions for the twins of doom heard me and started to argue against this particular possible plan, causing Alex's fist to tighten in my hair, but also to cause enough chaos that no one was running away and no one was harming Carrie for awhile. While they argued, Matthew shooting down the fears of two men who I wouldn't have been able to pick out of a crowd they were so memorable and Alex glaring down at me, I wondered if I was as right as I wanted to be.
Since I knew for a fact that Clay had the shop and the house wired for sound, it stood to reason that he would have put some other safety measures in place, just in case. I'd read about the "Find Your Friends" app in a magazine during a doctor's visit, so I had no doubt that Jensen would be more than capable of putting something similar in play on my phone, and probably Carrie's too. With the bug at the house he would have heard Carrie and me heading out for the night, and when he didn't hear us come back that would have led him to trace us, if he wasn't already once we stepped out of the house. Logic said that he was biding his time, the team's time, to figure out how best to take down the twins, their henchmen, and save Carrie and me, with the least amount of damage, and the highest rate of success for the goal. Meaning, save us AND get their names cleared and their lives back.
I had enough time, during the arguing to think this through, and Carrie had some time to reflect too, since she was forgotten during the upheaval that my smart mouth caused.
"Enough," Alex snarled, the sound of his voice forcing me back to the situation at hand. "You two," his eyes were on the idiots behind me, I guessed, since I couldn't see them. "Do a perimeter check, that way we KNOW if she's lying."
They started to argue about being the Stormtroopers or the Redshirts in this scenario, but the look on Alex's face stopped them mid bitching. Since he was holding my head captive in his grip, I couldn't see them leave, but then again, the door was behind me too. "Guess they're expendable, right?" I shrugged. "Hope you don't have a soft spot for-" I squinted. "Was I supposed to know their names?"
Alex rolled his eyes. "Were you always this annoying?" He looked at his brother. "Was she?"
"How could I know?" Matthew was still holding my phone and his eyes fell to it. "Should I-"
I grinned. "Send Clay a 'hey, babe, wanna meet?' text?" I licked my lips, dry and still rust flavored from the remnants of the bloodiness that Alex caused. "Sure, let's see if he wants to play."
"No one asked you, Charlotte," Alex growled and I rolled my eyes, he was growing tiresome. "Walter should have fought for custody, those twinks raising you made you unbearable, I swear."
"Those 'twinks' as you call them," I bit out, eyes narrowing as I sneered up at him, "are more manly than you, your twin brother, AND my sperm donor rolled into one, with those two morons you just sent to their doom added in for flavor. They gave me EVERYTHING, so watch your fucking mouth."
Alex opened his mouth like he was planning on telling me off, or something impressive, but my cell phone rang, and his eyes met Matthew's. "It's him." I smirked.
"Told you so," I sang, my smirk growing fuller. "Someone's gonna get it, or someone already did-"
Matthew's bare hand tapped the screen to answer the call and then another tap had the call on speaker. Clay's voice was loud and clear, as were his orders. And I had to say, if they thought I was annoying, learning that I was not only telling the truth BUT that I was being modest about Clay's ire, well seeing the terrible two looking so green around the gills was like icing on my fucking cake.
"Always sending others to do your dirty work, MAX." Clay's voice was like balm for my wounded soul, and my empty stomach. "I really hoped that you weren't stupid enough to lay a finger on either one of them, but I had a feeling that you WERE, so let me tell you how this is going to go." Neither twin said a word and their eyes were focused on the phone as if it would tell them how to get the fuck out of this mess. "Both of you will step back, to the farthest wall away from the entrance of the room you have them in, backs to the wall, hands to the ceiling. If either of you so much as twitch when I enter, I promise you your corpses will work just as easily to clear our names as your living bodies. So please, by all means, get an itchy nose. Sneeze. Cough. Give Cougar any fucking reason at all to give your head a new hole." I smiled as the twins finally glanced at one another and I could see them both swallow hard. "If you somehow manage to NOT move, you'll be cuffed and turned over to the proper authorities, but I cannot promise what state you'll arrive in, since that will be dependent on how Charlotte and Carrie's states look." Matthew's eyes fell on Carrie behind me and the pallor that his skin took filled me with dread for her. "Now, I'll give you 30 seconds to get into position. Put the cell phone on Charlotte's lap, remove your filthy fucking fingers from her hair, and get your asses where I told you to move."
I had a moment of fear, as Alex's hate filled eyes landed on me, that he wasn't going to surrender. That he was going to kill me, and Matthew would kill Carrie, and they'd die in a hail of bullets just to fuck over Clay a little more. I'd misread how much the twins valued their own selves.
Matthew tossed the phone into my lap, Alex yanked his hand free in the most painful way he could and then they whispered together as they backed themselves to the wall that Clay had indicated. The call was still ongoing.
"Clay?" I wanted to let him know I was alright, and hear his voice again, not just threatening and ordering, but MY Clay.
"Char," he breathed, and I felt my heartbeat relax. "I'll be there soon, sweetheart."
It was almost anticlimactic. Almost. Clay came in first, I guessed, since I heard him barking orders from behind me. A red dot appeared on each twin's forehead, which made me feel marginally better about my life choices, but then I heard Jensen's gasp and I knew that we might have a problem.
"Jens," it was Pooch, and he was trying to reason with him, I could tell. "Keep your mind on the goal. Untie her and we'll get her help." I heard muttering, and I heard some other noises that made little sense, but then the twins were on their knees and they were bound so I felt a little happier with everything.
Clay's fingers were on my wrists and his nose was against my neck as he got me untied and I felt more of my tension relaxing. "Just had to have a girls' night, didn't you?" He muttered and I shook my head. My hands were free and then he was in front of me, kneeling. HIs hands cupping my face and his eyes studying my face. "You're going to have so many bruises, Char."
"Yeah, well I ruined Alex's Armani suit, so fair trade." I shrugged, and then like a completely lightweight, passed right the fuck out.
