I put my elbows on the table and my face in my hands. Every time I think that things can’t get any worse, they do. This is harder than finding a dead girl in a box, than delivering her body to her murderer’s house, than discovering Mr. Volli is on this, or shooting a corpse. This is the worst of all.
Several minutes later, the door to the café opens again and I look up, hoping for Chasm but finding Maxx.
Crap.
My eyes widen as he storms over to me, slamming his palms down on the table so hard that the employees start murmuring amongst themselves. Factoring in my luck—or lack thereof—as of late, it wouldn’t surprise me if they kicked us out and told us to never come back.
“She’s devastated, Kota. She climbed in her car and took off like a bat out of hell. What if she gets into a wreck? Can you handle having your sister’s death on your conscious?”
I grit my teeth, but what can I do? If I call her now, it’ll only make things worse. Maxine really might crash; Parrish could die.
“I feel sick.” I shove up to my feet and take off for the women’s bathroom, assuming that X won’t follow me. He does anyway. Luckily, it’s just the two of us in there, but if the employees hadn’t considered kicking us out before, they might now.
I try to escape him by slipping into a stall, but he reaches his hand into my blazer pocket and snatches my phone before I can stop him. I whirl around, but it’s too late. He’s turning the phone on and …
“What are you doing?!” I choke out as he grabs my hand and presses my finger to the screen, unlocking the phone with my fingerprint. “X, stop!” I don’t even bother to try to keep my voice down. If somebody comes in here to check on us, great. I want to be kicked out. I really need him not to look through that phone.
I recorded that last video call so Chasm could see it before I deleted it. I’ve been making sure to factory reset the phone every night; this proves to me exactly why that’s necessary.
Maxx presses play just before I tackle him. Like, I mean, I really tackle him. I throw my full body weight into his, but he’s a hell of a lot taller than me and thick with muscle. There’s just something about that chiseled motocross body that makes it feel more like I’m tackling a rock than a person.
He just grabs my arm and forces me back a step, his eyes on the screen and not on me.
I consider screaming, but I don’t want anyone else to walk in here and accidentally see the video.
It starts to play, and his eyes widen, the sound of my voice and Mr. Volli’s echoing around the bathroom. X uses his thumb to scroll farther into the video until … he sees Parrish.
“What the actual fuck?!” he snarls, his wide-eyed gaze flicking down to mine.
Without thinking, I throw myself at him again, but this time, I don’t tackle him. I wrap my arms around his waist in a huge hug, and I squeeze him as tightly as I can. I put every ounce of love I feel for Parrish and Maxine into that hug, just so he’ll know, so he’ll listen to me.
“Please,” I whisper, my voice cracking, my cheek pressed against Maxx’s citrus-smelling t-shirt. I fist my hands in the back of his unzipped windbreaker. “Please, Maxx. You can’t tell anyone about this. You can’t. If you do, Parrish will die.”
I can see Maxx’s face in the mirror to my right. His eyes are even wider now, his mouth half-open in surprise. He’s shaking, too, and the video’s still playing. My love confession a heart-wrenching echo against the pink-tiled walls.
“I love you, too,” video-Parrish replies in his sad, broken voice. “Dakota, you need to tell Maxine that you don’t want to see her anymore.”
“What the … fuck?” X repeats, turning the video off and setting it on the edge of the sink. He very carefully reaches out and grabs my arms, forcefully extricating himself from me like I’m crafted of poison and hate, a toxic monster to be removed and cast aside. He keeps my forearms in his strong grip and pushes me back a step. “Please don’t touch me,” he chokes out.
His words hurt, but I try not to let them puncture my soul too deeply. He has every right to hate me, to feel disgusted by me.
“Maxx, I need you to listen to me,” I start, just before the bathroom door opens and a freaked-out looking employee in an apron pops his head in.
“Hey, um, could you take your lovers’ quarrel outside? You’re upsetting the other customers.”
“Yeah, sorry, sorry,” Maxx mutters, snatching my phone and shoving it into his own pocket before I get an opportunity to steal it back. He snatches my hand in his, and the employee gives me a look.
“Are you okay? Do you need me to call the police?”
“No, I’m alright. We just …” I glance up at Maxx, but he won’t look at me. Instead, he’s swallowing hard and staring at anything and everything but me. “We just broke up. But I’ll be okay.” I make myself smile. What’s another forced smile? I’m sure they number in the trillions by now.
We skirt past the employee and out the front door, pausing beneath the awning as rain pours down like a waterfall on three sides.
“I need you to give me my phone back,” I tell him, trying to maintain my calm. On the inside, I’m a hot mess. Maxx Wright knows. He knows. And what he does with that information will determine all our fates, one way or another.
“Here,” he says, ignoring my statement and slipping out of his Wright Family Racing windbreaker. He hands it over to me. “Cover your head, and let’s run.”
I bite my lip, torn about what I should do here and totally and utterly forgetting about Chasm in the chaos.
“Little Sister!” It’s Chas, running through the rain down the sidewalk. He skids a bit on the wet pavement, coming to rest beside me, panting and soaking wet. His yellow and black hair is stuck to his forehead, and when he reaches up to push it back, my heart skips a whole beat. He has that much of a pull over me, and I just didn’t realize it, the power to adjust my internal rhythm with a simple gesture. “Are you fucking with her again, X?”
“You know about this,” Maxx accuses, his voice thin and husky as he tosses the windbreaker at my chest and pulls my phone from his jeans pocket. He shakes it at Chas for emphasis, and then grabs my hand again. I try to yank out of his grip, but he’s like, stupid strong. Handling that bike has given him corded forearms of steel.
He presses my finger to the screen and unlocks it again before thrusting the phone into Chasm’s hands.
Chas looks around, but there’s nobody out here. Traffic streams by in a slow but steady wave, but nobody can hear or see us in the rain, under the awning.
“Are you okay with me watching this?” Chasm asks, and Maxx scowls at him.
“Seriously?!” he snaps, pointing at the screen with a finger. “Fucking watch it, McKenna!”
“Go ahead,” I agree, my voice this distant, floating thing, like a helium balloon that’s escaped the bunch. Up, up, up I go, twisting away with the breeze, joining the clouds … popping, falling, probably killing some sea life. Ugh. I definitely was not born with Tess’ gifts for words and metaphors. “The damage is already done.”
“What the hell?” Chas murmurs under his breath, but then he hits play, his face paling as Maxx moves up beside him to watch the video call play out. I can’t stand to look at it again, so I step back, leaning against the brick exterior of the coffee shop and closing my eyes.
I can’t hide from the sound though. The sound of my voice. Of Parrish’s. Mr. Volli.
“Oh god,” Chasm groans, and I open my eyes to see him biting his knuckles. “Parrish.” He lifts his amber eyes to look at me. “He doesn’t look good, Little Sister. He looks really, really fucking bad.”
“I know,” I whisper, using the wall to hold myself up. “I know he does.”
“So you did know about it? All of it.” This last part is a definitive statement, one threaded through with deep-seated anger and betrayal. Maxx is mad but … because we kept this from him? A small flicker of hope fires to life inside of me.
“We need to find Danyella,” Chas
m says suddenly, looking up at me. “We have to find her now and tell her so Parrish can get out of that goddamn chair.” He thrusts the phone back at me and then starts to mutter in Korean. He’s talking so fast that I couldn’t understand him even if I did speak the language.
“Chasm.” Maxx grabs his friend’s arm and shakes him. “Kwang-seon.”
Chas looks up at him.
“What?!” he snaps, switching back to English. He asks that question two more times, once in Korean and once in Japanese. I recognize those words from my K-drama and anime obsessions. “I don’t think you quite understand what’s happening, so let me give you the recap: Parrish dies if you open your fat trap. He dies if Dakota doesn’t obey this psycho. And he dies if we don’t get him a bed to sleep in or a chance at a goddamn shower.”
Maxx pauses, withdrawing his hand slightly. He looks chagrined, but only a little.
“I got the gist, Chas.” His emerald eyes swing over to me. “I’m not going to say anything. I’d like a better explanation of things, but … what do you need me to do right now?” He exhales heavily as I cuddle his windbreaker against my chest. I just need something to hold onto.
“Danyella,” I say, dreading my next move. I’ve already made my sister hate me today, so what’s one more person added to the list? “Let’s just get that over with so Parrish can sleep.” I close my eyes again, gathering my emotions into a tangled ball of twine and then shoving that stupid fucking ball down my own throat.
I have to stay calm and focused here.
Maxx is … he looks okay right now. Maybe Chas was right? Maybe we should’ve told him?
“You’re not going to tell anyone anything, right?” I repeat, and even though his nostrils flare, he nods once.
“I would never do anything to hurt Parrish,” he tells me, looking directly into my eyes. Somehow, I feel like he’s telling me more than one thing in that moment, giving me a secret that he’s only just found out about himself.
It’s a secret that’ll take me a few more days to figure out.
But when I do, I’ll hate myself even more for it.
That’s Justin’s goal, right? To destroy my character. If so, he’s doing an admirable job of it.
The Schaeffers’ house is dark when Chasm and I pull into the driveway. I’m sitting in the passenger seat of his car, listening to the Emerald City Murder Podcast—because clearly, I am a masochist. Maxx has left to join the search party, helping me field texts and phone calls from Tess.
Yes, I’m with him. Yes, I’ll be home by ten. Yes, I’m safe.
He takes my Tess-given phone with him, too, so that if Tess tracks it, it’ll be exactly where it’s supposed to be.
“Do you trust him?” I ask Chas as he turns off the ignition and I stare down at my Maxine-provided phone. Maxine. Oh god. What have I done?
“I …” Chasm starts, cursing in Korean again. “I do. Like I said, he has strict morals. They’re not always what you think they’d be, but he doesn’t lie. If he says he won’t tell anyone, he won’t.” Chas glances over at me, his amber eyes catching the light from the car’s screen and turning them gold. “But we will have to give him a full rundown.”
He looks back toward the house as I check my phone one more time. Danyella isn’t responding to calls, texts, or social media messages. This is a last resort.
With one last deep inhale, I open the passenger side door of Chas’ sportscar and climb out. He stays right behind me, a comforting and simultaneously confusing presence at my back. I hate that I’ve realized I have a crush on him while Parrish is missing. It’s a weird feeling, crushing hard on two people at the same time. How do I deal with it? As of right now, I guess I just … don’t. Parrish is my only concern at the moment.
We knock on the front door and wait. Knock again. Chasm hits the doorbell several times.
“She isn’t home,” I realize with a sinking feeling in my gut.
“Don’t give up that easily,” Chasm tells me, gesturing with his chin toward the gate that leads to the backyard. “Come on.”
He guides me through the yard, reaching up and over the fence to grab the latch. The gate swings open and we slip through, getting drenched once again by the unrelenting downpour. Oh well. We were both soaked to the bone anyway, so what does it matter?
From the front, it really did appear that the house was dark and empty. From back here, I can see that Danyella’s bedroom light is on.
Huh.
Chasm doesn’t skip a beat, climbing the steps to the deck and brazenly grabbing the handles on the French doors that lead into the dining room.
They’re unlocked.
He makes a frustrated sound under his breath.
“Fucking serial killer in town and the door is unlocked? Come on.” He shoves the doors open, but I’m not quite so comfortable with breaking and entering into my friend’s house. I figure it’s best if we just call her name now so that she knows we’re here.
Chasm reaches out to grab my arm, squeezing hard and stopping me before I can say anything.
“What the hell did you want me to do?!”
It’s Lumen. And she’s pissed. And also … scared? Frustrated, maybe.
The faintest murmur of another voice drifts down the stairs, and I figure that must be Danyella.
“Yeah, well, he didn’t exactly offer that up as an option, now did he?” she growls out. “I don’t have a lot of choices, Danyella.”
The sound of footsteps on the stairs makes my stomach bottom out, and the urge to run is overwhelming. Chasm holds his ground, waiting as Lumen appears in the kitchen, swiping tears from her face and snatching a bottle of liquor from Danyella’s parents’ stash.
She takes a huge swig before her eyes drift our way and widen. She chokes on the alcohol, sputtering and coughing as she swipes an arm over her mouth.
“What the hell?” Lumen asks, looking between me and Chasm, both of us soaking wet and standing in Danyella’s dining room. “Um. Did you guys just break in?”
“Did you just ignore us hitting the doorbell a hundred times for fun? I know you saw us on the doorbell cam. Just didn’t give a shit that we really needed to talk to Danyella?”
Lumen looks at Chasm and then swings her brown eyes over to me.
It occurs to me then that she woke up in a field with supposedly no memory of how she got there. Sort of … like how I woke up in my bed after being attacked by two men in the woods? Woods that looked suspiciously like the ones outside of Chasm’s dad’s guesthouse.
Oh.
The Fort Humboldt Security thing.
Shit.
I need to sit down and gather my thoughts, go over my spreadsheet again. There’s so much going on; I feel completely overwhelmed. Which, I think, is sort of the point of all this.
“Maybe you just didn’t give a shit that Danyella and I needed a moment alone?” Lumen counters, switching her gaze back to Chasm and sighing. She dangles the liquor bottle by the neck. “You guys want something to drink?”
“What’s going on down here?” Danyella asks, appearing in the kitchen entrance with her hot pink glasses perched on the end of her nose. She doesn’t seem overly surprised to see me and Chasm in her dining room. “Are you guys okay? I’m sorry we didn’t answer the door, but we’re sort of in the middle of something.”
“We just broke into your house,” I say, but she doesn’t seem fazed. “We’re the ones who should be sorry.”
It won’t be the only thing I’m apologizing for tonight. Mr. Volli—via the Slayer—told me that if asked, I had to blame my reasons for setting the theater on fire on Tess. He never said that I couldn’t tell Danyella how genuinely sorry I am for doing it.
“You must really need to talk to us then,” Danyella says, giving Lumen a look. They exchange a long, intense sort of stare before Danyella redirects her gaze to me. “Should I order in? We could have dinner.”
“I need to talk to you,” I say as Chasm closes and locks the back doors.
�
�We need to talk to you,” he corrects, and then turns around to level a dark stare on both girls. “Also, are you guys nuts? Parrish is missing, the Seattle Slayer is in town, and you left the back door unlocked?”
“Yeah, sorry, that was my bad,” Lumen admits with a loose shrug of her shoulders. Her blond hair waves gently around her face, and her makeup is flawless as usual, but there’s something else in her expression, a darkness in her gaze that bothers me. “What’s up?” She saunters over to the table and pulls out a chair, flopping into it with the alcohol bottle still in her hand.
Danyella watches her for a minute before grabbing a seltzer water from the fridge.
“You guys sure you don’t want anything?”
I can’t take it anymore. The words are crouched just behind my lips, clawing at my heart and soul with wicked fingers. I just need to get this out there or else I won’t be able to do it at all.
“I set the fire in the theater,” I blurt, adrenaline spiking my blood as I step forward and curl my hands over the back of one of the dining chairs.
“We set the fire,” Chasm corrects yet again, taking responsibility when he really doesn’t have to. Why is he being so … great? I mean, I like it. But I like it too much. That’s not okay. He moves to stand beside me, shoulder to shoulder.
“I’m sorry, what?” Lumen queries, setting the bottle down hard on the table as she blinks at us in confusion. “What are you guys talking about?”
“We poured gasoline on the props, and we flicked the wheel on a lighter, and we started the blaze.” I’m looking at Danyella, not Lumen, but she hasn’t moved since I made my statement. She’s still standing with one hand on the handle of the fridge door, the other clutching the cold can of her seltzer. “I’m so sorry, Danyella. I …” I trail off, tears pricking at my eyes. I really don’t want to cry yet again today, but it’s been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. “I didn’t want to do it, and I’m sorry. More than I could ever say with words.”
Payback Princess (Lost Daughter of a Serial Killer Book 2) Page 7