But Cassandra holds the gun like she means to use it.
“Cassandra,” I say.
“Raise your hands,” Cassandra says. “I don’t want any funny business.”
I lift my hands above my head, and Cassandra nods with satisfaction.
“I always loved your hands, you know. Really. They know exactly what to do, don’t they? Exactly where to tickle. Exactly where to glide. I often dream about how they would move down my body, to my you-know-where.” She winks, and then licks her upper lip. The way it moves, she looks like a snake. “Why are you here, Maddox? Tell me that.”
“To save Eden,” I grunt.
“You look angry,” Cassandra comments. “Are you angry, Maddox?”
“Of course I’m angry,” I hiss.
“But why?” Cassandra sighs. “Why would you be angry? I’m doing this for us. Just for us. I want us to be together. Isn’t that sweet? Isn’t that worthy of some respect? Isn’t that worthy of something? I don’t see that it has to be like this.”
“You’re holding a gun to my girlfriend’s head,” I say.
“Don’t call her that!” Cassandra screams.
She hefts the gun and brings it down on the back of Eden’s head. “Ah!” Eden squeals as the gun connects. Then her head slumps forward, her chin resting on her chest. Her hands, which had been gripping the arms of the chair for dear life, go limp. Her eyelids flutter. She’s awake, but dazed, the way you are after you get sucker punched.
“Cassandra,” I growl. “If you do that again, I’ll fucking kill you.”
“No,” Cassandra says, pressing the gun into the nape of Eden’s neck. “I don’t think you have it in you to kill me. You see, I think you still love me.”
You’re a crazy goddamn bitch, I think. I almost say it, but something stops me. An instinct. The same instinct that makes me an effective leader in The Miseryed. Use their weaknesses. That’s the trick to beating somebody, really beating them. Not knives or bullets or fists. Exploiting weaknesses, and Cassandra’s weakness is me.
I swallow—pride, self-respect. I swallow and force a smile to my face. I know how it must look: ghoulish. Like the twisted lips of a gargoyle. But I also know that Cassandra is the type of woman who’s willing to believe anything about. This is the woman who convinced herself that I wanted to marry her when I’d make no sign in that direction. This is the woman who had twisted her mind into thinking we were lovers.
I’m sorry, Eden, I think.
“Oh, you’re right,” I say, forcing my voice to be syrupy sweet. “You’re right, Cassandra. You’re always right.”
She raises her eyebrows, a dog about to be given a treat, eager. “Hmm?” she says. “Yes . . .”
“I couldn’t hurt you, not really.” Part of me hopes that Eden is unconscious, that she can’t hear any of this. Cassandra’s grip loosens on the gun. Without seeming to realize, she closes the flip lighter. The flame gutters out. “It’s always been you, Cassandra.”
“Do you mean it?” she says, but there isn’t enough suspicion in her voice. She wants to believe it, and when a person wants to believe a thing, it’s all the easier to make them. “Do you really mean it, Maddox? Tell me you really mean it.”
“Of course I do,” I say, acid in my throat. I don’t want to be saying these words, but these are the words that may save Eden’s life. “I’m sorry,” I sigh. I place my hands against the glass of the window, and Cassandra doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe she thinks it’s romantic, that I’m a lover who’s so keen to be with her I want to push the window in. “I’m sorry, Cassandra.”
“For what?” she urges. Her mouth is slightly open and her tongue sticks between her teeth. “For what?”
What would she most like to hear? I ask myself. What would bring her the most joy? Eden lifts her head slightly, opening and closing her eyes quickly. She peers up at me. I shake my head, a tiny motion, a motion Cassandra doesn’t see. She’s too caught up in my performance. But Eden sees it, and she lowers her head. She’s smart; she knows what I’m doing. And she knows it’s best if she’s not conscious while I’m doing it.
“For lying,” I say. “I’m sorry for lying, Cassandra.”
“Yes?” she breathes. “Yes? Yes?”
“I really did say all those things to you,” I say. “I really did say that I loved you and that I wanted to be the father of your children.” For Eden, for Eden, this is for Eden. “I was scared of my own love. Terrified by it. That’s why I lied. I couldn’t stand the thought that I’d been broken so completely by a woman. But I had! I had! You were the woman who broke me, Cassandra. You’re the woman who owns me.”
The grip on the gun loosens even more. I’m making ground, inch by painful inch.
“I always knew it was us,” she says. “I knew it.” She giggles. “Sometimes, Maddy . . .” She licks her lips, tasting the words. She’s never called me that before, but by looking at the way her jaws sets, I can tell she’s already fooled herself into believing it’s a long-used nickname, a name we’ve used with each other for years. “Sometimes, Maddy, I’d wonder if perhaps you were right. If you were telling the truth, I mean. If maybe you didn’t really say all those things. But the memories are so clear. So stark. The memories shine out in my mind like searchlights. How could they be false? So it’s you and me now, yes? We’ll get married and have children and be happy?”
I’d rather die.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, of course. That’s what I want.”
“Okay, okay, good.”
A weight falls from my shoulders and my hands slide down the glass. Now all I have to do is go around to the door, open it, and keep up the charade long enough to get close to her. Then it’s over, and Eden is safe. Then we can forget that this ever—
“Good,” Cassandra says, tightening her grip on the gun. She pushes it hard into Eden’s head. Eden groans.
“Cassandra,” I say. “It’s okay. We can be together now. You don’t have to.”
“I know.” Cassandra looks at me like I’m missing something very obvious. “I know that, silly. So I’ll just clean up here, and we’ll get going.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s no reason to let her live now, is there? You’ve picked me, you silly man!”
***
“Wait!” I roar, seeing Cassandra’s finger tighten on the trigger. “Wait! For fuck’s sake, wait!”
Cassandra tilts her head at me. “What? Why? We don’t need her anymore, do we? Why do I need to wait?”
“Why kill her?” I breathe. “Tell me that! Why kill her? There’s no need for it now, is there?”
“There’s no reason to let her live, either,” Cassandra says. As if we’re discussing how much sugar to put in a coffee. As if we’re discussing the weather. Goddamn, this woman is ice. “I don’t see any. Why should we?”
“But why kill her?” I persist. “I’ve chosen you.”
Cassandra chews her lip, thinking it over. How did we get here? I think, looking into Eden’s face. Her trembling lips. Her half-dead eyes. Her head lolls up and down from the strike. I need to get her to a hospital, sooner rather than later. I need to make sure she’s alright. I need to goddamn save her!
“But why?” Cassandra says. “I don’t understand.”
“It will be harder for us to be together if you kill her,” I say. “You won’t just be an embezzler anymore. You’ll be a killer, Cassandra. We can’t have that, can we? Imagine the hunt, the pain. It will be awful. So awful. They won’t stop hounding us. They’ll be after us forever.”
“Oh,” Cassandra says, a small smile on her lips. “You’re sweet, but you don’t need to worry about that. I’ve got everything sorted out. I have contacts, sweetie. Men who can sort fake passports and men who can get us far away from here. I have funds, too. And I imagine you have some funds of your own. We’ll make it out alright. There’s no need for panic.”
She strokes the trigger.
“Cassandra! Stop!” My voic
e is ragged, the pretense gone. Filled with fiery rage. “Don’t you dare pull that trigger.”
“Maddox, honey,” Cassandra says like a girlfriend trying to convince her boyfriend to go to a show. “What on earth are you talking about? We don’t need her anymore. You don’t need her anymore.”
“She has a child!” I say madly, hardly knowing what I say, just trying to get her to take the gun from Eden’s head. “She has a little boy, Cassandra! You can’t kill her when she has a little boy!”
Cassandra hesitates. “Is that true?” she says, nudging Eden’s head with the barrel of the gun.
Eden winces and then says: “Yes, it’s true. His name is Simon. He’s four.”
“Well, where is he?” Cassandra says. “I don’t see him anymore. Is he upstairs?”
“Yes!” I snap before Eden can answer. “He’s upstairs, Cassandra. You wouldn’t kill someone with their kid upstairs, would you?”
“That is unfortunate,” Cassandra says. “But what am I to do? You see, Maddox, I know you love me. I know you’ve always loved me. But what if there’s even a one-point-one percent chance you have an inkling of feeling for this sweet little bird? I don’t think I can take that. I’m not a jealous woman but—not that, not another woman. When you’re with me, you have to be with me. Nobody else.”
“I will!” I growl. “I will! Just you! Just don’t pull that trigger!”
Behind Cassandra, an old woman appears. A grizzled, bony old woman. Her eyes peer around the door, which leads to the hallway. She takes in the scene, wide-eyed. Okay, okay, I think. This can still work out.
“Just you!” I shout. “Just you, Cassandra!”
Then the old woman rushes into the room.
Chapter Fifty Four
“Get away from my daughter!” the woman screams.
Cassandra wheels around and in one swift motion smacks Eden’s mother in the mouth. She collapses into the wall, holding her jaw, and then slides to the floor.
This is it. My anger, restrained before, explodes now. I take a step back and throw myself at the window. The glass shatters in a shower of sparkling pieces. Crash, and then the pieces flutter to the ground. A thousand tiny cuts open in my arms and my face, but I don’t care.
I charge across the room, but Cassandra has just enough time. She’s quick, the senses of a predatory. In less than a second, she flips the lighter and throws it at the couch. Flames kindle and then catch, and the couch bursts into a ball of fire. Cassandra aims the gun at me, fires twice. I hear the bullets thud into the wall, whizz out of the open window and smash into something metal. Maybe her car, maybe mine.
“Maddox—”
I smash my shoulder into her chest. She grunts and falls backward. I leap at her, punch her once in the stomach. When she keels over, I wrench the gun from her hand, eject the cartridge, and toss it behind me, out of the broken window. Flames whip around us and Eden rocks in the chair, trying to get free of the bindings. “Ah, ah, ah, Maddox!” she wails.
I kick Cassandra in the gut once, swiftly. She grunts and curls in a ball on the floor, retching. Then I turn to Eden, my only care, my only desire. I lean down, pick up the chair by the legs, and lift her still bound to the chair to the door. The hinges of the door break with a loud, violent crunch when I kick it free. I run outside, smoke in my lungs. The fire has spread from the couch to the carpet; soon the house will be a mess of ash and charred wood.
“My mom!” Eden cries when I set her down in the driveway. “Get her!”
“Yeah,” I grunt.
I run back into the house. It’s overflowing with smoke already. It’s like a road in high fog when you can hardly see the tip of your nose for the thickness of it. I move across the room by sound. The mother is groaning lightly. Cassandra is somewhere to the left, knocking into the TV as she tries to stand up. When I get to the mother, I reach down and cradle her like a baby, hold her to my chest, and sprint from the house. Eden watches me with desperate eyes as I emerge from the house. When she sees that her mother is awake and breathing, she heaves a breath.
I place her beside Eden.
“Animal!” Cassandra cries.
I turn, and there she is, her face streaked with blood. She must’ve hit something when I tackled her. I don’t know. I hardly know what happened, it all happened so fast.
Cassandra reaches into her pocket and takes out a knife, a thick, ridged machete. The house hissing with flames behind her, she steps forward. I put myself between her and Eden and her mother, shoulders spread wide, fingers twitching.
“You can’t have it like this!” she snaps. “Not like this! It won’t be like this! I won’t have it! I won’t have it! I won’t have it!”
Aiming the machete at me, she breaks into a sprint.
***
I measure the space of her strides, the angle at which she holds the knife, and the direction her eyes move. I measure all of it in a split-second. She moves her arm back—and I step forward, into the space the knife had been.
I head-butt her so hard her nose explodes in a red shower of blood, spattering my face. With a dull grunt, she falls to the ground, as though all her bones have turned to jelly. I kneel down, take the knife from her grip, and take a few steps backward. I hand the knife to the mother, who’s on her feet now, rubbing her jaw.
“Free your daughter,” I say. “You did well in there, ma’am. It’s a shame we have to meet under these circumstances.”
The mother takes the knife. “Just did what any mother would,” she says.
“Maddox,” Eden says. “You have to call the police. You have to let them know what happened.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say.
I take my cellphone from my pocket and dial 911.
“I give the operator the details and the address, and then hang up.
Slipping my phone back into my pocket, I go and stand over Cassandra, looking down at her.
Eden stands up, the severed ropes falling around her, and comes to join me. She looks down at Cassandra, her expression difficult to read.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
“Yeah,” she mutters. “She was so close . . . so close . . . I can’t . . .” She reaches up and touches her head. Her hand comes away bloody. “I think I need a doctor.”
“Sit down,” I say. “There’ll be an ambulance here soon.”
Eden’s mother picks up the chair and carries it to us, and then takes Eden softly by the shoulder and leads her into the chair.
“Sorry, ma’am, but I don’t know your name.” I can’t call her Mrs. Chase, and I have no clue what her maiden name is.
“Call me Cynthia,” she says. “I think we’re on first-name terms, don’t you?” She smiles shakily, and then winces and brings her hand to her jaw.
A few minutes later, the air fills with sirens.
“You’ll be free now, won’t you, Maddox?” Eden says, her voice groggy.
“Yeah, I’ll be free,” I say. “What are they going to do when they see all this? All the bribes in the world won’t make something like this go away. The police will be falling over backward to apologize, I reckon. Imprisoning an innocent man isn’t good publicity.”
The three of us wait silently for the police and the ambulance. Soon uniforms are all around us, Eden is being patched up, and I’m giving a statement to a stern officer.
I’m just glad she’s okay, I think. Thank god she’s okay.
Chapter Fifty Five
Eden
I wake up on a thin mattress to the smell of disinfectant. For one groggy moment, I think I’m in a supermarket, collapsed in the home comforts aisle. Then I blink away sleep, and I hear the beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor somewhere down the hall. I lean up on my elbow, wincing as the bandages tug on my head.
“Whoa! Whoa!” Mom says. She stands over me, takes my shoulders lightly, and pushes me back down onto the mattress. “You had a concussion, Eden. Not a terribly concussion, but when are concussions ever good, you know?”
�
�Oh,” I grunt, allowing myself to be pushed back down.
For a split-second, when I was in that half-dreamy state, I could almost trick myself into believing it had all been a mad dream. Of course, I, a simple student, a simple programmer, had not been involved in a shootout, or a house burning down, or . . . any of it.
“Where’s Maddox?” I ask.
“Getting us some coffees,” Mom says. I turn my head and face her. Even that small movement hurts, but staring at the ceiling is oddly depressing. “He’s such a nice boy, isn’t it?” Mom goes on. Her jaw is purple, the skin raised in a nasty bruise, but otherwise, she looks okay. “It’s been two days, and he hasn’t left your side for a moment. I’ve told him, oh, I’ve told him—you can go on ahead, I’ll stay with her. But he won’t hear it. Sometimes he has to leave us to go and talk with some big brute of a man: a cuddly bear type.”
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