‘I haven’t said thank you.’
Euan jerked involuntarily in his seat. His eyes cut to the man at his side. At first glance, Mickey-O had improved, but upon closer inspection, he realised it was only the physical. Smudges the colour of soot were under hollow eyes. A face that had aged, creases that had deepened, a mouth tight with sadness, a body rigid with anger.
Euan shook his head, looked towards the sky. A cloudless, blue expanse, endless. When he looked at that sky, the impossibility of it after assuming he would never see such beauty again. The anger that Euan held in his heart for the man at his side morphed, shifted, changed. Maybe he could be a forgiving man. ‘Neither have I.’
There was silence between them then. A long drawn out stillness that sat comfortably, waited as they both gathered their thoughts. It was Euan who spoke first. ‘But I still don’t know why.’
Mickey-O sighed, stepped up out of his chair and moved out of the shadows created by the veranda’s overhang and further into the sunlight. He placed his palm on the post, leaned into it. Euan didn’t put too much thought into the fact that he placed his hand in the exact spot he had when he’d sworn vengeance on the man who now was their protector, his saviour.
Mickey-O cleared his throat before he spoke. ‘We knew of the house long before the Howard boy came to Nirvana. He might have been smart when it came to preparing for what was to happen, but he was an idiot at keeping his existence concealed. You would have seen it, known it, when you first approached. The house, the grounds, pristine. When every other building along that highway was ransacked and falling apart?’ He shook his head, dark hair brushed his shoulders. ‘That kid was better off destroying the house and living in the bunker.’
Euan nodded. He remembered the intact windows, the clean gutters. The trimmed lawn and hedging. His fear of a trap had been profound then. It had seemed impossible that someone could be that naïve.
Mickey-O continued. ‘I knew that there was something special here though. One of the boys I had on detail caught a glimpse of her. Nirvana was established then, I had so many under me. But I didn’t know what kind of firepower the kid held.’ His gaze turned to the truck that was already loaded with their hoard of weapons. ‘I wasn’t in a position to sacrifice so many to get her. So, I told the boys to watch and wait.’
Euan’s body protested as he stood. Pain, bright and uncomfortable bloomed in his feet. His lips twisted but he ignored it to move with a slight limp to stand by Mickey-O’s side. The direction of his gaze followed the men loading their supplies. ‘And then he took a trip to Nirvana?’ Euan guessed.
Mickey-O’s features grew hard. ‘And then he took a trip to Nirvana,’ he echoed, his fist tightening on the pole. ‘He was fucking crazy by that point. A rambling lunatic. He was a danger to himself, and to what he hid. It was obvious that he had somewhere nice to sleep. He turned up to Nirvana wearing what you’re wearing, by himself, a man the size of a peanut and expected me and the boys to support him and listen to his demands. He was dead before he even stepped foot in my town.’
Euan blinked. ‘You had him killed?’
Mickey-O huffed, an insincere curl to his lips. ‘Never. I didn’t need to. They would have slit his throat for the boots alone.’
‘Then you watched her?’
‘I thought maybe she might have died, and that’s why he’d left. We didn’t see her for months. Then one day, this tiny little blonde thing just opens the front door and goes out to feed her chickens. Like nothing had happened, like there was no plague, like there were a million women wandering the earth. Like she wasn’t one of the last left.’
Euan’s gut tightened, he could picture it. His beautiful little sun-sprite, leaving the safety of her bunker without a weapon, without a fucking clue. His voice was soft when he spoke, acknowledging the truth was difficult. ‘She didn’t know she was.’
Mickey-O grunted.
Euan’s thoughts spiralled, an idea slotted into place. He kept his eyes forward, but his focus was on the man at his side. ‘You sent us here, you gave me that girl, and you pushed us in this direction.’
Mickey-O’s smile grew. The gold tooth that had haunted Euan’s nightmares glinted. ‘It was a long shot, I agree. But you came, just as things were shifting. You have to remember that I was fighting a war, a war I was losing. We’d found that girl you took with you only days before, locked in a trunk, used by too many to count. The first man you killed in the pit was the one that put her there.’
Euan jerked. The surprise evident. ‘And the second?’
‘I promised Stephanie shelter, sanctuary. Fucking safety. The big mountain of a man you destroyed, took it upon himself to break that promise.’
Christ. Euan held Mickey-O’s stare for longer than he needed, but he couldn’t look away. ‘Ben said to me that it was complicated. Lily told Nick it was to enact justice. I didn’t …’
Mickey-O’s brow furrowed. ‘Ben?’
‘Smith.’ Euan’s gaze lost its focus. ‘He told me his name was Benjamin David Wright. He said he loved his mother.’
Mickey-O cleared his throat and said nothing. Thoughts as hot as the sun expanded between them. They’d both felt the acute pain from the preciousness they’d lost that day.
Silence reigned. A thousand thoughts churned inside Euan’s mind. He shifted his stance, leaned on an opposing foot, flexed his toes within his boot. Nothing could eclipse the truth of everything that Mickey-O had done for him, for Kira.
Until finally, ‘Why’d you cut the wire?’
Mickey-O snorted.
