“Are you gonna join me?”
“Nope.”
I heard the water sloshing around, making his skin steam. Though he was chest deep, he still tried to pull at me with the thumb of his cast.
I found a box of latex gloves and tried to stay focused.
“Why not?”
“Because someone needs to change those gross bandages on your head.”
“You know, in the hospital I had nurses givin’ me sponge baths.”
“Oh really?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. I was out of it up until yesterday, so I don’t know.”
“You are not funny.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
I bit my lip. “I think you know why.”
“So it’s not because I’m funny?”
Even though I’ve always had an appreciation for challenges, I realized right then and there that some challenges are truly impossible without proper sleep and preparation. Though in hindsight, I guess it might have helped to have motivation, too.
“You gotta tell me, Vicious,” I heard him whisper.
I bit my lip. “Promise not to get mad?”
“No.”
“Charlie.”
“You want me to lie?”
“J-just promise you won’t hurt yourself or destroy anything in the house.”
He seemed to consider this. “I can still beat on Polo though, right?”
The Charlie smile made me lose myself.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath and let it out. I rambled about the parasites and how grateful I had been for the way they infected me. And while I didn’t talk about everything that led up to it, I did tell him about the day at the boardwalk, how I had been considering it for awhile without even realizing it. How the feel of salt water on my face reminded me of him and how good it had felt to let go…
Charlie’s body was leaner than I had seen it last. Layered in fresh scars in places that I knew I’d have to explore later. Still, I tried to focus on changing the bandages, glad that the line where the stitches had been was starting to fade. The only really visible reminder was the yellow from the iodine that stained his scalp. I worked as I talked, trying to avoid his grim expression as I talked.
When I was done, it was awhile before he spoke, and I worried he’d go back on his word, wondering how badly the tile and pipe would get a beating.
“You tried to—”
My attempt at humor cut him off. “Well, you started it.”
He looked at me, horrified. “Addie, I almost killed you.”
I laughed. “No, I almost killed me. That why they call it suicide. Did you know the prefix sui- means—”
“Stop!” he shouted. “Just stop! How could you—what were you thinkin’?”
I sat back on the edge of the tub. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
He pulled me towards him, nearly taking me in the tub with him but stopping just short of resting his face against my chest. “Never again, okay? Not ever, ever again, Addie. No matter what…”
“You have to promise the same.” I tried to laugh but it hurt. I was mixed with relief and a twisted kind of guilt at making him feel so bad.
“I do.”
I kissed the top of his head. “Then I do, too.”
The kitchen table was adorned with Elise’s many creations. And despite the temptation to stay in the shower for the rest of the night and avoid the chaos beyond the bathroom walls, the smell of food was more appealing than I could resist.
Even Reid couldn’t keep away from the smell of pot roast and garlic potatoes. I must have been the last to the table though, because everyone was already eating when I got there. I stood in the doorway between the hall and kitchen, watching while Yuri trying to steal roast from Ben’s plate and got hit in the knuckles with a spoon for his troubles. Tyler and Polo began a food fight with the bean salad, while Reid and Elise yelled to each other back and forth. They all talked simultaneously so I couldn’t understand a word amongst them, but after the silence I had submitted myself to over the last weeks, reaching for the black within, it was a welcome change.
“There you are.” Charlie put his arms around me and rested his chin in the crook of my neck. “I almost sent a search party after you.”
“That would have been embarrassing.”
His sly smile was enough to give me one of my own. “I woulda been the only member.”
“Then we’d never get to eat.”
I leaned up to kiss him up but the abrupt silence followed by catcalls stopped me.
“Knock that crap off,” Yuri called.
“Yeah,” Reid chided. “We’re trying to eat over here.”
Maybe I should have felt awkward sitting with a bunch of people who were on the fence about whether or not I had betrayed them; maybe I should have been afraid. I considered that a normal person would have been, but then again I had never been normal. So I didn’t hesitate to sit across from Elise and next to Charlie at the end of the table, gladly taking a plate when it was handed to me, ignoring Reid’s stare like it didn’t exist.
“Addie!” Elise started in right away. “How have you been?”
I paused, buttering a piece of bread and looked up at her. I’ll confess, out of all the questions I expected to be asked, that wasn’t one of them. “Um, good?”
Charlie flinched, but no one seemed to notice since they were looking at me or their plates. Did they pre-plan this interrogation? Have Elise do the warm-up and see how I’d react? Maybe they’d learned a thing or two from the FBI.
“Have you guys been here since May?”
“Yep, yep, yep!” Polo smothered ketchup on his roast so the entire plate was red and overflowing. “The lake was still cold then but it got warm real fast.”
I nodded and took a bite so I would have an excuse not to respond.
Ben Walden looked up from his plate. “Obviously there are things to discuss…”
Elise dropped her fork loudly. “Can’t this wait until later?”
“It sure as hell can’t.”
“Way to go, Reid.” Yuri took another helping of roast. “You were quiet for a whole 70-something seconds there.”
We all laughed, but that only made him angrier. He stood up and tossed his napkin to the floor, pointing his finger at me accusingly.
“What kind of crap have you been up to?”
“Reid.” Ben calmly gestured for him to sit down, and like a puppet on a sting, Reid obeyed. “I must admit, we are all a bit curious about that as well.”
I wanted to reach for my water, but I was too afraid my hands would obviously shake. “Adam Harpsten and I are friends. We talk about books, my Dad, and his girlfriend. That’s it.”
“Bullshit.”
“Reid!”
“Is that all?” Ben Walden sighed.
I nodded.
Ben cleared his throat. “And do you have any other friends who are law enforcement officials?”
I shook my head.
“Do you know anyone by the names of Dardan Agolli or Pal Bizi?”
I was a little taken back. “No.”
Ben actually smiled as he picked up his fork. “Okay then. Now that that’s all settled, will someone pass the pepper?”
“What? Are you kidding?” Reid looked around the table for support, but everyone ignored him, opting instead to eat their dinner.
“No!” Reid yelled. “That isn’t the end of it. If she didn’t rat us out, then who did?”
We all glanced at each other, wondering something similar, none of us daring to ask.
***
We finished eating silently, and keeping routine in-check, I picked up the casualties of the food wars from the floor while Elise did the dishes. Pulling his magician act, Ben Walden disappeared again, only this time with Charlie and Tyler in tow.
When I began clearing off the table, I also listened to the faint sounds of video games and swearing, Tyler’s giggling, and a goofy voice from the television. Like any
one who had come back home, the familiar sounds made my heart swell.
“How are you?” I asked finally.
“Good.” She sighed. “Tired.”
“I bet.”
“It really is good to see you again, Addie. I honestly wasn’t sure, if—well, you know.”
“I know.” I shut the fridge. “Me too.”
“I have to say, though…” She beamed. “That interview you did was the greatest thing I ever read.”
I laughed. “Yikes.”
“I told Benjamin that you couldn’t have done what Reid keeps saying.” Her smile faltered for an instant. “But that interview convinced him.”
Her words scared me and I wondered if she knew the power behind them. If I hadn’t convinced Ben Walden of my innocence, would he have had me killed?
“Things are going to be so much better now.” She smiled.
My eyes glanced down to her stomach. “Are you…”
Elise nodded vigorously. “I hope you’re going to stick around this time.” She started the coffee pot. “I’m going to need all the help I can get.”
“She’ll have to whether she wants to or not.”
We both looked at Ben as he wandered back in the kitchen. Was he talking about keeping me a hostage again? In all honesty, it didn’t matter very much to me as long as I got to be with Charlie. Still, the menace I heard in his voice didn’t sound very good.
Elise, always eager to be cheerful, intercepted the conversation. “Uh, let’s have dessert, shall we?”
Everyone but Reid and Tyler were already in the living room, though Reid appeared a few minutes later. I happily sat next to Charlie and took his hand in mine. Briefly, I considered Dad and Robbie, though I hoped that my notes would be sufficient enough to keep their fears at arm’s length. I knew that Robbie, at least, would try to talk Dad down and that made me feel less guilty.
“Okay, Kids, here’s how it is. Obviously, someone we know is a liar and has to be dealt with properly.”
“Don’t you idiots get it? She. Is. Lying. It’s all a scam, people. She’s been banging that cop and feeding him info to get a jumpstart on her career. And what, you’re gonna let her bring us all down because she’s got Charlie so twisted up he thinks he can’t live without her?” Reid stood in the doorway, but leaned against the arch of it confidently. It looked to me like he was in it for the long haul.
“Shut up, Reid,” Yuri barked. “You did nothing but run your mouth off for months, planting ideas in everyone’s head, trying to get people to believe crap we knew wasn’t true.”
Ben sighed and pushed the brim of his glasses up. “Reid claims you were speaking to one of the Bizi brothers at the New Year’s party. Could that be true, Addie?”
I shook my head, flabbergasted. “I talked to a lot of people that night…” The epiphany came at me then, hard and cold. “There was one guy—”
“Who?”
I looked at Ben, his face determined but worried. “I—I never got his name. He said something about the food… but that was it.”
Elise reached for Ben. “They were in our house. How is that possible?”
“They must have known someone on the guest list.”
Charlie sighed. “So who’s been actin’ funny lately?”
They talked about their defense attorneys, about wine vendors, and distant cousins. But my mine wandered off. I was back with an impossibly beautiful dress and stolen moments in a heated pool. But before that, there had been introductions, a hundred names and faces, small talk…
“How’s Dr. Harmen?”
“What?”
I tried to squirm my way out of my awkwardness. “I—I just remember him acting weird at the party, that’s all.” I pulled back then, not wanting to step on toes. “I don’t know him well enough to really say anything. It just seemed like he was nervous during that party.”
“I remember that,” Elise added.
Ben and Charlie looked at each other.
“Could be,” Yuri said.
“We will have to contact him right away,” Ben mumbled. “Elise dear, do you still have his number?”
“For emergencies only, of course.” She winked at me as she began flipping through the screen of her phone. I thought nothing of it until her voice reciting the numbers and Reid’s asking out loud what we were supposed to do next rambled together.
“Wait,” I said. “Elise, can you say that again?”
Charlie’s eyes were on me again. I could have sworn I felt them narrow in question, but I couldn’t concentrate on that now. In that instant the last four digits of the phone number revved around in my head. They were familiar to me, as familiar as a whiteboard and anger.
“Did you ever have that number written down in the study?” I heard myself ask. “On a whiteboard?”
“Yes,” Elise said. “Why?”
“I went back to the house when I could find any of you. The number was erased but I still saw enough of it to call.”
“And?” Reid snapped.
“No one ever picked up. Then after what happened to Charlie it was disconnected”
Charlie leaned back into the sofa and swore. Still, it wasn’t quite clicking for me. I didn’t understand why or even how a stubby man like Dr. Harmen could be dangerous.
“What am I missing here?”
“He knows a great deal about us.” Ben sighed. “Including where we live.”
Elise gasped. I noticed only then that she was staring off outside the window, her complexion much more pale than usual. “He could have told them anything.”
“Why would they want to know where you live?”
“Because we’re the best,” Charlie said. “And as long as we’re alive, we take business from them. Even if we get out of it, there’s always the possibly that we could go back in or help out the Feds.”
I already knew the answer to the question even as Charlie began to answer it. Elise and I were liabilities in Reid’s eyes, maybe in the eyes of the competition, but the guys were, too. No matter what they did or where they went, they always would be.
“So they knew where we all were?”
Elise said it before anyone else did. “If we hadn’t left the house when we did…”
I remembered the newspaper article. “Charlie called you before he turned himself in.”
It dawned on me again. Charlie had probably told Elise and Ben to get out of there, that he’d be turning himself in and the authorities might be looking around, that they might find the house by way of some tie to me. He might have only been trying to prevent them from going to jail, but by getting them to leave, he had saved them from slaughter.
“Yay, Charlie!”
“Okay, Kids, here’s how it is because of the little hijinks in the States; it won’t be long before the authorities figure out we’re here.”
“They ain’t stupid enough to think we didn’t go North,” Yuri added.
“I don’t know,” Reid sneered. “They seem pretty stupid to me.”
“Well, even if they are, the Albanians are not. And despite Reid’s brilliant driving yesterday evening…”
“Yay, man!” Polo offered his fist for a fistbump but Reid waved him away.
“Oh dear…”
“Yeah,” Yuri said, clapping. “Big mouth started a high speed chase with a bunch of state-troopers.”
“That why you didn’t meet us back at my house?” I asked.
“I was trying to get those piggies away from you lovebirds,” he spat. “If Jackass had just killed you like he was supposed to—”
“What?”
“Oh yeah, princess. Boss man gave us the go ahead to get rid of you if we could find for certain that you weren’t just messing around on Jackass here, but that you were working with the Feds. Your roommate said it herself you had a boyfriend named Adam.”
“Oh yay! Hey, I know, that’s the girl you called pretending to be a reporter with, right, Reid? Right?”
“What?”
; “Jackass said he wanted to be the one to off you. I leave him to it, right? But if you want something done right, you should do it yourself.”
He lunged then, but Charlie was faster, ready to block or give punches, no matter the consequences.
They knocked over the coffee table before Yuri and Ben could stop them, bending blinds at the window and almost taking out a lamp.
“All right, Kids, that’s quite enough. We have…problems to tend to.”
But I was already out the door, filled with disgust, anger, and something else I couldn’t quite see my way though.
Elise called after me, maybe Charlie too, and there was the faint feeling of stubbing my shin on the tipped over coffee table, but I ignored it, swore, and went on. I must have slammed the door as I ran outside because the patio light flashed on; motioned sensored, it went away a few seconds after I ran past it. And though I ran aimlessly, I knew enough to not go any further than the moonlit path, remembering rumors about barbed wire and my own lack of direction.
Many of Tyler’s toys littered the side of the lake, but I went past them, trailing out to the side of the woods, where large boulders and roots broke the ground. Thoughts wove their way around my brain, stemming sharp things into me that I didn’t want to admit. Charlie had agreed to kill me, convinced Reid enough that he’d do it himself. I knew he’d never hurt me; instinctually felt it in my bones. Yet, he had once made me believe he didn’t love me, and easily made Reid believe he’d hurt me. For us, there didn’t seem to be much of a line between deception and truth.
Chapter 20
I stared out at the lake, completely different from the ocean, though a body of water just the same. I marveled that it could be so still one instant, then could ripple from one excited fish. That the ripple could travel, changing everything it touched.
“Addie?”
I barely turned before he kissed me, madly, violently, like I hadn’t been kissed in months, like I didn’t think I’d ever been kissed before, and even when we pulled apart, it was only for a second before we started again, hands eager, my legs climbing. He pulled me closer still, his tongue trying to exploit me, but I wasn’t going to give in that easy.
Conviction (Wated Series Book 2) Page 25
