by Logan Fox
I cringe when he licks his lips.
“Let’s go find out.”
I fall to my knees, but I’m up a second later, scrambling to get away. Behind me, Nick barks out a laugh and then shuts the door.
Locks it.
Pockets the key.
But I’m already on the other side of the room, grabbing the window sash and hauling it up.
The curtain wraps around my arm. I swat it away and lean out, lifting my leg—
The ground sways toward me.
But from a distance.
I hadn’t realized it, but I’m on the third floor. And below me? A gravel path hugging the side of the house.
Oh Lord, I’ll never survive that.
I spin around. Nick veers around the bed I clambered over, a filthy smile on his mouth. I look back at the drop. Swing my leg over the window ledge.
It’ll hurt, but hopefully only a little. Then I’ll be dead, right? No need for them to go after my men.
Except…I don’t know if that’s what will happen. Nick and Jess were given orders. Who am I to say they won’t follow them to the letter?
Death by gravel is the coward’s way out. And I’ll be leaving my men clueless. For all I know, they’ll walk into our house in Dana Point and Jess and her crew will already be waiting for them.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
I can hear every future gunshot slamming home into one of my men’s chests.
Just as Nick gets in arm’s reach, I dodge to the side.
We’re in a child’s room, a boy judging from all the action figures and faded blue paint. Where is he now, the boy that used to live here?
I slam into the door, pluck at the handle. Yes, even though it’s locked, because all I can hope for right now is a fucking miracle.
Locked.
Nick laughs again. I spin around, flattening myself against the wood. He’s only got ten minutes with me. And I’m determined to keep playing this game as long as—
Nick lifts Jess’s gun. Or maybe it’s his own, who the fuck knows?
And then he shoots me.
Chapter Forty-One
Rube
“Is this seriously the fastest you can go?” Apollo yells as he thumps the back of Cass’s headrest. “I thought you said this was a muscle car?”
“Do you even have a dick?” Cass yells back. “This is a fucking SUV. The muscle car is that yellow Mustang we left back in California, you idiotic, dickless—” he cuts off with a growl that comes close to competing with the SUV’s engine.
We’re headed south down the highway at a ridiculous speed.
I’ve never been an adrenaline junkie. Going this fast makes me feel sick, not excited. But I grit my teeth and I bear it, because the faster Cass goes, the faster we get to Trinity.
She has to be there.
It’s our only hope.
I mentally urge Cass to push the SUV as hard as he can without blowing the engine, and I hold onto the seat with claws for hands, and I will the contents of my stomach to remain where they are.
“How far, Apollo?” Zach asks.
Apollo briefly relents giving Cass shit, and checks his phone. “Another ten miles.”
“Go faster,” Zach says.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Cass mutters. “Do any of you even know what a speed limiter is? And that this car has one? And that, even if I wanted—”
“Shut up and drive,” I bark.
Then there’s silence.
And fuck, it comes just in time. Else I’d have told them to find me something to puke into.
“This is our turn off,” Cass says just as we pass a sign for a shooting range a few miles up ahead. He slows the SUV and puts on the indicator. “Christ, they weren’t fucking around when they decided to go remote, were they?” he mutters.
There isn’t much to see—just another long road.
“We still don’t know which house it is.” Apollo holds up the printout from the Redford library and starts looking through the windows. “But it’s got to be at least two or three stories.”
“Sounds like we’re looking for a mansion,” Cass says dryly. He catches Zach’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Sound familiar, Mason?”
Zachary narrows his eyes, but then his face relaxes again. He nods reluctantly. “Long drive, so the main house is far from the road. Lots of tree cover.”
He’s describing the house we were kept captive in. A place that used to be his home.
That silence comes again, but Cass breaks it this time after looking first at Zach, then at me.
“How about you burn this one down too when we’re done?”
Just after the turnoff heading for the shooting range, signs start popping up for ranches and plots. We drive until we find the first house that fits our description, but since there are two kids playing in the front yard, we drive past.
A few minutes later, something more fitting comes into view. We park behind a small copse of pine trees—just far enough to keep in sight without being spotted.
It’s a three-story house.
It’s remote as fuck.
If there’d been more than one of its type in this area, we’d have to have searched them all…but there isn’t. The only other houses are a few one-level ranch-style lots, most of them closer to the road.
Despite what Cass demanded, we didn’t come with an arsenal. We all have Kevlar vests on under our shirts, but only Zach and Cass are carrying.
I never handle guns, and this is no exception.
Apollo also declined. I have a hunting knife on me, Apollo a switchblade. But we’re only supposed to be backup for Cass and Zach, and we’re merely going in to scope the place and see if this is where Trinity is being held.
“You sure you want to go in there unarmed?” Cass asks, twisting in his seat and grabbing the headrest. “I mean, you could just wave it around. It doesn’t even have to be loaded.”
I shake my head.
The last time I touched a gun, I almost killed two innocent girls, and traumatized an entire family.
If I’d had a sliver of doubt left that I wasn’t a normal kid, that day changed everything.
It was a Saturday. Pissing with rain. My foster parents had a lunch date with friends, and their four daughters had decided to stay at home and watch sitcom reruns instead of going with.
I don’t know who bought the bottle of booze, but it was almost empty by the time I walked past and saw them passing it around. I wasn’t going to rat them out—I was just going to take it away. Our parents had made it pretty fucking clear how they felt about underage drinking. I mean, the youngest was thirteen. No one that young should be drinking anyway.
But when I tried to take it away, they ganged up on me. Thought it was a game. They were drunk, and I guess they’d been eyeing me for the past few weeks, because they tried to get me to kiss them.
They even started taking their shirts off.
A normal kid my age would have gone with it. But they were my sisters, and it was wrong, and the harder I resisted, the more intent they became.
My brothers think I’m a pussy because I never hit on any of them. I can’t even imagine what they’d say if I told them the truth about what happened that day.
Because it wasn’t just kissing.
They tried to get my pants off. And that shit triggered me worse than anything I’d experienced since we’d escaped the basement.
I snapped.
Lisa was the youngest.
She was so beautiful. Long blond hair, bright blue eyes.
I was just trying to keep her back, all of them. I shoved her too hard, and she took a tumble.
Ha. Took a tumble.
She slammed into a glass coffee table, face first. She almost lost an eye. I didn’t see her again after that, but I have no doubt the accident disfigured her.
So much blood.
And then the screaming began.
I had to keep them quiet
.
I know what happens when kids scream. Adults don’t like it.
Kids are meant to be seen, not heard.
I grabbed two of them, put my hands over their mouths. The third was unconscious on the floor. I don’t even know how that had happened. If I’d done something.
Still don’t.
And that’s how they found us. My foster parents.
Me with an undone fly, their daughters half-unclothed, and I’m holding two of them tight so they can’t scream anymore.
Blood.
Limp bodies.
The mother passed out.
Henry—my foster dad—was holding a gun. At first, I thought they’d just arrived. I couldn’t understand why he’d carry a gun around with him.
But later, when the red haze receded and memories came flooding back, I realized they’d been there long enough to see what was happening and then Henry went to get his gun.
Because I was lost.
Out of my own body.
I didn’t hear them begging with me to let their daughters go.
I just saw the gun. And then I tackled Henry to the ground. I pressed the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, but thank fuck the safety was on so nothing happened.
And I kept pulling that trigger until the police came and arrested me.
Zachary got everything sorted out, of course. Since no one actually died, and he’d offered to pay for Lisa’s plastic surgery—and then some—the charges were eventually dropped.
“I’m sure,” I tell Cass.
“Looks empty anyway,” Apollo says. “Maybe we’re too late.”
We sit in silence for a moment, and then all flinch at the faint pop of gunfire.
“Shooting range,” Zach says.
Me, Cass, and Apollo nod.
And as if that’s the signal, we file out of the car and head for the house.
“Is that…” Cass points.
I nod my head. “A grave.”
“Is there a…”
“We’ll have to check later,” I tell him. “Keep moving.”
We’re at the back of the property, headed for the patio doors. It’s the first set of doors we found, and one of the sliding glass panels is standing open.
It’s too quiet.
Surely there would be something. Voices, a radio playing, a television set. Unless, like Apollo said, we’re too late.
Or this is a dead end.
Who’s to say they even own this property anymore?
But the neatly dug grave out back gives me a shred of hope. We’re too far away to see if it’s empty or not, but there’ll be plenty of time for that once we’ve gone through the house.
I hear a faint noise. Cass holds up a hand. We stop to listen, but hear nothing.
Could have been Zach and Apollo, going through the front.
But then I hear it again.
It’s faint, but it’s undeniably a gunshot. Me and Cass frown at each other, but we don’t dare say anything.
“Shooting range,” Cass murmurs.
I nod.
We keep moving.
Through an entertainment area. Down a hall. I see a shape, and tap Cass on the shoulder, pointing.
It resolves into Zachary, stalking down the other side of the passage like a cop in an action movie. We glance at each other, and then he nods and looks up.
Downstairs cleared.
Cass and I are closest, so we go up the stairs first. As soon as we turn to head down the hall, I hear a sound again.
A panicked sob. A choked breath. Fabric and clothes rustling urgently.
My heart’s in my fucking throat, but Cass puts up his hand like he knows all I want to do is bolt forward.
I guess he also recognized the voice making those sounds.
Trinity.
Chapter Forty-Two
Trinity
The pain is so intense, I can’t even scream. It’s as if the bullet knocked every atom of air from my lungs. I drag in a horrible groaning gasp and slide to the floor.
I reach up, but I can’t bear to touch the hole in my chest. Instead, my fingers shake in the air a few inches away.
Somehow, through the violent buzzing in my ears, I hear Nick chuckle.
Then I’m flying up, the pain intensifying as Nick twists the grip he has on the front of my blood-stained dress. “Hurts, don’t it?” he says. “Should be thanking me on your hands and fucking knees, Missy, ’cos now you won’t feel anything else.”
He drags me to the bed. Tosses me on the mattress. I let out a low wail as I hit the firm surface, as that jolt sends a stabbing agony through me.
Liar.
The bullet hit me just below my right shoulder, but my entire torso feels like it’s on fire. I can’t move that arm, and my body is as limp as a rag doll.
Nick climbs onto me, pushes the muzzle of the gun so hard into my temple that I’m facing away from him, to a window.
The muzzle bites into my flesh, the cold metal spreading through me. Then he rips my dress up to my hips allowing the brisk air to caress my bare skin.
A wave of dizziness hits me. It feels like I’m on a boat, and the waves are tossing me around. Then like I’m drowning. Except I think I am, because when I try to breathe, there’s shit in the way.
I cough. Retch.
Thick, warm liquid spills from my mouth.
The air smells like copper.
Am I dying? The pain is so immense, it’s impossible to comprehend. I’m aware that I’m writhing with it, that he’s fighting my limbs so he can wrench open my legs, but that’s all distant and possibly happening to someone else now.
Or to my dying body.
Which is fine, because I’m not really there anymore.
I’m floating to the window. Heading for the bright afternoon sun beckoning me through the glass.
Not scared of falling anymore.
Because I’m weightless now.
I can just float away.
Up into the clouds.
And then the pain is back, a spear through my chest. I suck in a ragged breath, and turn my head.
Nick has his hand on my chest. He’s leaning his weight on the bullet wound, grinning at me.
I reach up, numb fingers trying to pry his hand off my chest.
But then his body is between my legs, holding them open. And he’s looking down.
There’s still something cold touching my face, but it’s different now. I use my good hand, my left hand, to feel alongside my head.
It touches cool metal.
The gun.
Pain, but not in my chest anymore. Down there. Down where he’s looking.
Let him look at my cunt, I don’t care.
Because then he’s not looking up. He’s not seeing me fumble with the gun. Trying to pick it up.
He shifts, his hand digging harder into my torn flesh. I cry out, and he groans as if the sound gets him hard.
But I don’t care, because now I’m holding the gun.
Pointing it.
It shakes.
Oh God, how it shakes.
It weighs thirty million tons.
I pull the trigger.
Where I expect him to go flying backward, he instead collapses on top of me. I cry out at the agony when his head slams into my chest. I try and push him off me, but I’ve only got one working arm and he’s still wedged between my legs.
I let out a wail of frustrated agony, but thank God I’m taking a breath when I hear footsteps coming up the stairs.
It takes everything I have to lift the gun again. I sling my arm over Nick’s back, gritting my teeth through the pain as I try and aim it at the door.
It’s too quiet out there.
Is it Jess? She said she’d leave—how long was Nick busy with me for? And if she’s gone, then who’s coming up the stairs?
The impostor.
He’s back.
I curl my finger around the trigger and blink sweat and blood out of my eyes.
The gun steadi
es.
Someone yanks at the handle. They rattle the door. Then a shot goes off.
Pop!
There’s a thump, and the door gives in, handle distorted by the bullet.
A silhouette darkens the doorway.
I squeeze the trigger.
The clap of the gun is deafening. It falls from my hand onto the floor. The figure in the doorway leans to the side, and then slowly topples to the ground.
I killed him.
I killed my father!
Tears spring into my eyes, blurring my vision. I let out a choking sob and try to shift Nick off me. He won’t budge, but then the bundle by the door starts moving.
A hand appears on the carpet. Thin. Delicate. Speckled with blood.
Jess.
I shot her.
But I didn’t kill her.
“No, fuck,” I whisper. My movements become urgent, but I still can’t shift the fucking dead body off me.
A second hand joins the first. Jess drags the top half of her body into the room. She looks dazed—eyes wide and unfocused, lips slack—but as soon as she spots me on the bed, her eyes narrow.
Other than her hands, I can’t see any more blood. But it’s as if the bottom half of her body doesn’t work anymore, because she doesn’t stand, or crawl…she just keeps dragging herself over the floor.
I stick my hand in Nick’s hoody pouch. Cigarettes, gum, a wallet. Useless shit.
I swallow hard, steel myself, and reach down.
My hand brushes smooth skin.
Lower.
I recoil when I touch his ass. If I could lift my head, I’d be able to see better, but there’s a terrible lameness spreading through me.
The dizziness is back. It comes in waves, each higher than the last.
It would be so easy just to let one of those waves take me away. To let it consume me.
Because it promises no more pain. No more leaden terror.
Jess grabs onto the side of the bed. How did she get here so quickly? Or did I actually pass out for a second?
I reach down again, pushing away my disgust and horror at touching Nick’s dead skin.
He must have pushed his pants down to his fucking knees, because I can’t feel them. Even if he had anything useful in them, they’re too far out of reach.