Gun Shy

by Lili St. Germain

  “No,” I whisper, reaching in and lifting her out of the tub, setting her on the tiled floor. I grab at the towels hanging on the rack, wrapping one around each of her wrists and holding them above her body, trying to use gravity to help stem the thick pulsing of blood from the identical deep lacerations on her wrists. I hold her wrists in one hand, searching for a pulse at her neck. It’s so faint I can barely feel her heart, struggling to pump whatever blood is left in her body to keep it going.

  “Cassie, baby, can you hear me?” I fish my phone from my jeans pocket and dial 911. I know that by doing this, I’m inviting the wrath of Damon King upon me, but I don’t care. I would walk through fire to save this girl. I would open my chest and bleed my heart’s blood into her if it would save her right now. I would kill everyone in the world if it brought her back, if it woke her up. The ambulance is dispatched. I hear sirens wail in the distance. I keep checking her heartbeat because I’m terrified that if I take my fingers away from her neck, she will die right here in my arms.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CASSIE

  I didn’t die.

  I couldn’t even get that right.

  What I did do was ensure that I’ll never be alone long enough to try it again. I don’t remember Leo finding me in the bathtub, or the ambulance arriving, or Damon riding in the back with me. I don’t remember them tapping his vein to transfuse more blood into me after they used their stock and ran out.

  I do remember waking up in the hospital, though, strapped to a hospital bed with leather restraints, my wrists bandaged heavily and my stomach full of charcoal, my poor, concerned stepdaddy sitting beside the bed.

  I remember the drive home, two days later, after Damon had signed me out with a promise to watch me like a hawk and never leave me alone. I remember the way he pulled up on the side of the road when we were halfway home, pointed at a clearing in the thick pine trees, and told me that’s where he’d bury Leo’s body if I ever pulled a stunt like that again.

  * * *

  THAT WAS THREE WEEKS AGO.

  * * *

  NOW, Chris McCallister sits across from me, his fingers drumming restlessly along the side arm of the sofa. I had to rearrange this room, move the floor rug to cover the large stain that Ray’s blood made. Ironically, not from the shot that killed him — apparently, that blood came clean off the floorboards in the dining nook. But in here, in the living room, the wooden boards lining the floor aren’t glossy, but dull and sanded back, waiting for a fresh coat of varnish.

  Instead, they got a fresh spray of blood when I slashed Ray’s palm with a carving knife.

  Damon says we’ll need an industrial sander to get the stain out, so in the meantime, my mother’s Turkish rugs and some clever furniture repositioning will have to suffice. The only reason I don’t want anyone to find out what happened to Ray is the same reason I don’t want anyone to find out what happened to Jennifer - because Damon will, undoubtedly, be able to pin the crimes on Leo and send him to prison for the rest of his life.

  Nevada has the death penalty.

  That’s not going to happen.

  Chris is here because Damon had to go into Reno and meet with a new taskforce. They’re taking over the investigation into Jennifer’s disappearance. And since I can’t be alone, I have a babysitter here.

  I doubt Damon would have chosen Chris had he known our history. Still. He doesn’t have any real friends, and he killed his own brother to save me. So I guess Deputy Chris is as good as it gets as far as babysitters for suicidal stepdaughters.

  “You want coffee?” I ask, breaking the silence. Chris shakes his head. “No, thanks. I’m good.”

  I wander into the kitchen to pour myself a glass, looking at the view through our brand new kitchen window. Safety glass. Unbreakable. Another lock on my tomb.

  I pour myself coffee and replace the pot, turning to see Chris has followed me into the kitchen. “Thank Christ you followed me in here,” I say, sipping my coffee. “I almost killed myself getting this coffee.”

  Chris rolls his eyes, circling the counter. “I know you don’t want me here,” he says, looking at me across the kitchen. “But nobody wants you to hurt yourself, Cassie.”

  I take a deep breath. It’s not myself I want to hurt right now. It’s everyone else. I’ve got this boiling rage inside me, this frustration. I can’t even pee without somebody standing outside the bathroom door, talking me through it. I need to escape, but I can’t. I need to see Leo, but I can’t.

  “Have you seen Leo lately?” I ask Chris. Suddenly, his presence isn’t so annoying. Suddenly, I can see a way to find out what’s happening. Chris nods. “I saw him at the hospital,” he says. “After you— well, after they brought you in. He was pretty messed up. Kept asking all the nurses if you’d made it, but they wouldn’t tell him a thing. Damon told them not to talk to him about you.”

  I nod. “I hope somebody told him I’m alive,” I murmur.

  “I told him,” Chris says, looking guilty.

  “Thanks,” I reply, surprised. Chris is loyal to Damon, but I guess he’s only human, too.

  “Why are you still so worried about him?” Chris blurts out. “ I mean, after everything. Why?”

  I frown. “It was an accident,” I say slowly. “It was a fucked up thing that he did, but he didn’t go out there that night intending to kill my mother.”

  “I’m not talking about the accident,” Chris says.

  Fear spikes along my spine, thick and cloying. “What are you talking about?”

  “Cassie. I’m talking about Jennifer. It looks pretty fucking bad, don’t you think?”

  Panic rises in my chest and I push it down. I wish I had a drink right now. “He didn’t do it, Chris.”

  Chris says nothing, but his jaw flexes like he’s debating whether to talk more. Like there’s something he’s dying to say to me.

  “I thought you were Leo’s friend,” I say, shocked. “I thought you were my friend. If you know something, tell me.”

  “I could lose my job,” Chris protests.

  “Leo could get the death penalty,” I snap. “But sure. You worry about your job.”

  “You’ve been working in a diner since you finished high school while I worked my ass off looking for dead girls,” Chris says, stabbing his finger in the general location of the diner. “Don’t pretend this is nothing. I can’t tell you anything. This is an active investigation!”

  “Oh my God,” I say, clutching the counter. “You think he did it, don’t you?”

  Chris is visibly agitated. “Come on, Cass. They found Karen next to his house! On his property! And then Jennifer’s just gone right after he gets back to town? How am I supposed to trust him when he tells me he didn’t do either of these things? Huh?”

  Angry tears are burning my eyes. “You don’t seriously mean that. I was with him when Karen was murdered.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t trust you either,” he says.

  Imagine if I told him that he was standing on top of the bloodstain that belongs to the dead man who slaughtered Karen. Imagine if I told him that Jennifer was outside the window, dead and buried. Imagine if I told him everything.

  He wouldn’t believe me.

  Nobody ever believes you when you try to tell the truth.

  “I want to show you something,” he says.

  “I don’t want to see your dick, Chris.”

  “Cassie!”

  “Sorry. Jesus. Ever heard of a joke?”

  Chris pulls his phone out, hits a few keys, hands it to me.

  “We can joke later. I want you to tell me if you know this car. If you’ve ever seen it. Who it would belong to.”

  I look down at the photo and a deep unease spreads in my belly. “I don’t think so,” I say slowly. “Why?”

  “Look again.”

  I pretend to look again, even though I don’t need to. “Nope. What’s so special about this car?”

  Chris sighs, pocketing his phone again. He looks dis
appointed. “Nothing. Leo came to me a while ago, asked me to look into some paint chips on the side of his Mustang.”

  “His Mustang from the accident? I thought that car was crushed or scrapped or whatever.”

  Chris nods. “We all thought it was. Turns out old Lawrence couldn’t bear to part with it, covered it with a tarp and hid it in the corner of his lot.”

  More unease. More head-numbing stuff. Suspicion is rising within me, hot and fierce, but I can’t show Chris that. “And the paint chips?”

  Chris shrugs. “Probably from the guardrail from a previous accident. Or from the scrapyard. Honestly, it was clutching at straws anyway.”

  “Wait,” I say, still utterly confused. “So Leo was trying to say the paint chips were from the night of the accident?”

  Chris nods uneasily.

  “From another car?”

  Another nod. “Hypothetically, of course. Because I sent the chips off to a private lab, and they’re the ones who matched it to this make and model, but I can’t find a single car in the state of Nevada that has ever been registered in this color.”

  “But if there were a car this color. Hypothetically. You’re saying this person may have caused the accident?”

  Chris sighs. “Yeah. It’s possible this other car pushed Leo’s car off the bridge. At that angle, at that speed, it’d have to be somebody who knew what they were doing.”

  I change the subject. I don’t want to appear too eager. I also don’t know if I trust Chris as far as I can throw him, even if he does seem like a lovely boy. He’s fiercely loyal to Damon, and so I cannot let him too close.

  I have the information I need.

  Now, I just need him to leave.

  Sure enough, a 911 call comes in about an hour later. Chris tries to get me to accompany him, but I flat-out refuse. He calls Amanda and asks her to come over, and speeds off, sirens blaring. I know I have about three minutes before Amanda and her pitying fucking eyes arrive, and I use those three minutes wisely.

  I make my way into the garage, quietly and efficiently sidling up to the car Damon still hasn’t gotten rid of. Well, I say car, but it’s a truck. Ray’s truck. I circle around to the front of the truck still parked in the spot Ray left it when he ambushed me, the night Damon blew a hole in his head.

  I skate my hands along its metallic paint, looking for something.

  It’s the right make.

  It’s the right model.

  It’s the exact color of the truck Chris showed me on his phone.

  The elusive pickup with the dark red paint.

  I remember Ray’s warning to me: Stay still or you’ll get what you deserve, just like your mother got what she deserved.

  At the time I’d thought it nothing more than an empty threat, but maybe that threat was full and overflowing.

  My brain does all sorts of calculations as I study the hard corners of Ray’s pickup.

  I run my hands along its edges, and at the corner, I can feel these tiny raised spots as if someone has fixed up the paint job.

  Usually you’d paint over rust spots, but these don’t feel like that. These are long strands, like gouges, but raised instead of indented into the metal.

  Using my fingernail, I dig at the dark red paint. Whoever patched the car did a great job of matching the paint; it’s invisible until you’re looking specifically. I scratch at the little raised parts, the dark red flaking away in my palms. Midnight blue paint glints at me from underneath.

  Oh, God. Oh God, Oh God.

  I stagger back, glancing at the license plate. Registered in California.

  Of course you’d never find this car on the Nevada database.

  Ray made sure to register it out of state to cover his tracks.

  But the bastard kept the truck, he kept the weapon he used to push Leo’s Mustang off the road.

  He kept it as a trophy.

  Because it wasn’t an accident at all, was it?

  Damon wanted me, and Mom was obviously in the way. Leo was in the way. So they got rid of them both in one fell swoop. One sideswipe on an ice-covered bridge. One old car with no airbags, no roll cage, no safety.

  Ray Linklater is the one who killed my mother.

  Ray and Damon.

  Brothers without blood.

  Accomplices.

  Murderers.

  I hear Amanda’s car pull up in the driveway and blink back tears, hurriedly covering the truck again. I’m pulling the garage door shut and heading for the front door just as Amanda knocks.

  I open it and she’s there, smiling, such a kind fucking smile. She must see the look on my face, utterly bereft, trying to unravel a decade of secrets and lies while trying not to fall to the floor.

  “You look like you need a hug,” she says, closing the front door behind her, pulling me into her, holding me tight.

  She smells like the cherry pie my mom used to bake, and I fucking lose it. I bury my face in her neck and cry. “Hey, come on,” she coos, stroking my hair. “It’s going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right.”

  * * *

  EVERYTHING IS NOT ALL RIGHT, Amanda. Everything is not fucking all right.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CASSIE

  Grief is seasonal.

  * * *

  DISBELIEF COMES AND GOES, and leaves an aching pit of sadness for you to somehow carry around with you while you smile and nod and pretend you’re not hollowed out inside. Grief is useless. It’s like drowning in a sea of your own despair because you won’t grab onto the rope being offered to you. So you let yourself be sucked under, you let the rough waters invade your nose and your mouth and your ears and your eyes until you’re dead on the inside, hollowed out, a walking corpse. Grief makes you weak.

  * * *

  BUT RAGE… rage is useful. It is the tiny seed that sprouts inside you and spreads like tendrils on a vine. It weaves itself around your veins, sticks in its barbs, and reminds you that you are still alive. It burns in your blood, that blood passes through your heart, and over time you fill up your hollow with something else. Rage…. And purpose.

  * * *

  I CAN THANK Damon for my rage. A hard kernel of hate that passed from him to me, a metaphorical transaction, the grit from which a pearl forms. It rests inside my belly like a bullet, smooth and hidden, and with it I find a strength that comes only from surviving something utterly catastrophic.

  * * *

  THE ACCIDENT WASN’T Leo’s fault. The accident wasn’t an accident at all.

  * * *

  IN MY RAGE, I find my solace. In my rage, I vanquish my despair.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CASSIE

  The next morning, I make coffee, just like I always do. One cup for me and one cup for him, fresh and black and bitter, just the way we like it.

  Damon’s cleaning his gun when I sit at the table across from him, sliding him his cup. He glances up at me, our eyes catching for the briefest of moments before he goes back to brushing imaginary dust out of his gun parts. The guy is obsessed with military cleanliness. And while I enjoy living in a tidy house, I do not understand why he cleans so obsessively.

  I bear the time patiently, watching him as he fiddles with gun parts in between sips of coffee.

  “What?” he finally asks. So he’s noticed my sudden interest in him. Good. I have a few things I’d like to ask him.

  “Did your mom used to clean a lot?” I ask him. “Your real mom, I mean.”

  He freezes, his right eye twitching the tiniest bit. You’d miss it if you weren’t watching, but I am watching. Intently.

  “I don’t remember,” he says. “Why?”

  “My mother used to tell me I was made of glass,” I say, smiling as I remember her in happier times. “You remember? She had this way of knowing what I was thinking. She always knew if I had lied to her.”

  He frowns. “I don’t want to talk about your mother.”

  “I think you’re made of glass,” I continue. “I see
right through you, Damon. I know what you’re doing.”

  He smiles then, a smirk that drags up one side of his wide, sensual mouth. “Oh, really?” he says. “Enlighten me.”

  I wait for a moment, watching as he fiddles with a tiny brush and some clear oil.

  “I think you’re trying to pin Jennifer’s disappearance on Leo.”

  His expression goes blank.

  “You promised me that if I stayed away from him, you would let him be. And yet, he’s your only suspect in her disappearance.”

  Damon’s jaw tightens; his grip on the little brush in his hand threatens to snap the thing in two. “Are you staying away from him?” he asks.

  I always look down at the ground when I’m lying. Mom always told me lying would send me straight to hell, so when I lie, that’s probably why my eyes go down.

  “Yes,” I reply, a flawless lie, and my eyes don’t waver from his. “I am. And so should you. Find somebody else to blame Jennifer’s disappearance on.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a while, his eyes on the gun, his body language telling me that he’s mad. One wrong word and he could snap.

  “Damon,” I press. “Promise me you will leave him alone.”

  He pretends like I’m not even here.

  In my mind, I sharpen my knife. I stare at the vein in his neck, the jugular, and I imagine slicing through it like a surgeon of death.

  “Daniel.”

  He drops the gun like it’s made of fire; if it had bullets in it, the thing would probably fire from the force at which it hits the tabletop. There it is. I have cut him open and now I’ll watch him bleed out.

  And I’ve got to say, I expect something more in his reaction. Something indelible, something violent. I expect him to tackle me down to the floor, maybe stick a bar of soap in my mouth and make me choke on it until I promise never to say his real name again. But he doesn’t.