by Mike McCrary
“Wait,” Todd calls out.
Davis shoves open the door, cutting through the people outside, charging toward his car. His blood boils. His body shakes as the anger-fueled adrenaline rips through every part of him.
“Davis,” Todd calls out again, following behind him. “Come on, man.”
Davis reaches his car parked behind the diner. He knows that he’s going to have to have at least one more conversation with Todd. He’s only a few steps from reaching him. It’s going to be unavoidable. For a flash of a thought, Davis considers bashing his head in with the car door.
But he doesn’t.
Davis turns around and finds Todd standing in front of him, slightly out of breath.
“You have every reason to hate me,” Todd says, “but let me make this right.”
Davis listens, but gives him nothing in return.
“I can stop Justin,” Todd says. “It’s one of the reasons I’m here.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
Todd nods.
“And?”
“I think we’ve come to an agreement. He’s a serious asshole, but I think I talked him into an arrangement that’ll end all of this without anything—the pictures, any of it—getting out.”
Davis feels an enormous weight lift from his body and mind, as if he’s been walking around hauling massive bags of sand ever since LA. He thinks of Tilley.
Am I really going to let money cover that up? Is that what I’ve become?
His eyes well. He gasps, coughs, then laughs. He can’t control it. The release of it all triggered a response in him, one he didn’t expect. He leans over, placing his hands on his knees and laughs until tears stream down his face. Todd looks around, not sure what he’s supposed to do here. Davis knows he looks insane right now, but doesn’t care. The line between laughing and crying is fine. The one between crazy and sane is even thinner. Davis feels like he’s teetering between both.
This is over. Justin is gone.
“Getting to good?” Davis says, still looking down as his laughter slows.
“Yeah. Something like that,” Todd says.
Davis can hear it. The way Todd forced the words through a crack in his voice. Todd’s emotions are taking hold of him. Davis looks up to Todd. His business partner. His friend.
He’s a red-faced mess. Unable to speak. Eyes full. Davis is still angry with him, but in this single moment he knows that Todd is truly sorry. It’s not just words right now. It’s as if what Todd did has finally hit him. He finally understands. They may never be the same, but Davis at least knows that Todd is capable of feeling regret about it all. And that’s a start at least. The theory that time heals all wounds will without a doubt be put to the test.
“Okay,” Davis says, rising up.
Todd nods, fighting back his own tears, rubbing his eyes clean. Todd reaches out to shake hands with Davis.
A blur slams into the side of Todd’s head. His body drops to the ground.
It happened so fast Davis couldn’t see where it even came from. So quick his hand is still out waiting to shake Todd’s.
Another blur.
Davis’s body goes limp.
His world goes dark.
36
Davis forces his eyelids to open.
His head is on fire, pounding like a bass drum without any specific rhythm to follow. His vision is a soup-like fog, showing only blobs of smeared colors cut up by thin slivers of light. As he sits up his stomach turns. Quickly, he realizes he did this way too fast and lies back down almost immediately. There’s a rush of nausea coupled with a whirling whip-spin inside his head.
He recognizes this feeling. It’s familiar. Very similar to when he woke up in LA, but yet different. He can’t put his finger on the difference, but this feels more scattered. Muted consciousness. Not nearly as sharp as before at the hotel.
As his eyes drift into focus he can tell he’s back at the lake house. The feeling. The smells. He’s in the bedroom he’s shared, occasionally, with Hattie. It’s dark. It’s night now. He can make out the moon through the window, its glow providing the only light to the room. The door is shut.
Did I lose another day?
I was with Todd in the morning, wasn’t I?
Having coffee.
Fighting.
Touching his head, he grits his teeth, jerking his hand back. There’s a pulsing, swelling lump on the side of his head that’s tender to the touch. He rubs his fingers together without looking at them. They’re wet. Slippery-thick with what he’s guessing is his own blood.
He remembers the blur in the parking lot. Todd’s body dropping.
Davis sits up again, ignoring the twist in his guts, the roar in his skull. As he braces himself with his hands on either side of him, his right hand slides a bit in the sheets. They are slick with something. He raises his hand, inspecting his palm through his blurred vision. His hand is covered, shining black in the moonlight. Fingers and palm coated.
Davis sucks in a hard breath, looks down at the bed next to him. There’s a dark stain, a large one, pooling up on top of the sheets before soaking in. He pulls back, his eyes ratcheting into hard focus.
Todd’s face is frozen, staring up at the ceiling, his head peacefully resting on the pillow next to Davis. The rest of his body lies a few inches below the pillow. His neck is still pumping a slight gurgle of life, the dark stain in the sheets growing with each passing second.
A pulse of frantic energy surges and Davis pushes himself away, slipping and scrambling, unable to form a sound. He thinks of Tilley. Her throat cut.
Did I do this too?
Davis falls from the bed with a thick thud. He jump-crawls up against the wall. His chest heaves in and out. Deep, hard, short breaths. Body shaking as if it’s below zero.
Framed under the moon, Todd’s severed head is perfectly placed on the pillow, his body positioned below with his arms crossed over his chest, fingers locked. Peaceful after the violence is over.
Davis hears the sound of footsteps moving toward the bedroom.
A tongue clucks.
“He’s up,” Justin says to someone in another room. “Showtime.”
The door opens and Justin enters the room, stopping just inside the doorway. The lights in the living room are on and Justin’s face and body are shrouded in shadow. Davis can tell he’s in a suit, hanging on to cool even now as he leans up against the doorjamb with his arms crossed.
Davis can’t speak, still unable to release a single sound from his lips. He wants to scream, wants to tear Justin apart with his bare hands.
He hears his girls scream. His children are afraid. He can hear their terrified voices trailing off like they’re being moved outside through the front door.
Davis jumps to his feet, charging hard at Justin. He’s off-balance, stumbling, still disoriented from the blow to the head. Justin grabs him by the shoulders, effortlessly flinging him into the living room. Davis skids across the hardwood floor, stopping as he slams into the table. He’s blinded by the sudden burst of light flooding into his vision. Davis can now hear the dog barking, closed off in the other bedroom, going insane, scratching at the door.
Justin glides in, then stops by the table. “For the record, we didn’t hurt the damn dog. We’re not monsters.”
He picks up a stack of papers held together with a large black clip. There are colorful strips marking various pages in the document. Pages Justin wanted to have easy access to after reviewing them closely.
“This thing you gave me,” Justin says, holding the document over his head like Moses with the Ten Commandments. “I went over it and over it trying to find an angle. Picking at it like a scab. It was annoying, but I couldn’t stop, ya know? I was driven like hell to find something for me to use, and I gotta tell ya, I was damn flustered.”
He kicks Davis hard in the ribs. All the air leaves him in a single deep cough as the bone-crunch rattles inside of him.
“Then I talked to your boy, Todd. He had
a solution to get me to go away. Seemed rather sudden. Damn sudden. And after a few searches I happened upon a blog post on a rather obscure tech site. That obscure tech blog talked about your firm selling out to a rather large investment firm.”
“Where’s my family?”
“Not yet.” Justin fakes a kick then stops as Davis balls up into a childlike defensive position. “The dollar amount this obscure site gave, well, I have to admit it gave me a little surge in my shorts.”
“Please.”
“Nope. Still talking.” Justin starts pacing while giving his sermon. “Then I went back over the papers you provided and it hit me like a hammer from the gods. There’s a section called Transfer Upon Death. That part didn’t get altered. Still says it all goes to you if Todd goes bye-bye.” Justin holds his arms out wide. “A real light bulb moment, if ever there was one.”
Davis knows what he’s going to say before he says it.
“The math on this is simple. If Todd owns everything and I’ve got nothing on him, then I’ve got nothing. But I’ve got everything on you, so if he dies and you get the company…” Justin runs his finger across his throat bladelike. “What’s a boy to do?”
Davis pushes himself up onto his knees. He listens toward the front door but doesn’t hear his girls anymore. No sign of Hattie anywhere.
“Where are they? What did you do?”
The green-eyed beauty steps in through the front door. She gives Davis a finger-curl hello then scrunches her nose with an affirming nod to Justin. She slinks over next to him, wrapping an arm around his waist.
Davis pushes up hard, getting to his feet and moving toward them. “If you hurt them…”
Justin pulls a gun out from inside his suit jacket then casually hands it the green-eyed beauty. She puts the barrel in her mouth and holds it in like a lollipop, letting her cheeks suck in, then slips it from her lips with a smack.
Davis comes to a dead stop as she places the moist gun barrel between his eyes.
“Let’s go outside,” Justin says. “Damn stuffy in here.”
They push Davis out the door into the driveway. A black BMW not far from the door has its trunk open. The tiny light in the hatch illuminates the inside of the trunk. Inside are Davis’s two little girls. Their hands are bound with zip ties, their mouths shut with duct tape, their eyes wide as pies. They are terrified beyond reason, tears tumbling down their trembling faces.
Davis runs toward them.
Justin sticks a foot out, tripping him, letting him stumble and fall into the gravel rocks of the driveway. The green-eyed beauty skips over to the BMW, slams the trunk closed, then tosses the gun over to Justin. She takes a position standing on the larger rocks that line the gravel driveway.
Davis can only stare at the closed trunk, imagining how afraid his girls are inside. Inside in the dark, bound and tied. Strangers with guns on their father. Their helpless father. Pathetically falling to the ground as he tried to save them.
“It’s okay,” he calls out to them, hoping they can hear him inside. “It’s going to be okay.”
“It can be,” Justin says. “It really can. All it takes is a little bit of money.”
The green-eyed beauty snickers.
“Sorry,” he says to her, then turns back to Davis. “A lot of money, actually.”
“Where’s Hattie?” Davis asks, struggling to get himself up to his feet.
Justin checks his phone, then says, “Ooooh, not far.”
“What do you want?” Davis asks. “What’s the amount?”
“Haven’t worked that out yet. Need to know the final number you’ll make off the sale of your business. You people have been less than forthright with numbers so far, so you can understand my reluctance to trust.”
“What did you do with my wife?”
“Nothing really. She just went on a ride with a friend. See, we didn’t know how long you were going to be out and we needed some privacy to take care of, ya know, Todd.”
“I’ll pay, I don’t care.”
Davis says it, but he knows no amount will end this. Nothing has changed. This is the same Justin as always. There isn’t a number that will pacify this beast. Davis has to do something. Something unthinkable.
“I know you will, but I wanted you to think hard about what we did to your friend in there. That was what we call in the biz sending a strong message. Then I want you to think about what we could do to Hattie if we put our backs into it.” He pauses, then points the gun at the trunk and whispers, “Or to them.”
“Don’t. Point that at me, not them.”
“Touching.” Justin turns his head slightly as he sees headlights approaching behind them. He tosses the gun between his hands for a moment, finally stopping and holding it steady at Davis. “You’ve been an interesting one, I gotta say. Challenging and boring all at the same time.”
Davis looks to the headlights approaching. Hattie must be in that car. The feeling of helpless rage erupting inside of him is almost too much to take. He wants to charge Justin, get the gun, and put two in each of their heads.
Patience. Think. Wait until Hattie gets here.
“Funny thing, Big Fun,” Justin says as another BMW pulls up into the drive, tires rumbling in the rocks. Its windows are blacked out, blocking any view of who’s inside. “If you think real, real hard you’ll remember something. I told you what I was going to do to you the first time we met.”
“What?” Davis asks.
“Give it a good think,” Justin says, turning to the car.
The passenger door opens and Hattie steps out. She seems unharmed, but she’s afraid. Shaken. Her face is red, possibly from crying, possibly just from the rage. She looks to Davis; her eyes are empty.
Davis breathes a small sigh of relief that she’s alive. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she says. “But I’m not hurt, if that’s what you’re asking me.”
Justin grabs her arm, pulling her over in front of him. He places the gun to her temple. Davis’s heart skips a row of beats.
“You ready for this?” Justin asks.
“No,” Davis spits out. “Don’t. Wait.” He runs, racing toward Justin and Hattie.
The driver’s door of the BMW opens.
Davis stops in his tracks. His feet plant, sucked into the gravel.
“So brave,” Tilley says as she steps from the car. “Like that. Like that a lot.”
37
Davis stands like a statue.
Shock has seized every muscle.
“You’re…” He fumbles around his words. “What? How?”
Tilley glides around the front bumper, moving toward Davis.
Gone is the ultra-sexy sheen she possessed in LA. She still carries her beauty, but no longer wields it like a surgeon’s scalpel. She’s more muted, more distant now, dressed in a smart business suit with a look that’s more ruthless attorney than a woman interested in seduction. She’s almost a different person than the one he met at the hotel bar. It’s her, but there’s a hardness, an unmistakable coldness to her. All the energy and charm she held before has vanished.
She now stands inches in front of Davis, studying him. He can’t help but stare blankly at her throat. Not a scratch. A silver necklace of a butterfly hangs where Davis imagines the cut would have been.
“You’re alive,” he mutters, more to himself than anything.
Tilley leans in to whisper, making sure the warmth of her breath tickles his ear. “Of course I’m alive, silly. You wouldn’t kill anybody.” She pulls back, holds his face in her hands and quietly says, “I mean, hell, we couldn’t even get you to fuck me.” Tilley holds his eyes, then breaks into a smile with a curl of her lip. Slinking away, she takes a seat on the hood of the BMW.
Davis’s head swirls into a mental tornado. The images of the pictures he’s seen shatter in his mind. Fragments of memories explode then slam back together. Memories he can’t begin to trust. Feelings he thought he’d had didn’t happen at all, were not real. Not hi
s to begin with. Manufactured by his mind off stories he was told by the insane. His fragile reality is burning down, his own mind betraying him.
Looking to Hattie, his heart snaps in two.
Her face is a twisted mix of confusion and disbelief. Her eyes dance, but her body is as still as a stone. A wax statue of his wife standing, staring past Davis with Justin’s gun at her head. Davis doubts she knows the gun is even there. She’s staring at the back of the car where her girls are being held.
The trunk thumps. Muted screams sound from inside.
Hattie jumps.
“Easy, Hattie,” Justin says into her ear, pulling her back and pressing the gun harder to her temple. “We’re almost there. A little trust, please.”
Davis steps toward the BMW that holds his daughters.
The green-eyed beauty slides over, taking a seat on the middle of the trunk. She pulls a knife from her pocket, flips open the large blade, then starts picking her nails with the sharp, pointed end.
“What are you doing?” Davis asks, turning between them all. His voice vibrates. “Why? Why do this? They didn’t do anything to you. This is all on me. Let them go.”
“It’s an escalation thing. We need to break you, Big Fun. There are levels to breaking someone down. Lots of variables. The situation. The mental makeup of the person, and so on. In the beginning, in LA, we needed things to use against you in order to perform the task we agreed to take on. To do what we were paid to do by your buddy Todd.”
Hattie looks toward Davis. There’s something in her eyes. Davis can see it.
“We staged all the sexy, sexy stuff and planned to use that during round one. If we needed to”—Justin jerks his head toward Tilley—“we’d move on to the pics of you killing her. Turns out we needed to. As you know.”
Davis checks Hattie. Her expression hasn’t changed. She’s not even listening to them. She’s dialed into something inside her own head.
“Those were fun to do,” Tilley says to her.
“They were, weren’t they?” Justin says, coming back to Davis. “You see, right? An escalation of blackmail to achieve a goal.”