Collateral

by Callie Hart

  She bites her lip, staring me down. “I know,” she says in a small voice. “I know he didn’t. But he said he did.”

  “You know the Duchess wasn’t your mom?”

  She nods. “I never believed him.”

  “Then—” I can barely speak. A wave of anger builds in my chest, making my throat constrict. “Then why did you speak to him on the phone? Why the hell did you go with him?”

  “Because…” She covers her face with her hands. “It sounds stupid now.”

  “Lacey, tell me!” I’m on the verge of screaming.

  “Because I already knew he was my dad. And…and I wanted him to think I believed him when he called me. That’s why I said…that’s why I said all that awful stuff. I’m sorry, Sloane, really, I didn’t mean any of it.”

  “What?” This is absolute madness. She knew? First Zeth knew all along that Lacey was his sister, and now she’s telling me she knew Charlie was her father? What is wrong with these people? Why the hell do they keep their cards so close to their chests? I want to grab hold of Lacey and shake her. Shake some fucking sense into her. “Why?”

  The blonde girl shrugs, pulling at a loose thread on the torn sweater she’s wearing. “Because he keeps fucking everything up for Zeth. He tried to hurt you. I wanted to…I wanted to kill him. I tried to. That’s why I’m in here with you instead of out there with them.”

  “You tried to kill Charlie?”

  “With a screwdriver.”

  None of this is making any sense. I press my forehead against my knees, trying to breathe through the panic that’s gripping hold of me. “He could have killed you, Lace. What were you thinking?”

  She doesn’t say anything. When I look up, about to scold her some more, I see there are tears streaking down her face.

  “I was thinking I wanted you two to be safe. I was thinking about the normal life you guys deserve to share. You can’t have that with Charlie still around, and you…you’ll never be able to forget it if Zeth kills him. It’ll play on you.”

  I want to deny that, but the words stick in my throat. Honestly, I’ve done everything in my power not to think about it. I’ve known for a while that killing Charlie is the only way Zeth sees us having a life together, just like Lacey is saying, but I’ve put it from my mind. Tried to make myself believe I’m okay with it because Charlie is a bad person. Because Charlie will kill us given half the chance. But I’m not okay with it. I haven’t been for a while.

  Lacey starts crying.

  I shuffle toward her on my butt and wrap an arm around her shoulder. “Zeth would never want you to take on something like that for him. And neither would I. You damn near broke his heart when you walked out with that man.”

  She turns into me and starts sobbing, her voice muffled in my shoulder. “I know. But…he’s done so much for me. Everything. And so have you. And I already killed Greg Mallory. I figured it wouldn’t be so bad. I could do it again if I had to.”

  “Oh, shit, Lace.” I hug her to me tight, running my hands up and down her back. This poor girl. I have to admit, I’ve been angry ever since she walked out of Zeth’s apartment with Charlie. She chose to leave us. She chose him over her brother and me. That hurt more than words can ever describe, but this hurts more. She did it all, put herself in this awful position, for us. I can’t cope with that.

  My own tears chase fast and hot down my cheeks. Lacey wraps her arms around my waist, crying even harder. For a brief and fragile moment, we are hopeless and inconsolable. And then I put a stop to it.

  “C’mon. Sit up. We need to figure out what we’re gonna do.” I wipe my face with the back of my hand, and then I wipe away Lacey’s tears, too. She blinks up at me, her tiny frame trembling against mine.

  “We can’t do anything. “

  “Of course we can. Being defeatist is the only sure way we’re definitely going to lose here,” I say. “How many men does Charlie have with him?”

  Lacey thinks on this. “They come and go all day. I don’t know.”

  “Okay. Well, I know the kind of man Charlie is. He won’t leave us waiting here for long. And when he sends for us, we’ll be ready. Right?” I have no idea where this shit is coming from. I know the kind of man Charlie is? We’ll be ready for him? Really? That sounds incredibly cliché and entirely unbelievable, but I sound like I mean it. Gives me an air of plausibility. Lace darts a doubtful look my way, but then nods slowly, still chewing on her lip.

  “Tell me about the screwdriver,” I say.

  “I snatched it when they parked the cars in the underground parking lot. They have a garage down there. Some of the guys fix up old cars for Charlie. They were arguing about whether they should go back for you and Zeth, so they didn’t notice me slip it into my pocket. It was small.” She looks down at her hands. “I should have waited. We were walking up the stairwell to get into the building and I couldn’t take it anymore. He just kept sniffing and sniffing, and I knew why. He was off his face. I didn’t care, then. I just wanted him to die. I pulled it out of my pocket and I was gonna drive it into his back, but the two assholes behind me grabbed me before I could.” She looks up at me, eyes still shining brightly from her tears. “Charlie was not happy.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “He had this room ready for me. It was full of pink lace and these pretty dolls. The bed was massive. It had one of those things hanging down from the ceiling over it. I don’t know what they’re called.”

  A canopy. I had a canopy over my bed when I was a little girl. I felt like a princess, and every night Dad would draw the voile across and lie on top of the covers with me, reading stories out of my Brothers Grimm books until I fell asleep. Poor Lacey never had that. Perhaps in some way, by giving it to her now Charlie was trying to be a father to her. But after your child tries to stab you in the back with a screwdriver, I imagine that changes things. I am right.

  “He didn’t let me stay in there, though. He said I had to learn some respect and he threw me in here.”

  “At least he didn’t kill you.”

  “He can’t kill me,” she says miserably.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he told me Zeth’s not really his. And he has no brothers or sisters. No other living relatives. I’m the only other person alive on the planet that shares his bloodline. And…he’s dying, Sloane. He hasn’t got long left to live.”

  ******

  Charlie Holsan’s on the way out. Thank the universe. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to hear a terminal prognosis in all my life. Does that make me a terrible, awful person? I remember Zeth saying he assumed Charlie was sick, and now that it’s confirmed it feels like a weight is being lifted from my shoulders. I have no idea why. I’m still locked in a concrete box with no means of escape. I still have no idea where the man I love is, or whether he’s even okay. But somehow, just knowing Charlie’s not got long left is faintly comforting.

  After an hour of holding Lacey in my arms and comforting her, Michael begins to stir. His eyelids flicker open, his right hand making involuntary open and closing twitches.

  “Michael? Michael, are you okay?” I check his pupil response again, though it’s still hard to see how his irises react with so little light. He mumbles something under his breath, eyes not focused on anything in particular, and then it’s as though his system reboots right in front of me. He inhales sharply, eyes widening, back bowing, and then Michael is suddenly awake. Properly awake. He looks up at me, two small creases forming between his brows.

  “Where’s Zee?” These are his first words. No confusion over where we are. No checking himself over to see if he’s all right. Where’s Zee?

  “We don’t know.” I place my fingertips against his neck, checking his pulse. Still slow, but steady. If we were in the hospital, I’d be very concerned about my patient. I’d want to keep him in a couple of days to monitor him. There would be MRIs to check his brain function and internal organs. There would be at least three people, each responsibl
e for making sure a different part of Michael was functioning properly, watching him around the clock.

  I would be in the same position. However, since we’re not in the hospital, I just have to assess how he’s feeling and go from there. Not that I can do anything about it if he does experience compression to his brain, or he is bleeding internally, of course, but still…

  “Do you feel nauseous?” I ask.

  “No.” Michael looks grim with the small amount of light slipping in under the doorway throwing his face into shadows. His whole head looks like that of a skull: eye sockets drowning in darkness, cheeks gaunt and hollowed out. “I feel like murdering somebody,” he grinds out.

  I had the good sense to be intimidated by Michael when I first met him, but in this moment I can see how he would be truly terrifying if you found yourself on his bad side. “You and I both, buddy. But we’re trapped in here.”

  Michael’s face distorts in a rictus of rage. I think he’s going to jump up and start beating at the walls, set on smashing them apart with his bare hands, but then Lacey shuffles across the bare concrete floor, twists herself over so that her back’s to Michael, and nestles herself into him. His whole demeanor changes in the blink of an eye.

  “What you been doing, kid? Huh?” he whispers to her, wrapping his arm protectively around the girl. Lacey doesn’t answer. She closes her eyes and falls asleep. I don’t sleep. The mere thought of it is laughable. All I can think about is Zeth and whatever the hell Charlie is doing to him. It can’t be good. Whatever it is, it can’t be good.

  ******

  “You want salt? They never put enough salt in the fucking food.” Charlie slides a saltshaker toward me; I catch it before it can go flying off the end of the polished oak table. The pasta O’Shannessey slapped unceremoniously in front of me, scowling the whole time, is over-salted if anything. I haven’t eaten any of it; I can just smell the overload of sodium. After the movie theater, Charlie had me hauled up two flights of stairs to what must once have been the main lobby of the place. The furniture has been ripped out. Nothing but the matted old carpet, worn threadbare in places by the feet of many thousands of people, and the concession stand remain. The place still smells faintly sweet, mixed in with the staleness of dust, age and time.

  “Doctors say the radiotherapy’s killed my taste buds,” Charlie advises me, as he winds some of the pasta around his fork and stuffs it into his mouth. “They’re full of shit, though. There are a few things left I can still taste. Garlic. Scotch.” He smirks at me. “Pussy. So long as I can still taste scotch and pussy, I don’t give a fuck about everything else.”

  Charlie’s mention of radiotherapy confirms my suspicions—he’s sick. He’s not just sick. He’s dying. “How long you got left?” I shove the plate away from me, my stomach twisting.

  “Told me I had two months,” Charlie says, grinning at me. “Five months ago.”

  “Commiserations.”

  “Ha!” he thrusts his fork in my direction, splattering sauce onto the tabletop. “You could give two shits if I live or die, my boy. But it’s nice that you pretend, right?”

  “Oh, I definitely give a shit. When you’re dead, Charlie, I’m gonna fucking dance on your grave.”

  “And what makes you think you aren’t gonna be in the ground long before me?”

  He has a point there. I just send him a hateful look down the table. If it weren’t for the fact that O’Shannessey and Sammy both have guns trained on me, I’d lunge right across the table and drown the motherfucker in his Alfredo Pomdero. I want to see the old man choke.

  “Why here, Charlie? Why the hell have you brought us here?”

  Charlie glances up from his meal, chewing with his mouth open. “The movie theater?” His eyes travel up to the ceiling, as though observing the decaying opulence and seeing something entirely different. “Your mother used to come with the Duchess here every Saturday for a matinee. They thought they lived in the fucking forties, those two. I thought for a little while the Duchess was cheating on me. I ’ad ’er followed just to make sure she was keeping her fucking knees together, and they told me she was coming ’ere to watch Casa-fucking-blanca and old Rita Hayworth movies. Only place in Seattle that used to play that shit at the time. And that silly bitch, she pissed me off one day, so I bought the place and ’ad it closed down. Kitchen still works, though.” He winks at me—the wink of an insane bastard. “It’s big and it’s quiet in here. The building’s been ’ere so long, people ’ave forgotten it even exists. It’s part of the landscape. People see it without actually seeing it. That makes it the perfect kind of place to lay low when you need to.”

  Hiding in plain sight. I have no idea where we are geographically—still in Seattle?—but I’m guessing it’s somewhere blatantly obvious.

  “Aren’t you gonna eat your food?” Charlie asks. He’s talking to me with the conversational tone of a concerned friend. I choke on the bitter laugh that wants to burst out of me.

  “I would rather starve.” I’m actually fucking hungry, but the sensation doesn’t feel right. My stomach feels like it’s pitching uncontrollably, one minute demanding food, the next threatening to expel its meager contents right onto the table. Hot and cold sweats, too. Whatever happened to my body in that blast, it’s seriously not happy with me right now, that much is clear. And I have no idea if Sloane’s okay, either, which is driving me fucking crazy.

  “You should eat,” the old man repeats. “You’re going to need your strength soon.”

  That sounds ominous, but guess what? Threats really are something I could give two shits about. Physical pain means nothing to me. Finding Sloane, making sure she’s okay, and then making this bastard pay, in that order; those are the only things that matter.

  “Y’know I wasn’t exactly ’eartbroken when I found out you ’adn’t died in that explosion. Since I took you from your uncle, I’ve enjoyed fucking with you. I’ve gained an immense, bottomless kind of satisfaction from watching you suffer throughout your life. I always thought I’d be there when you died, so I could enjoy watching that, too. The bomb was a little classless, I know, but it felt necessary. You ’aven’t been behaving yourself, Zeth. And I couldn’t ’ave that. But then, miracle upon miracles, you and your fucking friends survive, and I get my wish after all. I do get to watch you die.” He spears some chicken on his fork and shoves it into his mouth. I imagine it sticking in his throat. Imagine his face turning purple as he coughs and splutters and fights for air.

  “So with that in mind, I’ve organized a little entertainment for myself. There are six blokes on their way ’ere, and every single one of ’em ’as a bone to pick with you. I’ve said they can each go a few rounds with you, see ’ow long they can last. Probably won’t be long since you’re a berserker and they’re fucking stray dogs. I guess that’s my fault. When I used to come into your room at night, I created a bit of a monster, didn’t I? I created a fighter—a fact that might not have worked in my favor in recent days, but still. Was worth it just to ’ear you fucking cry. And if you’re not dead by the time the last man steps into the ring, that’s all the better for me. That means I can kill you myself.”

  I hate that he can talk about what he did to me so flippantly. This man has fucked me over more ways than I can count. He sent me to possibly the worst place on earth and left me there to rot for years. He killed my mother. He stalked the shadows of my bedroom on a near-nightly basis when I was just a snot-nosed shit of a teenager—tried to kill me—and yet he’s shown no remorse. Where I’m concerned, it’s very fucking clear he’s proud of his accomplishments.

  “So you have to bring in six guys to wear me down before you’ll take a shot at me, old man? Is that it? I seem to remember you being a lot braver when I was a third of the size I am now.”

  O’Shannessey snickers. Charlie doesn’t look at the man, but every muscle in his body stiffens. O’Shannessey realizes he’s just fucked up and clears his throat, shifting from one foot to the other. “I’m not a fu
ckin’ idiot, Zeth,” Charlie snaps. “I didn’t go through weeks of therapy and needles and fucking endless, humiliating exams just so you can smash your fist through my face. You’ll have to forgive me if I seem a little…delicate, but I want to preserve what life I have left.”

  The thing is, he doesn’t seem delicate at all. He hardly seems like he’s aged since the day he showed up at my uncle’s place and spirited me away. I clench my hands under the table, feeling wave after wave of adrenalin rattle around my body. Despite being in some pretty serious pain, I’m just waiting for my moment. Waiting for my moment to end this once and for all. And I don’t intend on waiting for Charlie’s buddies to show up.

  I know the kind of men he would have asked here. The kind who have lost family members at Charlie’s behest. All it would have taken was a few carefully whispered words in the right ears—Zeth Mayfair, he’s the one that did it—and I’m sure half of Seattle’s underworld is baying for my blood.

  Charlie angles his head, but doesn’t look at O’Shannessey—the old man hasn’t forgotten O’Shannessey’s little fuck up just now. I’m betting there will be repercussions at some point. Some point soon. Charlie’s never been one to let retribution sit too long. “Go and get the girls,” he snaps. To Sammy, he says, “Kill the other one.”

  Michael is the other one. I’m rising to my feet, ready to start some shit, when I feel the explosion of pain in my chest. My body locks up, and for a moment I can’t figure out why. I have no control over any part of me. My hands, arms, legs, none of it works. I tremble and shake, barely able to breathe. I do manage to roll my eyes down to the source of all the pain—two burning hot points in the center of my chest—and I see the probes there, digging into my skin. A Taser. After narrowly avoiding being shot with one at Pippa’s, I get shot with one now, here. By Charlie. I never even saw it coming. How ironic.