by Lisa Unger
“Layla—” I begin.
“Shh” she says through her broken lips, her eyes darting past me. “There’s a gun locker out in the shed. It’s where he keeps the hunting rifles. There’s a shotgun, too. The ammunition is on the shelf above.”
“Layla.” I am still struggling with my bindings. They’re looser, but not loose enough for me to slip a hand out. “Turn around so that we’re back-to-back.”
She lies still, exhausted. “I can’t,” she says, her voice going sleepy. She’s fading out. That head injury; it can’t be good. There’s so much blood. On her face, her neck, on the floor. Too much.
“Layla!” My voice is a sharp hiss. “Stay with me. I need you. You don’t get to bail right now.”
Her eyes flicker. Underneath the blood and bruises, her skin is an unsettling white. “Okay. Okay.”
I shimmy myself closer to her, and with effort we both turn.
“I’ll work on yours,” she says. “You’re stronger right now. If you get free, run. You know the code to the locker. Same as everything.”
Izzy’s birthday.
“Do you know what it feels like to truly hate someone?” she asks. “To wish him dead.”
I draw in and release a breath, flash on those entries in my dream journal, that terrible rage that surfaced when I faced Mac.
“I do now.”
We fall silent at the sound of footfalls approaching. The ladder leading to the loft starts to creak. We freeze, my bindings still tight, both of us beaten and weak. We’re no match for whatever comes next and we both know that.
“When you start to fade out,” I whisper. “Think of Izzy and Slade. We’re not leaving them behind. Not with him.”
I hear her draw in a sharp sob. Then the dark form of head and shoulders looms.
“Girls,” says Tom, his face full of compassion, his voice gentle and reasonable. “Let’s talk.”
* * *
“I think that we can all agree things have gotten out of hand here,” says Tom easily.
He’s helped us both down the ladder, and now Layla and I sit on the couch side by side, Layla so out of it that she’s leaning heavily against me. That cut on her head is still bleeding. The pain in my side is so excruciating, it’s hard to concentrate.
We’re going to die here.
Mac stands in the corner of the room, arms folded across his middle, staring balefully at Layla.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
Sorry: the favorite word of the abuser. How many times did Layla hear it from her father?
I find myself thinking about her wedding day. Of all the dashing and handsome men she’d dated in her life, why Mac, I’d wondered. Sweet enough, sure, but a dyed-in-the-wool geek. She’d been with photographers and models, adventure guides, all of them strapping and charming, head over heels in love with Layla. Mac was, as I understood it then, a banker. A number jockey. He sat behind a desk. I asked her: What is it about him, Layla? Why Mac? Because, she said, as pale and beautiful as a ghost bride. Because he’ll take care of me. He’ll never hurt me.
How could she have been so wrong? Or, on some level, did she know? When you come from abuse, do you forever confuse it with love? Do we invite darkness as the poet detective once suggested?
Mac starts to weep softly, he leans against the wall and sinks to the floor. Hatred tastes like bile in my throat. I wish I was strong enough to kill him with my bare hands. That rage, I allow its power to pulse through me; it’s keeping me conscious.
“So who killed Elena Montoya?” I ask Tom. No point in beating around the bush. “Was it Mac himself? Or did you hire Joe Knight?”
Mac looks up at me and Tom goes very, very still.
It was all there in Jack’s notebook, the notes he started keeping after Elena was killed. Pieced together with what I learned from Detective Grayson, the ugly picture is starting to come clear. Silence now would be the better choice, but I just can’t keep the words from coming.
“You met her through Alvaro and Jack, right, Mac? Did Alvaro invite her that night to Morpheus? Or maybe even Jack? He had a talent for keeping up connections. Elena was their old friend and colleague, their fellow alum from college. That’s how you met Elena?”
He says nothing. It’s so quiet that I can hear my own breathing. Out the window there is only blackness. This cabin; it’s miles from any other structure, sitting on a private lake. There’s a rickety dock, a boathouse where they keep a small dingy. Cell service here is spotty at best, which is what Mac liked about it best. His place to disconnect.
“So, what happened?” My words sound too loud, too strident. “Was it a single night? Or did you have an affair?”
“Stop,” whispers Layla. “Don’t do this.”
I look over at her. Does she already know?
But now that I know the truth, what’s real, what pushed me over the edge, it won’t stay in. It was a poison, a toxin, it almost killed me. It needs to be purged.
“Jack thought that Elena wanted more than you could give, Mac. You thought it was a one-night stand, but Elena wanted a life with you, threatened to tell Layla. When she couldn’t have that, she started blackmailing you. Hell hath no fury? It happens, right? Wealthy guy has a fling with the wrong girl, things get ugly. Rich people problems. Did you handle it yourself? Or did you call in your fixer?”
“Miss,” says Tom. That scar, that fixed stare, it’s unsettling. “I think you need to be careful with your accusations. We’re all in a place where we can work things out. Let’s not cross the point of no return.”
I should listen to reason, knowing what happened to Jack, Elena Montoya, what’s already happened to Layla, to me. But I’m too far gone. Maybe Mac’s right, maybe I am crazy. Too crazy to save us.
“I saw the pictures she was using to blackmail you,” I say. “Very graphic. Did she set you up? Lure you to her place for that purpose, or was it just her kink, how she got off? I don’t believe you were aware she was taking that footage. It doesn’t seem like your style, Mac. I had no idea you were such an animal, so—unhinged.”
The weeping has stopped; now he’s glaring at me again.
“You’re going to get us killed,” Layla hisses. “Shut up, Poppy.”
That’s what she doesn’t get. We’re already dead.
“Jack must have put it together when she was murdered,” I go on. “Someone made it look like a burglary gone wrong. But he didn’t buy it. How did he get all those pictures? Did she send them to him, too? It looks like he was investigating, trying to figure out what happened to her. It was haunting him.”
“I didn’t kill her,” said Mac. “It wasn’t me. I tried to tell Jack that, to make him understand.”
“But Jack couldn’t let it go, could he?”
“Mac.” Tom’s voice has taken on a tone of dark warning. “Don’t say a word.”
There’s a breath where I think Mac’s going to deny everything.
“No,” he says finally, his voice a growl. “He couldn’t. He wouldn’t let it go.”
Layla draws in a breath, starts to sob.
“She was nothing, no one.” Mac’s voice is high and indignant. He stands now, starts pacing. Layla shrinks against me, afraid. My brave, tough friend shrinks from him. That rage, it’s rumbling.
“It was nothing. Nothing, Layla. One stupid, drunken night, one stupid drunken mistake. She set me up, had those cameras planted and waiting.”
Arms waving, face red.
“That’s enough, Mac,” says Tom with a sigh. “Quiet now.”
“No, Tom, no. It was a setup. For all I know Jack was even in on it, from the beginning. And he would have ruined all our lives—mine, Layla’s, the kids’—even yours, Poppy.”
“Jack? In on it? He was your friend,” I say, incredulous. “He loved you.”
“Then mayb
e it was Alvaro,” Mac says. “He was in on it with her. I’m sure of it. She wasn’t working alone.”
Something about that strikes a note. That picture. Why would Alvaro give that photograph to me and pretend not to know who Elena was? He knew her. Did he hope it would jog my memory? And his words to Sarah: I wish Jack had been a little less good.
Was Alvaro capable of something like that? Setting Mac up to blackmail him? Did he figure Mac would just pay any amount to keep his affair from Layla, never imagining the dark turn things would take?
“Just tell me everything, Mac,” I say. “Make me understand what happened. The truth. God, for all of our sakes.”
“I advise you again to say nothing.” Tom again, looking a little red in the face.
Mac waves him off. “What does it matter now?” he says.
“Mac,” says Tom. “It matters.”
“I always really liked those guys, you know—Jack and Alvaro,” Mac says.
He rubs at his bald head. The Mac who met me at the door is gone. Now he’s more like the man I thought I knew. But that’s the trick of the abuser, soft one moment, a monster the next. Unpredictability is his best trick.
“When Alvaro was in town and we hung out, it was cool. I felt like one of the guys. Alvaro was kind of a dick, but—you know—he was funny. The girls loved him. We partied. I never had friends like that before. For me it was all school, work, work, work, then family.”
He starts pacing the room again. Tom stands still by the door, fists clenched.
“Alvaro introduced me to Elena. We danced. She was so hot, you know. Not beautiful like Layla—but eager, willing. With Layla, it had been so bad for so long. I can’t even remember the last time we—you know. All we do is fight now, right, Layla?”
“God, I hate you,” she moans. I glance down at her; the look on her broken face is pure revulsion. She sits up higher, seems energized by her hatred for him. I can feel her working on her bindings, too. Who are these people?
“See what I mean?” He looks at me with palms up, a caricature of the innocent man, eyes pleading. “You know what a bitch she can be, Poppy. Come on, you know.”
“Mac, please,” says Tom, an exasperated parent with a difficult child.
“I ditched Jack and Alvaro, and I went back to her place that night—Elena’s.” He stops, blows out a breath. “And it was totally off the hook, crazy.”
“Okay,” says Tom. But Mac’s not listening; he’s caught up in the telling of this.
“I told her that I was married. That it was just for that night. She seemed cool with that. But I saw her a couple more times. I mean, she was so—easy. Just light and fun. Then, I tried to end it. I mean, I have kids. I love Layla—despite it all—I do.”
He puts his hands in prayer at his chest, closes his eyes. It’s disgusting, how well he plays the role, the guy who made a mistake, one who is sorry for it.
Tom stands, shaking his head, totally focused on Mac. Slowly, carefully, I work at the bindings. Layla’s quiet but I can still feel her moving. My mind is focused on that gun locker. If I can get loose, I will run. I’m fast when I need to be.
“First, she sent the video to my phone,” he says. The darkness settles into his voice now. The anger. “I was at the dinner table with my kids. Then the pictures came to my office by messenger.”
I see it start to creep into the features of his face. The hardness, the indignation.
“And she wouldn’t stop. Money. That’s what she wanted. She didn’t want me. She didn’t want a life, a relationship. She just wanted money, more and more of it. That was all she ever wanted. I didn’t know what to do. For a while, I just paid up. But she wouldn’t stop, started showing up places. I think she was getting off on it, watching me dance like a puppet on a string.”
He stands in front of me, his expression dark, but still pleading. He wants me to understand. I nod carefully, giving him what he wants.
“So, you couldn’t take it anymore. You called your security firm. There was a problem that they needed to handle,” I say, trying to keep my voice soft, understanding. “What else could you do?”
“That’s right, Poppy,” he says. “What else could I do?”
I’m free. While Mac was weaving his tale, and Tom focused on how much of the story Mac was going to tell, I managed to shift out of the duct tape at my wrists.
But I leave my hands behind my back for now, stay very still.
“Tom is the fixer. And if Jack had just stayed out of it, everything would have been fine. It would have—” he makes a burst with his fingers “—gone away. The police, they bought the burglary thing.”
He sinks into the chair across from me and we regard each other. He seems drained of anger again. Tom’s angry flush is gone; his expression frighteningly grim. Layla hasn’t issued a sound, made a move. Now she lies heavily against me. Oh, please, Layla. Please hold on. Don’t black out now.
“He just didn’t get it,” says Mac. “That was Jack’s problem.”
I feel a shaking begin in my center. “What didn’t he get, Mac?”
“That the world isn’t big.” He swings his arm wide. “It’s small. It’s tiny.”
I shake my head; what is he saying?
“Jack was a bleeding heart.” He lets out an angry laugh, waves a finger at me. “He thought that it was the big picture that mattered—justice for this woman, what’s right and wrong. He thought that’s what mattered.”
A cold poke of fear presses into my belly.
“Jack—you know I loved him—but he was selfish. When you miscarried, Poppy, lost his child, he didn’t shed a tear. You know what he told me. That he was relieved.”
He practically spits the word; and it hurts, it slices, because I know it’s true. The power of rage is leaving me, crushed by sadness.
“That he wasn’t sure he was ready. His child died and it was about him, some ideal he had about parenthood and whether he could be ready for it. How disgustingly selfish is that?”
The air is leaving my lungs, my head spinning.
“So, if he didn’t care about his own child, why would he care about mine? Why would he care about Layla? What finding out about that woman would do to them? I had to fix that problem and he just didn’t get it.”
He’s gone weirdly blank. The man before me is once more a total stranger. The Mac who was married to my best friend, who I thought of as family, who held me when Jack died—he’s gone. Another friend lost.
“You’re right, Poppy. He couldn’t let it go. He didn’t understand that for most of us it isn’t about justice for the world, or capturing beauty. Life is not about art and travel and high ideals. What matters is our children, the life we’ve built, whether the people we love are safe. The world is not big. It’s small. You know that, Poppy. He didn’t.”
The irony that he’s just beaten his wife and her best friend seems lost on him. He’s the crazy one. He’s the one who’s lost his grip.
“Mac,” I whisper.
“He made me call in Tom,” says Mac miserably. “He forced my hand. I had no choice.”
“Jack became a problem.” Tom, cool and level. “He was a threat to the Van Santen family. I was empowered to deal with the issue as I saw fit. It might have gone differently if Jack had cooperated.”
Mac looks to Tom, then back to me, his face earnest.
“I didn’t know how he would fix it, just that he would,” says Mac. He seems pale and weak suddenly. “I swear it, Poppy. I didn’t know what was happening until it was—too late.”
I remember his grief, how he wept that day. It was real. Just like his weeping after beating Layla was real. Remorse changes nothing.
Mac sinks his head in his hand. His body sags, and I feel that wild thing come up from inside me again, that terrible rush of rage and grief. And I’m glad for it. Adrenaline. It’s all I ha
ve now. It’s a kind of electricity in my body.
Now Layla and I know everything. Which means they’re going to kill us both. Fear twists at my insides, and I try to nudge at Layla, but she’s heavy on me, not moving. Is she just pretending to be out of it? Has she gotten her bindings free? Or has she passed out completely?
Layla, please wake up.
How will they fix this? I wonder. When Layla and I disappear—how will it be explained? It can’t be. Grayson will know what happened. They won’t get away with it. But it will be too late for Layla and me. What will happen to Izzy and Slade?
“The police know everything, Mac. I’ve turned everything over to Detective Grayson. I found the safe-deposit box, the pack with all of the evidence Jack collected.”
“Then where are they?” he asks, with a smirk. “Why are you here alone?”
“I’m not,” I lie. “They know where I am. They’re on their way.”
Tom pulls on a pair of gloves. “You’ve been here two hours. Your rescue party is late.”
“I didn’t know how much Jack told you, Poppy,” Mac said. “I was relieved when you lost your mind. You should have stuck with that play. It would have been better for you. I don’t want this, you know. You did this.”
It comes up from deep inside me, a wail of rage so pure. I lunge for him using all my speed and weight, and take him down hard to the floor, tipping the chair over, his head cracking against the wood, releasing a groaning breath as I land on him. I sit up and punch him hard in the face, again, again. Blood sprays, my hands throbbing with each blow.
All the grief, all the rage, all the pain—it flows out of me just like it did in my dream. The blows land one after another, Mac prone beneath me, my breath ragged, my knuckles splitting, fists screaming with pain.
There are hands on me; then a sharp pain in my arm. I turn to see Tom standing behind me with a needle in his hand. The world starts to shake and wobble, nausea creeping up, everything dimming around the edges.
“No,” I say, grappling to hold on to consciousness. “No.”
