TABOO: THE COMPLETE SERIES

by Kol Anderson

  I gave him a second to come to terms with what I was about to unleash on him. “Pseudo-nitzschia,” I said. “The poison that’s usually found in some sea creatures. These organisms get mixed with seafood and the poison is so potent it can kill a healthy person in a day. Seafood, Weldon, the kind you might find at a Chinese Hut.”

  I watched the color drain from Weldon’s face. The gravity of the situation was starting to put it’s weight on him and I could see him struggling. “You can’t possibly…”

  “You’d be surprised what you can achieve when you pay cash to a minimum wage poor sap who has a sick child he needs to take care of,” I said. “Suggesting the place to Jackie was surprisingly easy considering she still has some seriously unrequited feelings for me.”

  Weldon looked speechless. “I can’t believe you’d do something like that…”

  “Someone wise once told me,” I said. “You don’t bring down The Devil. You rise up to him.”

  When nothing seemed to make sense to him, he started groveling. “Trey you’re not a murderer… you can’t do this!!! Please!!! Jackie… think of her! Think of the kids!”

  “Kids?” Jake laughed. “Now you’re worried about the kids? After decades of running a business that thrived on ruining lives!”

  “The only way you can save your father,” I said. “And have a chance of getting out of here alive, is if you tell us. If Colton’s lost to us, there will be nothing stopping us from ending your family one by one!”

  “You heard what he said,” Jake cut in. “Just tell me where you’re keeping him!”

  Weldon turned to Jake this time. “Do you have a clue, who it is you’re working with?” he said to Jake and it was obvious he was talking about me. “You don’t know him. You don’t know anything about him! You think he’s some hero? He poisoned Ryan on my orders, and if you want to know what he’s really like when you’re not in the room, Jake all you have to do is grab the surveillance video that’s in a pen drive on my desk.”

  I didn’t know what Weldon was going on about but I was certain he was doing this to drive us apart. One look at Jake told me he was doing a good job of it. “What video, Trey?” Jake asked me. “What’s he talking about? Who’s Ryan?”

  “Ryan is… was… my boyfriend,” Weldon said. “He’s dead now because of the poison Trey devised especially for him. Does that sound heroic to you?”

  “Jake,” I said. “I was just following orders. His orders. Because my sister was sick and needed my help and that’s the only reason he’s made me do all of it… but she’s dead now! And he can’t hold it over me anymore!”

  “Right,” Weldon mocked. “A sister who conveniently pops up when Trey does bad things and conveniently dies when he wants to take the fucking moral high ground!”

  Jake was looking at me suspiciously and that wasn’t all. I could see there were things going on in his brain that he couldn’t control. I knew I could have told them both Ryan was alive and it was only because of me but in case this didn’t go down as I planned, I didn’t want Ryan to suffer because of my decisions. That’s the only reason I left him out of everything. He had helped me enough. I couldn’t possibly ask him for anything more. If Weldon ever got a whiff that he was still alive and holed up some place all hell might break loose.

  “What video?” Jake wanted to know.

  “I knew you were smart Jake,” Weldon said, clearly using the tiny leeway he had found.

  “Shut up!” Jake raised the butt of his rifle and hit him with it. “Where’s my brother?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Weldon said. “If you bring me that video, I’ll tell you where Colton is, you have my word.”

  “Why?” Jake cried. “Why is this so important to you?”

  “You need to know the truth, Jake. That’s all.”

  “He’s just doing this to stall us!” I screamed. “Jake, you need to be rational!”

  “Let’s just get him the video,” Jake said and stepped out the door. I had to look at Weldon’s smug face for the rest of the hour that I had to sit in that room with him.

  “Ryan’s still alive, isn’t he?” Weldon said, out of nowhere.

  Fuck, had I said too much? But I couldn’t give in, I had to keep up the act. “What’re you talking about?” I scoffed. “Ryan died all those years ago!”

  “Don’t worry, Trey. Your secret is safe with me,” Weldon said. “But I’m curious. Where have you been keeping him all this time?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said flatly.

  “Ryan doesn’t have any friends,” Weldon said. “I made sure of that ages ago. So, it had to be one of your friends who helped. There’s no other way he could have possibly fooled me!”

  “Once again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Weldon smiled a little. “It’s good,” he said slowly. “It’s all good. Because when I’m slicing your throat and Jake’s and little Colton’s… I will need something to top it all off! You know? Make the victory all that more exciting! And Ryan will be that something! I will tear him apart… limb from limb… I will just hear him scream… until he can’t. Now that, Trey, is poetic.”

  My hands seemed to work of their own accord as they slammed heavily into Weldon’s bruised face and broke bones in his cheek on impact. The sound was incredibly satisfying and so was the resulting scream from Weldon. “Maybe you’ll win this,” I said. “Maybe in the end I will find that I was never good enough to fight you but I will always have this… how you screamed like a fucking girl at the mercy of my hands!”

  This shut him up.

  TREY

  Jake lunged at me and I wasn’t expecting the almost freakish strength he suddenly had, adrenaline most likely. I couldn’t believe Weldon’s luck. He found a way to drive us apart. I knew this wasn’t something that we could come back from if Jake truly believed what he was seeing. “Jake, you don’t actually think this is me, do you?!” I said. “I only did it because I knew they were taping Colton and I wanted them to think I was just like them. That I wasn’t going to be a friend to him. You think he would have let me see you or him, if I hadn’t pretended to be one of them?”

  “Why should I believe anything you say?” Jake laughed.

  “We can’t play into his hands, Jake. You have to remember I’m your only way out, and if what you just saw, is true then you have even more reason to get Colton out of this place!”

  Jake was not stupid. I just hoped he would choose to be smart in this case, but I could see in his eyes how much he hated me. It stung but it was the cost of doing business. If he wasn’t ever going to talk to me again, I was content with that if we didn’t lose sight of what was really important.

  “You’re right,” Jake said, and I could almost hear the loud snap in Weldon’s head. “Getting out of this mess should be our priority. Let’s not lose focus,” he stared at me and then walked up closer. “Just know that the minute my brother and I are out of this mess, it’s over between us. You and I will go our separate ways.”

  The snap resounded a lot closer this time, inside my own heart. But I didn’t let it show. “Sounds fair.”

  Weldon clearly wasn’t done. “You’re going to let a man who just confessed to being a pedophile, call the shots?”

  But Jake was ready for him. “If he was a pedophile, he would be taking your place,” he said. “Not trying to bring this operation down!”

  “You don’t know that he’s going to do what he says,” Weldon raised his voice. “Maybe replacing me is exactly what he plans on doing!”

  “If that happens,” Jake said, this time directly to me. “Then he’ll suffer a worse fate than you, I’ll make sure of that.”

  He pulled the drive from the laptop and dropped it in his pocket. “First things first, Weldon. Where is my brother?”

  “Colton’s my only leverage,” Weldon said. “I need assurance of my family’s safety before I can give it up.”

  “Your father’s an old man,” it was
my turn to speak. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be wasting time. The sooner we get Colton the sooner we can give your father the antidote.”

  “Just let me talk to my father,” Weldon said. “Take a phone, let me see how he’s doing.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” I started to say but Jake interrupted me. “Deal.”

  “Jake, you don’t think he’s going to actually give you Colton if you do this for him?” I said, well aware of the reason behind Jake’s confidence.

  “We’re not monsters like him,” Jake replied.

  You don’t bring down The Devil. You rise up to him.

  I wish Jake understood what he was doing had to have repercussions in the long run because it would look like weakness to someone like Weldon. I wish I could make him understand but I knew him too well to force him to rise up. That act would have to come from his own will, if it ever did appear. I wasn’t ready to make him come to this forcefully but if things went awry amidst the chaos then I was afraid neither of us would be left with much of a choice. In order to talk with Jake, I came out of the room and he followed me outside. We locked and shut the door so Weldon couldn’t hear us.

  “Are you okay?” I wanted to know.

  “I don’t know where my brother is and now I have to run through hoops to get Weldon a meeting with his father,” Jake said. “To answer your question, no I’m not okay!”

  I hesitated for a long time before I could find the words to speak. “Jake… the things I said to Colton it was only to mislead them,” I explained. “You have to trust me.”

  “Can we talk about that later?” Jake said. “We have more pressing matters at hand, don’t you think!” He took out the phone I had bought for him, no one could trace us on it. He used the burner phone to look at all the contacts I’d added into it after the purchase two days ago. “I have your number,” he said. “I’ll head to the hospital now.”

  “If something happens you give me a call!” I said but Jake was already gone.

  JAKE

  This wasn’t happening.

  I know I’ve been saying this for some time now, but I keep feeling like I’m being hurled into things that aren’t supposed to be here—like I was supposed to live a different life yet somehow these fucked up versions of it keep popping up and I’m helpless. A part of me felt it might not be real. But I couldn’t think about all that. I tried not to think about that video I saw, because thinking about Trey… and Colton… made me mad. All that was for later. Right now, I had a simple task—have Weldon see his father so he knows the older man is okay and then nothing will stop me from getting to Colton’s whereabouts.

  But it was when I reached the hospital room that Weldon’s father was in, that I received the ultimate blow.

  The atmosphere surrounding the room was filled with darkness. I could almost feel the pressure in my chest and knew something was wrong the minute I entered the general area of the private room. There was a familiar face on the bed, that of Weldon’s father, the man who had been nice to me and in all the shit that was going on it had seemed like a fucking life line. Surrounding him, was a horde of doctors and orderlies and another familiar face—Jackie. She wasn’t crying though, so I knew it couldn’t be that bad…

  “I’m sorry Jackie,” one of the doctors said. “We did everything we could but we couldn’t save him. I’m really sorry.”

  And that’s when I realized I was looking at a dead man.

  Weldon’s father was gone.

  But Jackie wasn’t crying…

  “I don’t understand,” Jackie said. “I thought he was getting better!”

  “He was,” the doctor responded. “We did a toxicology scan yesterday and it came out positive for Pseudo-nitzschia. It’s a toxic organism found in seafood but the probability of it happening to someone in the US is next to nothing.”

  After that there were more words exchanged but I couldn’t listen to any of it. Nothing made sense so I rushed out of the room, unseen, and hurried outside. In the miserable light of the fading twilight, I dialed Trey’s number, but my hands were shaking. “Did you do this, Trey?” I asked the minute I heard his voice.

  “Do what?”

  “Did you… are you going to make it look like Weldon’s father is dead… are you trying to hurt him? Is that it?”

  “Jake…”

  “You told me you lied about the poison so Weldon would think his father is in danger.”

  “Jake, what happened?”

  “They… the doctors… they said he’s dead. How’s that possible? They said it was some weird organism… Pseudo-nitzschia… which is what you said you gave him…”

  “Jake, just come back and let’s talk about this…”

  “You… you lied to me.”

  It took a while for this to sink in.

  No one could be trusted.

  No one.

  Not even the one man I had truly loved and cared for in all this time, the one man who promised me he wouldn’t betray me…

  “Jake…??? Answer me!”

  But I just ended the call and tossed the phone back in my pocket. I made my way to Trey’s car standing in the distance and when I got in, I couldn’t get myself to move.

  There was so much going on.

  So much I didn’t want to understand or wrap my head around, including the fact that Trey was a murderer. Weldon said he murdered Ryan for him, so maybe Trey is so used to all this that he doesn’t even see what’s wrong with it.

  Colton.

  He needed me.

  The only person I could actually trust, blindly.

  There was a knock on my door and it startled me. There was a face beyond the see-through glass of the SUV looking at me through damp eyes. She smiled but there was no life in it. There was nothing there, it was just muscle movement that came off as oddly heartbreaking. There’s darkness and then there’s numbness. Detached coldness. The opposite of hope. And no matter how much you get tired of it, you’re stuck when it comes for you. I knew that feeling, I knew it well. I wiped the stray tears off my face and tried to smile back and it was just as cold and detached. “What’re you doing here, Jake?”

  At first the question disturbed me. But then I realized she wasn’t saying it as an accusation but because she thought it was something to ask, nothing more.

  "Are you okay?" I asked because I honestly wanted to know and I guess she needed something familiar and trustworthy. She needed safety in the world that had suddenly become chaotic.

  "My father's gone Jake," she said and this time she broke into tears. I opened the door and got out and hugged her as hard as I could. I let her feel the safety that I was dying to feel. I let her cry while I held her there, vulnerable and on the verge of a breakdown.

  "I'm sorry, Jackie."

  She continued to cry and hold on to me like her life depended on it. It broke my heart. I knew who did this to her and there was nothing I could do.

  "It's a good thing the kids are with their father," she sobbed. "I don't think I could have handled them."

  "Jackie, I wish there was something I could do to help."

  She finally broke away. "Actually, there is one thing that you can do."

  "Anything. Just say the word."

  "I don't want to be alone right now," she said. “Will you take me home and give me some company?"

  Her grief wasn't bigger than mine. I knew if it came down to it, I would poison a hundred fathers to save Colton. It was a side of me that I never truly understood before but I did now. I had to push aside a lot of things in order to get to a place where I could feel sympathy for her.

  "It's okay if you have plans..." she started to say but I didn't let her finish the thought. "No, I'd be happy to give you a lift home."

  When she was in the passenger seat, I turned to her. “Do you mind if we make a little stop?"

  "Sure. What for?"

  "I need to pick up my prescription," I lied.

  "What kind of medicine? Is everything okay?" I co
uld tell her concern for me was genuine. "It's just Valium."

  She nodded. "Then you can pick it up some other time because my medicine cabinet is full of every antidepressant and sleep aid known to mankind."

  "Thanks, Jackie."

  Yes.

  Thank you, Jackie.

  You don’t know what you've given me tonight.

  TREY

  "You realize there's a ticking clock on this," Weldon had to be the most impulsive super villain I've seen. I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head, in a constant cycle.

  "Ticking clock?" I inquire, knowing that he was setting me up for something but curious to know what it was regardless.

  He looked up at me from the floor. “If Jake doesn’t get me what I need," Weldon said. “Stoll is going to kill his little bitch brother."

  I felt angry but I had to keep calm. Weldon could never find out about his dead father. It wasn't just leverage for him, the old man was our leverage as well. I was going to figure it out, the second Jake started to respond to my hundreds of texts and calls.

  God only knew why he was ignoring me. I hoped that he would come out of the anger long enough to see the light. Some things were more important than the life and death of random people.

  "If your henchmen hurt Colton I swear to God, I'm going to do the most unimaginable things that you can't even imagine!!!!"

  Weldon laughed. “Like what? Suck my dick? Your threats are worse than your blow job skills, Trey!"

  "Well, that's because I spent half my life sticking my dick inside your whore sister!!!"

  Weldon had stopped laughing.

  The look in his eyes spelled murder.

  JAKE

  I opened u medicine cabinet and lo and behold, it was a pharmacy in there. A few regular items like Tylenol but I saw everything from Valium to antipsychotics and obviously I wondered what the story was with the lithium.

  Tempting as it was, I stayed away from the other medication, remembering a time with Zac and his insane parties, and it all seemed like the best memories were all there, left far behind and I was standing in a sparse desert just waiting for my turn to disappear into oblivion.