“No harm no foul,” I repeated, stunned, one eye twitching. “What about Damon, Eddie.”
Eddie made a disgusted noise and spit blood on the floor. “Okay, look, that was just bad luck, all right? I wasn’t trying to get Damon. Sam was supposed to be carrying, not Damon. I don’t even know why he was there. But I was gonna get little Sammie off the streets. She was the first person Arlena talked to, so she was supposed to be the first one Arlena took down.” Eddie shook his head. “Then Damon got in the way. Since that little skank didn’t talk to anybody but you and Sam, I was out of connections.”
“So you told me to bring her to a party so she’d mingle. You forced the connections.”
He grinned. “Force is such a strong word…”
“And the photos? The fliers? The car? Taking her fucking clothes off?!”
Eddie went rigid. At first I thought he was just scared of what I was about to do to him—rightfully so—but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking behind me.
“Good job, Blayze.” The detective’s voice froze me in place. “Don’t think I could have gotten all of that out of him at once. Eddie Franklin, you are under arrest for stalking, harassment, sexual harassment, growing drugs, cooking drugs, distributing drugs, contributing to the delinquency of a whole hell of a lot of minors, and anything else I can throw at you. You have the right to remain silent.”
Eddie turned four shades of pale and sagged. Two officers came into the room on either side of me, cuffed him, and led him away. I turned around slowly. The detective was leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets, looking all around the room. I followed his gaze.
Every flier and poster that had ever been printed against Arlena was there, along with copies of the threatening notes, the original photos of her passed out in the bathroom, printed screenshots of his Fugwidem posts, and even a few photos of her car before and after its destruction. In one corner of the room was a battered baseball bat, a pair of decorative knives with orange seat padding stuck in the handles, and a whole lot of red-orange spray paint.
The detective met my eyes. “She’s a strong woman, Blayze. All this and still smiling.”
“How’d you end up here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I had my guys researching that ring. One of a kind, but we had a match in the system. Belonged to a big-time crime lord named Joseph Franklin. He was shot to death ten years ago. We think it was a deal gone bad—anyway, he only had one kid. A kid who happened to be enrolled at Burnaby High at the ripe old age of twenty-one. They called it in when you were leaving school. I followed you here, called in the address, and whaddya know—the property’s owned by one Eddie Franklin.”
He shrugged and flashed me a smug grin. “All a matter of following and listening after that. Figured you weren’t in too much danger. After all—he’s your best friend, right?” He winked at me and turned away, took a few steps, then stopped. “Oh, Blayze—you might want to get your things out of here. We’re going to have this place locked down for weeks.”
My head was buzzing. I was sure that he was going to arrest me for something—association or accomplice or even simple assault for what I’d done to Eddie’s face—but he didn’t seem to be interested. A cop stood watching the office until I stepped out of it, then he moved to stand in the doorway. He gave me a small nod and an even smaller smile. I took that as my cue.
When I drove away with my belongings—a pathetically small amount which seemed to dwindle a little bit more every time I was forced to move—Eddie was slumped in the back of a cop car, staring out the window. A steady stream of tears trickled out of his unblinking eyes. I wanted to hold a grudge. I really did. But he looked like a little kid in mourning—on some level, he probably was. All of the anger washed away, leaving me feeling nothing but tired. Exhausted, really. I wanted to drive to Arlena and curl up in her arms and just exist next to something good for a while, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I had some calls to make.
“Yo.”
“Dion, it’s Blayze. Cops raided Eddie’s place. Cancel the deal, there’s nothing to sell.”
There was a beat of silence, then, “Yup.” That one syllable was so full of relief that I had to wonder if he was a cruddy dealer on purpose. I didn’t ask, though. He’d already hung up.
I was about to call my mom, but she called me first. “Hello?”
“Blayze, where are you? I just drove past Eddie’s place and there are cops everywhere! Where are you?” She sounded frantic, almost panicked.
“I’m safe, mom. Don’t have anywhere to live again, but that’s pretty standard these days.”
“Get your ass to my place right now,” she snapped. Her voice was shaking. “Damn it, Blayze, you’re my good kid! I always knew Damon was going to end up in prison, but—but—” She started wheezing and sniffling. I listened in shock, feeling pieces of my heart crack in places they’ve never cracked before.
“I’m on my way,” I said. “Meet me there. And don’t call me when you’re driving, I know you don’t put it on speaker and I know you don’t do headsets.”
“Okay, okay,” she sniffled. “My house, right now.”
“Yes, mom.”
I shook my head as I hung up the phone. This entire day was dead set on shattering all my preconceptions. I just hoped that when I saw Arlena later that she would be the same person I’d been with the night before. The way my day was going, though, there was a decent chance that she would reveal herself to actually be an alien in disguise or an undercover agent or something.
33
My school day was so easy I almost couldn’t believe it was real. I hit up all my teachers for extra credit, and most of them came through for me. If I worked very hard for the next couple of months, I knew I would be able to make up for the damage all the drama had done to my grades—assuming no fresh terror popped out of the woodwork.
After my altercation in the bathroom, I was confident—no, I was positively cocky—that if anything else happened, I would be able to face it head-on and deal with it. Word about my newly-discovered backbone spread quickly, and nobody messed with me all day, not even on the bus home. The freedom to just exist in the world without feeling like a target lulled me out of the hyper-vigilant state I’d been living in for months.
It wasn’t until I was standing at the bus stop at the end of my block, ready to walk home, that the old fear took hold of me again. Even though the cops and my parents were on the case now, I was still alone at that moment—vulnerable to whomever had been stalking me for so long. Shadows seemed to crawl with unseen danger, and every window felt like watchful, malicious eyes.
A cool breeze made the nervous sweat trickling down my neck and spine feel like fingers brushing over me. My heart pounded in my chest, filling my ears with my own thundering pulse, leaving me half-deaf when every part of my being was straining to listen and watch and feel for danger. I took the last few yards at a dead run.
I cast a wary eye at the front stoop, expecting to see something new waiting for me. When there was nothing, I leapt up the stairs and shoved my key in the door, hands sure and quick even though my legs were shaking. I slammed and locked the door behind me, leaned heavily against it, and blew out a heavy sigh. I wanted to cry and scream and break something, but all I could do was stand there and shake.
I’d been so happy to depend on myself all day, to trust myself and my connections to handle everything. I’d felt so powerful, so in control. Now that I was alone, in a home I knew had already been invaded by my stalker, I felt small and helpless all over again. Months of terror had branded my brain, stamped panic on my mind. Every tiny sound from outside made my heart race.
My imagination turned even the simplest of sounds into an imminent attack. Every car on the road belonged to my stalker. The branches scraped against the shabby roof not because of the wind, but because the stalker was climbing the tree. A rumbling, crashing sound was an army of peers marching up to my house ready to tear me limb from limb—not just
my neighbor taking his trash barrel out for the night.
Caught in a paranoid loop I couldn’t break on my own, I texted Blayze. Can you come over?
I waited and waited, but he didn’t answer. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe the stalker found out he was working with the cops and killed him or kidnapped him or—I squeezed my eyes shut against a torrential wave of increasingly implausible horrors. I knew they were implausible, but I couldn’t convince my emotions that they hadn’t happened.
A wobbly sort of frustration was birthed from the conflict, along with just enough clarity to get my fingers moving again. I texted Sam.
I’m freaking out. Super paranoid. Nothing happened, but everything feels like danger. I don’t know what to do.
She responded almost immediately. Turn the TV on. Turn it up LOUD. Pick something stupid to watch. Invisible monsters can’t stand a laugh track.
It wasn’t enough to make me smile, but it was enough to peel me off of the door. I did as she said, turning the TV up so loud I was sure I would be getting complaints from the neighbors. A familiar, stupid sitcom was playing reruns and I clung to the laugh track like my life depended on it. She was right. With every burst of canned laughter, the monsters in my head receded a little.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but when my phone chimed with a response from Blayze the sun was well on its way down. I hadn’t turned any of the lights on, I’d been so focused on the TV, and realizing that I was sitting in the middle of purple shadows shocked me into action. I carried my phone with me as I turned on every light on the ground floor, then I looked at the message.
Sorry princess, a lot of shit happened. I’m on my way over now.
A lot of shit happened. What shit? What happened? I typed out a rapid-fire slew of questions, then deleted them all. He’d try to answer me, knowing him, and would end up crashing his car. I would just have to be patient for a little while longer. It wasn’t anything like easy, but the marathon was still going on on the TV.
I forced myself to sit and take in the familiar, unchanging backgrounds. The cityscape with lights that never go out. The elevator that would never be repaired. The books on the shelves that would never be read, the characters who would never really evolve. Stable. Secure. Drama without danger. I had very nearly soothed myself back into calm when someone knocked on the door loudly enough to wake the dead and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I muted the TV and raced to the door, heart skipping and stuttering in my chest. I peeked through the window and found Blayze on the other side. I tore the door open and buried my face in his shirt, inhaling his comforting scent. He didn’t say anything, just wrapped his arms around me and let me breathe.
“Come in,” I said finally, dragging him off the stoop to slam and lock the door behind him.
“You’re jumpy,” he said kindly. “Did something happen?”
I wrapped my arms tight around me and shook my head. “No, but I keep expecting it to. I’ve been jumpy ever since I got home. Mom’s working late tonight, and Dad always does, so it’s just been me and the TV.”
He settled his arm around my shoulders and herded me gently to the couch. “I’m here now,” he said as he sat and pulled me down beside him. “And everything’s okay.”
“It’s not though, is it?” I asked, my voice shaking. “Whoever this is is still out there somewhere, plotting their next move, their next strike. And I keep thinking, maybe they’re as tired of all this as I am—maybe they’re tired of playing with me. Maybe the next one will be the last one and I won’t survive it.”
He kissed my forehead firmly, then took my face in his hands. He looked deep into my eyes until I matched my breath to his, until my pulse had calmed down to a steady rhythm.
“He isn’t out there anymore,” Blayze said softly. “That’s why I didn’t answer you before. That detective showed up at school today to ask for my help. They found some evidence, and I knew who it belonged to. He’s on his way to jail right now. He’s a flight risk with a lot of money—I don’t think they’ll be giving him bail.”
My mouth was hanging open and I snapped it shut. “Who was it?” I asked.
He sighed. There was hurt in his eyes, a deep sort of hurt. I touched his face and he leaned into my palm, then kissed my wrist. He didn’t look at me when he told me.
“Eddie,” he said, his voice heavy. “It was Eddie.”
Confusion rippled through me with fury hot on its heels, driving me to my feet. “Eddie?! Why? What was—he was hitting on me! Wait, wait, no, he was actively trying to date me the same night my car got trashed. How? Why? Are you sure?”
His mouth quirked in a sad little lopsided grin. “That was my reaction too,” he said. “But yeah, I’m sure. Caught him red-handed trying to drum up some more hate in your direction. His target was always your dad, from the very beginning. He wanted to scare you so badly that you’d make your dad take you away from here.”
I scoffed, but my voice broke and it came out more like a shriek. “He thought I was such a spoiled brat that I would take my dad away from his work—his super important work, by the way—just because he made me a target for petty bullshit?” I glared, then started pacing the living room. “Fucking asshole. Hold on, that still doesn’t explain why he was trying to get with me.”
“Unfortunately it does.” Blayze had a troubled, faraway look on his face. “He saw how persistent you could be. How loyal you were. He wanted you on his side so if push came to shove you’d choose him over your dad and help him get away with things.”
My stomach turned over queasily. “Do I really seem like the kind of person who would ever do that?”
He stood and came to me, pulling me close against him. “No,” he said firmly. “But he is. He doesn’t know much about family, honestly. Or friendship. Or love. Everything’s a conquest to him, a game he wants to win. Everything. Even his generosity is just one step in a long con. He kept me close and gave me a room because he was hiding some shit that he knew I would never stand for. I was a smoke screen for him. He wanted the same from you.”
I pulled away from him and searched his face. “You aren’t just talking about me,” I realized out loud. His face was drawn tight, and there was fury mixed in with the hurt.
He offered me a tight little smile. “He fucked my brother over,” he said. “And a lot of other good people who were just trying to make ends meet for their families. Eddie hired anybody who wanted the work, but he was only ever interested in cultivating hard-core criminals. Everybody else…” He trailed off, his eyes going dark.
“What did he do?”
“He set them up,” Blayze said flatly. “He’d send them somewhere and tip off the cops. Cops would bring them in—your dad did the rest of the work for him, ironically. He was using them as sacrifices in his war against you. Every time someone got picked up, he’d blast it on that Fugwidem app and name you as the narc.”
I was shaking again. “And the hard-core criminals?”
“He protected them. He knew that the cops were going to be cracking down hard. The more small-time dealers he could hand over, the busier they would be, the less manpower they would have to track down the big-time movers.”
My head was spinning. I leaned it against his chest. “So it was never even about me,” I said, my voice sounding cold and distant to my own ears. “I was just a pawn in his sick little takeover game.”
“Right on all counts except the little,” he said with a sigh. “You should have seen his office, Arlena. He’s got a map of the city all covered in thumbtacks and string like some kind of serial killer. He had all of this down to a science. If he hadn’t lost his temper and gotten sloppy with your car, he’d be running this entire city within the next few years.”
I shuddered. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know he was your friend.”
Blayze shrugged. “Don’t be. Friends like that are one brilliant idea away from getting you killed.”
I held him a little tighter.
&nb
sp; 34
Her parents had come home, so we moved out to the back yard to talk. There was a little concrete stoop there, and a metal trash can that looked like it had held a bonfire. I nodded a question at it. Arlena smiled.
“My first attempt at dealing with this whole thing myself,” she said. “I stood out front and burned each letter one by one, shouting challenges out at an empty street. Pretty sure the neighbors think I’m nuts now.”
I was impressed. I grinned and bumped her shoulder with mine. “That took balls,” I said.
She giggled and snuggled into me, then took a deep breath. “God, it’s nice to just sit outside. I love being outside. Eddie had me so worked up for so long I was scared to leave my room half the time.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and kissed the top of her head. “It’s all over now.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said slowly. “What’s going to happen when people hear that Eddie’s been arrested? He’s the hookup. Everybody is going to be pissed. Won’t they blame me, now that he has them primed to think of me every time someone gets arrested?”
I nodded, thinking. “You’re probably right,” I said. “But once they know what he’s done, it’ll be a different story.”
She frowned. “Are you allowed to tell people? Isn’t there an investigation and trial and stuff that has to happen first?”
I grinned at her. “You’re thinking like a lawyer. I am just a private citizen who happened to stumble upon a double-crossing criminal mastermind in his lair. Nobody told me not to say anything. So yeah, I can absolutely run my mouth. But, since I’ve never been the kind to do that, it would raise suspicion if I started now.”
“Oh,” she said dejectedly.
“Which is why I told Sam,” I finished casually.
She perked up. “Oh!”
“Oh, yes,” I said, chuckling. “Everybody will know exactly what kind of douchebag Eddie really is by lunchtime tomorrow.”
Manic: A Dark Bully Romance Page 22