by Wasp, A. E.
Wes snickered. “Oh my God! Gray’s Anatomy is waiting for you, Doctor Alvarez. You sound so fucking competent as you make this shit up!”
Wes was right. There was nothing like a couple of multi-syllable words and a confident attitude to convince people you knew what you were talking about. The partygoers were convinced they were witnessing Harlan have a psychotic break.
“Alright, fam. My turn,” Wes said, chuckling darkly, and the lights in the house flickered out while the giant television on the wall turned on.
Some dramatic soul screamed, and I laughed out loud. The television blared static at first, the picture nothing but grayscale snow, and then the senator’s voice and image came through loud and clear.
“Kill them,” Harlan said, staring right at the camera. And holy shit, he looked even scarier on the video than he had in real life. His eyes were fucking insane.
“Do you really think that’s necessary?” a voice on the video asked. It was Steele’s voice, I knew it was, but it also wasn’t. His Georgia accent was more pronounced and the tone a little higher. I doubted anyone here would recognize Steele’s voice from this.
“Little whore stole my ring while he was sucking my dick,” Crazy-Eyes-Harlan-on-the-screen said. “He deserves to die.”
“Oh my God!” one of the partygoers exclaimed, and it seemed to set off a chain reaction. People were gasping now, clutching one another.
“This is horrifying!” one woman shouted. “Turn it off! Can’t someone turn it off?”
But Wesley was in control now, and there was no fucking way he was turning it off.
Harlan-on-the-screen continued. “And remember, Gonzalez, your fortune is tied to mine now, so you do what I say. Kill them both, dump the bodies. River out back, hiking trails a few minutes away, I don’t give a shit where, and the less I know, the better. Use your imagination. But I don’t want them found.”
Creative editing cut out the next part of the conversation that had happened downstairs, but Wes made sure to get the kill shot. The camera zoomed in on Harlan’s face as he said, “Things move fast around here, handsome. You need to keep up.” Harlan’s smile became something sick and feral as he stepped toward the camera – toward Steele – and Steele angled his chest down so the button cam would capture the Senator’s hand stroking over his package. “But you seem like a man who’ll have no problem keeping up.”
I wish I could say that the room exploded into pandemonium, but it didn’t. Not quite. More like confusion. One woman turned to another and said, “Does that mean… John’s a gay?”
Another cried, “I’ll pray for you, John. Repent, and you’ll be saved!”
Harlan had been standing in the middle of the floor, swaying from side to side, staring at the television like he was in a dream. But when Wes started replaying the feed again, the senator lost what little sanity he had left.
“Turn it off!” he yelled. “Turn this shit off!”
He grabbed a heavy tchotchke from the side table closest to him and threw it at the television, cracking the screen down the center. The picture cut off, but the sound did not. Instead, Harlan’s voice saying, “Kill them, kill them, kill them,” sounded over and over on endless repeat.
“No!” Harlan shouted. “Nooo!”
“Aww! Boo, hiss!” Wes said, chuckling gleefully. “Haters tryna shut down my party. But now the real fun begins.”
And one by one, every electronic device in the entire house capable of playback began playing the audio also. The little electronic picture frame on the mantle, the stereo in the corner, the television in the den on the far side of the dining room. It was enough to make even a sane person crazy, and John Harlan was far from sane.
“I said enough!” he screamed.
Steele took a deep breath and murmured sub-vocally, “If you’re going to play your part, Breck, do it now.”
Oh, I was so gonna do it.
The lights came back on, forcing people to shield their eyes. Harlan turned and saw Ridge strolling past the entrance to the dining room. “There!” he told Leo. “Catch that boy.”
But by the time Leo turned to look, Ridge was gone. Leo looked at Harlan sadly. “Senator Harlan, based on what I saw on that tape and what I’ve witnessed tonight, I’m afraid I have to restrain you for your own protection.” He took a step toward Harlan, but Harlan backed away.
I walked past the doorway to the kitchen, and Harlan spied me. “Him, over there!”
“He’s over there now,” Steele said skeptically. “Senator Harlan…does anyone know how long until the ambulance gets here?”
Ridge popped out of his hiding spot. Danny did too.
“Them! Him, too!” Harlan said, shouting at them.
I walked toward him. Harlan was nearly purple with rage, sweating profusely. It wouldn’t be long now until he passed out completely, but before he did that, I wanted to make sure he knew exactly who he was dealing with. He wouldn’t remember a fucking thing by the time the police arrived, but I needed to see recognition in his eyes right now.
“Are you talking about me, Senator Harlan?” I smiled sweetly. “Can I get you something? Some water, or...?”
I stepped closer to the senator and felt Steele tense as I passed him. I figured he was fighting some crazy-powerful instinct to grab me and physically put himself between me and Harlan, but he resisted.
“You,” Harlan said, pointing a shaking finger at me. “I watched you die! I watched you bleed out just an hour ago!”
“Me?” I gasped, looking down at my pristine suit. “No, sir! Who did you kill?”
“You’re a goddamn… goddamn whore,” he managed to get out.
I smiled as angelically, as sympathetically as I could and took one last step, until I was within spitting distance of the man who’d hurt me, the man who’d practically killed Danny, the man who’d made me live in fear.
“I’m the goddamn whore who just helped rip your life to shreds,” I whispered menacingly. “Goodbye, Senator Harlan.”
Wes whistled, and the sound nearly pierced my eardrum. “And the Oscar for scariest motherfucker of the year goes to Breck Pfeiffer.”
I turned to give Steele a triumphant smile, to say Mission accomplished, to tell him the dragon was defeated and I had a damn good idea of how we could move on with our lives.
But Harlan didn’t get the memo that he was done.
The next thing I knew, I was jerked back by a bony – and fucking shockingly strong – hand in my hair.
“Stay back!” Harlan said. “All of you, stay back!”
Something sharp pressed into my back, and I gasped. “Knife!”
“Senator,” Leo said gently. “You don’t want to do this.”
Harlan laughed maniacally. “You’re all idiots. Every one of you.” He stumbled back a pace, taking me with him, but managed to hold on to the knife and to me. “Clear a path!” he screamed. “And no fucking heroes. That goes double for you, Mickey!” he said, kicking a random man as we passed.
“I’m not Mickey,” the man cried, like that was really the worst thing happening here.
“Help me!” I cried, and the senator yanked my head back in retaliation.
Jesus Christ. I was going to cut every damn curl off my head when this was over.
I tried pulling away from him, elbowing him, throwing myself on the ground, but the fucker was crazy strong, like somehow the drug that was supposed to drop him like a sack of potatoes had given him superhuman powers, at least temporarily. Meanwhile, my brother, Danny, Leo, and the love of my life all watched me in horror, not sure how the fuck to get to me or whether it would enrage my captor further if they blew my cover by coming forward.
Harlan pulled me toward the basement stairs – the door to which I’d left fucking open when I’d come out of safety for my shot at vengeance. He pulled the door closed behind us.
“That will slow them down,” he muttered to himself. And it would. It totally would.
Fuck.
He ha
lf-dragged me down the stairs with a strength I’d only seen in him one other time, the night he’d beaten me and Danny.
“Ridge! Get this fucking door open!” Steele bellowed. His voice was coated with panic and pain so corrosive, I felt like my own skin was being flayed by it.
“Let me go!” I begged Harlan. “Please.”
I’d never gotten why people begged, in movies. I mean, the killer was hardly gonna let you go just because you’d asked him nicely. Wouldn’t it be more dignified, I’d always thought, to just sorta be defiant and brave?
But there were men upstairs who loved me, and at least a couple more who liked me a fair amount. If Steele hadn’t already gone into a full-fledged PTSD episode over Harlan taking me hostage, he was headed there soon. My brother would never forgive himself if anything happened to me, and Danny would probably go back to jumping at shadows. There was more on the line here than my own life, and for their sakes, I’d beg.
“You’re my ticket out of here.” Harlan dragged me through the basement to an outside door and then through it. The damp summer air was absolutely still as we crossed a small lawn and ducked into a thick stand of trees.
“Are we heading toward the river?” I demanded, praying that Wes was still monitoring things.
“None of your fucking business,” Harlan said. Then he completely confirmed my suspicion by continuing. “I’ll dump your body in the water, just like Mickey was supposed to.”
“You haven’t killed anyone!” I reminded him, hoping that was true. “Don’t start now! Remember, murder is a sin.”
He ignored me.
My feet touched wood as he dragged me backward, and I realized that we were on the dock. It was now or never.
“You’re a… you’re a senator!” I told him. “You don’t want this to be your legacy, do you?”
Somehow, miraculously, this seemed to reach him. Or maybe he was just getting tired of dragging me around, who knows? Whatever his reason, he threw me off the deck, into the muddy water near the shore, before he jumped into the boat.
I scrambled up the bank, back onto the grass, and sat on my ass watching the senator stumble across the deck to the captain’s seat and try to get the engine started.
I thought for exactly half a second about playing superhero and jumping into the boat again, but no. There was just no way.
“You guys?” I panted, hoping my comms were still working. “I’m uh, I’m here. He let me go. I’m okay.”
The boat’s engine fired up and the ropes fell onto the dock with a hollow thud just as Steele, Ridge, and Leo came running across the lawn.
It was too late. The boat pulled into the river before they could reach it.
“Breck? Oh, Jesus fuck, Breck,” Steele said, grabbing me up against him and smashing me into his chest. It was extremely uncomfortable, and I didn’t care at all. Steele was practically shaking – or maybe I was shaking, and that was making him shake too. Either way, the only thing that made it better was by eliminating every millimeter of space between us.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I let him get away.”
“He won’t get away.” Leo pulled out his phone and started barking commands into it.
“You’d better be sorry, Brekkie,” Ridge said, coming up next to us and laying his hand on my back. “Might not have been your fault, but I’m pretty sure you gave me a head full of gray hair tonight, and I swear to Christ, if you make me age before you do…”
Boom!
The black sky flared orange like a fucking fireworks display. Steele’s grip loosened, and I turned my face toward the river.
John Harlan’s boat was on fire a few hundred feet from shore. We watched the senator jump into the water and flounder there.
* * *
“How did we not know he had a boat?” Wes asked sometime later that evening. We were sitting on the deck of the house next door, having narrowly escaped the senator’s house with our spare clothes and contraband in the confusion before the police showed up and declared the whole fucking place a crime scene.
“We knew he had a boat,” Leo said, tipping back his beer and stretching out his bare feet. “Fucking Google knew he had a boat. I just didn’t think he’d try to rabbit. He had too much to lose.”
Ridge sighed and propped his feet up on the railing. The light from the police boat out on the river was barely visible through the trees. “Remember this when we do the debrief,” he said. “Next time, we incapacitate all modes of transportation. We remove the spark plugs. We flatten the bike tires.”
Leo snorted. “Your automobile expertise is incredible.”
Ridge threw a pretzel at him.
“I wonder where he thought he was going,” Carson mused. He leaned his elbows on the railing and stared off into space, looking like the star of a fucking Versace ad. He was the only one of us still kitted out in his formal evening wear, and a martini glass dangled from his fingers, like he wasn’t quite ready to shake his Ben Waters persona. “International waters?”
“In a boat that size?” Leo shook his head. “No way.”
“Could happen! My money’s on Mexico,” Wes said. “That’s where I’d go. Pretty senoritas. Cold margaritas… Basically all the -itas.”
“Wow. Explain to me how you are, like, a savant when it comes to hacking systems and a total idiot when it comes to all other aspects of life?” Danny demanded, slapping at a mosquito that landed on his arm. He wore a pair of cutoff sweatpants and, as usual, nothing on top.
“Just part of my charm, Daniel.”
“At least they caught him,” I said softly. “And hopefully they’ll have enough to hold him.”
Steele, who was sitting beneath me on a wooden Adirondack chair, tightened his arms around me. He’d said hardly anything since he’d found me on the dock, and he hadn’t let go of me for a second.
“They’ll have enough when I’m done editing the video,” Wes said with total confidence. “A nice highlight reel of everything we find from the tapes Ridge stole.”
“Better than that, though, he lost his power.” Carson turned to look at us. “You’re going to email everyone on those tapes and tell them that he has no hold on them anymore, right?”
“That was the plan,” Wes confirmed.
Carson nodded. “Then no one will help him. No one will pull strings. He’ll be forced to step down. And I’ll make it happen.”
Leo frowned. “Ben Waters needs to take a long sabbatical from society,” he warned. “He definitely doesn’t need to get involved in this any further.”
“Oh, Leo,” Carson said with a grin. “You’re adorable. Ben Waters won’t do a damn thing. But I am not Ben Waters.”
Steele gave a half-laugh and leaned his head back against the chair. “What I wanna know is, how the hell did the boat somehow get on fire? I thought for sure he was going to get away.”
“Sometimes there are things that defy explanation, boys.”
I sat up on Steele’s lap and spun around to see Josie in the doorway from the deck to the house. She was wearing a sleek, black tank top and a pair of jeans, and her wet hair was slicked back into a bun.
“Josie? What are you doing here?” Leo jumped up from his seat to stare at her. I’m pretty sure we all were.
“They do let me leave Florida occasionally,” she joked.
“Yes, but how did you even know where we were staying, when we…”
“I came north to visit a friend,” Josie said, sidestepping his question. She stepped aside and a gorgeous blonde in a bikini appeared in the doorway beside her. “Guys, meet Greta. Greta, these are my boys.”
“Why, hello, Greta,” Wes said with a devilish grin. Danny smacked him on the back of the head.
“Hey! What the hell was that for?” Wes demanded.
Danny folded his arms over his chest and glared at him. “Let’s consider it proactive punishment. You’re guaranteed to do something dickish in the next ten minutes.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Greta said
in halting English. Then she addressed Josie in a language that sounded like Russian. Maybe.
Josie laughed delightedly, like Greta had told a joke. “In just a minute, doll,” she answered in English, putting her hand on Greta’s arm.
“Boys, not sure it’s a good idea for y’all to hang around here all night,” Josie told us. “Not while they’re searching for the folks who ruined the senator’s party and set fire to his boat. A heist is only as good as the getaway.”
“Nah, it’s fine. None of us had anything to do with the senator’s boat,” Ridge told her, relaxing back in his seat again. “Not a damn thing.”
“Oh, well, how nice for you,” Josie retorted angrily. She set her hands on her hips and shook her head like she couldn’t believe Ridge’s attitude. “But somebody did, Ridge Pfeiffer. Somebody decent and kind and… probably really, really beautiful… who had only the best intentions when they did you that favor. Now, we may never know who that person is, and we certainly don’t know where they are right now, but I’m confident that person would appreciate it if your ass wasn’t hanging out on this porch where it would throw suspicion on them. I really think it’s only fair that you consider them right now, Ridge.”
Ridge frowned in confusion. “But, Josie, that doesn’t make any sense. Wouldn’t they…”
“I accept your apology for being selfish,” Josie said, holding up a hand to cut Ridge off. “Say no more.”
“But…”
“No need to bring it up again. You’re forgiven.” She clapped her hands once. “Now! It just so happens I called in a favor and got a couple unmarked police cars parked out front, ready to take us to the airport. Plus, I called ahead and told the pilot to get Charlie’s plane ready for us. Who wants to be back in Siesta Key by sunrise? Mimosas and Bellinis on the beach?”
I couldn’t deny, the idea had definite appeal. I wanted to sleep with Steele wrapped around me, I wanted to wake up in his arms, and I wanted to see the sunrise with him, tomorrow and every day.
“I’m down,” I said.
