“Jeremy’s missing.”
CHAPTER 105
JEREMY’S FEET ARE numb. He’s tried kicking, and ended up doing some horrific version of a mermaid flail. He now moves his toes instead, working his ankles back and forth, trying to find some give in the zip ties that bind them together. If only he’d worn boots today. Then his ankles would have some bit of protection, some room. He might have been able to slide a foot out, kick free. Instead he wore Nikes with barely present socks, leaving his ankles naked and unprotected, the hair there not enough to stop the ties from cutting into his skin, the warm ooze of blood coming when his foot manipulation gets too enthusiastic.
Whatever drug he was given has worn off for the most part. He stills feel light-headed, bits of nausea still sweeping along, increasing every time he remembers that the sour taste in his mouth is vomit. He must have, at some point in time, chugged a gallon of it. That is unknown. Everything is unknown. He’d come home, grabbed mail on his way in… and that’s as far back as his memory goes. Nothing else. No explanation of why he’d been tied up on the floor, hands tied behind his back, ankles bound together but knees left free, looking like a police suspect banished to the ground for resisting arrest. Whatever bastard did this also felt the need to tape his eyes, one duct-tape strip running from ear to ear, the sticky side pushed down, into his eyes, pushed hard, like some asshole had wanted to make damn sure that every individual eyelash would adhere to it, to torture his lids into submission while robbing him of his sight. A second piece covers his mouth.
He can move a little. Crawl for a bit before his legs are stopped. They seem to be tied to something, his range of motion restricted to an arc that spans from counter to counter, the point of connection being… the kitchen sink? He tries to arch his back, feel with his hands the chain of zip ties that leads into the cabinet, but can’t get far. He can only guess that his feet are chained to a pipe or the garbage disposal. Whatever it is, it is sturdy. He’s yanked and only worn his skin raw as a result.
Jeremy catalogs the house in his mind, tries to discover what is of value, what they could have wanted. Was it a team of men? Highly trained or neighborhood thugs? He wonders, when this tape is finally removed, if his entire house will be empty, wiped of all contents, his truck stolen with the keys they probably took from his pocket. He tries to calculate time. It’s Thursday night. He doesn’t work until Saturday. Should easily survive thirty-six hours. And he doesn’t miss work. Someone will worry. Deanna will notice, call someone. Maybe drive over, not that she knows where he lives. Scratch that possibility. Given the tone of their parting, she might think that his silence is intentional.
In Boy Scouts he was taught the Rule of Threes. Death will come from three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water. Thirty-six hours will be nothing. He will be fine.
It is at that point, that relaxation of his muscles, the mini-release of stress from his body, when his senses relax that he hears the beep. Coming from behind his head. From, best Jeremy can tell, the direction of the oven.
In that one beep, in that tie of his brain that connects the sound to the appliance, he feels his first moment of panic.
CHAPTER 106
“EXPLAIN.” I DON’T ask the other questions, the ones that are shooting from all directions out of my mind. How much does he know about Jeremy? What kind of tabs is he keeping on my life? How does he know he’s missing? Have I given him too much access? Is there any way to take it back? Jeremy is missing? What have I done? I say nothing, back off the accelerator, move FtypeBaby into the slow lane and listen to him speak.
“I don’t know for sure that he’s missing, but I’ve dug a bit. Things are coming back to me… things I said to the guy who was here. I was playing back our conversation, trying to think if there was anything you might want to know—just in case…”
“Skip to the fucking point.”
“You can’t be pissed at me anymore. I put your money back and was tortured trying to protect you. Let’s not forget that.”
His response is tinted with fear and that worries me. Mike has never, in all the emotions I have pulled out of him, sounded scared. And most definitely not scared of me. Aroused by, amused by, smart-assed by, but not scared by. And now he sounds scared and nervous, neither of which I like. “Shut up about the money, tell me about Jeremy. Quickly.”
“He hasn’t made a phone call since five o’clock yesterday. Or logged onto his computer, or used his cell phone’s data—that’d include playing a game or checking his e-mail or sending a text—in at least fourteen, maybe fifteen hours. I called his cell, it went straight to voice mail.”
I breathe. Not that bad. Missing is a strong fucking word for Mike to be throwing around. “Maybe his battery died during the night.”
“He stopped using his phone that early in the day? Plus, he’s at home all evening and he doesn’t bother to plug it in?”
“What else?”
“Well Marcus found out about him. Knew his address.” Any fear in his voice is now at maximum height. This is why he is worried.
“Found out what about Jeremy?” I try, and fail, to keep my voice level.
I did this.
I pissed off Marcus.
I blocked him.
I pushed every button he had and did it with glee.
I put Mike in this position.
I put Jeremy on this prick’s radar.
“I didn’t volunteer anything. He saw a photo of him… wanted to know more. His name. Address. I told him I didn’t know who he was—if he was a brother or your boyfriend.”
“How interested did he seem?”
“Interested enough to write down the info.”
I speed up, eyeing the center median and wondering if the car has the grit to make it over and through. Probably not. I head for the next exit, needing to end this joyride, turn the hell around, and head back to town. “What else do you know?”
Mike perks up a bit, speaking quickly. “I got into OnStar. His truck is pretty new, and he subscribes to the service. It shows his truck at his house, but I can’t tell how long its been there. There’s been no activity on his credit cards or bank account since last night.”
“So… you think he’s missing because his cell phone hasn’t had any activity and his truck is at his house.” I slow FtypeBaby’s roll down a bit, my breath moving at a more normal pace in and out of my chest. I spy an exit sign and prepare to depart.
“Yeah. It’s not much. But… I don’t know. When it came to me—that I had told him that—I just wanted to check. The cell phone activity is odd. Even a dead phone I should be able to follow. This thing just disappeared, like someone took out the SIM card or dropped it into the toilet. This guy. He’s not fucking sane. If he thought you had cared about me, he probably would have brought me with him to use as an intimidation tool.”
Something in his voice catches me. Something I have never heard. A vulnerability there. “I care about you, Mike.”
He laughs, the sound hollow in tone. “You care about what I do for you.”
“I’m not gonna massage your back and gush out compliments. You don’t want to believe it, don’t believe it.”
“I don’t need the compliments. Just check on your boyfriend, okay?” He hangs up the phone before I can ask for Jeremy’s address, an embarrassing request. Something a real girlfriend should know. A text from Mike, thirty seconds later, provides it without my needing to ask. I send a silent bit of thank-you karma his way and plug the address into my GPS. Eight miles, fourteen minutes away. I’ll get there in half that, providing I don’t get pulled over on the way. I slow down a bit, just to behave.
I’m coming, baby. I cross my fingers and hope he is fine, asleep on the couch, his sexy ass stretched out, pillow marks deep on his face. I don’t stop myself when the speedometer inches higher.
CHAPTER 107
IT IS BREATHING, the oven taking measured sighs as it ticks its way to warmth. It is alarming, the aw
areness of it near Jeremy’s head. He doesn’t know why it’s alarming, but it is out of place, as out of place as his hands and feet being bound on the kitchen floor. Out of place is worrisome. He hasn’t used the oven much, frozen pizzas being the main course entering and exiting its depths. The old oven was faulty, two hundred degrees one moment, four hundred the next. So he replaced it, a few months ago, the stainless steel fixture the only bit of this kitchen younger than him. Six or seven pizzas have made their way through those doors, eggs have been cooked on its surface, grilled cheeses flipped on frying pans. There is no reason why, randomly, the oven would turn on. It shouldn’t. Jeremy lies there, mind working, and starts to smell pizza.
CHAPTER 108
JEREMY’S NEIGHBORHOOD IS Beverly Hills compared to my slum, but nothing that my highbrow mother would have approved of. Small cottages built in the ’40s or ’50s, the trees have taken over, dwarfing everything, casting heavy shade on anything and everything their large arms felt the need to cover, the homes barely visible behind decades of overgrown hedges and small yards. In my haste I miss his house, circle the block again, and examine the numbers again. Recognize his truck and pull in.
Marcus is dead. He can’t be waiting behind door number Jeremy, a knife in hand, ready to assault me as I walk through the door. But I am still cautious, my turnoff of the engine heavy and slow. What if he is dead? What if this man killed Jeremy just to hurt me, then came to my apartment? I never let Marcus speak, I got too fucking excited and killed him too soon. If Jeremy is dead, I will kill Mike. It doesn’t matter that this is my fault. Fuck him for blabbing. He should have lost his fingers like a man. Share my money but don’t share details that endanger an innocent person. I open the car door, take a deep breath, and close my eyes. Say a quick prayer that he is alive.
My eyes are still closed when the house explodes.
PART 5
There are no lights. There is no pink.
CHAPTER 109
YOU WOULD THINK that ash would be hot. Floating through the air, coming off of a fire. But it’s not. It’s like whispers on my cheeks. Like gray snow, slightly damp in its arrival. I open my eyes and try to understand its presence. Try to understand why I am on the ground, a strange ground, looking up at oak trees that flicker in the light of a fire. I take a shaky breath and hear the crackle of wood settling, the crash of something falling.
Fire.
Ash.
I jerk to my feet, the world tilting briefly, and the sound of sirens starts, muted. The sound growing louder. Closer. An ambulance. Cops. I find my bearings, reach a hand out, grab hold of the side of my car and stare at the furnace before me. A kindling square of home, crackling into the night, Jeremy’s truck silhouetted before it. I drop to my knees and scream his name.
My scream. It is so familiar that I try to stop it, the sound ripping me back into my childhood kitchen, the howl of anguish and regret so similar in pitch to my mother’s that I am sick. Is this how she felt? When she looked around and saw the destruction that she had created? I try to close my mouth, try to stop the sound, try to block out the fire and the blood and my sister’s face and the man that I love and all I can think is that I turned him away. Jeremy wanted to come with me and I pushed him away in the parking lot. I pushed him away and now he is dead. He is dead and I can’t stop the scream. I repeat his name, screaming it to the fire, to the gods above, to the man that I hope is alive to hear it.
CHAPTER 110
IT IS UNLIKELY that Mike will ever again sit in his empty house and not think of those hours. The hours he was chained to the bed. The hours he waited, unsure of his future.
Now, the emptiness haunts him. Reminds him too clearly of those hours. Of, for the first time in a long time, how alone he feels. Jamie left a few minutes ago, life and work calling, plants somewhere needing to be tended to. Without her, this house feels empty. Like he is not a soul. As if he doesn’t, in some way, breathe life into this space.
He doesn’t have to stay in this house. People in wheelchairs go out—have normal jobs, live normal lives. But truth be told, leaving? Forcing himself to participate in daily interactions with normal, I-walk-around-on-two-legs people? Doesn’t interest him. Never has. Everything he needs is here. A job he loves. Freedom, inside these walls. Fuck what society thinks is needed to be happy. He doesn’t need the sympathetic looks of the public, their chips and pokes. He can read their looks. One hooker just spat it out, without hesitation, saying what he can see in so many of their eyes. You’d be so hot, she drawled, popping her gum and crawling on top of him. If you weren’t in that wheelchair. Does it bother you?
His dick wouldn’t cooperate after that.
Being alone is better than being with someone who is there despite the handicap. The worst is the constant waiting—expecting that crestfallen look, that moment where the girl will be caught with her guard down, with a look of pity she doesn’t hide fast enough. Fuck that.
The outside world doesn’t care if he has paraplegia or is paralyzed. It’s all the same to them. Wheelchair boy. Wheelchair boy with an “isn’t that a shame” pretty face. Crestfallen looks of apology accompanying any introduction or passing greeting. So Mike will keep his life indoors. His world online. There he’s a king. There he’s popular and beautiful and the captain of the motherfucking football team.
But right now he’s nothing but alone and scared. Scared that he’s ripped apart a piece of Deanna’s life. A piece that code and firewalls won’t put back together. Scared that she, after this act of destruction, won’t talk to him anymore. Won’t answer his calls or IMs, won’t accept his chats when he invites her to private. Scared that he’s ripped off a piece of his own life that the false walls of cyberspace won’t put back together.
Jeremy is dead. Has to be. No calls or text, no Internet activity? Drove his truck home yesterday afternoon, parked it out front and did NOTHING that evening? Nothing that night? Unlikely. Mike checked his cell phone records for the past three years. Never silent for this long. And he’s been power calling him. Routing the calls so they look like they’re coming from her. No response, and now his battery is probably dead, ’cause it’s going straight to voice mail. So he’s dead, or maybe tied up, like Mike was. A gag or tape over his mouth, handcuffs around his wrists. That’s the hopeful side of him talking. She’ll bust in, rescue him. Be the hero. Kiss the guy. Wrap her legs around him and probably fuck him right there on the living room floor. Or on the bed, if he is tied up where Mike was. Welcome back to life; you only had to suffer for one night and now she’s here, naked. Everything you ever wanted. Prick.
There is a moment of guilt for cursing a man who is most likely dead. Mike wonders, for the umpteenth time, if he should call the cops. Send them over to Pacer’s place. But she is going there. Was already close by. And she’ll be beyond pissed if cops show up. She’s probably got Marcus’s fucking finger stuffed in her jeans pocket—his dead body in her trunk—his blood on her shirt. A wave of nausea rolls through him and he bends over the trash can, noticing, as his body fails to vomit, that it’s empty, a fresh white liner in it. Jamie. Helpful woman. There is something, a background word that catches his attention, the police scanner feed jabbering for the last six hours with absolutely nothing of interest. He turns up the volume and listens.
“… a 911 call regarding an explosion. Fire and medical respond to Twenty-three Prestwick Place.”
His heart stops, his hand moving the volume control higher. An explosion. His world suddenly closes a bit, his fingers moving before his mind even catches up, typing furiously and bringing up iCloud. Deanna’s cell. Find-A-Phoning its ass until the green dot destroys his world. Prestwick Place. On a square that has got to be his house. Deanna. Wrapping her legs around his body. Fucking him on the bed, celebrating his safe release from capture. BOOM. He feels his heart unnaturally quicken, his breath keeping pace.
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
“Fire and medical, please
update me to your status in regards to Twenty-three Prestwick Place.”
The crackle and pop of empty air.
“Um… Captain Scott here with Engine Twenty-nine. Looks like a chemical explosion of some sort. Whole house is up right now. We’re working on containing the blaze and locating any survivors. One female found, in front of the blaze.” His words are cut off by a scream, a scream that—even through the miles, through the distortion and feedback of the radio—is haunting in its anguish. Mike grips the desk, listens to that scream, his heart rising and falling in one quick roller-coaster ride as it vibrates through the room.
CHAPTER 111
I AM CARRIED away from Jeremy’s house, my legs dragging at the dirt, my body limp, by a man in yellow. He speaks to me, words that I ignore, words I can barely hear through my screams of Jeremy’s name. Screams I am not sure are even coming from my mouth; they may just be screaming through my soul, my head, imaginary breaks in my sanity like bright-ass light streaming through a wasntpulledtightenoughclosed curtain.
I am dragged away, and my view of the house disappears as an ambulance door replaces it.
I will kill Mike. I don’t care if I brought Marcus to his doorstep. I will kill him and then kill myself. Slowly, in a fashion that will cause as much pain as my body can physically take. Fuck, I may skip Mike, my self-hatred too strong to control. I, killer of good, am not fit to live.
I am lifted, a second face joining the first, and they speak, a light shining into my eyes, useless questions coming forth from their lips. I speak, through the screams, the only thing they need to know.