by Elle Thorpe
And I wasn’t going down without a fight.
I turned the lock, then opened the door. I blinked in the bright light of the classroom but was relieved to see it wasn’t as thick with smoke as I’d initially thought from the darkness of the closet. The air was definitely scented with it, but the fire wasn’t right on top of me.
At least not yet. But I wasn’t planning on sticking around until it was.
I strode toward the door of my classroom, a plan forming in my mind. I knew where the infirmary was. I’d go straight there, find Rowe and Tori and Perry, and then we’d hole up somewhere and wait this thing out together. Maybe Rowe would know a way of checking on Heath and Colt. One thing I knew for sure was that I couldn’t go waltzing into Gen Pop alone. Facing a whole room full of prisoners wasn’t an option, but neither was staying in this classroom, alone and with a fire nearby.
I yanked the door open.
“Well, well, well. Howdy, little mouse. Where are you escaping to?”
DeWitt strode forward, pushing me back inside the classroom and letting the door slam shut behind him.
I had no choice but to scuttle backward or be bowled down by him. I didn’t want him touching me. I didn’t even want him near me.
He glanced around the room. “You all alone? Poor little mouse. So lonely.”
“Officer Pritchard will be back any moment,” I bluffed, praying it were true.
DeWitt chuckled at that. “Nah. He won’t. We took care of that.” He sniffed the air. “Ah. The delicious scent of burning flesh. Or to be more precise, burning officer flesh.”
Horror washed over me. “What are you talking about?”
DeWitt shrugged. “He was being annoying. And we didn’t need him for the plan. So I let James have some fun. He’s really missed setting fires, you know? Crazy fuck. But don’t worry. We trapped them in, and the doors are supposedly fireproof. It’ll burn itself out, so we’ll be fine here. This smoke stinks, though, doesn’t it? It didn’t smell so bad in Gen Pop, but that might have been because your boy’s blood is in the air down there. Randall and the boys were in the middle of a good old-fashioned ass-kicking when I left. I’m not one to get my hands dirty, myself. But Randall’s been busting to take Michaelson down ever since he got here. There’s really no love lost between the two of them. All good, though! I told them not to kill him. And they listen to me.”
He shrugged like it was no big deal.
But I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. The thought of Rowe trapped by fire was incomprehensible. What if Tori and Perry were with him? And Heath…
Bile rose in my throat.
No!
I wasn’t losing any more people, goddammit.
Something inside me snapped. I turned wide eyes on DeWitt and let the fear inside me take hold. It bubbled up as hysterical anger. “Crazy fuck?” I yelled, getting in his face. All traces of mild-mannered school teacher washed away in the smoky air. “What do you think you are? You think you’re some big mastermind? You think you’re some big dog around here? You’re nothing but a common thug.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “A thug?” His voice dripped with fake disbelief. “Sweetheart. Where did you get that from? I think we all know why I run this joint. I’m a born leader, baby.” He waved a hand around. “You see anybody else starting riots successfully? Nah. Just me.”
He talked the talk, but I’d pissed him off. It was evident in the way his shoulders stiffened at my accusations. I’d questioned his authority, and he didn’t like it. He buried it well beneath his bravado, but it was there. His tells. His little giveaways. They spurred me on, hate for this man swirling and gathering speed until it was all I could think of.
My sister was gone. Stolen from me. The people I cared about in danger now, too.
I saw red. And then I let it loose, nothing to lose.
I ran at DeWitt with no weapons but fingers clenched into fists and a fierce determination that this man would not block my exit for one minute longer. I was leaving this room come hell or high water. I was finding Tori. I was finding Heath. And I was finding Rowe. We were leaving this place together. All of us alive. Because I refused to lose one more person I cared about.
The realization that Rowe meant something to me was startling. It hit me as I slammed into DeWitt and pummeled at his broad chest, scratching and biting, screaming for him to let me go.
But the man was a wall. He didn’t budge an inch from where he’d planted himself, blocking the entrance.
His eyes darkened. His fingers wrapped around my slim wrists, his grip punishing. He yanked my arm so hard I was sure my shoulder was on the verge of dislocating.
I yelped in pain, hating I was at the man’s mercy. But my own determination refused to let me give up that easily. I slammed my heel down on the top of his foot, satisfied when he gave a grunt of pain.
“Don’t be a bitch now,” he murmured.
I kicked and thrashed, trying to get out of his grasp, while my shoulder screamed in agony.
“Seriously. Settle down,” he snapped, his control on his cool, unflappable exterior unraveling just a fraction.
But then he grinned. An evil grimace full of his rotted, dirty teeth and stinking breath. “I just wanted to take you to your boyfriend.”
He spoke with such dripping sweetness that even a blind man would have seen through it. It was the honey that attracted insects, only to get stung by the bee.
I didn’t know who he meant. For the tiniest of seconds, fear rushed through me, thinking that Liam was here. But then we’d just been talking about Rowe. Or was he talking about Heath? None of them were my boyfriend. But that didn’t stop me from caring about them. From being desperate to know where they were and if they were okay.
I wasn’t dumb enough to let DeWitt know that. “I have no boyfriend.”
“Oh, little mouse. How you lie. You’re all Heath talks about. I thought that would make you happy?”
“You’re a liar.” I somehow doubted Heath had been talking about me, but that didn’t matter now anyway. DeWitt knew there was something between us. The whole prison did. But I wasn’t going to fuel the fire.
DeWitt held me tighter, his fingers pressing into my flesh so hard I suspected my skin bled. “I never lie. I am taking you to Michaelson. Right down there in the belly of Gen Pop, where everyone is waiting for me to put on a show. I can’t wait to see the look of relief and excitement on his face when he sees you’re alive and well.” His voice dropped an octave, into a deadly whisper. “And then I’m going to snap your pretty little neck in front of him, so the man learns his place.”
Fear punched through me, sharp and deadly. I started up a fresh round of struggles, screaming and thrashing out, trying to fight the hold DeWitt had on me. He shoved me up against the wall, but I twisted, managing to skitter away.
I lunged for the door, freedom mere inches from my fingertips, only to be brought down by a bone-jarring tackle that had me slamming into the unforgiving floor.
I screamed out in pain, DeWitt’s heavy weight coming down on my back, smashing my face into the floor. Blood coated my lips, the metallic taste filling my mouth.
But I didn’t stop fighting.
I fought as he pulled my hair, yanking my head back. I fought when he flipped me over onto my back and leaned on me so hard I could practically hear my ribs groaning under the pressure.
“I knew you’d like it rough. I was just going to take you down there and kill you. I generally like boys better than girls. But you I have a sweet spot for. And my dick hasn’t seen any action for too long. So shut up. And take what you get. You stop screaming in my face, and I’ll make it real good for you.” His meaty fingers wrapped around my throat, choking my voice into silence. My eyes bulged. Breath burned in my lungs, then caught fire when I could neither expel air nor take it in.
DeWitt chuckled, that evil sound grating down my skin. “That’s more like it. A quiet little mouse.”
The burning in my chest ease
d as darkness flickered at the edges of my consciousness. Dimly, I was aware of DeWitt yanking off my pants and fumbling with his own.
With no energy or oxygen left to fight, I prayed I would pass out. Because that would be better than being awake to watch DeWitt take something I wasn’t willing to give. Passing out would take me one step closer to death. And right now, with every part of my body screaming, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing. Death was one step closer to being back with my sister.
The darkness tried to take me, hugging me close, silencing the world with its seductive whispers.
Something dripped on my face.
And then again, and again.
Slowly, the darkness at the edges of my vision disappeared, and sound rushed back in. The fog in my eyes cleared, and a red rainbow took its place. I blinked again, my oxygen-starved brain fighting to make sense of what was going on.
DeWitt wasn’t talking anymore. Every time I’d seen the man, he hadn’t shut up. But now, he was eerily silent.
It wasn’t a red rainbow.
It was a red slit across the man’s neck. A gaping, bleeding gash, where steel had cut his throat.
The dripping on my face was his blood.
A warbled scream came out as more of a croak, and I scrambled backward, sliding myself along the floor and away from the gory sight.
But I couldn’t look away. Instead, I stared with horror, as DeWitt bled out on my classroom floor.
Vincent stood over him, one hand still clutched in DeWitt’s hair, and a blood-soaked knife in the other.
38
Mae
“Vincent,” I whispered, staring up at the quiet, timid man who was by far my best student. He didn’t look any different. His hair was as neatly brushed as it always was. His brown eyes alert and intelligent.
He dropped DeWitt’s lifeless body to the floor and then stared down at his hands. “Darn it. I’ve got blood on me. Do you have a tissue, please?”
I blinked. A tissue wasn’t going to touch the mess he’d made. Blood was rapidly spreading across the gray concrete floor, darkening it with a sickening, slick stain. But I scrambled to my feet, tugging my clothing back into place as I went, and retrieved a box of tissues from my desk drawer, cautiously handing them over.
Vincent smiled at me politely, like we were at a high tea, rather than standing in the middle of a prison riot with a dead man at our feet and smoke in the air. I didn’t know where to look. Down at DeWitt’s unseeing eyes. Or at the man who had brutally murdered him in cold blood and now wanted…a tissue.
He pulled a few out carefully and dabbed at his uniform with a sigh of frustration when unsurprisingly, they did nothing to help. Then he glanced up at me. “Oh, sorry. Did you want one, too? You have a little…” He motioned to his forehead.
I put my hand up to touch my own, and my fingers came away with sticky red blood.
DeWitt’s blood.
I let out a tiny gasp and grabbed a fistful of tissues from the box Vincent offered, and scrubbed frantically at my forehead.
Vincent watched me curiously. “That isn’t helping.” He went to my desk and found my water bottle in the bottom drawer. “Look what I’ve found. Come here. Let me help you.”
I shook my head hard.
“You don’t want me to touch you?”
It was like he could see inside my head. Or maybe my terror was just written all over my face. But the notion didn’t seem to please him.
The last thing I wanted to do was piss off the man with the knife and an obvious penchant for murder.
“You first,” I stalled. “Your hands are covered in blood. Much worse than mine. The tissue just smeared it around. Let’s get your hands clean first, and then we’ll worry about my few drops.”
He didn’t seem impressed by that idea.
I spoke quickly, keeping my voice as sure and soothing as I could. “Truly. I’m just fine. You first.”
He reluctantly nodded and held the squirt bottle out to me. “As you wish.”
I took the bottle, careful not to let our skin touch, and tried to muffle a cough. The smoke was getting thicker. Where the hell was the riot squad? If I could just stall Vincent long enough for them to get to me…
“Squirt some into my hands,” he directed.
With trembling fingers, I did so, squeezing the bottle gently, while Vincent cupped his fingers together to make a little pool. When it was close to full, he rubbed his hands together, letting the pink-tinged water fall onto the floor.
I held the bottle up again. “And the backs? You have some, uh…spray on the backs of your hands and across your knuckles.”
He nodded and held his hands out. I covered them with water once more and watched as he scrubbed at first the back of his left hand, and then his right with a soggy tissue.
The tissue didn’t turn pink from blood like I’d expected. It turned an odd shade of brown. The same sort of brown the water turned when I washed my makeup off at night.
Shock punched through the abject fear keeping my body in a permanent state of anxiety. Vincent scrubbed more at his hand, rubbing off the blood, along with a solid layer of brown goop that might have been some sort of stage makeup.
It left behind not only clean hands but a small, brown birthmark.
Perfectly shaped like a scythe.
Our conversation with Liam’s brother, Hayden, came back to me in a rush. “DeWitt is a low-level nothing. He ain’t your problem. If you got someone on the inside you care about? Tell them to stay away from Scythe. The guy is a complete nutjob. A real screw loose sort of guy, you know? You could invite the guy to dinner and your granny’s house and he’d stab her right through the heart for getting a lump in his gravy. That sorta guy.”
My blood ran cold. “Scythe—”
Vincent glanced up sharply. “What did you say?”
I pointed to his birthmark, trying to stall. “Your birthmark is shaped like a scythe. Why did you have it covered? It’s almost like a tattoo.” I forced a smile, though I knew it trembled. “It’s very cool.”
Vincent gazed down at it, rubbing his thumb over the curved shape of the blade. “They sell makeup at commissary. I always cover it. Bad things happen when I don’t.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that and I didn’t dare ask.
But Vincent grew edgy in the silence. The seconds drew out, with the two of us staring, trying to work the other out. I was sure he didn’t believe my attempt at casual interest.
Hayden’s warning. DeWitt lying dead with his throat slit. My sister the same.
My head spun with the realization that I could be staring into the eyes of my sister’s murderer.
It was me who caved first. Me who couldn’t keep it together no matter how hard I tried to keep the fear at bay.
Vincent was Scythe. The one Hayden had called ten times worse than DeWitt. At the time, I hadn’t understood how that was possible. But now I saw. Now I saw Vincent’s silently lethal actions in the cold hard light of day.
And I understood what Hayden had meant.
A sob broke free from my chest. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. The terror. The confusion. All I could do was try to keep him talking. Try to remind him that I was his friend. Try to keep him thinking that we were a team.
I swallowed hard and tried not to lose the contents of my stomach when I stared down at DeWitt again. “Vincent, what have you done?”
He blinked, seemingly confused by the question.
I pointed to the body at our feet. The very, very dead body.
“Oh that. He was hurting you. So I killed him. And probably dulled my favorite shiv in the process. Most annoying. Anyway, shall we go?”
My stomach flipped. Vincent’s manners and quiet calm had always been out of place, surrounded by loudmouths and extroverts, all vying for the top dog position with their bravado and bullshit. But I’d never found his ways disturbing. Never found them as completely creepy as I did right now. Who killed a man in such a brutal manner
, then in the next breath, quietly and politely asked for a Kleenex?
Nobody in their right mind, that was for sure.
“Go where?” I asked, my mind racing. What was it people always said when dealing with kidnappers or people who were about to jump off a bridge? Keep them talking.
He switched his shiv to his left hand and held his right hand out for me. “Well, we can’t stay here, can we? I’m not sure if you noticed, but the smoke is getting quite uncomfortable, so I think it’s time we departed.”
“Departed?” I asked slowly. He was right, the smoke was getting worse every minute we stood here, but his choice of words had my legs trembling. I couldn’t stand the not knowing. “Are you going to kill me, too?”
He stared at me, and I could practically see his mind whirring. He tipped his head to one side. “What a curious thing to say. Come now.”
He held his hand out to me.
But I couldn’t. I’d rather die in a smoke-filled room than be brutally murdered at the hands of a complete and utter psychopath who used words like ‘curious’ and ‘darn.’
I shook my head. “No. No…thank you.”
He frowned but ignored my protest. “Come.”
I shook my head, drawing whatever tiny amount of strength I had left. “I said no.”
That was when I saw it. The change in him. Where he went from Jekyll to Hyde. Bruce Banner to the Hulk. A shield dropped down over his dark eyes, and they narrowed into slits. In one large step, he had his hand around my throat, his blunt nails digging into my neck. “No wasn’t an option, Miss Donovan.”
He hissed my name like he was some beast from the depths of Hell, and my legs threatened to give out.
Then just as quickly, he let me go, calm expression back in place.
I caught myself on a table, clinging to it for dear life in order to stop myself crashing into the floor again. When he held his hand out this time, I knew better than to disobey him.
With jerky movements, I put my hand in his.
His fingers clamped over mine hard, sharp, and painful.
Possessive.
“That’s a good girl,” he purred. “I have so many plans for you, Miss Donovan. And the night has only just begun.”