If You Dare

by Alessandra Torre

  “I love you.” She leans forward and lowers her mouth, kisses the top of his hand.

  He smiles weakly. Moves his lips and staggers out a single-word question. “Deanna?”

  She blinks back tears through a broken smile. “She’s in jail, sweetie.”

  He frowns, a thousand questions asked through his eyes, his mouth struggling to work. “She was arrested, J. She confessed. You might not remember but she tried to…” She swallows. “She stabbed you.”

  He shakes his head roughly, a gesture that has all three women springing forward, their hands holding him still. “Please stop talking to him,” the first nurse snaps. “We need to keep him stable.”

  Lily nods, breaking a hand from his to wipe at her eyes. He glares at her, a grimace breaking into a sound as he lifts his head from the pillow. “Simon,” he hisses. “It was Simon.”

  Four short, tiny words. The machine next to him flares to life, the numbers on it jumping erratically, and his head rolls to the side, his eyes still open, still stuck on Lily, a tortured plea that doesn’t stop as a vessel in his brain reopens, flooding the area with blood, his mental system shutting down in protection mode. Squeezing his limp palm tightly, she looks at him in panic.

  CHAPTER 82

  Present

  I AM NOT a normal individual. I’ve known that for quite some time. And tonight, with my nerves humming, my worry over Jeremy cresting, my night demons kicking, I calm myself the only way I know how: by planning. And my plans align in agreement that it costs at least ten bucks to properly kill someone. I’ve determined that after wandering up and down the eight rows of the Quik Mart. I stand by the convenience store’s front window and watch my building.

  There are four good options on the shelves of this store, my calculator of death rattling up totals in my head like jackpots.

  Zip ties, one gallon of gas, and a lighter. Total: $8.52 + tax Burn, baby, burn.

  Or zip ties, one gallon of antifreeze, and a funnel. Total: $9.32 + tax Poison, baby, poison

  Or zip ties, a razor, and (optional) aspirin. Total: $9.29 + tax Bleed, baby, bleed

  Or duct tape and plastic bags. Total $7.98 + tax Choke, baby, choke

  All four options would allow me to keep the gun’s safety on, the chamber free of bullets. I don’t know if I can handle a gun tonight. Scratch that. I know I cannot handle a gun tonight. Put Simon within range of a loaded weapon in my hand and I won’t get the first question out, won’t get the first truth revealed.

  “Need any help?”

  “Nope.” I don’t turn to the store’s attendant, the nerdy one whose eyes have undressed me three times in the last ten minutes. I pushed up the sleeves of my sweatshirt five minutes ago, and his interest increased tenfold. I really don’t want to rob this guy, especially not over a handful of items that adds up to a large box of tampons. I stay in place, hidden from the street, standing behind a postcard carousel, and watch the road. Ten minutes and no one has passed more than once. I walked past all of the cars on the street twice before coming in here. No bodies in the cars, no stakeout, best I could tell. But I’ll give it two more minutes, just to be sure. I tap my fingers against a postcard of Niagara Falls, an inventory item that makes no freakin’ sense in Oklahoma. “Any cops come in here lately?” I ask.

  “No.” A normal person would be suspicious of my question. A normal person wouldn’t choose to work the night shift in this neighborhood, especially not with white skin and acne that screams underage. I glance over at him for a moment before returning my gaze back to the street. I can’t pull my gun on this guy. It’ll ruin the boner he’s spent so much time and effort adjusting. Maybe I could offer to flash him, sex over violence, a new page for me to turn. What American male won’t pay a few bucks to see breasts? I count over windows till I get to my apartment. The lights are off. How considerate of the cops for my utility bill. Too bad that Simon’s is on the opposite side of the building, no hint as to its life from this angle. No matter. If he isn’t up I’ll wake him up. And her. Please let her be there.

  My two-minute sentence ends and I turn, half-excited by my future, half-irritated by the steps needed to get there. I face the man and watch his eyes move to my face. Gun or sex, gun or sex… the kaleidoscope of options rolls through my mind. An easy decision, though sex feels dirtier, for some reason, than violence. I tilt my head and let a slow smile spread over my face, as my hand unwraps from the gun. I step across the store over to the crowded counter and lean on it, my elbows pressing into the hard edge, a glass mat of lotto tickets my stage. “Daniel…” I drawl the name off his name tag, and he shifts in his ironed khakis. “I have a proposition for you.”

  Five minutes later, I move through the Quik Mart’s door, my sweatshirt back on, hood up, feet quiet, a tossed wave given to Daniel, who flashes an enthusiastic smile in my direction. I step outside and jog across the empty street, my feet hopping over the curb and along the broken sidewalk. I tug at the sleeve of my sweatshirt and cover my hand, use the protection to tug on the door’s handle. Then, just like that, I am inside Mulholland Oaks and thundering up the stairwell steps.

  Second floor. If they are both there, I will go for him first.

  Third floor. Maybe I’ll play nice in the beginning. Get their guard down while I look for extra weapons. Wait, answers. That’s what this is about. The plastic bag in my hand swings as I climb higher.

  Fourth floor. I will burn this sweatshirt when this is all over.

  Fifth floor. I can’t burn the sweatshirt. He gave me the sweatshirt. He may never have the chance to give me another. Assholes.

  Sixth floor. I would have loved to shower but there is no time. I round the final bend in the stairs and stop on the landing, my chest aching. I wait, shaking out my limbs while my breathing calms. Jump a few times in place because I’ve seen guys do that on television before a fight and it looks badass. My breath quiets and I let out a long, controlled exhale. Then I quietly climb the last seven stairs and stop. I set the bag on the floor and crouch before it, pulling out my stash. I pop the plastic off each item, leaving a sea of plastic wrap and price tags on the ground. Sweet Daniel. Should my life ever return to normal, I’ll send him a thousand bucks. He rang up each item on the register, carefully and precisely. It had totaled $9.57 and he had even given me the forty-three cents of change. I start with the zip ties, pulling out a few pieces and linking them together, a foot or two of chain, both ends left open. Then I grab the duct tape, ripping off five long pieces and sticking one end of them to the backs of my legs, their loose tails fluttering down like fly strips. I keep the zip tie chain in one hand and put the rest of the unwrapped items in the plastic bag, snagging it off the ground. Moving to the door, I press softly on the door handle. Crack it a hair and peek down the hall. Empty. I push the door the rest of the way open and step into the hall.

  I am not a physically imposing person, I don’t have a wealth of martial arts skills, I am horrible at taking a punch, and strangling others really takes it out of me. But all that being said, I am intelligent and I have studied the art of killing for the last half decade. When the creative minds at Survival Life posted instructions for a makeshift grenade with a PVC pipe, baking soda, and vinegar, I tested it out in the north stairwell one chilly December night. When Gizmodo explained the harmful effects of the Bleach Bomb and warned readers to “never ever create one,” I printed the recipe out and taped it to my fridge. Did you know you can create napalm by stirring Styrofoam in gasoline and scooping out the resulting goo? I don’t have to be a black belt or have my weapons arsenal to be dangerous. All I really need is to be smarter than my opponent.

  I am smarter than Simon. I suspect I’m smarter than Chelsea. I am definitely, at this moment in time, more awake, prepared, and motivated than either of them. I walk down a hall I’ve lived on for a thousand days yet walked down less than fifty times. Pass my door and eye the new lock. Go down two more doors and stop before Simon’s. The last time I knocked on his door, I had almost k
illed someone. I had been a barely contained mess of emotions. Funny how, this time, I am falling apart in a thousand different ways. The madness in me, it is pushing, stretching, filling my body down new and unique paths, my skin growing accustomed to its heat, its darkness. I reach up my hand to knock, and realize, it hovering in the air, that it is not trembling. I frown, unfolding my fist and rolling it over, looking at it for a moment. I am in control. I am here, with instruments to kill, a plan of attack in place, and I am in control. Is this the madness, my hereditary push toward the darkness? Or is it just me, is this the person I am becoming, a person with full faculties and awareness of the actions she is about to take? That thought, that realization… I step away from Simon’s door for a moment and take a deep breath. Right now, my world breaking apart at the seams… I can’t do what I need to do and be in control. In control means responsible. Responsible means that, if I go batshit crazy and everyone inside dies, that I, Deanna Madden, in full control of her actions, was responsible. Not the demon inside, not the loss of control. I close my eyes and search for the deep, scary part of myself, the part that I’ve run from so often. I search for it, I find it, and I dive into the cool pool of its depths. I push further, imagining my kills, the thirst I had had, the feeling I had gotten, the high I had experienced. I plunge into the past, make it my present, and inhale the sexy stench of evil.

  When I open my eyes, I am the girl I never wanted to be but have been for a long time. I am the madness, the demon, the insanity. I step forward with purpose and pound my fist on the door.

  CHAPTER 83

  Present

  ALL IS NOT lost; it will be fine. There was a rebleed, but he’ll come out again. Lily knows it. She stands in the doorway and watches the nurses work. Everyone quiet, the monitor behaving. The doctor left a few minutes ago but said he’d be back. This is a good sign, he’d said. His brain is tired, he said. We’ll give him some time to recoup, then pull back the drugs in a few days. See what happens. See what happens. Like it was Olivia’s softball practice and they weren’t sure if it would be rained out. She doesn’t like the doctor. He fidgets and doesn’t ask her name and doesn’t look her in the eye. Like he doesn’t want to connect with someone who might get hurt. She told him, what Jeremy said, those five little words that brought everything crashing down. He blinked down at his phone and then took Jeremy’s pulse.

  It’s not fair, that he came to life for a few minutes and uttered only five words. Even more unfair that every single one of them were about her. The girl that, just hours earlier, Lily had been cursing to an early grave. She had literally spent all of last night planning out and practicing the speech she would give jurors, the stories she would tell about Jeremy, and the final dramatic moment when she would gasp back a tear, point toward the bitch and scream, She took it from him! She took everything from him! before collapsing into an inconsolable mess, right there, on the stand. It had played out very nicely in her head, a potent nail that would push every juror to decide, in their final deliberations, to send Deanna Madden to Death Row. That, Lily Ortiz had decided, was her rightful punishment.

  Granted, she hadn’t always thought that. She had actually believed in her innocence. Had scoffed a little at the detective’s questions about Jeremy’s girlfriend. Yes, Deanna seemed weird. Antisocial. Yes, Lily had been irritated and put off by Jeremy’s resistance to introduce them. But why would his girlfriend try to kill him? Jeremy wasn’t the type to piss off a girlfriend. If anything, he’d always been too nice, too forgiving, too willing to overlook a flaw or two. So she had pushed that option from her mind. But then the girl had confessed and everything, in that quick line of news, had changed in Lily’s mind. A dark, venomous hate had grown in her gut and eaten every bit of compassion and understanding in her heart. She had sat in that hospital room¸ stared at his still form, and begun to hate Deanna Madden with a black madness previously reserved for any person who would think of harming her child.

  I love you, she had sobbed to Jeremy.

  Deanna, he had responded.

  She’s in jail, she had said.

  Simon. It was Simon.

  Who the F is Simon? Not one of his friends, no one he worked with… She digs deep and comes up blank. She turns away, toward the hall, and takes a few steps, then stops, leaning her back against the wall. She cups her hands around the cell phone and unlocks the screen. Stares for a long moment at the home display, the time changing as she watches it, one more minute lost forever, one more minute she will never get back.

  Simon. It was Simon.

  Slowly, she scrolls down the call log, her finger hovering over the number of the detective, their last chat a couple of days ago, when Deanna Madden had confessed.

  Simon. It was Simon.

  Who was to say that Jeremy was coherent? That he even knew what was going on? That he even remembered what had happened? Who knew if Simon was a real person or just a figment created by a morphine-high brain? Why should she listen to him?

  Simon. It was Simon.

  He’d only managed five words during his journey to the surface. It only makes sense that she should listen to what he said, damn the validity. She presses on the number and lifts the phone to her ear. Hears the ring and worries, for a moment, about waking the woman.

  When Brenda answers, there is the rush of road noise in the background, and Lily breaths a sigh of relief.

  “Detective Boles? This is Lily Ortiz, Jeremy Pacer’s sister.”

  “Lily, we’re headed to you now, we’re about twenty minutes away.” She says something to someone else, a muffled conversation occurring out of Lily’s earshot.

  “There’s no point in coming.” Her voice cracks and she swallows hard, forcing her vocal cords into submission. “I mean… he’s back asleep. He probably won’t talk again for another twelve hours or so.”

  “Oh.” The disappointment in that one word is clear and pronounced.

  “But he did say something. Right before he fell back asleep.” Asleep, that’s all it was. The heavy medication, his injuries… he was asleep. Asleep with his eyes open, that’s the part she can’t erase from her mind. That’s the scene that, if this doesn’t end well, she will never ever forget.

  “Yes?”

  She squeezes a chunk of hair in her fist, her nails biting into the pad of her palm. “He said it wasn’t Deanna. That it was someone named Simon. Do you know who he could be talking about?”

  There is a long pause, the hum of background noise the only thing verifying their connection. “Simon?” the woman says warily. “That’s what he said? Are you sure?”

  A stupid question but she’d asked the nurses a hundred of them that day alone. Will he be okay? Is he thirsty? Will he wake up? Is that medicine helping? “Yes.” She says shortly. “I am a hundred percent sure. He said the name twice.”

  “Yeah,” Brenda says carefully. “We know a Simon. Thank you for the information, Mrs. Ortiz. Please call me back if he wakes up again.”

  “When he wakes up again.” She can’t help the snap.

  “Of course. When he wakes up again.”

  “Who is Simon?” She blurts the question quickly, before the woman can hang up.

  “At the moment?” the woman’s voice is wry, her response quick and unpolluted. “Our new suspect.”

  “But how does he—” Lily stops her question midstream. It is too late, the background noise gone. When she glances down at the phone, the “Call Ended” screen blinks up at her.

  Simon. It was Simon. So Simon is real. And Deanna may be innocent after all. She locks the cell phone and lowers her head to her knees. Replays the conversation for a second, then a third time. Hopes fervently that she did the right thing by calling the detective.

  CHAPTER 84

  Present

  I SEE A light come on beneath the crack of the door, and step back. The asshole himself opens the door and stands before me. From the darkness behind him, I hear her mumble his name and see a pile of blankets move on the right ed
ge of the room. Good. We’ll make a threesome. So much fun.

  “Hey…” Surprise in his greeting. He is not happy to see me. I can see it in the dart of his eyes, his hand’s nervous play on the knob.

  “Hey.” I smile and it’s a good thing I’ve had four years of smiling at clients because I am damn good at it. He has never seen a Jess Reilly smile from me before and he hesitates, caught off guard. I lift a hand to my mouth, the index finger pointed up, the universal shh sign, and giggle softly. Come here I mouth, stepping back, against the opposite wall, the plastic bag in my hand bumping against the plaster with a seductive swoosh. I crook my finger and the idiot follows, pulling the door behind him. I sway a little sideways as if I am drunk, and drop the bag on the floor.

  Shh…, I shush and giggle, though he has said nothing and this is too easy, his hands coming out and supporting me, his body close enough that, if my breasts were knives, he’d be impaled with one step forward.

  “I thought you were—” I cut off his sentence with my mouth, pushing my pelvis forward and grabbing the back of his head, pulling him to me, his mouth stiff then softer on mine, his hands settling on my hips and his hair is spiky and unwashed and his mouth tastes like pot and kissing this prick is absolutely worth it as I stop the passage of his hands up my shirt and grab his wrists, wrapping a giant zip tie around them, threading one end into the other and yanking hard. The handcuffing is done without a break in our mouths, his attention captured while his freedom is taken. Then I break the kiss and kill any mood by pulling the gun from the small of my back. I drag back the slide, pop a bullet into the chamber, and level the barrel at his forehead. SimonTheAsshole freezes still, the dim hallway light bright enough for him to understand the situation. He tries to lift his hands in surrender and struggles, the tight grip of the tie making the act awkward and—from the grimace on his face—painful. Oh, Simon… The poor boy has no idea what is ahead.