He watched that? He watched that fucking shit and saved it on his computer? What else did he do, direct it?
I’m going to kill him. I’m going to rip his scalp clean off his skull. But first I send another blow to his face. His nose cracks again and he’s howling, a stream of curses that turn into wordless rage. Joshua’s hands scrabble at the front of my shirt but don’t get purchase because I’m punching him again.
And again.
And again.
He doesn’t take long to go down and curl up, but it leaves his soft underbelly exposed. I kick that, too, hoping for a hit against some vital organ. I’m going to keep kicking until he’s pulp under my shoes. Until he’s absolutely fucking nothing. I’m never going to stop.
I’m still striking when the guards come. I land two more kicks while they twist my arms around my back and then they’re duck-walking me out of there. Guys cheer. Who are they cheering for, him or me? I doubt they even know. They’re cheering for violence in general.
All I can hear is the pounding of my own heart. All I can feel is the raw pain at the tips of my knuckles. “Fuck him,” I say. “Fuck him. I’m gonna kill him.”
“Shut your mouth,” one of the guards says, but he obviously isn’t committed to follow through. I know he’s not.
“Fuck that bastard.” My feet are hardly touching the ground. We don’t turn right toward my regular cell. We turn left, and I know exactly where we’re going.
Solitary.
The hole.
An empty, windowless cell, a hard slab for a bed.
The two guys toss me inside unceremoniously and my shins hit the side of that slab. My head throbs. My heart is a jagged wasteland. I roll over onto the cushion-less platform and stretch out, breathing hard. It’s like being back in that place with that killer. My fists hum with pain, blood pouring from my split knuckles.
It’s worth it.
“See you in a week.” The guard’s voice echoes through the room. The door slams. A single lock scratches into place.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
AVERY
I only have a few minutes in the gun store.
It was easier to get Nathan to drive me downtown for this, because he, unlike the bodyguard, is willing to risk leaving me alone for a few minutes. He thinks I’m waiting patiently in the car while he runs into a store to grab us drinks. I purposely picked a store that is busy, where the people behind the counter take their sweet time prepping orders. A few minutes is all I need. Aside from the gun, that is. I also need the gun.
There are rows of pistols lined up under glass, sleek and shiny, and one of them is going to be mine.
“Are you looking for something to take to the range?” The man behind the counter is a very casual shadow. My guess is, he sees women come through here all the time looking for a piece. The sign out front advertises quick background checks, and he’s already run mine. It’s not technically my name on the ID I handed over—it’s a fake name, attached to a fake ID Nathan had made for me in high school. It’s a good fake. He’s a Capulet. So it passed muster.
“Yeah,” I answer, a beat too late. “Something to take to the range. And for self-defense, I guess.”
Doesn’t seem to bother the guy. I’m not sure how to feel about all these guns. These pistols. Some of them look too similar to what the killer in his torture dungeon carried. I look at the rows of guns and see the red blossom of that girl’s head—the one Rome was forced to rape. The last thing she ever felt was a stranger fucking her before her brains were blown out.
The last thing I thought I was going to feel was Rome’s body pressed up to mine as he held my hand.
Anxiety threatens to squeeze the air out of my lungs. Not now, though. Not now. I don’t have time. I breathe through it and consider the guns again.
“That one.” I tap the glass with my finger.
It’s smaller than the one the masked man carried, but I’m not going to need a big-ass gun. I need something I can hide in my purse before Nathan gets back from getting the bubble tea. When he came to check on me this morning, I rolled over in bed and pretended to need it more than I needed anything in life. It’s a half-lie. I went through a phase senior year where I drank milk tea with golden boba every single day after school. Nathan’s smart enough to think I’m reaching for familiarity and stupid enough to believe I’d do it now, when he and his parents are camped out in my very own house.
The man behind the counter lifts the compact gun—a .22, probably—from its case with the same care as a jeweler lifting precious diamonds. He turns it over in his hands carefully and puts it into my palm handle-first.
It feels...good.
“Wow,” I whisper. I’ve got to stop. If I keep this up, he’ll know I’ve gone off my rocker. Surprise, surprise. I have. The XO killer did that to me. Thank you very much, serial killer. You’ve stripped the very last of my reservations from my brain. “This is nice.”
He scrutinizes me, face showing nothing. “You’ve got your safety there on the left.”
Years ago, Nathan and I did go to a shooting range. Later, Will and I visited one. For fun. There’s nothing like the kick and boom of a gun in your hand. So I keep my finger pointed out straight, away from the trigger. Gotta show off for this guy so he knows I’m all about safety.
“Ammunition?”
“One box. No, two.”
I turn the gun this way and that in my hand. It is nice. It fits me perfectly. How’d I pick it out of a lineup like that? I hope it’s as easy to pick the XO killer out of a lineup when they get him. Deep down, though, I’m not sure anyone ever will.
Rome is in jail. Joshua is in jail. Will is in jail.
As much as I’ve tried to figure it out, I can’t. I can’t figure out why Joshua would have been so fucking stupid when all he had to do was put a ring on my finger and install me in a house somewhere for the rest of time. I can’t figure out if Will was actually framed or if he and Joshua had the kind of twisted agreement I can only imagine because of my six weeks in hell.
The only thing I do know is that Rome is innocent, yet he’s in jail too. I’ve pleaded his innocence to the cops until I’m blue in the face, any time they’ll take my calls. Nothing makes any fucking sense.
Nothing but the gun in my hand and the boxes of ammo the shop owner slides across the counter.
I set the gun on a thin felt pad on the glass counter and hand him my credit card. I’d rather this were in cash—people could have access to my accounts, I don’t know—but I couldn’t withdraw cash in front of Nathan and I don’t know how much the bodyguard reports back to my family. I have to assume he reports everything. Credit it is.
“Receipt?” He says this like I’m buying a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.
“No. Throw it out. Destroy it, please.”
The man’s hands make quick work of the paper and I drop the gun and ammo into my purse. I made sure to use a bigger purse today, and I manage to fit the gun and both boxes of ammo in easily, with room to spare. I unwind my scarf from my neck and shove it into the purse, making sure it covers my purchases in case Nathan peeks inside.
Don’t laugh, I tell myself sternly. Don’t laugh, even though this is an intensely fucked up situation. Buying a gun and hiding it with a scarf. Being so afraid in the company of your own family you feel you need a gun.
I hike my purse up over my shoulder. It’s such a simple pleasure, having a purse to carry around. I didn’t know if I’d feel better with the gun inside, but in another surprising turn of events, I do. The world seems more solid. I have at least one option to defend myself when the killer comes calling.
Because he will come calling. I know it, deep down in my bones. Whatever happened in that place, it isn’t over. I know we pissed him off by taking those pills, forcing his hand. The more I turn the pieces over in my mind, the clearer it is that the only reason the cops found the IP address and managed to locate us down in that hellhole is because the killer freaked when he saw we’d taken e
nough pills to kill ourselves.
Yeah. Whoever he is, he’s going to come back. This isn’t over. He’s going to call on me again.
Maybe he’s calling from inside the house. I know, I know. Bad joke. But with everyone I know already arrested, it’s making me think the wolves have been circling for a lot longer than I previously guessed.
I pause at the door of the shop. The tea store looked busy–but was it busy enough to buy me a few more minutes? I chew my lip, weighing the risk.
“You need something else?” the guy calls after me.
I turn on my heel, rushing back to the counter. “Yes,” I say, my words coming out in a breathless jumble. “I just realized I left my cellphone at home and I need to make a call. Would you mind if I used your phone?”
He looks unimpressed, but he slides the phone on the counter toward me. The handset is shaped like an old-school pistol, and the cradle is in the form of a leather holster. “Do you have anywhere a little more … private?” I ask as nicely as I can, peering around the guy toward the back office behind him. He steps to the left, obscuring my view of the office, and sticks his fingers in his ears. “You got three minutes,” he says. “I’m already half deaf, so you’re good to go.”
I muster up a grateful smile. “Thank you.”
I slide a business card out of my purse, picking up the heavy gun-shaped phone receiver and dialing the number I’ve scrawled on the back. Two rings and somebody picks up.
“Burton and Lancaster, how may I direct your call?”
I ask for Thomas Burton. He’s busy, until I tell the receptionist who is calling.
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Capulet. Connecting you now.”
Thomas Burton is my father’s lawyer and one of his oldest friends. I’ve had more than a few dealings with him over the years–when my mother died and he executed her will, and again when the same happened with Adeline. He counseled me legally after the incident with Tyler Capulet. More recently, he helped set up my pre-nup with Joshua, adding in things I’d never dreamed were necessary, but which I appreciated immensely after the fact.
A moment later, Thomas Burton is on the line. “Avery,” he says smoothly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Hi, Tom,” I address him informally. I’ve known the man since birth. “I need a favor from you. I don’t care how much it costs. But I need you to make it happen now.”
Thomas chuckles, ever the unflappable legal shark. “Shoot,” he says. Ironic, since I’m standing in the middle of a gun store. I glance at the old man behind the counter. He’s staring at the front door, his fingers still in his ears. I open my mouth and ask my lawyer for something that’s probably impossible; but then, nothing is truly impossible when you’re a Capulet.
After Thomas promises me he’ll move heaven and earth to make my wishes come true–for a hefty fee, of course–I hang up and thank the guy behind the counter. He slowly takes his fingers out of his ears, wiping them on his jeans.
“You’re that girl from the news,” he says.
So fingers aren’t great blockers of sound, and he probably heard my entire conversation. Great.
“You take care of yourself,” he says, sliding two more boxes of ammo across the counter. “On the house. Just promise me you’ll shoot the fucker right between the eyes if he comes sniffing around again.”
I swallow thickly, nodding as I shove two more boxes of bullets into my bulging purse. “I will. Thank you,” I mutter, fleeing the store.
Outside I say a quick thank you to the universe for putting this gun shop in the same strip mall as the bubble tea place I used to love. I stroll back down the sidewalk. My instinct is to tip my head back and close my eyes. Soak in the sun. That’s another thing I missed down there. The sun. Simple pleasures, right? But I don’t close my eyes. Now more than ever, I need to keep my eyes wide open.
Halfway down the strip mall, Nathan comes out of the bubble tea place. We showed up in the middle of the lunch rush, another ingenious bit of planning on my part. He frowns when he sees how far down the sidewalk I’ve gone.
“Hey,” he calls. “You’re not supposed to be wandering off alone.”
“I didn’t wander off.” I let my eyes go big and excited at the prospect of the bubble tea. “It’s such a nice day. I wanted to feel the sun on my face. I didn’t even leave the sidewalk.” Don’t go too far, Avery. He’ll know something’s up. I meet up with Nathan and take the bubble tea from his hand with a bratty flourish that’s all pre-capture Capulet. “Thanks, Mom. Can you worry a little less? It’s suffocating me.”
He almost looks apologetic as he stabs his straw through the top of the cup. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Aves. Can you blame me?”
I nudge him with my elbow and stab my own straw into my drink. The most satisfying thing about bubble tea is the sharp edge of the straw and the way it slices through the filmy lid.
“Too late now,” I say, and Nathan laughs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ROME
My new clothes feel fucking weird, but that’s the nature of being bailed out. If you’ve been kidnapped and tortured for months and then go directly to jail, you get new clothes. I shift uncomfortably in jeans a size too big in the San Francisco sunshine while my dad pulls up the car.
My dad. My fucking dad? He’s the one who came to my rescue and bailed me out on day two in the hole? Honestly, when the guards came in and pulled me out of solitary five days early, I was convinced they were taking me somewhere to shoot me and dump my body. Instead, they let me take a hot shower in the guard’s change rooms, brought me brand-new clothes with the tags still on, gave me a fucking razor to shave my face, and presented me with a hot, gooey cheeseburger and fries washed down with an ice-cold Pepsi while they hovered nervously around me. Then they handed me a clear plastic trash bag full of my personal effects and two hundred bucks gate money and wished me well, dumping me out in the parking lot to figure out what the fuck just happened.
“Get in,” he says, leaning over the bench seat of a shitty brown station wagon that looks like it’s been lifted straight out of a 70’s gangster movie.
“Dad?”
I haven’t seen him in years. He’s traded in his flashy car for a beater, something brown and ugly as fuck, and he’s trundled up in it with his too-long hair pulled back in a messy bun at the back of his neck. I don’t know what to make of that. His business suits are long gone, replaced by a pair of bright yellow fishermen pants, the baggy type that wrap around and tie at the waist. And a brown t-shirt that matches the hue of his car, adorned with what looks like a messy rainbow painted by a five-year-old learning to use fabric paint. The car reeks of pot, and I’m not even close enough to stick my head in yet.
A newly-made hippie, coming to give his criminal son a ride.
Life doesn’t always present us with the best choices. That’s fucking clear. It’s either go back inside or walk home. After all this time imprisoned, the open blue sky seems huge and threatening. So I get in my dad’s car and settle into the awkwardness.
He reaches out a hand and pats my shoulder while I put my seatbelt on. The last thing I need is to get thrown back in jail for the crime of not taking my life seriously.
“You good?”
I want to stare at him, open-mouthed, until he looks ahead, pulling the car away from the prison loading dock. What a question.
“Could be worse, I guess.” It’s a terrible joke. He doesn’t laugh. “I see you’re back in the city.”
“Heard you were back in jail.” He shrugs one shoulder and shifts into drive. “Figured you’d spent enough time there already.”
Shit is complicated with me and my dad. He left town pretty much as soon as the house fire was extinguished and what remnants of ash and bone remained of my dead baby brother were scraped up from the nursery floor and laid to rest. He didn’t take me with him. He checked my mother into a mental hospital and left me with friends. I know why he needed to flee. The cops were breathi
ng down his neck, insisting he was the one who’d set fire to our house to collect the insurance money after his business empire collapsed, inexplicably killing my brother in the process. I never really knew any of that shit until I was older, and to be honest, with the corruption I grew up around, I never really believed he did it. But I do believe he abandoned me, his only surviving son, and never came back. So there’s that.
And yet...there’s some part of me that needs for him to know. That, at the very least, needs to understand why he did this for me, now, after all this time has passed.
“I was in on a murder charge. You know that, right?” My shoulder still aches from the bullet wound and my chest aches from missing Avery fucking constantly. That, and the one hit Joshua Grayson managed to land. “Why would you come here and bail me out?”
For the first time, he looks me in the eye. “Like I said, I think you’ve done enough time in prison. Word was they were going to transfer you to a maximum security prison. Couldn’t have that.” He shifts his eyes back to the parking lot and puts on the turn signal. It feels fucking surreal, riding in a car. It’s the little things, you know?
“I didn’t murder anyone.”
He keeps his eye on traffic and merges onto the freeway.
“All right, Rome.”
All right, Rome. That’s what I get. After six weeks of torture and another several weeks of hell. Cage to cage, and my own father can only manage an all right, Rome. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch his jaw twitching, which makes me look again. His eyebrows are knitted together. He swallows hard. He’s scared as fuck. I don’t know if it’s because he’s scared of being in the car with me, an accused murderer, or because he knows I’m innocent and shit is about to get crazy. Either way, I have to control myself. I can delay being an asshole for a few minutes despite all those old urges coming back again.
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