Lovegame

  It’s just in time, too, because my stomach revolts—too many pills and too much sorrow all mixed together.

  I bolt for the bathroom, barely make it to the toilet before I’m throwing up what little is in my stomach. Then I’m dry-heaving, again and again and again, my body shaking and shuddering even as I strive to shut it all down again. To shut the insanity of this morning far, far away from me.

  “Veronica.” Ian’s voice slams into me and I realize suddenly that it’s not the first time he’s called my name. “Goddamn it, baby, answer me. Veronica!”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not your baby. I’m not your anything.”

  He bites his lip, looks like he wants to say something else, but then he just nods.

  He looks distraught. He looks like hell and for a moment, just a moment, I want to scream at him. To demand to know how he can look so broken when I’m the one who’s been used. When I’m the one who’s been lied to. When I’m the one who’s broken.

  No. I shy away from the word. Not broken. Not—

  “Baby, are you okay?” My mother calls from the chair by the window. Ian must have sat her there when I got sick.

  No, I’m not. I’m not okay. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again.

  I don’t say that though. I don’t say anything, and I’m saved from any more of her explanations when the doorbell rings.

  “Why don’t you go get that,” Ian tells me roughly.

  “Me?” My eyes dart between him and my mother and the gun that is lying, discarded, on the bed.

  “I’m not leaving you alone with her,” he grates out as he drapes a robe around me and ties the sash. “Now go.”

  I don’t have the energy to argue, don’t have the energy for anything with my mother’s Xanax or whatever the hell she drugged me with weighing me down. So I just nod, and make the trek to the front door.

  I have enough peace of mind to check the security cameras to make sure it’s Dr. Reece and his small entourage before I open the door. His eyes widen as he gets his first look at me and then he’s moving in, instructing his nurse to take care of me as he asks for directions to where my mother is.

  I start to take him there, but reaction is setting in and I’m shaking so badly that I can barely hold myself upright. The nurse directs me to the closest chair and then Ian’s there, at the top of the stairs, calling out directions to the doctor even as his eyes are fastened on me.

  It all happens quickly then, so quickly. The nurse is barely done taking my vitals before Dr. Reece is back. My mother is with him, stretched out on a cot carried by two orderlies in scrubs. She’s sleeping peacefully, a small smile on her face.

  Dr. Reece stops to talk to me—and check me over—as the orderlies carry her out to the big, black SUV in my driveway. He’s shining a light in my eyes, pressing a stethoscope to my heart, taking my pulse. And through it all, he’s talking—about my mother, about the Valium she’d admitted to crushing up and putting in my coffee, about the fact that he’s going to admit her to the hospital for a few days, just for observation.

  He’s saying it all, saying so much, and I’m barely tracking. Everything seems to be coming from so far away. And then Ian is there, his hand rubbing soothing circles on my back. I want to scream at him to go, want to scream at him to leave me alone, but I know that doing so will only delay Dr. Reece’s departure. Will only have him looking at me with even more concern. Already, he’s making noises about me coming by his office in the morning and talking to him.

  As if that’s going to happen.

  As if I would ever let my mother’s shrink run around in my head.

  A few more minutes pass as Dr. Reece continues to examine me. I must do all the right things, say all the right things, because he seems satisfied when he stands back up. He hands Ian something—a prescription, I think—and then he’s on his way, telling me he’ll call once he has my mother settled.

  He doesn’t suggest I come to the hospital with them to make it easier for her, which I’m grateful for. Then again, that could be because I’m currently covered in her blood.

  Her blood.

  It was one of the questions Dr. Reece had asked her before he’d given her the shot that knocked her out. Where she’d gotten the blood from. It turns out she’d been planning this for a while. She’d taken a few pints of her own blood over the last couple of weeks—after buying the proper equipment at a medical supply store—and then stored it in the small fridge in her room, just waiting for a chance to do this.

  I don’t even know what to say, except I want it off me. I want it off me right now.

  But Ian’s still here, looking at me with dark eyes filled with concern. I can’t stand it. Can’t stand him looking at me like he cares. Can’t stand the pain I can see written on his face. Can’t stand even being in the same room with him.

  There’s one thing I have to know, though. One thing I have to ask before I go upstairs and wash this whole nightmare off of me once and for all.

  “Did you know?” I ask. “When you decided to take the Vanity Fair interview. Did you know that Liam Brogan had once been my bodyguard?”

  I’ll say this for him. He doesn’t flinch from the question. Doesn’t try to look way. Doesn’t even try to lie. Instead, he looks me straight in the eye and says, “Yes.”

  I nod, take a few seconds to assimilate the answer I already knew was coming. Then I point to the door and order, “Get out.”

  “I will,” he promises. “But you have to listen to me first. You have to let me make sure you’re okay—”

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “I can’t just leave you like this.”

  “I’m not your problem to worry about anymore—if I ever was. Besides, I’ll be fine.”

  I move past him and open the door, wait for him to pass.

  He doesn’t move. “Damn it, Veronica. Let me help you clean up. Let me take care of you. Let me do something—”

  “Oh, I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?” It slips out and I want to kick myself for letting him see, even for a moment, how much I’m hurting. But then I decide to hell with it. It’s not like he doesn’t already know. “What did I ever do to you to deserve this?”

  “Jesus, Veronica—”

  “Did you ever care about me or was it all just part of the plan?”

  “Of course I did.” He grabs me, his hands wrapping around my upper arms as he looks straight into my eyes. “I do care. I love you, Veronica.”

  I lash out, slap him across the face. “Don’t say that. Don’t you say that to me. Not now. Not after everything that’s happened. Don’t you ever say that to me again.”

  His face crumples. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry you got caught? Sorry you can’t write your book? What exactly are you sorry for, Ian?”

  “I’m sorry for hurting you.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I push him and he stumbles back, stumbles out the door onto the porch. “I don’t believe for one second that you know what it means to be sorry.”

  And neither does my mother.

  Before he can say anything else, I shut the door in his face. Lock it. I even set the security alarm for good measure.

  Then I walk back up to the third floor. I don’t go in the Picasso room—I’ll never go in that room again. Instead, I walk to the Warhol room. I start toward the bathroom, toward the shower as I’m still covered in blood, but as I do my gaze falls on the picture of my mother hanging in the center of the room.

  Rage, pain, sorrow…they all slam through me like a wrecking ball. And I break wide open.

  I rip the picture off the wall, throw it on the floor. Stomp on it until the frame breaks. And still it’s not enough. Still I feel like I’m suffocating.

  I look around wildly, then grab a fountain pen off the desk in the corner and stab it through the canvas again and again and again. I don’t know how long I do it for, don’t have clue how many holes I poke through the world
-famous painting. Enough that my arm is tired when I finally stop. More than enough that it’s nearly unrecognizable between the tears in the canvas and the ink scattered across it like blood.

  I stare at what I’ve done for long seconds—stare at her graffitied face, her vacant eyes—until my skin crawls. Then I walk into the bathroom, turn on the shower and step under the freezing cold spray. The blood runs off my body, turns pink as it mixes with the water and slowly swirls down the drain.

  I reach for the soap, pour it all over my body. And scrub. And scrub. And scrub. Only when I’m clean, only when I can look down at my naked body and see my skin and not the blood, do I do what I’ve been afraid of since this nightmare began. What I’ve been afraid of for far, far too long.

  I shatter.

  Chapter 31

  Don’t say that.

  I don’t believe you.

  Don’t say that.

  I don’t believe you.

  Don’t say that.

  Don’t say that.

  Don’t say that.

  Veronica’s words echo in my head as I make the hour long drive from Houston Hobby airport to the Huntsville correctional facility.

  They wash over me again and again, just as they have every day—every hour—since I walked out of her house two weeks ago.

  What did I ever do to you to deserve this?

  I slam my fist against the steering wheel and try to block out her voice. To block out the blankness of her face, the devastation in her eyes.

  It doesn’t work. Nothing works. It hasn’t since I walked away from Veronica. No, not walked away. Since I let her push me away.

  I don’t believe for one second that you know what it means to be sorry.

  She’s wrong. She’s right about so much, right about everything else. But on this one thing, she’s so, so wrong. I’ve never been more sorry—more sick—in my life.

  What happened to her that last day—what I let happen to her—in that shell of a house, with her shell of a mother—it haunts me.

  The profiler in me knew Melanie Romero was a narcissist from the moment I started observing her at that party. But like so many other mental disorders, narcissistic personality disorder encompasses a wide spectrum of behaviors and varying degrees of severity. And I didn’t realize just how gone she was, didn’t realize—even after I learned about her role in Veronica’s relationship with William Vargas—just how far she would go to cover up her own culpability and reap the benefits of her daughter’s fame.

  That was my mistake, and because I made it, Veronica was terrorized, drugged, made to think that she was the crazy one while I did nothing to stop it.

  How could I have not seen?

  How could I have not known?

  Understanding deviants and how they think is my job. More, it’s my vocation. It’s what I’ve dedicated my life to. And yet when it came to Melanie, I didn’t dig deep enough. I saw only the superficial threat and Veronica paid the price.

  Is it any wonder she wants nothing to do with me? It’s bad enough that I lied to her, that I tried to use her to get information for the Vargas book. But then I also failed to protect her.

  I’m so lost in my head—lost in the sickness of my remorse—that I make it to Huntsville before I’m ready. I have no idea what I’m doing here, let alone what I’m supposed to say to Jason.

  Then again, what is there to say to the man whose choices have so brutally affected my own life? The man I’ve spent so many years trying not to be.

  I slowly pull into the parking lot for the maximum security unit, park the rental car in one of the last spots. Then I empty my pockets of everything but my driver’s license and car key—the only two things I’m allowed to bring inside the entrance.

  And then I just sit in my car for long seconds wondering if I really want to do this. If I really want to walk into that prison and see my brother for the first time since he’s been incarcerated.

  I don’t believe you know for one second what it means to be sorry.

  Goddamn it. Am I never going to be free from what I did to her?

  Fuck it. Just fuck it. Facing down Jason can’t be any worse than sitting here and dealing with my own demons. My own transgressions.

  Now that I’ve made my final decision, I want to get in there and get it over with as quickly as possible. I stow my wallet, cellphone, and key ring in the glove compartment of the car and leave everything else that I’ve got in my pockets—a pack of gum, a random business card, a pen—on the passenger seat.

  And then I start the long walk to the front door.

  As I walk, I struggle to find the right words, struggle on how to deal with Jason when I see him. I’ve met with a lot of prisoners through the years—when I was in the FBI and even afterward, because of the books I choose to write—and there were very few that I ever had trouble speaking with. But I don’t have a clue what I want to say to Jason.

  Maybe that’s because there are no right words. No right way to handle this first—and if I have my way, only—meeting.

  I called last weekend and had my name put on the visitors’ log so that check-in would go smoothly—or at least as smoothly as it possibly can when visiting a maximum security prisoner. I give my name at the entrance, wait patiently as the guard verifies who I am and confiscates both my driver’s license and my key. I’ve opted for a contact visit with Jason and in the wrong hands, both of those things can easily be turned into weapons. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told through the years.

  After I check in, the guard gives me a pat down more thorough than any doctor’s examination I’ve ever had, and then tells me to take a seat in the empty waiting room while he calls to have Jason brought into the visiting area.

  It’s a long wait, but then, I’m expecting that. Once I gave up my FBI shield, everything about prison visitation grew infinitely slower and more complicated. It’s just the nature of the beast.

  Twenty-five minutes later another guard appears and leads me down a narrow corridor into a large visitation room. All fifteen tables are empty, so I choose the one in the corner, closest to the window. I could use the sunlight right about now, even if it is being filtered through unbreakable glass.

  A couple minutes later, a guard escorts Jason in. He’s not handcuffed, but his legs are shackled and when he sits, the guard secures the shackles to a metal loop in the floor.

  Again, it’s just par for the course—guards don’t take chances with maximum security prisoners—but it’s an uncomfortable feeling to see my brother like that. No matter how much I know that he deserves it.

  For long moments, he doesn’t say anything and neither do I. We just look each other over—fifteen years is a long time and it seems like it should make a huge difference. But I guess we’re still young enough that that hasn’t happened, because he looks almost the same as I remember him.

  He’s still whip-cord lean, with broad shoulders and long, elegant-looking hands, despite his time spent at this work camp of a prison. And while his dark hair is shorter than it’s ever been and peppered with gray, his eyes are still carefully blank. And his attitude is still the biggest thing in the room.

  Despite all that, it’s a little like looking in a mirror. We have the same eyes, the same nose, the same cheekbones and jaw. The same build. The same height. The same hands. It’s disconcerting, even after all this time. Then again, it always has been.

  Two peas in a pod my mother used to call us. Even though I was significantly younger than him, she always went on and on about how alike we were, even after it became apparent that there was something very, very wrong with Jason. At least to everybody but her.

  There’s a reason I have the issues I do.

  I wait for him to say something—anything—but he just looks at me with those strangely expressionless eyes. He’s waiting for the same from me, I’m sure, but I still have nothing to say. Not here and not to him.

  Minutes pass, long and silent, and still neither of us says a word. I don’t k
now how long it’s going to go on, but it feels like we’re locked in a battle now and the first one to speak is going down. I’m determined that it isn’t going to be me—I’ve lost to Jason too many times through the years, in battles far more important than this.

  Eventually he’ll get tired of the game, or my visitation will end. Either way, I’m still the winner because I get to walk out the front door and he has to go back to his cramped and isolated cell.

  More minutes pass in our strange and silent countdown, marked only by the incessant ticking of the clock on the wall behind us, well out of reach of the prisoners. The guard is watching us from his post in the far corner of the room, and I can tell he’s trying to figure out what the hell this is about.

  I would enlighten him if I knew. But even the profiler in me is stumped by our stubbornness in this.

  In the end Jason breaks first, just like I knew he would.

  “What are you doing here?” he demands.

  “Mom said you wanted to see me.”

  “And you just came running, out of the goodness of your FBI agent heart.”

  “I was never an agent.”

  “Oh, right. You were the analyst. Isn’t that the job they give people who can’t cut it as agents?”

  “Sometimes.” He’s looking for a rise and I refuse to give him one. Just like when we were kids. But I’m not a kid anymore. “And sometimes it’s just the job they give to people who have psychopathic assholes for brothers.”

  “Hmm, maybe.” His voice is unconcerned, but I can tell he didn’t like that. Didn’t like being called a psychopath, but more, didn’t like that I was the one saying it. But he, too, has his poker face on. “Feel better now that you got that off your chest?”

  It’s just unlucky for him that I’ve spent the last decade and a half staring down people much more disturbed—and disturbing—than he is. “Not really, no.”

  “Yeah, I figured it’d take more than you being a snarky little cunt to clear the air between us.” He shoots me a grin so macabre that my blood runs cold.

  Again, I keep that shit to myself, on total and complete lockdown. “Oh, I don’t know. I can see you just fine. Fifteen years and a couple of degrees in psychology clears a lot of smoke out of the way.”