Rules of Survival

by Jus Accardo

  My head was fuzzy but starting to clear. Mick. My dad. He’d done this. Drugged us. How the hell had I been so stupid? I’d waltzed into his house, plopped myself down at the table, and totally disregarded the rules. Again.

  I ticked them off, one at a time, in my head. It was completely pointless now, but they made me feel better. Never let your guard down. Don’t enter any place that you can be trapped. Don’t trust anyone… And why had I blown them off? Because he was my dad?

  Mom should have warned me that applied to relatives.

  Really though, I should have known. There was a reason she wasn’t with him. And I should have known if he was a good guy, she would have told me more about him. She’d been running all this time, and I was ready to bet all ten of my toes that it was him she had been afraid of—not Bengali. The letter had warned me. I just hadn’t put the fragments together correctly.

  “Kayla…?”

  “Shaun?” I twisted toward him. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Hazy, but fine. Are you?”

  I nodded, fidgeting with the tape. It didn’t budge. “I think so.”

  Beside me, he wiggled and squirmed. There were several moments of cursing and some grunting before he said, “I think we might be fucked.”

  I brought my legs up close to my body and tried to move them apart. Nothing. They were tied, too. Stretching, I tried to reach the tape with my fingernail, but the way he had us bound, it wouldn’t work.

  “Shit,” I swore. “I can’t reach, but I think if we move together, we can stand. Maybe we can find a way out.”

  “Can’t hurt. I’m not really interested in waiting around to see what he’s got in mind for your family reunion.”

  I leaned sideways as far as I could and hit something solid. “The wall. We can use it to sort of slide up. You ready?”

  “Yeah. I think so. On three?”

  “One…two…”

  “Three,” we said together and pushed off the ground.

  But as it turned out, my plan was better in theory than practice. We did manage to get off the ground, but the height difference between us, and the way Mick had us trussed, allowed Shaun to stand faster than me. Since we were cuffed to each other, he’d taped each of our hands together—then bound both pairs. The whole thing sent me off-balance and I tipped forward, taking Shaun with me. Without the use of my hands to help break my fall, I hit the ground face-first—and hard.

  The entire right side of my face stung. I ran my tongue along the edge of my teeth, convinced for a moment I’d knocked several of them loose, but they all seemed to be in place.

  “You okay?” Shaun asked, voice muffled. He managed himself back into a sitting position, which by default pulled me upright as well.

  “I think so. Okay. So that didn’t work. Your turn.”

  “You’re Plan Girl.” He laughed. “I, ah, got nothing.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “So, what do you want to do tomorrow? ’Cause I’m thinking if you haven’t got any plans, maybe we could try pissing off the Mafia. That’d be a fun change of pace.”

  “Aren’t you a riot?”

  He chuckled. The sound was oddly comforting. Something that in the short time I’d known him, I’d come to love. “I try.”

  “Do you think he’s going to kill us?”

  Shaun tilted his head back until it rested against mine. “I think he wants to. I don’t think we’ll give him the opportunity.”

  “Feels like he’s got all the opportunity he needs—and then some.”

  “Maybe. But we’ll think of a way out. I’m not worried.” He nudged me with his head before straightening and nodding to the door. “Besides, you’re forgetting about Patrick.”

  “We left Patrick at the diner, along with the trace he had on you. He doesn’t know where we are,” I reminded him, even though a small seed of hope bloomed in my chest.

  “But he knew that you wanted to hit up Mick. It would be the next logical place for him to check. Patrick will come for us,” he said, resolute. “I’m not worried at all.”

  And he wasn’t. I could tell from the relaxed set of his shoulders and the easy tone in his voice. It bothered me. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Go for it.”

  “What would it take for you to lose faith in Patrick? You just found out he lied to you about his past. Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Don’t do that,” he said with a fierceness that caught me off guard. “Melissa kept things from you because she felt it was the right thing to do. She thought it would keep you safe. Don’t lose faith in her because she made a bad call.”

  “I feel like she had this whole other life, and she hid it from me.”

  “Of course she hid it from you. Kayla, you’re eighteen. No parent is going to tell their kid about the dark spots in their past.”

  “Maybe—but not telling me about Mick was worse in the end. I could have been prepared. I could have stayed away.”

  “It was a bad judgment call on her part. Cut her some slack, okay? She probably thought she’d always be around to keep you safe. Plus, you don’t know what the rest of that letter says. She might have come clean.”

  That letter. That damned letter had started all this. If I’d never gone back for it, chances were I could have just kept running. “Guess I’ll never know now.”

  “Sure you will. I’ll take you back to the cabin myself once this is all over.”

  “What if—” The words caught in my throat. “What if she did kill that kid?”

  I felt his shoulders lift with a shrug. “This is gonna sound harsh, but so what? I’ve listened to you talk about Melissa for days now. And I don’t agree with how she did things, but it sounds to me like she loved you.”

  “She did,” I admitted. No matter what she did or what she’d neglected to tell me, there would never be any doubt in my mind about that.

  “You knew her better than anyone—whether you realize it or not. The things she didn’t tell you about didn’t make her who she was. So ask yourself—do you really think she murdered anyone?”

  Mom wasn’t a murderer. I knew it deep in my gut just as sure as I knew my own name. “If she did do it, she had to have had a reason. A good one. Or it was an accident.”

  “There ya go. You have the only answer you need. The rest doesn’t matter. Not in the long run.”

  I wanted to ask him when he’d gotten so smart, but there was a loud creak and a thin beam of light flooded the room from somewhere behind me. “Everyone comfy?”

  Mick.

  His shadow danced its way down the wall by the stairs, distorted and resembling more of a monster than a man. Fitting, I thought. Because that was what Mick was. A monster. I wanted one thing in that moment. To hit him. Over and over until he was lifeless and still. To make him feel all the years of fear and pain I’d lived. “It was you. You did it.”

  He stopped in front of us. “I’ve done a lot of things—most illegal. Which one are you referring to?”

  “You killed my mom.”

  “She got exactly what she deserved,” he snapped, stomping his foot against the concrete. The beam of light from upstairs fell across his face, giving him an almost inhuman quality. “She stole my heart and my money, and then to top it all off, threatened me.”

  He might have been waiting for us to ask questions so he could continue his little monologue, but I refused to give him that. Unfortunately, he continued anyway. If he was the one who’d been chasing us, then he’d been saving this up for a long time.

  “I loved Melissa. From the first moment I saw her, I knew she had to be mine. We met in high school when we were fourteen and started running the con. It was little stuff at first. Identity scams. Credit fraud. Stuff to pay for nice dinners and exotic hotel rooms, but she wanted to go bigger. She was always looking to ‘trade up.’ She pulled in that shmuck Patrick, and that’s when things fell apart. I got so tired of hearing her go on and on about how smart he was and how we’d never be wh
ere we were if it weren’t for him.”

  Mick started to pace.

  “Every idea I had—she needed to run it by him first. When she told me she was pregnant and wanted to quit, I was thrilled. I was finally going to get her all to myself—and then she had to ruin it. She mentioned him and the plans she had for all of us. Well”—he snickered—“I kind of lost it. I’ll admit I acted a little rash and things got a bit out of control, but, well… You know how love is.”

  This guy was insane. “Something tells me whatever you think you felt for her, it wasn’t love.”

  He ignored me.

  “So I went along with one last job, figuring it could kill two birds with a single stone. It was one final score to set us up for a long time, and the opportunity to get rid of Patrick once and for all.”

  “How would that get rid of Patrick?” And then I understood. “Oh my God. It was you. You killed Bengali’s son. You were going to frame Patrick.”

  “I left for five minutes. Five fucking minutes! No one was supposed to be there for hours.”

  But someone was there. “Mom came back, didn’t she?”

  He stopped pacing and nodded, expression furious. “She found the kid and screwed it up. Put her prints all over everything in the room. I came back and, while she was distracted, managed to plant a small piece of evidence. Patrick’s wallet.”

  “And she just believed you?” I found it hard to believe, even in her younger years, that Mom would ever be that gullible.

  “No. Patrick was an angel in her eyes. He could do no wrong. We ran, and she took the wallet with her. God forbid her precious Patrick be implicated. She needed more convincing—and luckily, he took care of that for me.”

  Shaun balked. “He took care of it?”

  “Later that night we met up outside town to decide what to do. The cops were crawling all over town and a witness had seen Melissa fleeing the house, covered in blood. Bengali had also reported one of his accounts was completely cleared out. It was all over the news—along with Melissa’s picture. Patrick confronted her. It was funny, really. He came at her like a madman. Never gave her a chance to get a word in. He accused her of killing the kid and taking all the money.”

  “And what, she didn’t defend herself?” I snapped. Mom would never let anyone attack her like that. The woman I knew would never take that from someone.

  “That bastard was her weakness. The accusation in his eyes. The fury in his voice. Melissa was devastated that he believed it all so easily. That he had no faith in her.”

  No faith in her. And maybe that’s why Mom had never told me the truth about her past. Because the harsh reality of it had already cost her someone she’d obviously cared about. Maybe she was worried about what I’d think.

  Suddenly I hated myself for second-guessing her.

  “Once I got her away from him, I was able to convince her that maybe the reason Patrick had attacked her so viciously was because he really was guilty. The kid was dead and the money was gone. His wallet had been at the scene.” Mick smiled. “Eventually she just began to believe me.”

  “And it was you,” Shaun growled. “You killed the kid and stole the money just to get rid of Patrick?”

  Mick shrugged. “Guilty.”

  “That’s all good—in a twisted, douche-bag way—but it doesn’t explain why you killed Melissa.” Shaun prodded.

  “She never really let go of him. Every once in a while, she’d become obsessed with finding out the truth. Then, one day, she did.”

  Now I understood. The information the letter mentioned must have been the proof she had against Mick. It would clear her name, and if the cops could actually find him, free mine, too. “She found evidence, didn’t she? That it was you, not Patrick. That you’d planned the whole thing.”

  “And then she stole my money and ran.”

  “Your money? Dude. You stole it,” Shaun said with a laugh. But Mick was lost in recollection.

  “When I realized she was gone, I went crazy. I looked everywhere.”

  “You have to be the sickest shit I know,” Shaun said. “And believe me, that’s saying something.”

  Mick ignored him and continued like he wasn’t even there. He was lost in his own world now. Swept up in a memory. “I’ve built up my resources over the years.” He chuckled. “I dare say I’m almost neck and neck with that fool Bengali. But Melissa had a talent for disappearing. That woman could drop off a grid like no one else.”

  He thumped his chest and grinned. “She learned from the best. I got close quite a few times, but she always slipped past me. She always stayed one step ahead. Finally, I created John Jaffe and hired a collection of the best bounty hunters to do the legwork for me. Patrick was working for me all along, and the fool didn’t have a clue.”

  “But why?” My voice cracked a bit. “Why not just leave her alone? She obviously wasn’t going to turn in the evidence.” Mom would have never gone to the cops. They would have arrested her for various other infractions, and with no family, I would have ended up in the system.

  “Think about it from my point of view. That evidence was like a pendulum swinging back and forth over my head every damn day. Add that to the fact that she stole from me, and then left me. I gave her everything and she left me. She would have gone back to him eventually, and I wasn’t going to allow that.”

  “Back to him? Back to who?”

  Mick stomped his foot. “Patrick.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Wait—she and Patrick were involved?”

  A fit of hysterical laughter overcame Mick. “Of course they were involved. Melissa was involved with everyone! That girl’s barn door was always open, so long as it got her where she needed to go. If not for me convincing her to get a DNA test done, we wouldn’t have any idea who your daddy was. You could have been related to that slob Bengali for all we knew,” he snapped as though I was a moron.

  And really, I was. This entire thing had been about jealousy. Mom picked Patrick over Mick. He couldn’t handle it.

  “From the moment she laid eyes on him, I was forgotten. Me, who’d been there since she was a kid. Me, who’d sacrificed everything for her. Me, who she claimed she loved!”

  “So, she loved Pat,” Shaun said. I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell he was smiling. “You got her for a while—but it was by default, huh?”

  Mick crossed the room in the blink of an eye and backhanded Shaun. The blow sent us both sideways. “She loved us both, she told me once. But I don’t share. And in the end I saw she just wasn’t worth it. Never had been.”

  “And now?” Shaun asked.

  “And now I wrap this up,” he said, retrieving a roll of duct tape from a nail across the room.

  The tape peeling from the roll, and then the tearing sound it made as he ripped a long piece, echoed through the room. Without a word, he jammed the piece across Shaun’s mouth, then straightened to rip another.

  “I have the evidence,” I screamed as he came at me with the tape. “If you kill us, then it’ll go straight to the police. I’ve got it all hooked up.”

  Mick laughed. Not a short cackle or a lighthearted snicker, but an all-out belly laugh. When he finally got it under control, he sighed. “Just like Melissa. Never willing to give in. You don’t have anything.” He came forward with the tape again. “You didn’t even know about the evidence—or the truth.”

  He smushed the tape across my lips as I tried once more to protest, and then hauled us to our feet. Once we were up, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small knife. Shaun tensed and I held my breath, but all Mick did was bend down to slice the tape around our wrists, and both our ankles so we could walk.

  “Get moving,” he hissed, and shoved us toward the steps.

  I could still smell the blueberries as we walked up the narrow stairs and through his living room. He steered us out the back door and around the right-hand corner of the house. Since the property was so far from the road and completely surroun
ded by trees, we were totally concealed. No one would see us being marched to our death.

  “Move it,” Mick snapped when Shaun and I slowed our pace.

  We were being herded down a thin wooded path and into the forest. Each step away from the house caused my heart to hammer just a little bit harder. Was he going to take us into the woods and shoot us like he had Mom? Stab us with that little knife in his pocket and leave us to slowly bleed to death? Maybe he planned to tie us to a tree, gagged with the duct tape, and simply leave us there to die from exposure and starvation. All the scenarios rampaging through my head were horrible and terrifying, but when we emerged from the path and I saw what lay several yards ahead, well, that’s when I really lost it.

  I dug both feet in and started screaming. The noise was muffled and incoherent and anyone listening would probably write it off as an animal—because that’s what I sounded like. A crazed animal. Shaun must not have seen what I did at first, but when he did, probably remembering how I’d acted when I’d seen the pool outside the first hotel, he freaked, too.

  In that moment, getting shot or stabbed or left for bear bait tied to a tree sounded like heaven compared to what it seemed Mick had planned. Ahead, on a short wooden deck, was a rope, a couple of cinder blocks…and a really big lake.

  He was going to drown us.

  Shaun kicked at Mick in one last desperate attempt for escape. It didn’t do much good, though. All he managed to do was catch him in the shin, which caused him to stumble and curse—not let go.

  “Enough,” Mick growled. He grabbed hold of Shaun’s arm and dug deep into his front pocket, producing the knife. “If you don’t move along and cooperate, I’m going to simply slit her throat and let her bleed out here while you watch. Is that what you want?”

  Beside me Shaun stopped struggling, and a part of me screamed for him to continue. I wanted him to keep at it because anything would be better than drowning.

  Mick smiled. He had Shaun figured out now. “Good. Now move.”

  Together, the three of us walked the last few yards to the edge of the dock. The hollow, clanking sound our feet made as we moved across the deck turned my stomach. Suddenly I was sure he’d never get the chance to drown me. I was going to puke and choke to death on it.