Ding, ding, ding.
“I knew it,” I whisper as Logan licks his lips, glancing between the raven-haired girl and the blonde before turning his attention back to Victor.
“Why?” Victor asks, his stare so intense that if I were Logan, I’d be squirming like a butterfly pinned to a wall. “You’re a Prescott kid. You know as well as we do that nobody ever does anything for free.”
“Bernadette,” Logan says, pointing past Victor and toward me. “He said it was all about getting Bernadette when she was hiding behind you.”
“Either you’re lying to me, or your brother played you like the world’s smallest violin. What a bunch of bullshit. Neil was after more than just Bernadette. Tell me, Logan. What happened with Ivy?” Victor frowns hard, and it’s scary.
Logan blanches and then shrugs.
“She was mouthy, full of gossip. You know that. As soon as she found out that Danny was dead, she was threatening all sorts of shit. Talking to the cops, talking to you guys. Neil said he’d take care of her, and he did.” Logan glances over at the blonde girl again, and they exchange a long, studying sort of look.
He’s lying.
I open my mouth to suggest that to Vic, but he’s nodding, like Logan’s easy lies are actually working on him.
“Very good, Logan. You squeal like a little piggy, don’t you?” Victor goes completely still, like a vampire who’s forgotten how to breathe. That’s when I remember that despite his ability to control his temper, despite the fact that he keeps his hands clean most of the time … he’s the most dangerous letter in Havoc. “Say it, Logan. Tell me what you are.”
“What?’ Logan asks, backing up a little. But then he seems to realize that Callum is right behind him, looming like a monster in the dark. “I’m not saying that shit.”
“You will, or I’ll start breaking your fingers, one by one,” Cal says, and Logan curses under his breath.
“Fine, fuck this, I’m a little piggy. You happy now?” Logan spits the words out with a scowl, raking his fingers through the frosted tips of his brunette hair.
“And what sound do little piggies make?” Victor continues, smiling. He’s truly and utterly enjoying himself right now. I wet my lips with my tongue, and the girl in my arms squirms, like she can sense she’s on the precipice of disaster.
Logan just stares back at Victor for a moment, his hands shaking, his shoulders tense.
He has little choice but to comply.
It’s either his dignity, or his death.
“Oink, oink,” he breathes, nostrils flared, pupils dilated. If it were just him and Vic, I think he might try to fight him. As things stand, I could kill his girlfriend faster than he could win even a one-on-one fight, let alone one against four.
“Excellent. Now, get on your knees and kiss the toes of my boots. Say I’m sorry your majesty, and we’ll be finished here.” Vic’s smile gets a little wider as he studies Logan and his barely contained rage.
“No way,” Logan bites back, quivering as he looks from Hael to Oscar, back to Callum, then over to me and the girl in my arms. “You can’t ask me to do that, as a man, in front of my girls.”
“Do it, or you’ll see exactly how pissed off I get when my orders aren’t followed.” Victor cracks his tattooed knuckles in a very clear threat. “I’m losing my patience rapidly, Logan.”
Logan moves forward, as if he’s going to do what Vic’s asked. At the last second, he turns and takes off down the hallway.
Coward.
Victor moves so fast I barely register that he’s taken off after Logan. He grabs the other boy by the back of the hair, wrapping his arm around Logan’s neck and cutting off his scream. The two of them crash to the ground, but there’s no contest. Vic is much bigger, and much stronger. He turns Logan around, straddles him, and then puts his hands around his throat.
“No …” the blonde girl collapses against the lockers as she watches the scene unfold. I expect her to take off down the hall to try to rescue her boyfriend, but then she turns, and her eyes meet mine. “He left me,” she says, wonder and horror both apparent in her voice. “He left me.”
I release the raven-haired girl as Hael withdraws his knife, and she collapses to her knees, choking and sobbing.
“What is he doing?” I ask Oscar, watching Vic, stone-cold and immovable as Logan thrashes beneath him.
“Killing him,” Oscar answers easily. I look up, noticing that we’re in one of the school’s dark zones. Jesus. Havoc never does anything in half-measures. I wonder how long it’ll take me to get used to looking at a situation from every possible angle. “Usually takes about five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” I choke out as the two girls crawl toward each other, wrapping their arms around one another, and begin to sob. I’m sure this isn’t how they expected Snow Day to turn out. “Usually?” I add, after I really process what Oscar’s just said.
“Usually,” he agrees, and then he bends down next to the girls. “We’re going to let the two of you go back to the party,” he tells them, his long, inked fingers tapping against the glass of his iPad. “But if you say one word, if you make one misstep, I will be there waiting for you in the dark. Do you understand?”
“We understand,” the blonde whispers, pulling the other girl close. “I grew up in the southside.”
Oscar seems to think that’s explanation enough, rising to his feet.
Hael hooks a thumb in the direction of the doors at the end of the hall, where the two Havoc Crew girls are waiting outside.
“Skedaddle, ladies,” he says casually, and Logan’s girls scramble to their feet, heels loud against the floor as they run as fast as their stilettos will carry them. The doors open, close. Logan makes some awful, awful gurgling sounds.
And then it’s all over.
“Help me with the body,” Vic says after a few seconds. He stands up, and Cal and Hael move forward to assist him. Me, I’m wearing a pink party dress and stilettos. Silly me. When I picked this outfit out, I thought I’d be snorting cocaine with five Havoc Boys, not murdering one Charter boy. What a dumb mistake to make.
I approach the body anyway, bending low to grab one of Logan’s limbs. Vic stops me with a hand on my shoulder and shakes his head, leaving Cal and Hael to do the rest of the dirty work. He slips a cigarette from his pocket and lights up.
“Not you, beautiful girl,” he says around the cigarette. “You owe me a dance.”
My mouth drops open as Vic moves over to the side doors to the gym, the ones blocked with a piece of metal pipe. He waits for Cal and Hael to clear the doors heading outside, Oscar following just behind them, and then removes the blockade.
Victor opens the doors wide, nodding at several members of Havoc that are watching it from the inside, and then reaches back for my wrist.
Despite the fact that I just saw him kill a man with his bare hands, I take those inked fingers and curl my own around them.
“I want Aaron back,” I tell him as he drags me into the middle of the room, spinning me around to face him and putting one big hand on the curve of my waist. With the other, he clutches my hand so tightly it almost hurts. Yet, I do nothing to break that grip; it’s comforting, rather than frightening.
“We’ll get him back, I promise,” he tells me, turning me in time with the music and leaving me with a perfect view of Kali Rose-Kennedy and Sara Young, heading for the exit on the opposite side of the room. “I promise, wife,” he repeats.
And then Vic draws me in close and kisses the last of the breath from my lungs.
Aaron Fadler
The woods around the cabin make the perfect cover. The trees grow close together, and the canopy above me is thick and dense. Here and there, I stumble into patches of silver moonlight, but there’s not much else to help me navigate.
Sticking close to the road is both my best bet and my greatest risk. If somebody finds the cabin on fire and decides to come after me, this is the first place they’ll look.
“Mothe
rfucker,” I groan, putting my back against the trunk of a tree. My leg is starting to go numb from the pain, and my right arm is a mess of fire. It hurts to even curl my fingers into a fist. When I lean my head back, I can see a glimpse of the silver-edged moon through the trees.
I wish I had some idea of where, exactly, I am. Even just a general sense of direction would be nice. Instead, I push up off the tree and continue to navigate half-blind and dragging my right leg through the foliage.
Dew-dotted ferns soak my jeans and leave me shivering as I continue to trace the winding dirt road down the hill. The terrain is rough. It’d be a challenge on a good day. And today, well, let’s just say today is not a very good day for me.
Not thirty minutes into this mess, I hear a car on the road and let out a string of curses that’d make even Bernadette blush. The thought makes me smile, but it’s a grim one. As soon as the people in that car discover the house, I’m in deep shit.
Run, Aaron. Forget the pain and just go.
I start to move as fast as I can, pushing my adrenaline reserves to the limit. If I fall and hurt myself any further, it could be a death wish. Chances are if I break a leg, I’m not dragging myself out of these woods alive. Besides the very obvious threat of humanity, there are coyotes, cougars, and bears out here.
Twice, I stumble, but manage to avoid serious injury, using the trunks of trees to haul myself to my feet as I careen down the hill at a pace that’s decidedly dangerous.
Even worse though, is the sound of that car circling back down the mountain.
Not long after, I hear it: the crashing of boots in the woods, the cracking of sticks, the rustling of brush. Ducking low, I huddle beneath the reaching limbs of a blackberry bush. The tendrils are like alien arms, reaching out into the darkness. They’re dotted with thorns, and I’m sure I’m bleeding, but it’s sure as fuck better than getting found by some of Ophelia’s goons.
Whoever it is that’s in the woods with me—Charter Crew, one of those hired thugs, whatever—is moving quickly, but not quietly, like they’re so certain that I can’t have gone far that they’re not even trying.
That much I pick up right away. Oh, and the fact that there’s only one of them, too.
Good sign.
I wait for the sound of their boots to pass by my hiding place as they follow the road down the hill. After long enough, they’re likely to switch to the other side and continue their search there. That’s when I can start moving again.
My breathing is controlled, nice and quiet, but I can’t help the shivering. It’s cold out here, and I’m covered in blood. My face hurts, and everything is damp and wet; my clothes are rapidly becoming soaked. Even the damn blackberry bush above me is dripping down the back of my hoodie, cold fingers of water sliding down my spine.
December in Oregon, what are you gonna do?
When the woods are silent long enough to satisfy me, I stand up and keep going, intending on putting distance between me and my pursuer.
I make it all of fifteen feet before somebody comes at me from behind.
The guy—whoever the fuck he is—wraps his arm around my neck. But if he thought this was going to be easy, then he doesn’t know what it’s like when you live for someone other than yourself.
When I fight, I’m not fighting for pride, or because I’m some macho dickface with something to prove. I’m not even fighting to survive. The only reason I fight is for the people I love. And when you’ve got motivation like that, you can break necks like you were born to do it.
Using the slope of the hill and the bodyweight of my attacker, I throw him forward and over my shoulder. His back hits the ground hard, and he grunts. It’s the only sound he manages to get out before I’m driving my elbow into the front of his throat.
The man gags, hands reaching up to grab at me, but I pull back quick enough that his fingertips do little more than graze my face. Bet he has weapons on him though. As soon as he recovers from the element of surprise long enough to remember that, I’m screwed.
As he pushes himself up to a sitting position, I grab for his belt, fingers feeling for a gun or a knife of some sort. It’s too dark to see much, but he’s got the advantage since he already knows where, exactly, all of his weapons are. This is going to be a tough one, Aaron, I tell myself, but then I think about Bernadette again. I think about our girls. If I die here, the course of their lives will be irrevocably changed, and that’s not fair to them. Not at all.
When the guy feels me going for his belt, he reacts just the way I thought he would, reaching for a gun in a shoulder holster under his armpit. I just assume there’s two of them, going for the other side and feeling this spike of adrenalized elation when my fingers clench around the butt of a gun.
An elbow comes back, hitting me in the chest, but even though the impact hurts like a bitch, I don’t move, yanking the gun out of its holster and then falling back on my ass to put some space between us. By the feel of it, I can tell it’s a semi-auto of some sort. The most common safety location is at the rear of the slide, but not always. My fingers fumble for it in the dark, but I can’t find anything.
Come on, man, come on.
My attacker is already turning around toward me, using the sound of my breathing to find me in the dark. With few options left, I heft the weapon up in both hands and point it at the shadow I see moving across the silver edge of the moon. It’s the only target I have to aim at. Please, for the love of god, let this be a Glock or a Walther P99 or something without a safety.
I pull the trigger, and blessedly, the weapon discharges, knocking the man back enough that he loses his footing and slips. His body rolls down the hill. I can’t see much, but I can hear the foliage rustling, branches cracking, distant grunts and cries.
And then everything goes silent.
My body is tensed and ready to run, the surge of adrenaline keeping me from feeling any of my injuries as I clench the gun in my left hand and start to move. Part of me wonders if I should try to follow the man down the hill to make sure he’s dead, but there’s too much risk in that.
I have to keep moving.
This time, I veer directly into the road. I don’t have time to stay in the trees. If Ophelia—or whoever—sent one guy after me, it won’t be long until there are more.
At least now, I have a loaded weapon to use. That helps. That helps a hell of a lot.
The terrain levels out, and I’m left standing at a T intersection, the dirt road curving up the hill behind me, and a paved road laid out perpendicular to it. A green sign directs me back toward Springfield—twenty-five fucking miles away.
“Son of a bitch.”
I should’ve checked my attacker’s car for a radio or a phone of some sort, but I guess I’d rather walk twenty-five miles than risk getting caught. Tucking the weapon into the pocket of my hoodie, I start to jog. My adrenaline stays with me for about a mile and a half of that, and then the pain starts.
The next time a car drives by, I duck into the trees, but that doesn’t stop whoever it is from slowing down and stopping.
“Aaron!” a voice calls out, shaky and unfamiliar. It’s that David guy again. Guess the bloodstained hoodie and jeans gave me away. I step out of the woods, removing the pistol from my pocket at the same time. “Whoa, where did you get that?” he whispers, his eyes locked on the gun as he swallows several times to clear his throat.
“Give me your keys,” I tell him, and he looks up at my face. “And your phone.”
“You don’t want my phone,” he says, and I raise a brow, forcing my right hand to grip the weapon even though it hurts. David doesn’t need to know what bad shape I’m in. “My dad tracks me. He has all of that parent-spyware crap installed, too. But I can drive you into town. Nobody has to know about any of this.”
I give him a look.
“You came all the way back here to give me a ride? Sorry if I call bullshit on that.”
“No, I came all the way back here because my dad called me and said he
was having trouble getting ahold of his guy.” David pauses and glances over at the woods, as if he can sense the carnage I’ve left behind.
“Right,” I say with a harsh laugh. “And that makes me trust you so much more.”
“Look,” David says, turning back to me, his breathing picking up, hands curling and uncurling as anxiety rides him like a wave. He's so damn easy to read. “My father and his friends …” He trails off, but when he looks me in the face, I can see it. I’ve been victimized, too. It’s implied. “I can’t do much, but I can at least give you a ride.”
I tap the Glock against my thigh. Nothing is ever free. There is always a price. What’s the price here? Too much risk, Aaron, I tell myself, but I’m tired, and my adrenaline won’t last forever. Pretty sure I fractured my leg. Maybe my face. Probably my wrist and hand.
“You drive. I’ll hold the gun. Don’t disappoint me, David.”
We head over to the car—a blacked-out Lexus LX—and I pause.
I know this car, somehow. This is the car that’s always picking Kali up from school. In the driver’s seat, there’s another boy. Clearly, David wasn’t driving. That’s when I remember what Bernie said: David doesn’t drive himself anywhere.
“Oh, please,” the driver says, rolling his eyes dramatically. “You think I’d help my boyfriend’s abusers? Get in the car. I’m Mack, by the way.”
I stand there for a moment, looking between the two of them.
“What about your phone?” I ask, wanting to call Bernadette, hear her voice, listen to her sigh with relief at hearing mine. We’re a tragic fairy tale, me and her. Childhood sweethearts rarely live to see the sunrise together.
“If I were you,” Mack starts, exchanging a look with David. “I wouldn’t take the risk.” He turns back to me. “I work for Tom; he spies on me, too. I watch plenty of gay porn on my phone though, so at least when he snoops, he’s got something to see.” The guy smiles at me, but I’m not exactly in a smiling sort of mood.
Anarchy at Prescott High Page 4
