Born Under a Blond Sign

by V. J. Chambers

  I had reached my own house. I could hear Regan in the back yard. She had seen me, and she was barking out a happy greeting. But I couldn’t go to her. I couldn’t even call out to her. I needed to get to Miles. I switched the phone to my other hand.

  “So I did,” he said. “I shut her up.”

  I headed for my car, parked in the driveway. I opened the door, and I got inside. I found the keys in my purse, and I fitted them into the ignition.

  “I shot her in mid-scream.” He laughed a little. “One minute, she was so loud, and the next…” Another laugh. “But then it was bad. They were all in there, and they were all screaming, and there was so much noise, and I just… well, I needed quiet. Do you understand that?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Do you understand that, Ivy? Answer me.”

  “I guess so,” I murmured. “Sure.” But of course I didn’t. I didn’t understand at all.

  “I just needed quiet, that’s all there was to it. It was too loud to think. So… so, I made it quiet. And then… and then… Well, then it was done, and I didn’t know what to do. I wiped off the gun. I put it in Gilbert’s hand. And then the door was opening, and people were pouring into the room, and it was pandemonium, and it wasn’t hard to slip away, so I did.”

  I sat, holding the key, which was in the ignition of my car. Was his confession finished? Because, the thing was, I kind of knew all of this already, and I needed to get to Miles before Cal did something horrible.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m in my car. Where are you?”

  “I’m at the office, of course.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I drove to the Quikslim building as fast as I could. At first, I didn’t care if I went too fast, or if I was speeding. If I got pulled over, so much the better. I could get Miles help.

  But then I remembered that Cal had said he would shoot Miles at the first sign of sirens. If he heard me get pulled over, that might be the end of Miles.

  So, I slowed down a bit. I still drove quickly, but I stopped flooring it.

  I stayed on the line with Cal the rest of the time, but neither of us said too much. Mostly, I listened to him breathe. Every few minutes, he would check to make sure I was still there.

  “Ivy?” he’d whisper.

  “Yes,” I’d say.

  “Don’t hang up.”

  I didn’t hang up.

  Finally, I arrived at the Quikslim building. I parked my car in the parking lot, which was mostly empty. There were a few scattered cars lurking in the darkened gloom, but I didn’t see their owners anywhere.

  The building itself looked practically deserted as well. There were a couple lights on in the building, but for the most part, it was dark and dead.

  I made my across the parking lot, my shoes making noise on the pavement.

  There were streetlights every several yards. They were stylized to look sleek and modern. Mosquitos and gnats gathered in their bright halos.

  I stepped onto the walkway that led to the entrance. The air felt sticky, the way it does in the late spring. In the distance, I could hear insects singing to each other, and even further off, the sound of cars on the highway, whooshing to their destinations.

  In my ear, Cal breathed.

  I walked to the entrance to the building. The glass doors loomed over me. I could see the lobby inside, tastefully decorated, lit with the evening lights. They made the interior look ghostly and unreal.

  I put my hand on the door handle and pulled.

  The door didn’t budge.

  “The door’s locked,” I hissed into the phone.

  “I can buzz you in.”

  There was a buzzing noise.

  I tugged on the door again.

  It opened.

  I stepped inside the lobby, which had a decorative staircase traveling over the back wall of the room. It functioned fine, but it didn’t lead anywhere. There was a long desk in front of it with Quikslim written on it in swirling, curling letters.

  I walked over the tile floor toward the elevators. The tile was blue and white checks, like a checker board.

  When I reached the elevator, I pressed the button for up.

  I waited.

  I could hear Cal breathing on the other end of the phone. Above me, the evening lights hummed faintly.

  The air conditioning was chilly, and I felt goosebumps on my arms. I hugged myself.

  The elevator opened.

  I went inside. I hit the button for the floor where Cal’s office was.

  I waited.

  It seemed like nothing was happening.

  Cal breathed in my ear.

  I hit the button again.

  The doors slid closed.

  “How’s Miles?” I whispered.

  “Don’t worry about Miles,” said Cal. “How many times have I told you not to worry about him?”

  “Is he… is he okay?”

  “Shut up,” said Cal. “One more word about Miles, and I’ll put a bullet between his eyes.”

  I swallowed.

  The elevator hitched to life, pulling me up through the building.

  I watched the floors tick by, one after the other.

  Now, when Cal breathed in my ear, his breathing was elevated. He was angry.

  I hoped that I hadn’t done the wrong thing, asking about Miles. I hoped it didn’t cause Cal to hurt him. I couldn’t lose Miles. I couldn’t.

  Of course, now that I was here, now that I was just a few minutes away from getting to Cal, I had to acknowledge that the only reason Cal would want both of us here was to kill us both. If we were the only people who knew, and he got rid of us, then he was home free.

  Not for the first time, I wished I had a gun.

  Surely now that it was putting his own life in danger, Miles would lean on the county to approve my application.

  If we lived through this, that was.

  It was a big if.

  The floors ticked over, getting closer and closer to my destination.

  Four more floors.

  Three more.

  Two.

  One.

  The elevator doors opened.

  I got out onto the same floor that I’d been on earlier when I’d come to confront Cal. But no one was here now. The offices were closed up tight. The receptionist wasn’t there, and her desk was empty and still. Everything was lit in the otherworldly after-hours lights.

  I walked down the hallway, my footfalls echoing through the empty space, which seemed more and more like a tomb with every step I took.

  At last, I reached Cal’s office. The door was open, and I peered around the doorway to look inside.

  I saw the glass wall at the back, the tall potted plants against the glass, the desk, empty—but covered with papers and folders—the chairs in front…

  There was no one in the office.

  “Cal?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Where are you?”

  He laughed.

  “Cal, if you didn’t want to see me, why did you make me come all the way here? Why are you playing games with me?”

  “I’m in my father’s office, Ivy. Calm down.”

  Jesus Christ.

  I stalked back down the hallway to the elevator and got back inside.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?” I said.

  “Why? Where did you go?”

  “I went to your office, of course.”

  He laughed.

  I hit the button for the right floor this time and waited for the elevator doors to close.

  “I thought my father’s office was the right place to do it,” said Cal.

  The doors swished closed.

  “Do what?” I said. See, I knew he was planning on killing us both. Motherfucker. I needed a weapon of some kind. I may not have a gun, but maybe if I had something else…

  The elevator was moving.

  “Oh, you’ll see,” he said. “You’ll see when you get here.”r />
  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  The doors to the elevator opened, and I scrambled out onto the floor that contained Louis Pike’s office.

  I looked around for something to use as a weapon.

  There was the secretary’s desk, but secretaries didn’t have a lot of weapons lying around.

  “I hear the elevator,” said Cal. “You’re here.”

  Frantically, I searched the desk for something… Anything…

  “You can come in now,” he said.

  Damn it, he was going to have a gun on me when I walked in. He was probably going to shoot me right away. I probably wouldn’t even have a chance.

  But maybe if I could get close enough, maybe I could… I snatched a pen up off the desk. It was better than nothing.

  I opened the door to Louis Pike’s office.

  It was dark inside. The only light came through the glass wall behind the desk, and it was scant light, because it was night.

  Still, I could see the outline of Cal, sitting in his father’s desk chair, sprawled out, holding his phone to his ear. He wasn’t even facing me. He was staring out the glass wall.

  “Cal?” I said.

  I watched him hang up the phone. He swiveled on the chair.

  I hung up my phone too, scanning the room for signs of Miles. Where the hell was he? He could be anywhere. Maybe behind the desk, or on that couch over there, or just hidden in the shadows.

  “Hi there, Ivy,” said Cal.

  I turned to look at him.

  “Looking for Miles, aren’t you?” He laughed. “You’re not going to find him here.”

  “What?” I said. “What have you done with him?” My voice broke. “He’s not… he’s not already…”

  “No,” said Cal. “He’s alive. And if you’re very good, maybe I’ll take you to him.”

  “What do you want?” I said.

  “The same things that everyone wants,” he said. “I want to be loved and to love in return. But that never happens to me, Ivy. Someone else always gets what I want. There’s not enough room in the hearts of the people that I love. Not enough room for me.”

  That was when I saw the gun. He had it in one hand, and he casually moved it over to his other hand.

  “So, you have to wonder why I bother being alive at all.” He did it again, moving the gun back to his first hand.

  “Cal, why don’t you put down the gun?”

  “Of course not.” He laughed. “No, it’s funny. I came up here, and I was going to do it, because, I should, you know?” His face crumpled. “He was my little brother. She was a bitch, and she deserved it, but he was…”

  Cal was crying, I realized. I watched his shoulders shake.

  I started to move closer to him, gripping the pen I’d gotten from the secretary’s desk. Maybe if I got close enough, I could jam into his eye or his neck or something. I could stop him. I could find Miles. I could save the day.

  “So, I should,” he said. “I should do it. But it’s funny, because I got here, and I just couldn’t. I think… I think that I didn’t want to be alone.”

  I kept coming. Closer. Closer. My hand was sweaty as I held the pen, and I was afraid it was just going to slip right out of my fingers.

  “That’s why I called you,” he said. “But I knew you wouldn’t come if I just asked you. No one does that kind of thing for me. So, I had to tell you something to make you come to me. I had to make something up, threaten Miles. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have bothered.”

  What? “Cal, what are you saying?”

  “Just…” He looked down at the gun. “Remember it with me, Ivy. Remember us together. Remember that I made you laugh. And that I made you come. And that—even if it was only for a very short time—I was a good thing for you.”

  I stopped moving. “Cal, give me the gun.”

  “Please, Ivy,” he said. “Please. There was a time, even just a moment, when you liked me.”

  “Why did you say that you made something up?”

  “Of course. You can’t stop thinking about him. Not even now. Not even in the last moment of my life. Of course.” He laughed again. “Goodbye, Ivy.”

  In one movement, he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  The crack of the shot echoed through the room.

  His body leapt and then fell, sliding down against the office chair.

  I gasped.

  * * *

  I kept trying to call Miles, but he wasn’t picking up his phone.

  At first, I thought that I’d hear his phone ringing somewhere in the building, because if Cal had brought him here, then he would have brought his phone as well.

  But I didn’t hear the phone. I looked all over the office, in all the places where I could think that a person of Miles’s size might fit.

  And he wasn’t there.

  And I kept thinking about how Cal had said he had to make something up to get me to come here.

  Was Miles even there at all? Had Cal lied to me to manipulate me into coming?

  It seemed likely, knowing Cal.

  But Miles still wasn’t picking up his phone. Something had to be wrong.

  Unless…

  He was still angry from earlier and was just ignoring my calls because of our argument.

  Gah.

  Finally, I dialed 911 and waited.

  The Quikslim building wasn’t in Renmawr, so I was spared the agony of dealing with the Renmawr Police Department, all of whom hate me. Well, most of whom anyway. If the RPD had shown up, then I probably would have gotten arrested for the murder of Cal, even though it was utterly obvious that Cal had done it himself.

  I told the officers on the scene that there was the possibly of a hostage somewhere, but I hadn’t verified that. That Cal had claimed to have his brother tied up and unconscious somewhere in the building.

  Instead of combing the entire place, the officers called him.

  He answered their phone call.

  Jackass.

  He was fine. He was at home. But when he heard what had happened, he was at the Quikslim building like a shot.

  I was sitting on the ground floor, just outside the building, on one of the benches. I’d been told not to go anywhere, because they wanted to ask me some questions.

  When Miles pulled up, he saw me right away, and he came over and sat down next to me.

  “You okay?” he said.

  I nodded. “Fine. But Cal…” And then… I don’t know… I couldn’t handle it for some reason. I started crying. All of the stress of it, thinking that Miles was going to be killed if I did one wrong thing. Thinking that I was going to have to try to jam a pen into Cal’s eye. Watching Cal shoot himself. It was all too much.

  Miles wrapped his arms around me, which was something he never really did.

  I buried my face on his shoulder.

  He let me cry.

  And when I could speak again, I managed to get out what had happened, all of it. “I thought he was going to kill you.”

  He kissed my forehead. “I’m sorry I wasn’t picking up the phone earlier. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “Miles,” I said. “They want to ask me questions. What do you want me to tell them? Before, you didn’t want anyone to know about Cal. If you want, I can play dumb. I can leave out the parts about Cal killing Gilbert. Because it doesn’t matter now. Justice has been served, even if it wasn’t the way I would have wanted it.”

  He drew back, looking off into the parking lot. He was thinking.

  Another car pulled up, and we both saw Louis get out. His face was streaked in tears.

  Miles looked back at me. “Tell them the truth.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” He took a deep breath. “It’s about time this family came clean. About everything.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It took a while for the furor to die down around the Pike
family. Now, it wasn’t the youngest brother who’d pulled the trigger, but the middle brother. And it wasn’t a senseless shooting, but a lover’s revenge. The story was juicy, and the media was all over it.

  It wasn’t easy for Miles’s family to deal with. It wasn’t easy for Miles.

  But in the months after the incident, I’d wager that things were better for Miles and me than they ever had been. We had each other, and the rest of the world could be shit. Having each other made things easier.

  I was at Miles’s side when we went to Cal’s funeral. I held his hand while the reporters snapped pictures of the family as we all walked inside the church. I stood next to him when his father lost his cool and began yelling at the tabloid journalists to go home, calling them vultures.

  I was with Miles when some stupid waitress at a restaurant blurted out that he was one of that “family of shooters,” wasn’t he? Miles hid his face. I snapped at her that she probably wouldn’t like it if one of her brothers had killed the other, would she? I told her that she needed to mind her business.

  Later, Miles said I was like some kind of mother bear or a protective lioness.

  I said that was true. After all, Miles was my family. I was going to do whatever I could to keep him safe.

  We spent as much of that summer as we could in each other’s company. And, like always, it was wonderful to be with him. We were comfortable and happy together.

  We didn’t spent every second together. After all, we both had to work. But when we could, we were together. At his place. At my place. At restaurants. In parks. And whenever I took his hand, he let me, and he didn’t even flinch.