“So no lying?” I query back with a dry humor that I don’t really feel. On the inside, I’ve gone completely numb. Out of control emotions won’t serve me here. I almost let them get the better of me yesterday; I can’t make the same mistake again.
“You will not tell the authorities about our conversations. In fact, you will not tell anyone that will pass that information along. If Kwang-seon talks, Parrish dies. It’s that simple. Consider your pawns carefully.” The man continues to watch me, but there’s not even a shred of emotion to latch onto. He’s as cold as Tess is. Shit, maybe this really is Justin Prior? Seems like they’d be a match made in heaven. “I appreciate your ingenuity in recording this conversation, but I suggest you delete it. If Tess finds that phone—or anyone else for that matter—and passes the information to the police, then Parrish dies.”
“Look at you. Fucking tough guy. Who do you think you are: the Seattle Slayer?” I know I’m pushing the envelope, but I can’t just sit here and smile prettily. I’m going to fight back.
Once again, the man pauses, like he’s considering his words very, very carefully.
“I’ve always hated that name. It’s incredibly gauche, don’t you think? I’d prefer it if you simply called me ‘dad’.” He waits patiently as I blink through his words, doing my best to process them.
“Wait, what?” I query back, shaking my head and pinching the bridge of my nose with my left hand. “You’re not the Slayer.”
“Call me whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. Here are my conditions: play the dutiful daughter, follow the rules, and do what you’re told. Find the right clues. Follow the right trail. Or someone you love gets hurt. Good girls get rewarded; bad girls are punished. Am I making myself clear?”
I sit there in stunned silence because I don’t know how to respond to that. He thinks this is a game? This is a game to him?!
When I don’t answer right away, the man stands up and pushes his chair out of the way. He moves out of view of the camera, leaving Parrish front and center. I just sit there and stare at him, at those beautiful brown eyes with their gold flecks. Memories of his hands on my body, of his body inside mine, of his hot mouth pressed to my lips, come flooding in, and I clamp a hand over my stomach to hold back the nausea.
His captor returns, but this time: he has a knife with him.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I cry out, lunging to my feet, as if I can somehow leap through the screen and save the prince of sloths, like a princess on a white steed, brandishing her sword. “Please don’t hurt him. I’ll do it; I’ll play. I love games.”
He ignores me, cutting Parrish’s t-shirt with the knife and dropping the bloodied fabric to the floor. When he moves aside, I can see it, a long slice along the right side of Parrish’s chest. It doesn’t escape my notice that just a few days ago, my mouth was in that spot, kissing and tasting his sweet skin.
“For every day that you take, I make a mark. Just one mark. But eventually, it’ll be too much for him. Your time limit is entirely dependent on this boy’s strength.” As I watch in wide-eyed horror, he puts the blade of the knife to Parrish’s chest and presses down, drawing blood.
Parrish barely acknowledges it, his eyes on mine, his face stoic even as he sweats, even as he bleeds.
“You don’t have to do this, Dakota,” Parrish finally says, and I can hear in his voice just how much pain he’s in—even if he doesn’t show it. “Just … forget about me. Go tell Tess. Tell the cops. I don’t want you involved in this shit.”
The man—my father? the Seattle Slayer? one in the same?—just stands there, tapping the bloodied knife against his gloved palm.
“Your decisions are yours to make, Mia. But there are repercussions. Every choice you make has a ripple effect on the world around you. This is an important lesson for you to learn at your age, one that I wish I’d been able to instill in you sooner.”
I stand there for a moment, trying to process all of this.
I’m a gamer, right? I love puzzles. I like to figure out how to beat each level, how to take the top score. Analyzing tricky situations is a specialty of mine. When Danyella joked that I could be a detective, she wasn’t wrong. It’s sort of my thing. The pieces click into place.
Teenagers in the Seattle metro area are going missing. Teenagers in Seattle started going missing after my story went viral. Parrish is a teenager. Parrish is missing. His kidnapper is the Seattle Slayer. His kidnapper is my father.
“My father is the Seattle Slayer.”
The words almost hurt when they come out, like my tongue is being scraped by a serrated blade. I taste blood. That’s when it occurs to me that I’m biting my tongue so hard that it really has started bleeding. I force myself to stop, still sitting there and watching Parrish through the tiny phone screen. He feels so far away, so goddamn far away.
He just sits there, wrapped in ropes, bruised and bloodied but alive. He’s still wearing his pajama pants, the ones he slipped on after we finished making love. The ones he was wearing when I kissed him goodnight and slipped into my room with a goofy smile on my face.
It’s surreal.
Had my first time on Saturday. My new love-hate boyfriend kidnapped on Sunday. Sitting here on Tuesday negotiating with a fucking serial killer. All of this could’ve been avoided if I’d never seen that stupid Netflix show. If my grandparents had never called that awful hotline.
I exhale sharply and shake my head.
“I’d do anything for you, Parrish,” I tell him, and I mean it. He looks devastated by that news, not uplifted, not hopeful. Devastated.
“I wish you wouldn’t, Dakota. I really wish you wouldn’t.” Parrish closes his eyes tight, but he doesn’t stop talking. “If you’re determined, I can’t really stop you though, can I?” He opens his eyes again to stare at me. We both studiously ignore the psycho in the stag mask. “If you want to save my life, here’s what you have to do.”
With my heart thundering in my throat, I stare at the typewriter on Tess’ desk. It’s the only one I’ve ever seen her use. She touches it reverently, like it’s an extension of her soul. It must be, for her to prefer writing on it when it would be a million times easier to just use a laptop.
Sweat drips down the sides of my face as I touch it, keeping my fingertips light the way Tess does, like I’m just saying hi. If I think about the page I found in here the other day, will that make this easier? Only, nothing about this easy. It may very well be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.
Chasm told me text him if I got another message, but I can’t bring myself to do it. This … task, or whatever it is, feels too personal. Too urgent. That’s the point of it, I imagine. Because if this man, this Justin Prior, really is my father, he’s got an agenda in mind.
I could turn him in right now, tell the cops that I know who the Seattle Slayer is. If I did that, would they be able to find him and rescue Parrish before it’s too late? But no. No. He wouldn’t have told me the things he told me if he thought he could be caught.
Either way, it’s not a risk that I’m willing to take. Any risk to Parrish’s life is too much.
Please let him be okay, I think as I pick up the typewriter and make my way downstairs. A quick peek down the hall toward the living room/kitchen area shows me that I’m alone for the time being. Not that it matters. The missive was quite clear: smash the windshield with the typewriter then tell her how you really feel about her; tell her she’s a bad mom; tell her she’s the reason that Parrish is gone.
I feel dizzy, almost like this an out-of-body experience. Tess is inconsolable and panicky, as she should be. She lost a child once, and now she’s missing another. What if she never sees him again? If I don’t do this, that’s both of our realities.
With a groan, almost like a strangled cry, I move into the garage and stare at the white BMW sitting pretty on the epoxied floors. I’m about to destroy the very first birthday present that my biological mother ever gave me (that I can remember) with her special typewrit
er, the one she writes all her bestsellers on.
Gods help me.
Swallowing hard, I move into the garage and then try to sort the logistics of this out. Throwing a heavy typewriter into a car window isn’t an easy thing to do. Eventually I just set the typewriter on the roof and climb up beside it, hefting it into the air … just in time for Tess to open the door and see me standing there.
Pretty sure there are tears streaming down my face, but what can I do?
The life of a boy that I hated, that I’ve come to love, is on the line.
I could never forgive myself if something happened to him.
“Dakota?” Tess asks, sniffling and red-faced, her eyes puffy and her hands shaking. Paul is standing just behind her, gaping up at me from behind his glasses. Fuck. And I’d thought my life was hard before? That was nothing compared to this. Why did she have to get my name right for once? Why couldn’t she have called me Mia this time, just to make this a little easier? I look at her, and all I can do is say how sorry I am with my expression.
I keep the words to myself. Well, those words anyway. There are other words that I have to say, or else Parrish will be the one that suffers. Because of me. This is all because of me. No wonder he hated me, no wonder he wanted me gone; I really did ruin his life, just the way he claimed.
And yet … the memory of his warm hands on my body, his lips against my own, I can’t shake that.
“Parrish left because of you,” I say, and then I throw the typewriter as hard as I can into the windshield of the car, destroying both. Small squares of safety glass scatter as Tess screams, clamping a hand over her mouth to cut off the sound. “Because you’re a bad mom.”
The words get stuck in my throat, sticky and gross and unnatural. Their shape is foreign and sharp; it hurts to say them. I’m not Tess’ biggest fan, not by a long shot, but she doesn’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this.
I try to convince myself that she does, that it’s her fault I’m here. If Tess hadn’t found me, then he wouldn’t have found me.
My biological father.
The Seattle Slayer.
One in the same.
I spend the rest of the day lying on my side and staring at the wall, hoping that if the Slayer—oh, I’m sorry, I mean Daddy—shows up here, that I won’t see him coming. I put my hands over my ears, even though the house is dead silent.
Dead. fucking. silent.
With Parrish gone, it feels like what little heart was in this place has gone with him.
“Please be safe,” I whisper, and not for the first time. If I believed in any gods, I would probably pray right now. As things stand, all I can do is repeat that mantra and hope that it sticks. “Please be safe.”
After throwing the typewriter into the windshield of my new car, I hopped down on the broken glass and walked right past Tess and Paul. Neither of them followed me. Neither of them has spoken to me.
The worst part of it all though is not knowing what’s happening to Parrish right now. I’ve checked and rechecked my phone about a million times; there are no new messages, no matter how much I wish there were. I end up lying there for hours, living and reliving the trauma on Tess’ face as I used her typewriter to destroy my birthday gift.
Well, look at that, you wanted your dad in your life, right? You got him.
Shoving up from the bed, I stumble into the pristine marble bathroom and fall to my knees in front of the toilet. When I try to vomit, nothing comes up, and I’m left choking over the toilet bowl with nobody and nothing to help me. Nobody to help Parrish, more like.
“Goddamn it, Dakota.” Chasm appears as if summoned, sweeping my green and black hair back for me as he squats down at my side. “What the hell happened today? There’s glass all over the garage floor.” I grip the toilet bowl, turning my face so that I can look at his.
I wish he could hold me the way Parrish does. I just want someone to hold me right now.
“Can we go into Parrish’s room?” I ask and Chasm grits his teeth, giving a sharp nod. I stand up and rinse my mouth out before letting Chas pull me across the hall by the wrist. Together, we lie side by side on Parrish’s bed. Still not touching. Definitely not touching. “I threw Tess’ typewriter into the BMW’s windshield.”
“You what?” Chasm chokes out, turning to look at me. I’m staring up at the ceiling, wishing it would get dark faster so I could see the glow-in-the-dark stars. The whole room smells like Parrish, that stupid dewy freaking clover and citrus smell. It’s honestly making me sick right now. “Why? Did he tell you to do it?”
“Did I mention that Parrish’s kidnapper is the Seattle Slayer?” I reply, as if it’s no big deal, as if people find out their sperm donor’s a notorious serial killer all the time. Just another pothole in the bumpy road of my life.
Chasm sits up like he’s been electrocuted, turning an aghast expression my way.
“You’ve lost your mind, that’s what. If the dude that kidnapped Parrish is the Slayer then that would—”
“Make him my dad?” I query back, my voice much calmer than my actual emotions. “Apparently.”
Chasm just keeps staring at me like he can’t quite process the information. Eventually, he starts running his fingers through his hair and muttering in Korean again.
“That’s not possible.”
I sit up, too, crossing my legs and letting my hair tease my bare knees.
“Maybe not. Maybe the kidnapper isn’t the Slayer. Maybe he isn’t even my dad. But you know what I do know? He has Parrish tied to a fucking chair. Does it even really matter who the crazy fucker is?” I rub at my face. I’m beyond exhausted, but how could I possibly sleep through this? How?
“How does this guy even know about Tess’ typewriter? About the car?” Chasm murmurs, tucking his knees up close to his chest and putting his arms around them. The sleeves of his blazer climb up with the motion, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of his tattoos. I can barely stand to look at them. Parrish did that; that’s Parrish’s art. “Anything else I should know about? I told you to call me.” He looks supremely irritated, narrowing his amber eyes in a way that reminds me of Parrish. “I can’t help you if you won’t let me.”
“I know.” I cross my legs and rest my elbows on my knees, putting my chin in my hands. “It just felt so … personal.” Chasm doesn’t say anything, but he never takes his eyes off of me. I laugh, but the sound is far from pretty. In fact, it’s one of the ugliest sounds I’ve ever heard on my life. So bitter. So twisted. “He made me tell Tess such awful things … Whoever he is, this is personal. Extremely personal.”
“So you did what he asked. Now what?”
“He wants me to find Parrish,” I begin, thinking about the stag mask, wondering what it represents. A quick search online gave me a possible answer: fatherhood. Gross. “This is … it’s like a game to him.” I glance back at Chas to find him frowning, mulling over the situation and doing what I’ve been doing since this morning: looking for a solution to the puzzle. “As long as I do what he says, he’ll keep Parrish alive. But it’s up to me to figure out where he is.” I pause for a moment, picking at the black comforter beneath us with my fingernails. “He knows you know, by the way. The kidnapper, I mean. He says he doesn’t care who I pick as my ‘pawns’, as long as you don’t tell anyone that’ll try to intervene, like Tess or the cops or something.”
“He what?” Chasm repeats, blinking in surprise. “How could he possibly know that?”
I lift up the phone and give it a little shake before tossing it onto the bed in front of us.
“Take your best guess, but I would assume through the phone camera? How else?” I groan and rake my fingers through my hair. This is a lot to process; I’m fairly certain that I’m still in shock. My emotions are not that of a normal person right now. I feel detached, distant, like this is happening to someone who isn’t me. “Anything interesting happen at school?” I ask, trying to change the subject so I can have a moment to breathe.
“
Everyone thinks Parrish took off to escape Tess. It’s like this is a big game to them.” He sighs heavily, but I can easily see that being the case. In a school full of rich brats with private jets at their disposal, this actually happens a lot. Two weeks ago, a senior girl took off mid-class and flew to Spain without telling her parents. “Danyella and Lumen were worried about you though.”
They’ve been texting me all day, but I haven’t had the strength to respond. I even have messages from Maxine as well as my grandparents, even with all the risk that entails. Everyone’s worried about me when they should be worried about Parrish instead.
“You look exhausted,” Chasm tells me, uncurling his arms from his legs. “You should try to get some sleep. I’ll watch the phone and wake you up if another message comes through.”
I give him a look.
“I can’t sleep right now,” I say, as if that’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Are you joking? I’m not sleeping until Parrish comes home.” Chasm’s face falls in a way that scares me. It scares me because he looks away, tries to hide it. “You don’t think Parrish is coming home, do you?”
“I think that this is going to go on a lot longer than you think. You can’t forgo sleep for … however long it takes to resolve this.” Chasm reaches out and pulls me into his arms, dragging me down to the bed and tucking my head beneath his chin. I go completely stiff, a sense of betrayal snaking through me. It should be Parrish holding me here like this, not Chasm. I shouldn’t like Chasm holding me either. It’s fucked. It’s so goddamn fucked. Told ya you were cringey, Dakota. “Shh. Just relax. I’ve got you, Little Sister. We’ll get through this together, no matter what it takes.”
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