DARE SERIES COLLECTION

by Tessier, Shantel

  “Keep the blindfold on,” I tell Demi as we pull up into the circle drive.

  “I am.” She giggles. “I’m not even touching it.” She slaps her palms on her jean-clad thighs.

  Getting out, I rush around my Range Rover and open the passenger side door. She reaches out blindly, and I take her hand, helping her out. “You’re going to take three steps,” I inform her.

  “Where are we at?” she asks for the fifth time.

  “It’s a surprise, princess.” I make sure she doesn’t trip over the steps and look up when the front door opens. I see Austin standing there with a smile on her face. I mouth, “Everything ready?”

  She nods. I gave her a key yesterday, and she came over today to help me set everything up.

  I bring Demi to a stop in the grand foyer with my hands on her shoulders. Reaching up, I remove the blindfold.

  She gasps, bringing her hands to her face as she looks around the house. “Deke … what is this?”

  Red rose petals cover the white marble floor. When I don’t answer, she begins to follow the trail down the hallway and into the main living room on the first floor. “Oh, my God!” She squeals when she sees the little puppy sleeping in the middle of the room on a pink princess bed.

  The puppy’s eyes spring open, and she sits up, wagging her tail. Demi drops to her knees and crawls over to her. “What … who is she?”

  “She’s yours,” I tell her.

  The puppy jumps into Demi’s arms and starts licking her face. “Deke.” She sniffs. “I don’t understand.” She looks up at me with the dog pressed to her chest.

  I look around the large open living room. The construction on this house was completed last month. I was lucky I found it when I did.

  “Well …” I go over to her and take her hand. She sets the dog down, and I lift her to her feet. I wipe the tear from her cheek as I take her other hand in mine. “She’s yours, Demi.” I take a quick look around the house. It’s over five thousand square feet with six bedrooms, a gym, an office, and more bathrooms than we’ll ever need. But I hope that one day we’ll fill it full of kids. “It’s all yours.”

  Her brows pull together. “What do you …?”

  I let go of her hands and kneel on one knee.

  She takes a step back from me, her hands coming up to cover her mouth while gasping.

  “Demi Lane Holt.” I pull the Tiffany box out of my front pocket and open it up to her. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Here. In this house.” Tears run down her beautiful face. “Will you—”

  “Yes!” She rushes me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders, and I stand, picking her up with me.

  “Deke?”

  I blink, her voice pulling me out of the memory. “What?”

  She holds the dog in her arms. “I was telling you that Brynn called me before Austin got here. She’s going to meet up with us.”

  I pick up my towel from the floor. “Demi, that’s not …”

  “And I guess Shane’s in town too. They’re going to meet us there.” She turns to exit the bathroom, but I grab her upper arm, stopping her.

  “That’s not a good idea. You should have asked me first,” I growl.

  Her eyes narrow, and she pulls away. “Oh, does this have to do with something that you should have told me?” she asks, arching a brow.

  My jaw clenches. She just gives me a smile, then leans down and kisses the sleeping dog on the head before walking out of the bathroom.

  “Fuck!” I hiss, running my hands through my wet hair. I need to warn Cole.

  I finish getting ready as quickly as I can—throwing on a T-shirt with a pair of jeans and tennis shoes. I’m practically running into the kitchen where I find Demi and Austin sitting at the kitchen table and Cole leaning up against the island. “May I talk to you?” I ask him.

  “It can wait.” Demi stands. “We’re already late. Who’s driving?” she asks.

  “I will,” Cole offers, his eyes going to his wife’s full wineglass. “I won’t be drinking.”

  Just to piss him off, she lifts it to her lips and downs the entire thing. Fuck. This is not going to be fun.

  AUSTIN

  “How do you find these places?” Deke asks from the passenger seat of my Range Rover.

  “Facebook.” I watch Cole in the rearview mirror while he drives to see if he acknowledges my statement in any way.

  He doesn’t.

  The bastard deactivated my social media page last year. I understood why he did it, but he hasn’t mentioned it since I reactivated it months ago when the girls and I went to Silence. Which just isn’t Cole. He never has a problem telling me what he does and does not like.

  “I think it sounds fun,” Demi replies, opening a round mirror compact and turning on the dome light to line her lips with red lipstick.

  Deke lets out a growl. He hates that I drag them to these places.

  “Is there a fee?” Demi asks, popping her lips and closing the mirror. “I have cash on me …”

  “Not that I saw.” I was on Facebook the other day and somehow ended up on this girl’s page. It turns out, she goes to UT with Cole and Deke. She had a picture of her standing in the middle of a field last weekend. Her face painted white, red contacts and black lips. She looked hot in a black leather miniskirt and fishnet stockings. The only thing it said was #DeathValley. So, being curious as to what it meant, I went through the comments. She had over two hundred. Guess the girl is cheer captain at the college and very well known. People were posting their own pictures, and in each one, they were dressed up like it was Halloween.

  I had to come see it for myself. Thankfully, someone had dropped the address for a friend she had tagged.

  “How much farther?” Cole asks in a flat, borderline annoyed tone.

  I bite my lip to keep from smiling. I do love when he’s pissy. Which is pretty much Cole a hundred percent of the time. But I’m pissed at him, so I plan on returning the favor. He’s not going to stand me up and then not tell me why. And when I asked him at Demi’s, he said something came up, which isn’t a total lie, but the truth was he was at practice. Why not just say that? Why hide it? I would have totally understood had he been honest. “Uh ... my GPS says one more mile. It’s up here on the right.”

  “This is the middle of nowhere,” Deke goes on, looking out the tinted window. Nothing but wooden areas on either side of the two-lane road that we can see. We’ve been driving for almost thirty minutes.

  “Pretty sure that’s the point,” Demi says, rolling her eyes. “Are we staying the night? I didn’t think to bring a bag,” she asks me.

  “No,” the guys say in unison.

  I sigh. I saw kids talking about how they stayed overnight. Death Valley is over twenty-five miles away from civilization. They come out here to party. Pretty sure they get so fucked up they pass out in their vehicles. But we won’t have that issue since my husband is the designated driver for the night.

  “This reminds me of some Texas Chainsaw Massacre shit,” Deke adds.

  “Exactly!” I clap with excitement.

  He shakes his head. “No one is cutting off my arms tonight. Or any other night.” He straightens in his seat. “I’ll kill a fucker …”

  “There it is,” I say, seeing lights up ahead. Bright red and white spotlights are pointed up at the sky. It reminds me of the Batman signal in Gotham.

  “What kind of place is this?” Deke asks. “Looks like Silence.”

  I snort. “This place is nothing like Silence.” At least I hope it’s not. Silence was an abandoned insane asylum we visited for Halloween last year that ended up being a total disappointment.

  “It’s not a tourist attraction. It’s just a place where kids party. Kinda like how we partied at the beach in Collins.”

  “Well, we all know how that ended.” Deke sighs.

  Yes, we do. Not very well. “There aren’t going to be any fights tonight,” I say, narrowing my eyes on Cole in the mirror. Again, he doesn’t ac
knowledge me, and my irritation grows. What is his problem?

  We pull into a large open field, and he brings the SUV to a stop. We all exit, and I stop to look at the castle that I could only imagine being in London standing tall before us. It’s old with broken windows, some completely missing, and graffiti painted on the concrete sides of the old and massive four-story building. I bet it was gorgeous back in the day.

  Cole takes my hand, and I look up at him. My eyes run over the smooth skin of his chiseled jaw, straight nose, and into his dark spiked hair. He wears his black hoodie and a pair of jeans with his Nikes. In a way, he’s so different from the night I met him in that cemetery, but also the same. I fell in love with a killer. And a part of me thinks he misses that life. The blood. The anger. Our life is safe. Boring. The same routine, day in and day out. Becky’s words ring in the back of my head. “He can never love you. He’ll only use you. You’ll become a frumpy housewife, and he’ll get bored of you …” I know another woman isn’t why he didn’t come home tonight, but the insecurity is still there. I hate myself for even having that thought in the first place. For giving Becky that kind of power over my marriage.

  He lets go of my hand long enough to shove his palm into my chest, bringing us to a sudden stop. “What the …?”

  “Motherfuckers!” A guy screams as he runs in front of us with sparklers in his hands, cutting me off. Two guys holding Roman candles chase after him.

  Cole grips my hand again. “Keep an eye out,” he tells Deke.

  He nods. “I’m packing.”

  I drop my eyes to Cole’s waistband but can’t see anything through the hoodie. I pat it down with my free hand and feel his gun on his hip.

  That gets his attention. He drops his head to look down at me with his blue eyes. I arch a brow.

  “You know I don’t go anywhere without it,” he states flatly.

  Do I? “Since when?” I ask.

  He ignores my question and looks away from me, searching the crowd that has gathered over at the tailgate of a lifted truck.

  I yank him to a stop. “What is your problem?” I ask again. We both know that I don’t let shit go easily. Things have been better since Thanksgiving. I thought we had moved past this, but I guess I’m kidding myself.

  His jaw sharpens as he continues to watch the kids running around with beer bottles in their hands.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you,” I snap.

  He looks down at me once again, glaring. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I instantly get pissy. He does this shit all the time. Hides what he feels. What he thinks. What he knows. He treats me like a child sometimes as though I’m unable to understand or comprehend what is going on. I’m his wife. I’m not some bitch he just met who he can keep secrets from. “Cole …”

  “I said no, Austin!” he barks, and that’s that.

  I rip my hand from his and cross my arms over my chest. He places his in the front pockets of his jeans. I look over at Deke, and he’s nodding his head as he looks over the vast property littered with kids. There’s a truck to our right that is pulling a trailer with three four-wheelers on it. They’re removing them one by one.

  My eyes catch sight of Demi, and she’s glaring at Cole, knowing he’s acting like a child. At least someone other than me notices his attitude.

  We should have never come here. But that’s what Cole wants. He pouts, and he expects me to give in. Well, fuck him. I was aggravated when I sat at home waiting for him. I understand things come up, and he may be late, but a text would have been nice. “Let’s go inside,” I say.

  “Hey, bitches!”

  Demi and I turn around, and I see Shane walking our way with Brynn on his shoulders. He comes to a stop, leaning forward, and Brynn jumps down. She wears a pair of cutoffs that might as well be underwear, a long-sleeve crop top hoodie, and a hat on backward with her hair down over her shoulders.

  “You brought a backpack?” Demi asks while I laugh.

  “Well, yeah.” Dropping it to the grass, she unzips it and pulls out some shot glasses, then a bottle of Fireball. “You don’t come to Death Valley and not get drunk,” she states.

  I take a quick look over at Cole to see he’s moved a few steps away, and Deke is whispering in his ear. What the fuck are they up to?

  Demi gets my attention. “Then let’s get this party started.”

  “This place is massive,” Shane says, looking around.

  “It used to be gorgeous,” Brynn adds.

  “What happened to it?” I ask. Demi and I have gotten pretty close with Brynn. And for the most part, I forget that we never knew her when we lived in Collins. She fell into our group and feels like a sister to us.

  “It was a preparatory academy for boys. About fifteen years ago, a fire broke out.” She looks around the vast property. The grass is overgrown and unkept as much as the building is. “It’s at least thirty minutes to the nearest town. By the time emergency services arrived, most of the building was up in flames. It took them hours, but they finally put it out. Hundreds were dead. Others missing. The academy couldn’t afford to rebuild after all the lawsuits, so they left it.”

  “What about the property?” I ask. “Why hasn’t the owner torn it down? What’s left of it? Or at least sold it?”

  She turns and points to the headstone that sits up by the front concrete wall that surrounds the entire property. “He died in the fire. What was left of him was buried.”

  “Someone has to own it,” Shane says. “Children?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Spouse?”

  “Nope.”

  “The city …?”

  “There’s a story going around that he left it to a man. But no one knows who he is or why he hasn’t done anything constructive.”

  “Interesting,” Shane adds.

  “Well, it’s beautiful out here.” I look at the entrance. At first glance, it looks more like a prison than an all-boys school. There’s a concrete wall that has to be more than ten feet tall and then a fence with barbwire wrapped around the top.

  “There are rumors,” she adds, “that they tortured the boys and one of them set the fire on purpose.”

  Demi gasps, “Why would they …?”

  “The legend is that they were grooming them. Creating an army.”

  “Why doesn’t the law come and shut this place down?” She goes on.

  Brynn smirks. “Would you want the kids partying in your city?” She shakes her head at her own question. “The cops want them out here. Away from the citizens and children.”

  “Come on.” Cole grabs my arm, hearing enough. “Let’s go inside.”

  We walk up the stone steps and enter the building. The once large double doors are no longer there. It looks as bad inside as it does outside. It smells like weed. There’s broken glass on the floor, and the walls have been painted on. The cracked concrete looks like spiderwebs covering the walls.

  “Hey, I knew I’d seen this place before,” Shane says once he enters behind us with Brynn.

  “You’ve been here?” Deke asks, wrapping an arm around his wife’s shoulders and pulling her into his side.

  The place is crawling with drunk kids and druggies. This isn’t anything like I was expecting.

  He shakes his head. “No. It was all over the news last year. A girl went missing. Her friend accused a junior football player of sexual assault and murder.”

  “They weren’t friends,” Brynn corrects him, “but you were right about the football player being accused of rape and murder. The trial lasted three months, and he was found not guilty.”

  I take a shot of the Fireball. “What happened to the girl he supposedly killed?”

  She looks over at me, her green eyes full of sadness. “Her body still hasn’t been found.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  COLE

  WE’VE BEEN WALKING around this place for the past hour. We’re making our way down a dark hallway when a woman comes running out of a nearby
room, colliding with Austin. The girl screams out in surprise.

  “Are you okay?” Austin asks her.

  “Fine,” she breathes, quickly looking over her shoulder, but no one’s there.

  “Are you sure?” Austin asks again.

  She quickly nods and turns back to face my wife.

  “Looks like you’ve seen a ghost,” Demi adds, coming up beside Austin. “I imagine there are a lot in this place.” She smiles as if she likes that thought. She and my wife love haunting shit.

  “Yeah,” the girl breathes again. “I guess.”

  “Another reason we should get the fuck out of here,” Deke says, coming up behind Demi and wrapping his arms around her shoulders, pulling her back to his front.

  “Give it up, Deke. We’re staying,” Demi tells him, rolling her eyes.

  “This place is identical to Silence,” I growl, coming to stand next to my wife. “Boring and uneventful. At least this place was free,” I add as if I care how much this place costs. I just want to go home.

  Austin looks up at me, irritation very clear in her eyes. “Can you try to pretend you want to be here?”

  “No,” I reply flatly.

  She turns to fully face me. “I want to be here. Isn’t that good enough?” she asks, placing her arms around my neck.

  She’s trying to turn my sour mood around, but it’s not going to work. I look down at her but don’t answer.

  “Henley?” a girl calls out, running toward us, and Austin pushes away from me once again. She’s fucking with me, making me pay for her waiting for me earlier. “Where did you go? I was worried sick about you.” She comes to a stop and looks at the four of us. “Oh,” she says, her eyes darting back and forth between Demi and Austin. “Hello. I’m Lacey.” She reaches out her right hand.

  “Hi. I’m Austin …”

  The girl grabs Lacey’s outreached hand and pulls it back. “We gotta go,” she announces and then yanks her away from them.

  “Where the fuck did Shane and Brynn go?” Demi asks.

  “Hopefully they left,” I growl.

  Demi gives me an evil look, but I don’t give a fuck. She doesn’t know what’s going on. Or what my so-called friend did.