The Bad Guy

by Celia Aaron

  “Is this the house?” I pulled into the mouth of the driveway, my headlights illuminating the man.

  Mint checked the GPS on his phone. “Yeah, I think so.”

  The man walked through the gate, which began to swing shut behind him.

  “Shit.” I jumped out of the car. “Hey!”

  He kept walking.

  I took a chance. “Sebastian, is that you?”

  He slowed and stopped as the gate clanged shut, but didn’t turn around. “What are you doing out here?”

  Mint walked to the gate and clutched the bars. “We’re looking for Camille Briarlane. Have you seen her?”

  “Why would I have seen her?” He turned, though the headlights only illuminated up to his chest. His face remained steeped in shadow.

  “Because you visited her at school.” I stepped to the gate at Mint’s elbow. “Because you invested in a greenhouse there.”

  “I did. That still doesn’t explain why you think I’ve seen her.”

  His snide tone ate through me like acid. “Are you fucking her?”

  “Am I fucking your girlfriend?” His laughter chilled me more than the icy air. “You came all the way out here on Christmas Eve to ask me if I’ve been fucking your girlfriend?”

  “Answer me, you son of a bitch!” I tried to shake the gate, but it didn’t move.

  His laughter ended abruptly. “If you’d like to keep your job, I would suggest you change your tone.”

  Fuck. This was not how I planned on this going. I figured we’d stop by, say we were in the neighborhood, and Sebastian would let us in for a few moments despite the blatant lie. This was a clusterfuck.

  “Hey, asshole. I don’t work for you.” Mint banged on the bars. “You have her in there, don’t you?”

  “I most certainly do not. In fact, if I recall correctly, she informed me she was going to visit the rainforest over Christmas break. Have you tried there?”

  “She’s not in Brazil. She’s in your goddamn house!” Mint’s yell ripped through the quiet.

  The kid had balls, I had to give him that.

  “I think if you investigate elsewhere, you’ll find you’re mistaken.” Sebastian turned on his heel and walked away.

  “Let me in!” Mint kicked the gate. “You’ve got her. I know you do!”

  “Mint.” I put a hand on his shoulder as Sebastian disappeared up the dark drive. “We’re not getting anywhere tonight.” The threat of losing my job seemed to knock some sense into me. The blonde at the restaurant couldn’t have been Camille. I’d let Mint drag me into his paranoia, and here I was, standing at the gate to my boss’s house while a teenager yelled threats at him.

  “No, I know she’s in there.”

  “Let’s go. We’ll—”

  My cell phone chirped and vibrated in my pocket.

  I pulled it out and stared at the screen. “Holy shit.”

  “What?”

  “She came back from her trip early. She’s back at her place. Says she’ll see me tomorrow night.”

  “No way.” Mint snatched my phone and stared at it. “This doesn’t prove anything. He could have, I don’t know, sent a text right then from her phone to throw us off the scent.”

  “I don’t know man.” I stuffed the phone into my pocket right as Mint’s notification sounded.

  He pulled it out and read the message.

  “Let me see.” I held my hand out.

  “No.” He pocketed it. “It’s private. Shit.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s her. The real her. I can tell.”

  “What the fuck, man?” I hustled back to the car as the wind picked up.

  We both got in and defrosted for a moment before I turned back on the road and headed south.

  “I don’t care that she texted. There’s something wrong with that guy.” He held his hands in front of the vent.

  “Maybe there is, but it doesn’t fucking matter anymore. She’s home. He doesn’t have her chained in his basement. I ought to kick your ass for leading me on this wild goose chase.”

  “He could have let her go or something.”

  “Mint.” I banged my palm on the steering wheel. “She’s been in fucking Brazil. Not in upstate New York. Sebastian is a dick, but that’s about all. He’s not a psycho killer or a kidnapper. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re the ones who look crazy right now.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, so why was he out on the street at night in the cold?”

  “Why the fuck does it matter?” I wanted to bitch-slap him, though I opted against it. He had at least twenty pounds on me.

  “It’s bizarre.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” I tried to use my calm grown-up voice. “He’s a weirdo. Camille is home. All is well. And another thing, I want you to stay away from her.”

  His eyebrows hit his hairline. “What?”

  “You heard me. I’m beginning to think you’re obsessed with her or some shit. You’re never going to fuck her, okay? She’d never dick down with a student. So give it a rest.”

  He fell into a stony silence, which was fine with me. I didn’t need any more of his bullshit clouding my judgment.

  What had I been thinking? One thing was for certain, I’d never drink with a fucking teenager again unless it had tits and daddy issues.

  43

  Camille

  I walked across the baseball diamond as the helicopter lifted off, the dull grass shivering beneath the harsh downdraft. It was surreal, to be back at Trenton, the clock tower shining in the darkness beyond the skeletal trees.

  The helicopter rose and angled away until it and the sound of its rotor died in the still night air. The area was empty; no one had seen my arrival. I walked through the low fence near the visitor stands and hurried behind the administration building. It didn’t make sense, but I felt the need to hide, to secret myself away from anyone and everything.

  Once I’d passed through the campus and hit the street to my house, I dodged behind trees and stayed in yards instead of walking along the well-lit sidewalk. Music floated from some of the houses, and more cars than usual parked along the street. Holiday parties with loved ones were in full swing, and every so often I caught the scent of rich food on the air.

  My house sat silent in the cold night, only the front porch light shining faintly against the gloom. I walked around to the back, through my small yard, and to the kitchen door. I tried the handle. Locked. Kneeling, I lifted an empty flower pot and grabbed my key. Once unlocked, the door swung inward, and I was home.

  I walked into my kitchen and threw the deadbolt behind me. Everything looked just the same as when I’d left. A dish towel draped haphazardly across the drying rack. My houseplants lining the windowsill. It was as if I’d walked into a museum of my life, everything preserved. The house had stayed the same while I’d changed and, at my core, had become a completely different person. As if to prove this hypothesis, I grabbed a knife from a drawer and carried it with me as I searched the house. It was empty—no Sebastian lurking in a closet with a burlap sack, ready to carry me off again.

  A shiver coursed through me, and I turned the thermostat up, then walked to my bedroom. Other than a few missing items and clothes that I knew were in my closet—no, in his closet at the Catskills house—the room was untouched. A new cell phone sat on my bedside table. I picked it up and swiped to unlock it. All my information was there, including the texts I’d missed. Sebastian hadn’t told me the extent of his texts with Veronica, Link, and Mint, and as I read his cold responses and their mounting panic, I realized he’d needed me to step in to avert suspicion. I felt sick when I realized I’d been tricked, yet again. The worry in the messages spoke to the old me—the kinder one—so I fired off a few missives to let them know I was back from my trip early, then silenced the phone.

  I kicked my shoes off and lay down. Sebastian’s coat still warmed me, his scent coating the fibers and giving me a sense of comfort that was all wrong. I hugged myself and closed my eyes.
Should I call the police? And tell them what? I was kidnapped by a man who kept me in a lavish mansion, never touched me until I asked, and who I had sex with of my own volition twice? I rolled over and faced the small window looking out into the night.

  The last two weeks had been a nightmare mixed with slivers of daydream. I pressed my nose to the coat and drew in a deep breath. It was insane—a prisoner who wanted to escape, and now, a free woman who ached for the man who’d held her captive. I would never go back, never be a prisoner again as long as I lived. But the depth of sadness in his eyes when he set me on the helicopter had ripped a hole through my heart. He felt. And, in turn, I felt for him.

  “It’ll pass,” I murmured to the empty room. “It has to.” I leaned back and set the knife on my nightstand, the hilt close to the edge. If so much as a floorboard creaked, I’d be ready.

  When I lay back down, the familiar metal at my ankle tickled along my skin. I drew my knee up and grabbed the golden shackle. With a hard pull, the clasp gave way. Warm in my hand, the metal glinted in the soft moonlight. I closed my palm around the solid proof that it hadn’t all been a fever dream.

  Sebastian had taken me prisoner, and just as suddenly, had set me free.

  The doorbell rang. My eyes flew open, and for a brief moment, I didn’t know where I was. Gone were the wide windows with the view of the mountains, the sumptuous bed, and the luxury furnishings. But when I realized I was in my own bed, I sighed with relief.

  Someone knocked at my front door and rang the bell again, several times in a row. I grabbed the knife from my bedside table and crept down the short hallway to the living room.

  A face peered through the small porthole in the front door. “Hello? I’m freezing my fabulous off out here!”

  What the hell? “Who is it?”

  “Paul.”

  “Paul who?”

  “Is she kidding? She’s kidding, right?”

  Muffled responses. How many people were out there?

  “I’m the Paul of Splendide.”

  “What’s that?” I shuffled to the door.

  “Only the finest salon in all of Manhattan.” A high-pitched female voice.

  I leaned against the wall. “What do you want?”

  “She’s kidding. She must be.” Paul’s voice grew more animated by the second. “We were told to be at this address, and we were paid handsomely, might I add. An in-home appointment on Christmas Day doesn’t come cheap, even if we don’t exactly celebrate. Hanukkah Sameach.”

  I rubbed my eyes, not entirely sure what was going on. “You were paid to come here and do my hair?”

  “Mrs. Lindstrom, if you aren’t going to let us in—”

  “I am not Mrs. Lindstrom.” I stared at the face through the porthole.

  “My apologies.” He rolled his eyes. “Mr. Lindstrom was the name on the payment. If you aren’t going to let us in, we’ll return to the city.”

  He certainly didn’t look like a contract killer or an evil minion. I could just see the edges of bright pink hair along his scalp.

  Pulling my phone from my pocket, I looked up Splendide. It was legit. Paul was splashed all over the web site wearing various bizarre outfits with even stranger hairstyles.

  I studied him with the safety of the door between us. “What did he pay for?”

  “Color. Brown, apparently.” He held up a photo of me from last session’s school yearbook. “This color to be exact.”

  “Oh.”

  Sebastian was clearly trying to set things back to rights. But it would take a hell of a lot more than a change in hair color to do it. Even so, I stuffed the knife behind a pillow cushion and unlocked the door.

  Paul pushed through, followed by two assistants with equally bright hair colors. He dwarfed the room and must have been almost six and a half feet tall.

  The woman, her eyes painted like a peacock, glanced around and frowned. “Here?”

  I should have been offended. Instead, I stared at the rhinestones that dotted her face.

  Paul plucked a lock of my hair between his dark fingers and inspected it. “I remember this color. I traveled to do it, too. You’re the one who’s afraid of stylists.”

  I shrugged. Given the way he and his assistants dragged in various rolling luggage full of who knew what, I was beginning to agree with that particular lie. “That was me.”

  The male assistant with bright green hair pushed my couch, ottoman, and side chair into a snarl on one side of the room and started unpacking his bag.

  “This won’t take long.” Paul held up the yearbook photo. “A base of B45 with highlights of A34 and A15.” He stared at my part. “Your roots are already growing back in. Easy to match.”

  A sharp sound, like air being let out of a tire, shot through the open front door. A moving truck rolled to a stop in front of my cottage. Timothy jumped out of the passenger side. I pressed my hand to my throat, worry shooting through me like tainted adrenaline. He gave me a wave and a smile, as if to say, “Don’t worry.”

  It didn’t work. My hands trembled. Was he coming to get me? Was this all part of Sebastian’s sick game?

  He and the driver met at the back of the truck and rolled up the door. They started unloading things—my things—from the back. Sebastian was returning everything he’d taken as well as giving me everything he’d bought for me.

  “Have a seat.” The female assistant pointed to a salon chair that they’d put together as I’d stared out the door.

  “This is surreal.” I sat as the woman side-eyed my furniture.

  “You aren’t kidding.” She started brushing out my blonde strands as Timothy carried an armload of clothes through the front door.

  “Can I put these in your bedroom?” At least Timothy asked before coming any farther.

  “Yes.” Seeing him here added to the crazytown feel. But he was dressed down in a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt.

  “Bless.” Paul watched Timothy walk by with more than just professional interest. He turned to me and stirred some purple gel inside a small paint tray. “Eye on the prize, beautiful. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  44

  Sebastian

  I finished off the bourbon and tossed the bottle to the far side of the greenhouse. The satisfying crash of glass was the perfect backdrop to opening my next bottle of Pappy. The lid dropped to the ground, and I took a long draw.

  Her plants grew around me, and I wondered how long it would take for the vines and leaves to cover me over, bury me in the green she loved so much. Her touch colored everything in here, from the pots and plants to the mortar and pestle she’d used to create my poison.

  I knew physical pain. That was an easy sensation to clock. But it was nothing like the excruciating agony of losing her. Everything seemed to stop, and there was nothing in the world that could get it started again. Except her. So, instead of waiting for something that would never happen, I decided to drink. Seemed logical.

  Was the pain worse because I’d never felt anything like it? I didn’t know, but I wanted it to stop. Therein lay the problem. The only thing that would fix it was a woman who ran from me the first chance she got. I took another swig from the fresh bottle, barely even tasting the amber liquid as it slid down my throat.

  “Sir?” Timothy stood next to me. Where’d he come from?

  “Yeah.” I offered the bottle.

  He shook his head. “All her things have been delivered.”

  “When?” I squinted at the cloudy sky.

  “Late this morning.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Five in the afternoon.”

  I’d been here for almost a day, but I hadn’t realized it. All I could think of was her, the blue of her eyes, the softness of her skin, the cute way her nose would wrinkle, the sounds she made when she came. I could drown myself in good bourbon and thoughts of her for the rest of my life. It would be more fulfilling than trying to function without her. I took another swig.

  “Sir?�
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  “Still here.” I lay down on the center table as the mister overhead kicked on. The cool water felt good on my hot skin. As I got settled, a few more pots crashed to the ground, but I didn’t care. She wasn’t going to come back and see the mess I’d made.

  “What are your plans?” I hated the pinched sound of his voice. Worrying about me was dumb.

  “I plan on drinking all the bottles of Pappy van Winkle in my possession, then I’ll move along to the cheaper stuff.” I closed my eyes as water droplets collected on my face and drained away, tickling my ears. “What did she look like?”

  He took the bottle from me and took a drink before sputtering and handing it back. “Blonde when I got there, back to brown when I left.”

  “Was she happy?”

  Please say no. Say no. Say. No.

  “Not at all.”

  I smiled and swallowed another gulp.

  “I think she’s sort of, I don’t know, shell-shocked. And she gave me a vicious stink-eye when I removed all the cameras and microphones.”

  “Did she say anything about me?”

  “No. She was quiet.”

  “Silence. Fuck.” I needed to know more, to peel her apart until I understood everything going on inside her, but that chance had passed. I’d have to ask Timothy. “Do you…”

  “What?” He reached up and angled a mister away from my face.

  “Do you think she misses me?”

  He coughed into his hand as the hiss of the misters began to die off.

  “Fine.” I scowled.

  “I think she will. She needs time to sort through it all.”

  “How is it that I, a fucking psychopath, feel more for her than she feels for me?” Just saying it out loud sent a spike of pain through me.

  “I don’t know if that’s true. She has feelings for you. They just aren’t—”

  “Was she drinking?”

  “No.”

  “Being a little bitch like me?”

  “No.”

  “See?”

  He leaned against the opposite table. “That doesn’t mean anything.”