Stolen Crush

by Stunich, C. M.

  His gamer girl, I guess.

  “Fucking Christ,” Chasm snarls, but he moves over to the wooden box anyway. Together, we heft it up and carry it over to his car, shoving it into the trunk as he curses and mutters under his breath. “I already sort of figured that I was going to hell.” Chas steps back and then uses some bungee cords he had stored in the trunk to keep the box in place. We can’t exactly close the trunk; his zippy little sportscar isn’t nearly big enough to hold the … box. “Guess this seals the deal.”

  Just think of it as a box, I tell myself. It’s just a box, not a person.

  It also proves that JJ was, in fact, a victim of the Slayer. Because of me. Because she was my maid for all of one day. I feel fucking sick to my stomach.

  “Let’s go.” I climb in and Chasm does the same, resting his forehead on the steering wheel for a minute before sitting back up and starting the car. “If it’s too much for you—” I begin, but he doesn’t let me finish, casting me this death glare that gives me the chills.

  “I’m not leaving you to do this alone, and I sure as hell am not leaving Parrish to get killed by some deranged lunatic. Are you kidding me? I know you don’t like me, but you really have low expectations.” Chas backs out of the parking space and off we go, following the directions that were given to us.

  “Whoever said I didn’t like you?” I whisper, because it’s just too much to ask me to talk any louder than that right now. There is a dead girl in the trunk of my stepbrother/boyfriend’s best friend’s luxury sportscar, a girl that was killed by my supposed bio dad who also happens to be the Seattle Slayer whose victim count just clicked up one from twelve to thirteen.

  If he killed Parrish, too, then it’d be fourteen …

  I was missing for fourteen years.

  Could be a coincidence or … not.

  I clamp a hand over my mouth and lean back in the seat, doing my best to think about anything but the bloodied corpse in the trunk. Well, it’s not even really in the trunk, is it? It’s half-hanging out for the whole world to see. It could theoretically fall out onto the road, crack open, be exposed to anyone driving by …

  “You don’t have to like me. Just don’t ask me to stay out of this; it’s insulting.” Chasm turns up the music, and I lean back, wishing that the moment were different so that I could correct him. I do like you. In fact, I’ve just realized that I have a crush on you. Isn’t that sick? The guy I like is missing and could very well end up dead, and I’m thinking about you. That’s all sorts of messed the hell up. “Don’t you think these tasks are escalating rather quickly?” he asks me, but I can’t respond to that right now.

  I don’t even want to think about that.

  I just have to work harder, do more research, figure out the trick. Because in every game, there’s a trick, something to make it all so much easier, to nail that high score, to snag that grand master rank, to kick big boss Bowser’s ass. Something.

  “We have to find Parrish. Period. There’s nothing else to it. There are no alternatives.”

  Chasm grunts but doesn’t reply.

  About an hour later, we pull up outside a house with cheery yellow siding and an impressive garden out front. There are flowers in every shade, blooming prettily along the edges of the driveway and the sidewalk. In the center of it all, there’s a bright green lawn and a bird fountain with small songbirds hopping around in it. The house sits just outside a town called Granite Falls, another Podunk place in the middle of nowhere. This is the only house for miles.

  Great. I’m sure that’s a wonderful omen.

  “Fucking hell,” Chasm chokes out. “Whose house is this? We’re not, like, delivering this girl to her parents or something, are we?” He looks over at me, and I meet his eyes. I don’t have an answer to his question, but I sure as hell hope not.

  Burning down the theater was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.

  This is worse than that.

  Much, much worse.

  At least nobody was hurt in the fire; somebody is dead this time.

  JJ. An eighteen-year-old girl who did nothing but end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  We get out of the car, unhooking the bungee cords and then carrying the box to the front porch of the house. There was nothing in my instructions that said I had to knock or ring the bell or anything, so I don’t. Instead, as soon as we set that box down, Chasm and I turn to leave.

  Only … someone comes out of the house and sees us.

  My eyes meet his and a cold chill skitters through me. Every instinct in my body tells me to run. Every cell. Every chromosome.

  I know this guy, I think, just before another thought crosses my mind: is this him? Is this my father?

  Dear god, I hope not.

  “What are you doing here?” the man asks, which sort of helps to answer that question. He runs his tongue across his lower lip which most definitely isn’t a good sign. Chasm has my arm in his hand already and he’s tugging me down the path.

  Unfortunately for the pair of us, we don’t get very far.

  “Wait a second,” the guy tells us, drawing a gun from the waistband of his pants and pointing it at us. “The two of you aren’t going fucking anywhere.”

  Chasm stares at the gun like he can’t quite process what he’s seeing. This is a far cry from our time at the lake, isn’t it? When I danced to Working Bitch and he tried to kiss me against the trunk of a tree. How the hell did we end up here of all places, with a dead maid in a box, and a gun pointed at us?

  “Get in the house.” The man gestures with the gun before leaning down and cracking open the lid to the box. Unlike any normal human being, he doesn’t seem to have much of a reaction to it. Actually, he seems … annoyed?

  This is not the boss, Dakota. This is the sub-boss.

  In which case, he’ll be easier to beat but far more annoying than the final monster. That’s how games always work. Somehow, thinking about the man with the gun as a stupid shitty sub-boss makes the situation easier to deal with.

  “Dakota, run,” Chasm whispers, and then he shoves me to one side and freaking tackles the guy. The gun falls to the floor as both men crash into the wall, grappling with one another. There are precious few seconds to waste, so I don’t bother overthinking the situation.

  Instead, I’m throwing myself on the floor and going for the weapon. The man that Chasm’s attacking is no amateur though, and he kicks the gun away before I can grab it. I scramble to my feet at the same moment that Chasm is shoved back. He ends up falling against me and we hit the ground together hard enough to knock the air out of me.

  The man reappears above us with the gun back in hand.

  “Nice try, kid, but no dice. Get the fuck up.” He kicks Chasm as hard as he can in the stomach, preventing him from rising to his feet. Instead, he lies there on his side, clutching his belly and coughing hard. Fear spikes through me as I push to my feet, hands raised, doing my best to distract the man from Chas.

  “Look, we didn’t come here to hurt anyone,” I say slowly, studying the man in front of me. He’s fairly indistinct, white, middle-aged, balding. There isn’t much to him, nothing that might make him stand out in a crowd. The only distinct feature he has are his eyes, this pale blue color that only helps to enhance the disturbing nature of his stare.

  It’s like he’s undressing me with his eyes, and I hate it. I feel helpless. Just like I did on the hike.

  The hike.

  This guy is the hiker. I know it. I know it as sure as I know the sun will rise tomorrow.

  “You’re the hiker,” I say, and the assertion seems to surprise him. “You were there; you hit Maxx with a walking stick.”

  “Fuck me,” the guy murmurs, and for some reason, my statement seems to make him nervous. “That’s why you’re here then? He sent you.” The guy curses some more as Chasm struggles to sit up, but I very carefully put my foot on his side, telling him as quietly as I can to stay down and be quiet.

  “You’re the
ATV driver, too,” I suggest, although I’m much less sure of this part. “You hit us on purpose.”

  The man scratches the side of his head with the barrel of the gun, not like it itches. More like he’s starting to panic and isn’t sure what to do with himself.

  “Get in the bedroom,” he tells me, gesturing down the short hallway with the revolver. “Now.” He points at Chasm with the gun and meets my stare with a pair of soulless eyes. There’s a sense of wrongness around this man, an instinctual residue of perversion that makes me physically ill. He’s looking at me like so much meat, like I’m not even a person.

  I’d rather die than go into the bedroom.

  “No.” Just that one word. I stand firm, holding his gaze. Based on his behavior, I feel like he knows who I am. The Slayer’s Daughter. If he hurts me, he might end up like the girl in the box. We both seem to be aware of that. There’s always a chance he’ll refocus his aggression on Chas, but then, he has no idea who Chasm is. For all he knows, we’re both off-limits.

  “You think you have a choice, bitch?” he spits at me, dropping the weapon down so that it’s pointing at my leg. “You think I won’t shoot your ass and then just take what I want?”

  I smile. Maybe not a great choice, in retrospect, but I feel like my hunch is right. This guy can’t hurt me without drawing the wrath of Parrish’s kidnapper. Whether he’s the Slayer or Justin Prior or not is irrelevant: he’s dangerous either way.

  “I really don’t think you will,” is my response, even as Chasm grabs onto my ankle in warning.

  “I said now!” the man screams, and then a gunshot goes off, startling me. It’s like a car backfiring inside the walls of the house; the sound is deafening. I clamp my hands over my ears, squeezing my eyes shut tight.

  After a moment, I risk opening them to find … It takes me several tries to piece together what I’m looking at. My hands drop by my sides as Chasm finally finds his feet, standing up beside me and staring down at the man. He’s slumped against the wall in front of us, holding his leg and howling. It takes me almost a minute to register that, what with my ears ringing and all.

  “You fool,” a voice says, just before a man walks out of a nearby bedroom holding a gun. “You animal.”

  I stare at the newcomer because it’s just occurred to me where I heard the kidnapper’s voice before.

  In class. At school. Sixth period. Mr. Volli.

  “What the fuck?” Chasm chokes out as Mr. Volli pauses beside us, reaching up to adjust his glasses. He’s not looking at us though. Instead, he’s staring at the bleeding man on the carpet, looking at him the way one might inspect a roach they’ve just squashed.

  Is … Mr. Volli my dad?

  Alarm bells go off in my bed. That can’t be right. It’s too obvious. Think harder, Dakota.

  Regardless, whether Mr. Volli is my bio dad or not, he’s the one who was wearing the mask in the video call, that’s for damn sure.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” the man on the floor screams, clutching at his leg and rocking back and forth with the pain. “I knew I never should’ve gotten involved in this shit.”

  “No, you never should have raped and killed that maid. You’re a pervert, no worse than an animal. I don’t like people who can’t control themselves.” And then Mr. Volli pulls the trigger again and Chasm yanks me against him, holding me in his arms like he can use his own body to protect mine.

  When I look back, I see that the bullet wasn’t aimed for me or Chasm. Instead, it’s gone right through the skull of the blue-eyed man.

  He’s dead.

  Mr. Volli, my sixth period teacher, has just killed someone in front of me.

  The smell is … god, it’s horrible. Gunpowder and iron, that’s what it smells like. I press my face into Chasm’s uniform, inhaling his dark chocolate mint scent and wishing I were anywhere but here.

  “Where’s Parrish?” Chas demands, but his voice sounds like it’s underwater. I wouldn’t be surprised if we both had permanent hearing damage from the gunshots. I push back from him just enough that I can turn and see Mr. Volli standing there, dressed all in black like he was during the video call.

  “You know the rules regarding Parrish,” he explains, like that was a silly question. “Now.” Mr. Volli moves toward us, holding out the gun. “Take this and fire two or three shots into Mr. Fosser’s body.”

  “The fuck?” Chasm blurts out as I press my back against his front, seeking comfort in his warmth. I can’t stop staring at the dead guy, at the spatters on the wall behind him, at his sightless eyes, his bloodied leg. I’d never seen a dead body before today; now I’ve seen two. Now I’ve seen someone murdered right in front of me.

  “It’ll leave fingerprints on the gun and gunpowder residue on your hands to keep you accountable,” the computer science teacher explains, still holding out the weapon like he’s certain neither of us will use it on him instead. “Just a precaution. I’m sure you’d rather see Parrish alive than shoot me, but you never know.” He gestures with the gun yet again as my stomach churns and my mind rebels against what I’m hearing.

  He wants us to … shoot a dead body. So that we look guilty. So that we can’t tell the authorities.

  “Don’t mind him. He was a rapist who couldn’t control his urges. Less than a dog. If you think about it, he wasn’t even really human anyway.” I mean, Mr. Volli has a point. Rapists aren’t human; they’re trash. But still … that doesn’t mean I want to hold a gun or shoot a corpse or be involved in any of this.

  I look Mr. Volli straight in the face, into brown eyes that are too pale to be reminiscent of mine. But then, I know where I got my eye color from. My eyes are Tess’ eyes. But are there parts of me that came from this man?

  “Are you Justin?” I ask, but Mr. Volli just continues to stare at me, the gun held in his outstretched hand.

  “Take it.” He waits until I finally reach out, curling my fingers around the weapon.

  “Dakota,” Chasm warns, but we’ve already been through so much, done so much to save Parrish. The guy is already dead, and now here I am, with a weapon in hand.

  “If I shoot you, maybe I go tell the cops everything from start to finish. Maybe we find Parrish safe and sound and this is all over?” I grip the weapon, placing my finger on the trigger and then pointing it at Mr. Volli.

  Still, he doesn’t seem concerned.

  And I have no idea if I could actually do it, kill a person like that.

  It’s unfathomable.

  “Maybe,” Mr. Volli replies, giving me a small, polite smile in response. “Or maybe I’m not Justin, and you disobey the Slayer’s orders, and then we’re all dead. What do you think about that?”

  I glance back at the dead guy. The dead rapist, I tell myself, because that makes it a little bit easier.

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I raise the weapon, close my eyes and fire.

  Chasm takes me back to his place since we can’t exactly drive through a horde of reporters with blood on our clothes. I’m so distracted by what I’ve just seen that I barely register the grandiosity of his home. It’s a palace compared to the Vanguard’s place.

  “Over seven-thousand square feet of misery and loneliness,” is how Chasm introduces it as we drive through the front gate and into a brick courtyard with a fountain. He parks the car beside the front steps and we both climb out, heading into an impressive foyer and up an even more impressive set of marble steps.

  It occurs to me that this isn’t the same house that I saw before, the one with the lake beside it.

  “This is your house?” I query, blinking in surprise as Chasm pushes open a door to a hallway and then leads me down to the end. He pauses beside another door to glance back at me, a wry expression on his face. There are spatters of blood all over his shirt and neck. I wonder if he knows that?

  “Oh. Yeah. The other place you saw is the house we lived in when I first came to the United States. My dad’s seen some success since then.” He snorts and pushes
open the door, leading me into a massive bedroom with an attached bath. This doesn’t look like his room anymore than the other one did, more like a hotel suite or something. “Normally, it’s a vacation rental. I’ve been begging for years to live there by myself, but he won’t have it.” Chasm kicks open the door to the bathroom and starts the shower, turning around to face me. “He’s got friends staying there now or else I would’ve taken you there.”

  He hooks his thumb in the direction of the shower.

  “Go ahead and rinse off. I’ll go next.” He starts to leave when I reach out and grab onto his arm, pressing my forehead to his bicep.

  “Please don’t go,” I whisper, pushing back the assault of images in my brain. The dead maid, the disturbing coldness on that monster’s face, Mr. Volli’s awful smile. Is he really my dad? Has he been watching me in class for three months and plotting?

  The thought makes me sick.

  “I don’t want to be alone,” I add, waiting with bated breath for Chas to respond.

  Finally, as if he’s given it some thought, Chasm steps back from me and takes off his own shirt. Together, we strip down and climb into the shower together. It’s a huge fucking shower, bigger even than the one I have back at Tess’ place. There’s more than enough room for us to share without touching.

  We stare at each other, the blood draining off our naked skin and swirling down the drain. If I were in a different state of mind, I might find something wrong with this. But there’s nothing sexual between me and Chas, not right now, not after what we’ve seen, what we did.

  Eventually, we climb out and Chas gives me some of his clothes to put on.

  “Do you mind if I use your laptop?” I ask, pointing at his desk. He looks confused, but he nods anyway, sitting down on the edge of his bed to watch me.

  I log into an account I haven’t touched since the news of my kidnapping went viral.

  Followers? A metric fuck ton. It’s like, the meager pittance I had before has multiplied into a storm. The internet can be a cruel, dark place, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a weapon that can be wielded for either good or evil, depending on the hand that grasps the hilt.