FREAKS

by Hart, Callie

  How long had Fix been gone? If I kept Sadie talking long enough, he’d come back and knock her the fuck out for real this time. I couldn’t rely on him, though. It was too dangerous to play a waiting game like that. I had to handle the situation as quickly as possible. “Aren’t you happy that I killed him?”

  She jerked her head back. “What?”

  “Aren’t you at least glad that I did kill him in the end. I stopped him from hurting the both of us.”

  A vein pulsed angrily at her temple. “Are you insane? He was my father. I loved him. Even when he—even when he did those things to me, I knew he didn’t really want to. You turned him into that monster. He just needed to get away from you. If you’d only left us alone, he would have stopped. He wouldn’t have touched me anymore. But you fucking carved him up like a piece of meat.” She was fire and vitriol—a spark, waiting to ignite. Leaning close to me, she shoved her face into mine, brandishing the knife underneath my throat. “You were the carver once, but not anymore. I didn’t think I’d have the strength to face you like this. I hired Marcosa to do my dirty work, because I didn’t want to sink to your level. Now, I’m glad things have worked out this way. Now, I really do get to become the carver. Marcosa won’t even be able to recognize that pretty face of yours by the time I’m satisfied, Sera. I’m going to cut you into ribbons.”

  I was running out of time. She was losing her grip on reality. She was delusional if she believed her father would have stopped abusing her. Ever. Men like him never stopped until they were forced to. I didn’t waste my breath trying to make her realize the truth, though. She’d never listen to me, no matter what I said. All that was left to do now was to get the fuck away from her before she had chance to follow through on her threats. I had to arm myself, and quickly.

  “Peter paid for his crimes, too, y’know,” Sadie said. “Took me a while to find him. Just like me, he’d changed his name. Moved to some fucking nowhere town in the middle of Pennsylvania. I hired him to work for me for a while, just like Daddy did, and then, when I was done with him, I shot him up with formaldehyde and left him to die slowly. Painfully. It must have been an awful death for poor old fat, useless Peter. I know you found him down there in that hole. I made him sit in front of a computer for hours, tracking you, monitoring your card transactions, figuring out where you were at all times.

  “I waited for Marcosa to kill you for two fucking weeks in Seattle, but he didn’t carry out the job. I figured the setting hadn’t been right. Too crowded. Too busy. So, I tried to speed the process up. I hired him to take out that mechanic in Liberty Fields. I put him directly in your path again. Right in front of it, so he’d have no excuse. Next thing I know, he’s in the background of three separate photos at your sister’s fucking wedding!”

  So Fix’s job in Liberty Fields hadn’t been a coincidence after all? He’d picked up the job to buy himself some more time, but Sadie had been the one to drop the work in his lap. She’d been pulling the strings behind the scenes this whole time, and I hadn’t suspected a thing. She’d been the one to murder the guy in the bunker in Centralia, too. Peter. I still couldn’t believe that guy, Anderson, had been Peter.

  He’d looked nothing like he used to, but then again, I hadn’t hung around to get a proper look at him. His swollen, purple face and his bulging eyes had scared the shit out of me.

  “Fix saw right through that ridiculous bullshit you said about me,” I growled. “He watched me. He knew that file you sent through was complete and utter bullshit. You really expected him to believe I murdered my mom? That I was poisoning my sister? Come on, Sadie.”

  She shrugged. “I gave him the ammunition he needed to satisfy his bizarre moral code. I didn’t expect him to try and verify any of it. Besides, you might not have been responsible for your mom’s death, but you’re very much responsible for Amy’s. As soon as I’m done with you, I’m getting on a plane and I’m going to pay your little sister a visit. I’m going to slip a needle in her arm. I’m going to poison her, just like I poisoned Peter. And that will be your fault, Sera. She will settle the final debt between you and I. It’s not enough that you’ll be dead. You need to die filled with despair. You need to know that the people you love are going to suffer for your sins, even after you’re gone. Amy. Marcosa. I’m going to—”

  I saw my opportunity and I took it.

  Sadie was ranting, lost in her rage. Her words struck fear into me, paralyzing me, but I couldn’t afford to give in. If I quailed now, I’d be dead. Fix and Amy would be in danger. That simply wasn’t an option. Reaching out, I grabbed hold of Sadie’s wrist and twisted as hard as I could.

  Her shriek of pain echoed around the bedroom. I yanked her entire arm around, gritting my teeth together as I pulled, forcing her arm up behind her back. She wailed, fury cutting through her pain; I was seconds away from ripping her arm out of the socket, but still she didn’t drop the knife.

  “Give it to me, Sadie!” I roared. “It’s fucking over. Just drop it!”

  “So you can stab me with it? I don’t think so.” With inhuman strength, she lurched forward, tearing herself from my grip. She spun, ducking low, dropping into a fighting stance—a whirlwind of malevolence, dressed in Lululemon yoga gear. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, I might have fucking laughed at the madness of it all. The knife cut through the air as she slashed it toward my stomach. “Move, Sera. Out into the hallway. Go!”

  I began walking backwards; there was no way I was turning around. I was going to see the crazy bitch coming if she decided to attack. “You’re not going to do it,” I told her. “You aren’t strong enough. If you were, you would have killed me years ago, when we first met.” Goading her was definitely not a smart move, but it was the only option available to me. If I riled her up enough, she might slip up. React before thinking, leaving herself wide open for my own assault.

  “Shut up. Just shut your lying, manipulative little mouth, Sera. Go on. Into the bathroom.”

  Bad, bad idea. The bathroom was the smallest space in the apartment. At such close quarters, I’d almost certainly wind up dead. Fuck. What was in there? What could I use to defend myself. The sharpest thing I could think of was a razor, and against the huge knife in Sadie’s hand a razor would be fucking useless.

  “I’m not fucking around. Move it!” Sadie charged, jabbing the knife out in front of her. I twisted to one side, trying to avoid the sharpened steel, but I wasn’t quick enough. The bite of pain seared across my flesh, digging its teeth in deep. She’d slashed my side open. Quickly, the fabric of my white t-shirt turned bright red as my blood began to soak through it.

  Oh… fuck.

  My head swam as I clasped my hands to my side, trying to stem the bleeding. I had no idea how deep the cut was, but it felt bad. It felt like she’d almost gutted me.

  Sadie’s entire face was lit up with excitement as she prowled toward me, backing me into the bathroom. “You’re wrong. I’m am strong enough. I’m not weak anymore,” she said. “I’m going to enjoy inflicting pain on you. I won’t stop until every last inch of your skin is in ruins.”

  With that, she snatched up a ceramic candle holder from the shelf above the toilet and hurled it at the shower screen with all her might. I watched, my body slowly turning numb, as the glass screen shattered into a thousand pieces.

  She grinned with menacing delight as she stooped, picking up the largest, sharpest piece of the glass, and took a step forward.

  SIXTEEN

  FIX

  “Thirty-eight fifty, please.”

  The male cashier smiled at me as I handed over two twenties; people were a hell of a lot friendlier here than they were in New York, that was for damned sure. I took my change and the bag of groceries from him and made my way outside, not caring about the fact that it looked like it was about to rain. I’d walked past four different stores before I’d stopped at this one, wanting to give Sera plenty of time to catch up with her friend. She undoubtedly had a lot to talk about with the w
oman after the long weeks spent apart, and the night air seemed fresher here. Crisper. Less muggy and humid than the sweltering, sticky streets of Brooklyn after the sun had gone down. The walk had actually been great after being cooped up on the plane for so long.

  Didn’t matter what Sera said. Driving here would have been better. We could have broken up the trip. Stayed in nice hotels. Enjoyed ourselves a little. Fucked each other’s brains out at every rest stop along the way. Being stuck in that cramped tin can for six hours, unable to get up and move around, unable to take a breath of clean air, had been fucking torture. Next time I was going to put my foot down. No more planes for me.

  My dick was still hard from earlier. We’d been seconds away from doing very dirty, degrading things to each other in the shower when Sadie had turned up unannounced. Seriously fucking inconvenient. Would have been better if she’d shown up tomorrow afternoon. Or even better, tomorrow evening. By then, my need for Sera might have been slaked a little, and we’d have been fit for polite company. As it stood, I was going to be itching to get the woman out of the door the moment I walked back into the apartment.

  I needed Sera’s perfect mouth on me. I needed her hands on my skin. I had some pretty elaborate plans that involved my tongue and her pussy, but they were going to have to wait until we’d made it out of the shower and into the bedroom.

  I slowed my gait, grumbling to myself under my breath. If I came back sporting a raging hard on, snapping like an enraged bear at a woman I’d already nearly scared half to death, Sera would probably die of embarrassment. She’d wanted me really badly before her friend had shown up. I knew she had. But that didn’t mean she’d want me acting like a fucking caveman, tearing her clothes from her body and demanding she get on all fours in front of Sadie.

  So, I dragged my feet.

  This was why I didn’t have friends. They only complicated things and showed up without being invited. Sadie hadn’t even known we were going to be there and she’d still let herself into the apartment. The girls must have been really damn close if Sadie was used to showing up without permission and taking advantage of Sera’s place when she wasn’t there. Sure, she’d spun some story about swinging by to drop off that bottle of wine for Sera to enjoy when she got back from her trip, but I could smell the lie on her. She’d come there to drink that bottle of wine herself. Lord knows why, when she could easily have stayed at home and drunk it there, but whatever.

  When she’d turned around in the hallway and seen me, it had been the weirdest thing: she hadn’t even flinched. Instead of surprise, her eyes had been filled with another emotion—something that had looked an awful lot like irritation.

  The words she’d spoken had been a little off, too. At the time, I hadn’t had the opportunity to pick them apart, what with Sera screaming toward me, yelling at me not to hurt her friend, but now my mind kept pulling me back toward that moment, as if trying to show me something I hadn’t noticed yet.

  What the fuck are you doing here?

  What the fuck are you doing here?

  What the fuck are you doing here?

  Not, “Who the fuck are you?”

  Not only had she asked the wrong question, but her inflection had stressed the wrong word, too. The way she’d emphasized the word you, as if she’d recognized me, as if she knew my face and she wanted to know why the hell—

  The bag of groceries almost slipped from my hands.

  Oh.

  God.

  No.

  No, I was being crazy. Sera had only spoken highly of her friend. She’d only had great things to say about her. There hadn’t seemed to be any sort of animosity between them back at the apartment. Sadie has seemed genuinely happy to see Sera, after she’d gotten over the initial shock of—

  Unbidden, a thought occurred to me, giving life to a dark and terrible suspicion inside my mind. Sadie hadn’t been shocked when she laid eyes on me. Why not? The hypothetical answer to that question: she knew perfectly well who I was…because she had hired me to put an end to Sera.

  Sadie had been incredibly shocked to see Sera. Why? The hypothetical answer to that question: because Zeth Mayfair’s boss had forwarded a photo of Sera’s contorted, bleeding body to Carver, informing him that his mark had been taken care of.

  Except in this hypothetical world, Carver was not a man. He was a woman.

  Sadie was Carver.

  And as far as she’d been concerned, Sera was fucking dead.

  The night pressed in from all sides as I postulated a series of further questions to myself:

  Why would Sadie want Sera dead?

  Did she have the means to set something like that in motion?

  If she were Carver, why wouldn’t she have dealt with Sera personally, if she’d had so many opportunities in the past?

  Any answer I formulated in response to those questions was mere speculation, weak at best. But there was this festering feeling, sinking down into my bones. This feeling I just couldn’t shake. I’d gotten good at reading people in my previous line of work, and there was just something off about this whole thing. Something that suddenly refused to sit right…

  I was running before I’d even really made the decision to move. The bag of groceries crashed to the floor, another wine bottle exploding on the ground, but I didn’t care. If I was wrong here, if Sadie and Sera were gossiping like old housewives at the dining table when I arrived, then I’d happily go back out and get another fucking bottle of wine.

  But if they weren’t…

  If I was right…

  Hot, acidic bile rose up the back of my throat, making it hard to breathe as I pumped my arms, pushing myself, forcing one foot in front of the other.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I’d purposefully taken my time. I’d gone way further than I’d needed to. I’d stretched out the walk back, moving at a snail’s pace, thinking I was doing Sera a favor, and yet there was a chance…

  Fuck, I couldn’t even think it.

  I dodged pedestrians on the sidewalk, roaring at them to get the fuck out of the way as I barreled back toward Sera’s building. I ran on the road, dodging the traffic, ignoring the angry car horns, when my path wasn’t clear.

  I faltered when I reached the lobby. Where was the elevator?

  Where the fu—

  Shit. That’s right. There wasn’t one.

  My heart was bursting out of my chest as I launched myself up the stairs, taking them three and four at a time. I was used to running, but I’d never moved this fast in my entire fucking life. Adrenalin spiked, lighting up my bloodstream, making the lights burn brighter overhead, my ears picking up every sound as I sped toward Sera’s apartment. The door to 12B swung open and the old man who’d been staring at me when we first arrived stepped out, a newspaper gripped tightly in his hand.

  “Not now, Julian,” I growled as I sailed past him.

  “You tell those girls to quit screamin’ and hollerin’ at one another. I’m tryin’ to watch my shows, and all anyone can hear is them bickerin’ at the top of their voices.

  Shit!

  It took everything in my power not to slam the sole of my booted foot into the front door. If I busted my way in, my presence would be known immediately. Likewise, if I knocked, that would tip Sadie off. Instead, I moved quickly, fishing a card out of my wallet and sliding it between the doorjamb and the actual door itself, wedging it between the wood, giving it a hard, solid shove down, and then…

  The lock popped open.

  “That’s illegal,” Julian grumbled. “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to call the police.”

  “Damn it, Julian. I’ll get Rhonda over here in a minute if you don’t mind your own damn business.” I left him standing out in the hallway, hoping and praying that he went back inside his own apartment and he didn’t call the cops. Cops were the last thing we needed right now.

  The door to the bedroom was wide open. When I saw the scene of destruction and old, dried blood beyond, my vision nearly faded to black.
What the fuck? Where was Sera? Was she fucking hurt? If that bitch had harmed one hair on her head…

  “…inflicting pain on you. I won’t stop until every last inch of your skin is in ruins,” a voice hissed. By the way it echoed, its owner was somewhere small, somewhere cramped, somewhere tiled. They were in the bathroom. I rushed down the hallway, already planning the glorious revenge I was going to enact on Sadie for creating this mess. When I saw the small pool of blood on the floor outside the bathroom, my rage, my fear, and my panic all just…ground to a halt.

  This was not old blood, like in the bedroom. Was it Sera’s? The sight of the vibrant, bright red fluid against the floorboards kindled the most reckless, cruelty in me. Of all the times I’d killed over the past five years, I hadn’t enjoyed the experience once. If Sadie really had made Sera bleed, however, that was all going to change. I was going to do more than enjoy it. I was going to savor every last second of it as I strangled the life from her wretched body.

  A crashing sound cut through the silence. The nerve endings in my body fired, pulsing through me like an electric current.

  “Sadie, no! Just stop!”

  I had no idea what was going on in that room, but I wasn’t going to wait any longer. Sera was in danger. Her life was being threatened. I threw my weight behind my shoulder, crashing into the bathroom, and an explosion of broken glass went skittering across the tiled floor. Sera stood by the wash basin, wearing a white shirt that was stained red with blood. There were small cuts and scrapes all over her feet. Her eyes were vacant, staring numbly down at her hands, which were…

  Which were…

  I released an uneven breath, my finger nails digging into my palms as I stared down at her stomach. She was holding something in her hands. Something jagged and sharp.