by L. T. Vargus
The words spilled out of her all at once.
“I don’t know.”
And her eyes went up another size, cartoon level shock in them now, as though she was surprised by what came out of her mouth.
Somehow, it was what he expected to hear, what he wanted to hear. She’d walked into it. Accepted what was coming for her.
He watched her now. Small and pathetic. She trembled before him.
His fingers relented, letting the crushed beer can drop to the floor, but her eyes didn’t track its fall.
She stared out at nothing, watched him out of the corner of her eye, something she always did in these dramatic moments.
“Wrong answer,” he said, at last.
He lurched toward her, his fist drawing back behind his ear to deliver the blow she’d asked for.
But just as he went to let his hand go, went to unleash the overhand right, she cowered. Twisted. Brought her hands up to defend herself, and the blanket slipped away from her face.
The jagged scar appeared there near her chin. Revealed itself like the end of a magician’s trick. A tattered slash of pink flesh all mottled. Rough in texture.
And he froze. Stopped himself. Balled hand still raised over his shoulder. Face all clenched up. Nose wrinkled. Teeth exposed.
His chest heaved, and the breath huffed in and out of his nostrils, whistling and ragged and strange. But he didn’t move.
And her fingers parted, and they looked at each other, eyes seeking one another out, fastening, and staying there. Some wordless significance passing between them.
Mark pivoted, his arm dropping as he turned. He didn’t say a word, didn’t so much as think one. He just stormed out through the garage and climbed into his Jeep.
Even as drunk as he was, starting it and backing out of the driveway happened all at once. A reflex more than a conscious course of action.
He sped away.
Chapter 35
The metal bar lifts high over Emily’s shoulder. Waggles a few times. Descends.
It’s an overhand delivery. A clean stroke. The desk leg plunging like an axe splitting wood on a block.
The flat end with the screw plate clobbers one of the boards nailed over the window. The sharp edge gouges at the wood. Chips at it. A flake of lumber the size of a crooked toothpick removed. Fluttering away.
And the reverberation of the force explodes in her hands and wrists. Jostles her arms up to the shoulders. All of that momentum cutting off at once knocks her back a step.
The pain of the impact flares and recedes. Makes her grit her teeth.
It’s useless, of course, and she knows this. Knew it before she took the swing.
She may have grooved a little indentation into the wood, but that’s all she can muster. Surface damage. The equivalent of a flesh wound. Nothing more.
There’s no angle to pry at the boards. No use in bludgeoning the cylinder of the deadbolt, though she gave that a few swings as well, mostly missing it and peppering the door with dents.
There’s no way out of here.
All she can do is vent frustration. Swing her weapon with wild abandon. Know the pain of clubbing immovable objects.
She hefts the bar in front of her. Fingers probing the length of the metal.
The screw plate wobbles some at her touch. Pivots at the seam of the weld. It’s coming loose.
Damn it. That’s her sharp edge. Her blade, more or less. The spiked ball at the end of her mace. It’s the part that might gash Stump’s head when the time comes.
And she’s weakened it for no good reason. Dulled it.
Hot tears flush her eyes, the wetness somehow intensifying the sharp sting of them. Little grains of sand that cut like glass every time she blinks.
And the heat overtakes her again. Swirls confusion into her skull. Opens up that pit of black noise to swallow her.
Her legs buckle, all of their strength sucked away. The whole world careens.
And she’s falling. Falling.
She lands on her knees, the desk leg tumbling away from her, jarred free when she hits the floor.
She thinks the worst is over, but her balance still betrays her and she tips forward. Flailing. Weightless.
Gravity doesn’t make much sense in this moment. It seems strange and cruel. Somewhat arbitrary.
Her hands move in front of her out of reflex. Fingers splayed. Bracing for impact.
Her arms are too weak to catch her, to bear her weight, so she can only soften the blow.
She folds up into something small when she hits, the rounded dome of her forehead clunking the tile pretty good.
And now reality retreats a little more. Distances itself from her.
Everything gets farther away.
Goes darker. Darker. Not quite reaching black.
She lays there. Full body pressed against the cool ceramic. Face resting on her hands.
Her eyelids flutter several times. She fights them. Gets them opened to tiny slits.
And she pushes herself up onto hands and knees. Not quite sure why she’s doing this, why she continues to put up a fight.
She hovers in that position. Poised to crawl. Huffing and puffing all the while. Hissing and spitting and choking. Something strange happening.
Gabby speaks from somewhere behind her.
“Breathe, Em.”
It occurs to her that her friend only appears in moments like these. Always fluttering at the edge of things. Always just out of view.
And now the salt of Emily’s tears reaches her mouth. Coats her lips. The tang of it reminds her of the ocean, and she sees that beach scene again from when she was small. The dark place in the sand where the tide had washed all the footprints away.
“Just breathe.”
But she can’t. She can’t.
Her diaphragm hitches. Her chest spasms. Little clicks and gasps scraping out of her. Some detached part of her grasps after what this sounds like and finds it: a vomiting cat.
“Listen to me, Emily. You’re hyperventilating. You have to take a deep breath.”
She obeys. Concentrates. Sucks in.
There’s a little snap at the back of her throat like a bubble popping, and then the cool wind rushes into her lungs. Bloats her chest cavity. Lifts her up.
She breathes. Inhales. Exhales. Repeats.
“You have to be smart now. You’re one step ahead of him, but only if you’re smart about it.”
Emily nods. She talks to Gabby, even if she can’t see her.
“I have a weapon, and I’m not chained to the desk. That’s something.”
“That’s right, and now you need a plan.”
Chapter 36
Nothing like a nice, drunk drive to clear the mind, Mark thought. He chuckled a little at this, but in some ways it was true.
He tossed the empty can out the window of his Jeep. The can hovered next to him for a beat and then dropped out of sight, falling behind the speeding Jeep. He watched it tumble in the rearview, the yellow tube of aluminum somersaulting and bouncing before finally disappearing into the dust and scraggly plants.
Out here, he could forget about her for a little while. He could focus on the road.
With the dancing object gone, the desert landscape went back to the still, beige emptiness it usually was. Oppressive in both its monotone and its flat expanse that stretched out to the horizon.
Mark didn’t know why anyone would choose to live in a place like this — all brown and dead. He and Claire lived there because they couldn’t afford to move, couldn’t escape the jobs they had and start over somewhere else. They were trapped here. Stranded in the suburbs in the desert. Surrounded by a sea of asphalt and sand with massive casinos towering over everything, the gaudy lights blinking all night every night.
His eyes flicked from the mirror back to the road — an empty stretch of blacktop cut through the level swath of sand. Cacti and desert scrub poking up from the plains.
Out here, he was alone. No other cars on the
highway. No gas stations or fast food joints. No signs of any life at all, in fact.
He could open the throttle up. Push his little Jeep as hard as he wanted. The vehicle rode higher when he jammed the pedal to the floor. It stood up taller on the wheels, and he liked the feel of it. It topped out within a few mph of 100, the fenders beginning to shake and shimmy. He backed off, let the speedometer hover closer to 88.
He kept one eye on the road as he fished a hand into the box on the passenger seat. Cold cylinders met his fingertips there. He secured one and plucked it free.
The fresh can cracked like a gun when he opened it, the metallic sound somehow louder and more percussive out here on the road, out here in the emptiness.
He’d grabbed a twelve-pack of Coors Banquet at the party store. They were out of Pabst. These cold yellow dogs were his second favorite, so it wasn’t so bad, though they did cost a little more.
He took a drink, long and deep. It was cleaner tasting than the PBR, just a touch heavier, too.
Without warning, the image popped into his head, made him cringe. He saw Claire cowering on the bed, the blanket falling away to reveal her scar. His fist hovered there next to his head, ready to strike.
Damn. He’d tried to avoid that memory and had mostly done so up to this point. Apparently fourteen beers weren’t enough to keep it away. Not quite enough to kill the proper brain cells, even if they’d turned in a valiant effort.
He took another drink, gulped three times, licked his lips. He felt the beer foam and spiral in his throat, all of it sucked down into his belly like the water swirling in a bathroom drain, vanishing slowly but surely.
He wished the image — his shaking fist — would disappear like that, would drain from both his head and Claire’s, but it wouldn’t. She’d never let it go. Never. Even though he hadn’t touched her, she’d hold onto it, hold onto the negativity and let it fester between them.
Of course, he had hit Claire in the past, but that was just what it was. The past. It was over.
He hadn’t laid a hand on her at all in three months, and the last time was just a little slap. What do they call it? A love tap. Three months for Christ’s sake, and it felt like even longer. It really did.
And it hurt both of them when he did it. He let that rage inside of him out, let it express itself in physical violence, and he felt guilty as hell afterward.
He cried after the first time. She’d been needling him all afternoon, finally made some comment he couldn’t take. He’d backhanded her in the kitchen — another one of those violent bursts that caught both of them entirely surprised. She bled right away. Gummy red pouring out of her, collecting in thick pockets in the crevices between her teeth, seeping down her chin. His knuckles had mashed her bottom lip into her teeth. Gashed it pretty good. And she had a fat lip for almost a week after that.
He had stormed out right when it happened. Got in his Jeep. Drove out here to the desert just like today. The empty highway.
And once he was alone amongst the sand, he sobbed like a little child. He blubbered. Had watched the road through the blur of tears.
Now the heat swelled in his face and neck and chest. A pulsing warmth that rippled through him.
And he could hear the sound from that memory over and over again. The wet slap of his hand busting her lip against her teeth. He caught her clean. It snapped her head back, tipped her chin up just like a stiff jab.
He changed his grip on the steering wheel, toe fidgeting against the gas pedal, and he could feel the beer buzz thrumming in the tiniest bones of his hands and feet, some strange electricity. Pleasant. Almost euphoric, but not quite.
He ducked his head under the dash to take another drink before he remembered that it wasn’t necessary now that he was out in the middle of nowhere. It made him laugh, the way he’d bowed out of view like he was sitting at a stoplight downtown. Those little drunk driving habits can be hard to break.
And he saw himself standing over her again, but it was different this time. He didn’t cringe. He licked his lips. God, it would feel pretty goddamn good to let his hand go. No. Hands. Both of them. That would feel good, wouldn’t it? And she always shut her trap after. That was the hardest thing to accept in a way. The thing that drew him back to this headspace over and over, maybe. She always learned her lesson. She did. For a while, anyway.
The desert all around him seemed to dim now. Seemed to recede, to pull back from the edges of the road, like it wasn’t real anymore. Not all the way. He was real. His mind. His imagination. The canvas of his dreamscape grew, the pictures in his head gaining intensity until they reduced reality to a soft focus, mostly drowned the physical world out.
And his thoughts grew clearer, grew nuanced and intricate, every idea somehow amplified out here alone on the road. An incredible sensitivity occupied his head, a religious lucidity — a feeling he’d known perhaps a handful of times in his life, always when drunk, sleeping, or in that flash of adrenaline during a dangerous event. Strange states that gave him a fleeting glimpse into the subliminal.
And he understood it now, had words for what lay at the heart of his conflict with Claire.
What hurt was the way she kept things from him. Hid them. The good and the bad both. She blocked him out of the things that pained her, and the things that made her happy. All of her history was locked away from him, trapped somewhere in that skull of hers.
She kept him at arm’s length. Apart. Alone.
And something about it jammed a blade into his guts and twisted. She made him worthless. Made him bleed.
There were topics in every relationship, he supposed, that couldn’t be talked about. Things both partners knew that could never be pulled up from the murky depths, could never be discussed out loud. Secrets that must be taken to the grave.
This hurt she caused was one of those things. The wound would never heal, so it festered. Got worse and worse and worse until he couldn’t take it anymore. Until he had to express the agony in the real world.
He told her in bruises. In black eyes. In busted lips. His hands scrawled it on her body in a language of cruelty, etched it in marks all over her skin.
And his breath would get hot in these moments. He could feel its heat on his tongue, pushing out in spitty bursts between his teeth.
All of the outside world would go quiet, and he could hear only those muffled sloshing sounds inside of his head like when he was a kid at the public pool holding his breath underwater. The blood beating in his ears. The wind whistling in his sinus cavity as he blew a flurry of bubbles out of his nose.
He felt powerful when he stood over her. He felt whole. A terrible oneness that was only real in those moments of violence when his heart hammered in his chest and ice water flooded his veins.
And once it was done, that feeling faded out all at once. The heat fled his face, and he felt awful. Nauseous.
This was the cycle. Intense cruelty followed by guilt. A dramatic tonal shift that felt important. Almost sacred.
In the quiet after it was done, the tidal wave of guilt and shame washed over the two of them, uprooted them from their lives, from their ideas of themselves, threatened to swallow them up for good. An overwhelming surge of suffering that was somehow shared, somehow belonged to both of them, even if he was the one who’d wronged her.
And from there they acted out the guilt ritual like they always did. The ceremony.
He told her he’d change. Told himself the same. The words came out solemn. Serious. With a somber rhythm like a prayer. He swore up and down that he’d never do it again. Sometimes one of them cried. Sometimes both.
But the awful truth crept into the blank spaces where neither of them dared to look. It was always there. Always all around them. Because, like he’d already reminded himself, every time it happened, she learned her lesson. For a little while, she learned her lesson. For a little while, the wound was healed. For a little while, they felt closer. Bonded by chaos, by the sheer intensity of the act itself, of the emo
tional shift. It was, after all, an experience that only they shared.
And now? Now it was worse than before, wasn’t it? Now it wasn’t just her blocking him out. She had a whole team of law enforcement professionals helping her. All of them conspiring to hurt him, to make him worthless. This Loshak fuck leading the charge.
Well, it couldn’t stand. No fucking way. He was going to do something about it. Something big. Something permanent. He had to. It was the only way.
He would show them.
He would take care of it.
He blinked a few times, and the sand and rock along the road seemed to return from the dreamscape, all of reality congealing back into solidity.
The desert didn’t move outside. If it was aware of his existence, it showed no sign of it at all.
Chapter 37
Darger watched Nicole through the windshield like it was a TV screen. The girl clomped across the lot, weaving between parked cars, the streetlights shining through her hair so it almost glowed.
She moved slow on her stilettos, a methodical back and forth strut, and the shoes were loud. Clicking away at the emptiness, each footstep sending out a call that pinged back a clapping echo as a response. Darger could hear the knocking plainly through the closed doors and windows of the rental car, which seemed amusing.
They were well off the Strip tonight, parked off to the side of a third-rate hotel so Nicole had easier access to the side door — apparently the preferred entry for some calls. And even if the parking lot was damn near full, there was no traffic out this way, making the clack of the shoes all the more prominent, all the more obnoxious.
Flaring light in the cup holder drew Darger’s eyes away from the rhythmic totter of Nicole’s back. Her phone lit up there, rumbled a beat later. She checked it.
Spam. Of course.
She sighed. Swiped the cash advance text away. And just then the clicking footsteps cut out.
Her gaze returned to the windshield. Scanned from left to right. Nothing. No movement.
Nicole couldn’t have reached the door yet — she still had a few more rows of cars and an alley to cross. So where was she? She couldn’t just vanish.