I fight against it, but a small smile breaks through anyway. Yes, I could follow Mike’s directive. Add my twelve grand to the Cayman fortune and leave this life. Run. Hide. Buy a new identity and cut all ties. Leave behind the man I love. The only friend I have. Live safely in a new bubble of fakeness. That option sounds horrific.
Or, I can wait. Wait for the man who comes. And take my time on him when he arrives. Punish him for torturing my friend.
My smile widens. Stretches so tightly it hurts.
PART 4
“Skip to the fucking point.”
CHAPTER 80
WHEN YOU KNOW someone is coming, the biggest enemy is time. I knew where, I knew how. The only thing I didn’t know was when. I call back MysteryBarbie and ask the question I should never have overlooked.
“Where are you? What city?”
“Worcester.”
“Where the fuck is that?”
“Google it.” She hangs up the phone and I smile despite myself. MysteryBarbie might have teeth after all.
Worcester turns out to be in Massachusetts, some fifteen hundred miles away. I have to assume he came straight here. If he had flown, he’d be here already. Driving would take him… I do a quick calculation. Twenty, twenty-two hours. Not counting bathroom breaks and an overnight stop. Which means I have little time.
One feature I offer on my website is a live voyeur feed that displays my cam chats. I scroll through three years of saved cam history and pick a day fifteen months ago. I embed four hours’ worth of video files into my site and start streaming the video through my “live” feed. Anyone checking my site will see me, naked and happy, pleasuring myself for strangers. I leave it playing and unclip my corset, loop by loop, walking to the dresser and yanking open a drawer.
The transformation from vixen to ordinary is less than a minute. I lace up tennis shoes, pull my hair into a ponytail, and stand, shrugging into a jacket, too hot for summer, but one that will hide an instrument of death.
I take a deep breath and wonder if I should call Dr. Derek. Wonder if I am mentally equipped for this errand. It is funny how quickly things can change. A few days ago I was reeling myself in. Chastising my poor decisions and promising myself in big capital letters that I Will Stay Inside. Not repeat my recent mistakes. Cut back my freedom and regain control. Do a better job of keeping others safe, of policing my own actions.
Yet here I am, about to leave the house. Drive my car. Run an errand with no purpose other than to properly outfit myself for war. And to make matters worse, I’m walking out in the world armed with a weapon. It’s a necessary item, FingerCutter’s location unknown, the knife tucked in my jacket, one that is needed for my own protection.
I stand at the door, my car keys in hand, and take short, measured breaths. Will my resolve to stay in control. I will be fine. It is during the day. The knife is contained—I will not pull it out unless assaulted. I take a moment. Breathe. Focus. Prepare.
I have a sudden thought and turn, hurrying to my pink desk, yanking open drawers, and sighing in relief when I see the roll of clear scotch tape. I cut off a piece, hold it carefully, and walk to the door. Yank it open before common sense stops me, and come face-to-face with Jeremy.
“What are you doing here?” My eyes skip over his empty hands, no package present for delivery.
“We’re going to an early dinner. Remember?” He glances at his watch. “Thursday at five, right?”
I swear under my breath, pulling the door shut and locking it. Not the dead bolt—Simon is the only one with that key. But the lower lock, part of the knob, a weak barrier that has never been tested. I hesitate, looking at it, then rise on my toes, sticking the tape firmly along the crack at the top of the door. I jump slightly, trying to get the tape to be flat and invisible. Jeremy moves closer, his fingers replacing mine, his height making the task easy. He looks down at me, his fingers sliding over the tape. “You expecting a visitor?”
“Not sure,” I mumble, trying not to inhale his scent. He is so close to my chest, the warmth of him intoxicating in its life. I step back. “I can’t do dinner today. I’m sorry—something’s come up.”
“Something’s come up?” His brow furrows, a look that is adorable. I wonder, briefly, if eyebrows were cut out of a face, how much they would resemble caterpillars.
“Yeah. I’ll talk to you next week.” I need him away from me. This is bad, his presence at a time when someone is on their way here. Jeremy will only complicate this situation. Worst-case scenario, he gets hurt. Best-case scenario, he sees me rip a man to shreds with glee. Both disastrous, one a scenario I may not ever recover from. There is already the ongoing possibility that I put Mike in danger. I cannot, will not, endanger this man also. I turn, my walk picking up speed until it is a jog, and I bang through the stairwell door. This is so familiar. We have been in this situation before. Last time I needed his help, his truck. Now, I’m in a different place. One that doesn’t want to get another innocent individual hurt.
I exit the stairwell out the back, hoping he isn’t following, my steps quickening in the parking lot, the blacktop littered with tricked-out Cadillacs and tired Corollas. And there, in the midst of dented fenders and duct-taped windows, she sits. Like a coiled snake, ready to strike. Gorgeous, feline, and dangerous. I feel wetness between my legs, the rub of my jeans heightening my excitement and anticipation. I am not the same tentative woman who drove this monster home. I am being hunted. And, in the face of that danger, am releasing all constraints. War has no room for indecision. It’s time for me and her to kick some ass.
I press the button, listen to her chirp, and slide around the front of her, rolling my hand gently over her polished surface and pull on the handle. Thank God I paid for her before the theft of my money. It’s almost, in retrospect, like getting her for free.
“Where are you going?”
Shit. He followed. I pause, one foot in the ohmygodImabouttodrive car. I glare at him. Use my bitchiest voice. “I’m in a hurry. I’ll call you later.” I sit in the car, glancing up when his hand stops the closing of my door.
“That’s it? You’re standing me up for dinner and you won’t tell me where you’re going?”
He sounds pissed, a tone I’ve never heard from him. I stand up enough to pull his hand off the door, then scoot back inside, slamming the door before he has a chance to think about it. As an afterthought, I roll down the window, worried, in my hurry to kill someone, that he might try to follow me. “I’m sorry, I promise I’ll call you later. Something’s come up; it’s kind of an emergency.”
“An emergency…” His stare doesn’t leave my eyes, the hard look in his one that worries me. He is mad. Doesn’t believe me. Doesn’t, from the suspicion on his face, even trust me. It figures that my relationship would have an emotional breaking point today, at a moment when—at any second—my adversary could come striding across the parking lot.
I look into his face and say the only thing I can, a sentence that we may never recover from, but that I hope will get through.
“If you do love me, you need to let me go right now. Trust in me, in us, and go home.”
I push the giant “START” button and let the roar of the engine drown out his response. I can’t listen. Can’t know. Can’t allow him to be in danger and me to be emotional. Love is weakness. And right now, I need every bit of strength I have.
I carefully pull forward, out of the space and out of the lot, leaving Jeremy standing alone, in a sea of cheap cars.
Damn. I suck as a girlfriend.
CHAPTER 81
WITH MYSTERYBARBIE’S CALL, everything changed. Those fantasies that I hide from, that I push out the door with every ounce of my underdeveloped muscles? I suddenly need them. I need to embrace that evil, need to go back down that path. I am not afraid, I am not worried about that part of myself stepping up. I know, without hesitation, what will be in my heart when I fully unlock that door. The darkness has not disappeared. It, like that tree in Florida, has
flourished despite my best attempts at starvation. My struggle over the last two months has only fed this monster’s need. Fed its appetite with juicy giblets of freedom. It has, despite my best attempts, strengthened.
FtypeBaby and I break each other in well. We hit Bass Pro, Lowe’s, and Home Depot, before a curious store associate is kind enough to point me in the direction of an army-surplus pawnshop. I put the top down and head north, reaching the destination far too quickly for my newly freed tastes. I leave her in a front spot and push open the pawnshop’s door, the weight of it enough to work my arm muscles. For a girl with a steel-reinforced apartment door, that says a lot.
I know, the minute my tennis shoe hits the concrete floor, that I have come to the wrong place. The right place for a gas mask, the wrong for every single aspect of my twisted personality.
Knives.
Guns.
Machine guns.
Handcuffs.
Nunchakus.
Fighting stars.
Things I don’t even know what they’re called but they look badass awesome.
My hands shake slightly and I shove them in my pockets, which puts them in close proximity to my knife. Like, bumping up against close proximity. I take a deep breath and try to focus on the man behind the counter. Sixties, bald, with enough wrinkles and character for me to know that he has killed before. Probably served enough tours to make my future death count look like a paint-our-toenails Tupperware party.
His eyes glance at my car, the gleam of the hood loud, even in this dark pit of death. “You need directions?”
I meet his eyes. “I need a gas mask. I was told you carry them.” I don’t look around. I can’t. I will go apeshit crazy if given the chance. Fill up a shopping cart like those contestants from Supermarket Sweep. Shriek with glee while I stuff samurai swords and grenades in FtypeBaby’s trunk.
He sticks a toothpick in his mouth, leans one liver-spotted arm on the glass case before him. “A gas mask? You a survivalist?”
“And fentanyl. If you have it.” I shrug as if certain he doesn’t, a challenge in the gesture. He probably doesn’t have it, fentanyl in chemical form more common in a terrorist cell than a pawn shop. My eyes catch on the low display rack beside the counter, and I bend, snag a Taser, one that advertises enough volts to put down a thousand-pound cow, and set it on the counter.
“And fentanyl. A gas mask and fentanyl and…” His eyes drop. “A Taser.” He walks around the counter until he is crossing before me, and my muscles tighten. He is close enough to touch, my hand knocking against the switchblade in my pocket. I shouldn’t have brought it. But, knowing that FingerCutter was coming—it would have been stupid to leave the house without some sort of protection. He walks on, toward the door, his eyes on my car. “That your car?”
“I drove it here, didn’t I?”
He turns, faces me, a frown stretching and pulling the wrinkles on his face. “I didn’t ask you that.”
“It’s none of your damn business. Do you have what I need?” He’d better. He has to. The town isn’t big enough for a fourth possibility. Unless I knock off a family of survivalists, this is my only and last hope. Me and ToothpickDick need to sort this hierarchy shit out so I can get on my way.
He sighs, tongues the wood in his mouth, and saunters to the right, down an aisle, till he is almost out of sight. Then reaches up and picks up a plastic piece with tubes and glass. A mask. I hope my sigh of relief isn’t audible. “This is the smallest one I have. You just need one?”
I nod.
He shakes his head, moves back to the counter. “Young pretty girl like you. Walks in and wants one gas mask. Seems suspicious.”
“Do you have the chemical?” I interrupt this bullshit waste of speculation.
“Well now that makes me even more suspicious.” He sits on a stool, one with dog-bitten legs and nowhere convenient to rest a foot. His legs stick out, like a kid’s.
“It’s a yes-or-no question.”
He chuckles. Slowly. As if he knows the time-eater will drive me crazy. I can feel the madness creeping. Can feel my slippery grip on morality sliding. Dark thoughts sneaking in, every line of the smirk of his face expediting the process.
“Fuck you,” I spit out, grabbing the mask from the counter and digging into my pocket. I fish out two hundred-dollar bills and slap them on the counter.
“Now wait just a minute.” He pushes to his feet, shuffles down the counter, then bends over, hidden from view. “I don’t have any incapacitating agents per se, at least that’s my line for any suits that walk in the door, but I think this is what you’re looking for.” He straightens, lifts a box out, and sets it on the counter. I move closer, glance at the contents while trying not to drool all over the counter.
White aerosol cans. Fifteen or twenty. Lined up in a neat row like jewels in a box. Shimmering under the dim light of the overhead fluorescent. I place my hand gently on the edge of the box, my irritation forgotten. “What is it?”
“Capsicum. It’s not gonna knock anyone out, but will wreak havoc on their senses. Can cause blindness, will definitely disorient someone, give them one hell of a headache, blurs vision, dizziness, pretty much a one-two punch of fucking you up. It’s the same stuff that is in pepper spray, but this is an aerosol form. Set four or five of these in a room, pop the tops, let the mist fill the room. You’ll have about fifteen minutes of knock-you-down air before it’ll start dissipating. Just keep your mask on. It’ll linger in the air for a few hours; even the afterburn will cause your eyes to tear up and your throat to close.”
“I’ll take ’em.”
“How many?”
“All of them.”
He tilts his head at me, brown eyes scrunching underneath brows that have never seen the beautiful sharp end of tweezers. “All of them? Who’re you going to war with?”
I don’t respond, reaching into my pocket for more cash. “How much?”
He works his mouth and I can practically hear the inflation rising. “Sixty each.”
“Twenty.” I have no earthly idea what capawhateverhesaid goes for. Have never heard of it. ToothpickDick could be selling me mini-cans of hairspray, my attempt at mayhem giving me one hell of a stiff hairdo. But the price had been tossed out with suggestion, like there is some room to haggle.
“Naw, I can’t do that. Not for all of them.” He works the piece of wood, flipping it straight out, and I wonder suddenly, if I stiff-hand his face, if it will puncture anything important, or just slide down his throat and cause him to hack like a furball-afflicted cat. “Thirty.”
I make one last volley. “Twenty-five.”
He answers by withdrawing a small stack of cans, shutting the box lid, and sliding it across the glass toward me. “Cash. I’ll sell you fifteen.”
“Cash.” I grin, count out four hundred more bucks, and lay it on the counter, backpedaling with the box in hand, not waiting for change.
Then FtypeBaby and I get the hell outta there, gas mask and arsenal in hand.
CHAPTER 82
AFTER TWENTY-SOME HOURS of driving, and one overnight spent in five-star luxury, Marcus reaches 23 Prestwick Place. A small house underneath big trees, the thin lot cozies right up to the neighbors, a fact that sits ill in Marcus’s stomach. Neighbors are a bitch. There is a reason his house sits on fifty acres. Neighbors hear screams. Neighbors report if a naked bitch stumbles out on the lawn with bloody wrists.
This yard is clear. No vehicle present. Now is the time to go in, while the house is empty. Damn the neighbors, damn the daylight flickering through the trees. He parks on the street, a few houses down, and pockets goodies from Thorat’s package: zip ties and a syringe preloaded with ketamine, the veterinary anesthetic that will knock a grown man on his ass within twenty seconds. A grown man fighting, less time. A quick pop of the trunk and his casserole dish from hell joins the party.
He locks the car, his eyes sweeping over the Mercedes’ lines. A little conspicuous. He should have borrowed a car. Rent
ed one. This neighborhood, same as the cripple’s, isn’t the type to host hundred-thousand-dollar cars. Picking his way through fallen leaves, carrying five pounds of mayhem, he watches the house. Dark windows. Empty drive. No one home. More trudging. Over the curb and through the yard, his head forward, like it is normal, like moving around to the back of the house, over a forgotten hose and past the water meter, is routine. He’s pleased to see a fence around the back of the house, the privacy it affords. Lifts his head and focuses. Tries the back door, skips the windows and tries the doggie door. A big one, built for a large dog. Lifts the flap, but a plastic piece covers the hole. A plastic piece that three hard kicks knocks loose. He sets down the dish and examines the opening. Dirty. Made for an animal that licks its own ass. He pushes aside the irritation and shimmies through on his belly. Disgusting yet easy. The best side effect his small stature has ever afforded him.
Dark inside. Silent, his breathing the only sound. No dog. No roommate. Good. He takes a quick tour, retrieves the casserole dish, then gets in position. Settles in and waits.
It doesn’t take long. Less than an hour later, the sound of an engine. He listens, counts the sound of a single vehicle door open and close. The weight of feet on the steps outside. Unhurried, relaxed strides. The knob twitches, keys jingle, and the door swings open. Marcus waits, watches. The man, big with strong shoulders, steps inside, swinging his foot behind him and kicking the door closed without looking, the man’s head dipped in distraction as he sifts through a handful of mail.