Made for Breaking

by Lauren Gilley

  His brows snapped together. “Oh. If I cared about you, I’d let you go in there and kill him right now? In front of the cops?”

  No, a tiny voice whispered in the back of her head. But she was too enraged, too full to bursting with senseless emotion, that she couldn’t make sense of her buried urge to throw herself in his arms and cry against his chest. “Get away from me!” She hit him with both fists and spun away from him, crying messily, hugging herself to stop the shaking.

  He lingered; she could hear his shoes on the floorboards. Half-turning, she shouted, “Go!” over her shoulder.

  She heard him sigh, and then retreat, steps heavy on the porch as he went to the stairs.

  She shoved him out of her mind, more effectively than she’d been able to shove his wide chest, and went inside, mopping her face with her hands.

  ***

  “Let me see.”

  Cheryl was shaking like she had palsy. She pulled her hand away from her face and it was all Ray could do to keep from snatching Lisa’s gun up off the counter and chasing the paramedics out the front door where they were toting Tristan to the ambulance. She had a deep laceration along the ridge of her cheek, bleeding like crazy, and the eye was already starting to blacken, the lid swelling.

  She licked her lip; it was split in the corner where the door had caught her. “I’m fine,” she said, voice unsteady. “Just a little rattled.”

  “Hey.” He snapped his fingers at one of the lingering paramedics. “See to this,” he said, pointing to his wife’s face. Then he turned back to her. “You should go to the ER and get checked out. You probably need stitches.”

  “I don’t, and I’m fine,” she said, voice strengthening. “Where’s Lisa?”

  “Here,” came the answer from the kitchen threshold.

  They both turned, and there was Lisa, looking ten pounds and two feet tall, holding herself around the middle, trying unsuccessfully to staunch the tears pouring down her face.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Cheryl said. “Come here.”

  Instead, Lisa’s eyes came to him. “What will happen to him?” she asked in a voice that he found, if he was honest, frightening, coming from her.

  Ray put a hand on Cheryl’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll have to see how the facts stack up,” he told his daughter. He frowned. “Where’s your guard dog?”

  “Heading back for the pound, probably.” And she turned away and shuffled into the next room like something from a horror movie.

  “Sir?” The paramedic was standing at his elbow. “I need to take a look at your wife’s face.”

  Ray didn’t look at him. He ran his thumb down Cheryl’s uninjured cheek and she smiled bravely. “Sure.” He told her, “I’ll be in the dining room,” and ensured the fire rescue guy was going to be gentle enough with an iodine swab for his liking.

  Sly and Eddie were waiting for him, standing on opposite sides of the table, still and silent as stone. Mark was by the window, watching Tristan get loaded into the first ambulance.

  Ray’s head was a mess of snarls, each more tightly knotted than the last. The shock of Shilling’s revelation – and what had happened in the minutes afterward – was still too fresh for him to make any kind of sense of it. He would, eventually, but not now. Now was one of those times when he was thankful his brother had talked him into hiring a pair of court martialed Navy SEALs. He needed them for moments like these.

  He looked to Sly. “Find out why,” he said. “And make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  Sly’s blue eyes were glowing in the evening sun. He nodded.

  “What if he won’t let me in?” Johnny asked, raking a hand through his dark hair and looking doubtful.

  “That’s not the point,” Sly said, patience ebbing. Johnny was a good kid, a sweet kid, but sometimes… “He just needs to come to the door.”

  He nodded. “And then you guys will – ”

  “Go knock on the damn door.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sly watched from his position two long strides down the hall as Johnny approached the apartment door. On the other side of the door, pressed flat to the wall, Eddie waited, electric with coiled energy. It wasn’t a pulse-pounding, excited sort of energy; it was more visceral and less pleasurable than that. It was an alertness. Preparedness. An exact knowledge of what was about to be expected of his body and an anticipation of every move, the gliding of every muscle. It was an energy that had been trained into them, and they shared it.

  Johnny rapped twice on the door and waited, fidgeting. He’d been pushing lately to have a role in the security business, not understanding that, at times, it was more like a “security” business. The kid had to grow up sometime, Sly figured, and in this family, that needed to be soon.

  They’d waited out in front of Nick Morrow’s building until an elderly woman with an armful of laundry had come out; they’d helped her, earned profuse thanks, and snuck in while the door was open. Now they waited, gambling that Tristan’s closest friend would know something.

  Sly tensed as the door opened a crack and a wedge of pimply face appeared. “What?”

  “Nick,” Johnny said in a high, too-friendly voice. “Hey, man.”

  The door pulled wider, all of Nick’s greasy face visible. Everyone like Tristan had a collection of friends designed to make him feel better about himself. He had dumb jocks and gutter rats and this: the unfortunate looking one with a personality to match. “What do you – ” Sly saw his eyes widen as he finally recognized Johnny. “Oh, shit – ”

  Sly and Eddie moved in seamless unison, landing on the door with a speed that left Johnny gasping and Nick cursing. It flung wide. Sly grabbed Johnny by the shirt and shoved him in the direction of the apartment’s tiny kitchenette before he went after Nick. Behind him, he heard Eddie lock the door.

  “No!” Nick protested, making a mad lunge across his living room.

  Sly caught him by the back of his shirt and yanked him back hard, slamming him to the ground. The wind left his lungs in his rush and his eyes bugged. While he was still gasping, Sly flipped him onto his stomach, pulled both his hands behind his back, and zip-tied them together. He wore dirty, smelly socks without shoes, and Sly bound his ankles too, not because he was afraid of the little shit getting loose, but because it would up the terror.

  When Sly glanced up, Johnny was staring at him in wide-eyed shock. Eddie was moving around the kitchenette.

  “You got any salt, Nick?” Eddie asked. “If I’m gonna have to force feed you saltwater, I’d just as soon get started now.”

  Nick squirmed impotently on the floor, testing his bindings. “What-what…” He gasped down at the floor. “What do you want? Just take it.” He wasn’t far from crying. “I’ll do whatever you want, but please – ”

  Sly dug a knee into the small of his back. “You’ll tell us what we want to know?”

  “Yes!”

  Eddie braced his hands on the kitchen counter and sighed. “Well that wasn’t any fun.”

  Sly cut the tie securing Nick’s ankles and hauled him upright, setting him back against the side of the sofa. He stood and found a kitchen chair, dragged it over in front of their captive.

  Johnny was sitting in a recliner over by the TV, dumbfounded and frightened. Nick looked worse, white as paste beneath the red blots of his zits. He was trembling.

  “Alright,” Sly said, sitting and bracing his legs out in front of him. “You know why we’re here?”

  “About-about” – Nick licked his lips – “Tristan.”

  “Good doggie,” Eddie said.

  Sly asked, “So you know that he was planning on killing Cheryl and Lisa Russell?”

  “Whoa. Whoa, man, no way.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Murdering. Did you know he was planning on murdering them?”

  “Dude, he wasn’t going to – ”

  Sly leaned down into his pimple-covered face so quickly Nick threw his head back against the sofa, gasping. “Do I need to tell my friend to keep lo
oking for the salt?”

  “N-n-no, I – ”

  “I’m not here to listen to you justify your friendship with some sick bastard,” Sly continued. “Don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what’s been going on these past few weeks. You can rat on your friend, or you can keep testing my patience.”

  Nick swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny throat.

  “Now,” Sly said, “let’s start with the easy stuff. Was Tristan sending the Russell girls flowers?”

  “He – ”

  “It’s a yes or no question, Nick.”

  He swallowed again. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “To – just to mess with them. To scare them a little. Them and Tristan’s dad.”

  “And his dad is…?”

  “Carl Shilling.”

  “He told you this?”

  “A couple months ago. He was drunk and he wasn’t making much sense, but yeah, he told me.”

  “He was trying to make it look like the flowers were from his father?”

  Nick nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t – ”

  “Why would he want them to think that?” Sly pressed. He lifted the toe of one boot and just that sent Nick cringing away from him.

  “I dunno.” He was sweating. “’Cause of that business with Russell turning on his client. Why wouldn’t Tristan’s old man want revenge? Tristan said – he said they’d think it was his dad automatically. They’d never know it was him sending the flowers.”

  Sly pretended to think it over, silent and still a long moment until Nick started to squirm. “You didn’t think that was really fucked up?”

  Nick shrugged as best he could with his hands bound, avoiding eye contact. “I dunno. I always knew Tristan thought Lisa was a bitch. I mean, she is. So I thought – ”

  “So you thought, what’s the harm in terrifying her and trying to kidnap her and – ”

  “Whoa!” Nick said. “I didn’t do that. That shit behind the bar? That was Will.”

  Sly looked to Johnny. “Will?”

  “Part of Tristan’s group,” Johnny supplied. The kid was, thankfully, getting his color back, a more suitable, harder look claiming his face. “Big ex-football playing loser.”

  Sly turned back to his prisoner. “He attacked Lisa behind the bar?”

  “Yeah. Your friend did a number on his face. It looked like he had road rash.”

  Sly suppressed a hint of a smile. Good for Drew. “What was Will supposed to do with her?”

  Another shrug. “Get her in the trunk.”

  “And do what?”

  He shrugged again, and squirmed, cheeks coloring. “Bring her to Tristan.”

  “So you could do what with her?”

  Sly’s voice had been so low, so innocuous, and yet the most acute kind of penetrating; it invited confessions, lured them out of people. He’d used it so many times, always with results, so he was forced to believe Nick when he lifted his head, features pinched, and said, “I don’t know.”

  Sly leaned back. “Did you ever stop and think,” he drawled, “that you were all about to do something that would get you very arrested?”

  “Not really.”

  They exacted Will’s address from Nick, shoved a sedative down his throat, waited until he passed out, then cut his wrists free and left. “We don’t want him giving Will a heads up,” Sly explained to Johnny, who nodded and absorbed it like it was the most important lesson of his life.

  As it turned out, though, Will wasn’t at home. His landlord said he’d been found by a neighbor, unconscious and bleeding out of his ears not but an hour ago; he’d been taken to the hospital.

  “Drew?” Eddie asked as they walked back to the truck.

  No one had seen the guy since that frantic moment in the kitchen with Tristan.

  Sly nodded. “That’d be my guess.”

  “I can make some coffee,” Cheryl said, and started to rise.

  Ray laid a hand over hers on top of the dining table, keeping her beside him. “No. We’re all fine and you’re not.”

  She murmured a note of disapproval, but stayed in her seat.

  It was dark, the night heavy and black, the air thick as a quilt. Nightfall had brought with it a kind of relief: this nightmare of a day was almost over.

  “Okay.” Ray glanced around the long dining table. The chandelier cast diamond-shaped glimmers across the faces: Mark, Sly, Eddie, Johnny…and Carl Shilling. Sly had poured a round of Jack; they were all working on round two. “You’ve been to see the friends?”

  Sly nodded. “Even Will, who’s got a mother of a concussion.” He almost smiled. “Drew was missing those speed bag workouts, apparently.”

  “How did Drew even know to get to Will?”

  “I talked to Lisa’s DJ friend at the bar. Drew stopped by this afternoon, wanting a rundown on all of Tristan’s friends.” He shrugged. “Will was the ex-baller. He would have been my bet on the attempted kidnapper too.”

  “Huh.” Perceptive, Ray thought of the kid, and then shoved it aside.

  “They all had the same story,” Sly said. “They knew Tristan was messing with Lisa and Cheryl, but none of them saw a reason to put a stop to it.”

  “Sweet kids.” He looked to Shilling. “Carl, how are we going to stick the little bastard with murder charges?”

  “My testimony won’t be worth much.”

  “I’ll talk to the DA. By the time we factor in what happened today, it won’t be much of a stretch to tie him to the previous murders.”

  Shilling’s smile was sideways and humorless. “Thank you. I guess.”

  There were a thousand curses Ray wanted to lay on the man. If he’d told the truth straight off, none of the rest of this would have happened. His girls wouldn’t have been in danger.

  Beside him, Cheryl’s fingers stroked against his.

  So his girls were okay. It didn’t make the danger they’d been in any less real.

  “Thanks for coming forward,” he relented. “Finally.”

  Shilling ducked his head and stared at his hands. Ray had no idea, if he was honest, what it felt like to be him at the moment. One of his children was dead, and the other was an absolute sociopath. It didn’t get much more fucked up than that.

  There was the softest of knocks at the front door and all of them tensed. A half a second later, when the knob turned, Ray cursed himself for not having locked the door behind the police. They were all half out of their chairs when Ellen stepped in. She was in a red dress belted tight around her waist, big Wilma Flintstone fake pearls at her throat and both wrists. Her hair was truckstop waitress big tonight, and the sight of her made Ray want to laugh…in a good way.

  She turned to face them after she closed the door, smile bright. Her gaze moved over all their tense faces, and for a moment, before her eyes settled on Mark, she sent Ray the most subtle of looks. A fast, careful question. She knew – under that truckstop hair, she was sharper than he’d given her credit, and she could read the vibe in the room.

  She didn’t say anything, though, but smiled, and said, “I brought two kinds of salad.”

  Cheryl dashed a hand under her nose and got unsteadily to her feet. Ray wanted to protest, but she squeezed his shoulder. We need this, he swore he could hear her think. We need to pretend things are okay.

  And they did. She was always right about these things.

  ***

  It had taken an embarrassing amount of time to get her tears under control. Her eyes were so sore as a result that they throbbed in time to her heartbeat, swollen and bruised-feeling. The dark helped. Her room was bathed in darkness, an ambient glow from the security light filtering through her window. She could feel more than see Hektor’s sleek head resting on the edge of her bed. He was worried about her. And he probably still had blood on his mouth.

  They were all downstairs talking, and for once, she didn’t care that she was left out. This anger was too thorny and devastating for her t
o be able to manage it and hold up the threads of a conversation. The hot, red, murderous fury had faded, tainted blood leaking from her system. And in its wake, she struggled to understand how she was even capable of that kind of rage.

  It wasn’t about revenge.

  It was about her family.

  About the thought of anyone hurting any one of them.

  Her sheets still smelled like soap and sex from that afternoon. God, that had only been hours ago. It felt like her whole life had changed since then. It hadn’t changed as fully as it might have, because that stupid, brave boy she loved had intervened.

  Loved.

  Holy shit.

  There was a soft knock at the door and, thinking it was her mother, said, “Come in,” in a voice just audible to her own ears. She heard the door crack and a heavy, careful tread started across the rug. Not her mother.

  She sat up and twisted around, saw Ray easing down onto the edge of the bed beside her. The mattress dipped; Hektor went and nuzzled his hands, asking to be petted. He scratched the Dobie’s ears in an absent, fond sort of way, murmuring, “You’re a good boy.” He’d come for a reason, so Lisa let him reveal it himself, keeping silent.

  In the dark, his eyes were bright as they lifted to her. “I think this bone-headed dog and you are twins,” he said. “But thankfully, he’s the one with the sharper teeth.” When she didn’t comment, he said, levelly, “You were going to shoot Tristan dead.”

  “I was.”

  “I gave you that gun for self-defense.”

  “And according to Drew, that’s not what I was doing.”

  Ray sighed. Heavily. His shoulders sagged. “And what do you think?”

  “I think…” She took a deep breath, suddenly shaking. “I think I’m not right in the head.”

  “Sweetheart.” His hand reached through the darkness and settled on her hair, like when she’d been a little girl. “There’s nothing wrong with your head.”

  She shuddered hard, breath catching. “But I – ”

  “You live in a world I never wanted for you,” he said. “And you’ve dealt with things I never wanted you to see. The reason I keep you out of the loop, Lis, is not because I don’t want you around. Or because I don’t trust you. It’s because I never wanted my daughter to have to decide if a man should live or die.”