by Naomi Martin
“Maybe the bikers but Blaze, Evan, and Alec all have money,” I remind her. “They’ll be able to buy justice.”
She shakes her head. “You have them cold. You have them on video,” she says. “They’re going to prison.”
“You have more faith in the justice system than I do,” I tell her. “My experience with the cops hasn’t exactly been a good one.”
She takes my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. “I understand. But trust me on this,” she urges. “The cops have got to have this video.”
My heart stuttering as wildly as my belly is churning, I purse my lips as my thoughts tumble wildly through my head. Maybe she’s right. Maybe going to the cops is the right thing to do. Maybe they really will all be locked up. And if they’re locked up, they won’t be able to touch me. But if something goes sideways and they don’t wind up in prison, I could pay for it with my life.
“I’m putting my trust in you,” I say. “And the cops.”
Jenna throws her arms around me, squeezing me tight. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispers in my ear. “We’re going to get through this.”
As I leave the bathroom, my only thought is that I hope she’s right. I make my way back through the hallways, pushing my way through the crowd. It feels like it takes forever, but I finally get out of the building and make my way to the parking lot. I get to my scooter when a car roars up and comes to a screeching halt next to me. I gasp when Evan jumps out from behind the wheel. He strides over to me, a look of dark rage upon his face.
“What the fuck, Harlow?”
I try to control my breathing and smooth out my features, doing my best to not give anything away.
“What?” I ask. “I told you I’m not going to do what Blaze –”
He steps closer to me, his face scant inches from mine. His eyes are wild, his face etched with outright terror. He looks like he didn’t sleep last night either – and is haunted by watching his friend be executed by the bikers.
“Don’t play stupid with me,” he hisses. “I know it was you out in the woods last night. I know you saw what went down.”
I shake my head, trying to feign innocence. “I – I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I heard your scooter, Harlow,” he spits. “You’re just lucky nobody else seemed to notice. What in the fuck were you doing out there?”
I know there’s no use in trying to keep up the charade. He knows. So I let out a long breath and drop the pretense. I glare at him as the image of watching Patton be murdered and thrown out like garbage flashes through my mind.
“The better question is what in the fuck are you doing with the Lords of Chaos?” I spit back at him. “And why haven’t you gone to the police, Evan? They murdered Patton right in front of you.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” he growls.
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
He looks away and I see his eyes well with tears. The fear coursing through him is etched deeply into his features and I can’t help but feel a slight sense of pity for him. But he made this bed himself. He chose to do what he did to me. He chose to get into bed with a motorcycle gang. And he chose to sell drugs.
“There’s nothing I can do, Harlow,” he says, his voice flat and emotionless. “If I go to the cops, they’ll kill me too.”
I say nothing. Evan looks at the ground, kicking at the pebbles that litter the concrete. He looks like a man tormented by his choices. Or maybe, more like the consequences of his choices.
“Maybe I’d deserve it,” he says softly. “But I don’t want to die, Harlow.”
I’m not a cold-hearted bitch. At least, not completely. I don’t like to see people get hurt. And complicating things even more are my feelings for Evan. I hate him for so many things but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t still some of that residual attraction I have for him clouding the issue in my head. I know it’s wrong. It’s sick. I can chastise myself as much as I want but it’s not going to change things. We don’t control our hearts. But we can control our actions.
“You need to turn yourselves in, Evan,” I tell him.
“I can’t,” he says.
“Evan, you were a witness to a murder,” I urge him. “Maybe you can get immunity or witness protection or something.”
He scoffs. “I doubt it. More like I’ll get charged with murder.”
“You won’t,” I tell him. “You didn’t pull the trigger. I have video proving it.”
His eyes widen and he pales as he looks at me. “Please tell me you don’t actually have video.”
“I do.”
“Harlow, they will kill you if they find out,” he tells me. “Or Blaze will.”
“It’s the only thing that’s going to keep you out of prison.”
He runs a hand through his hair and blows out a long breath. “You need to destroy it. I’m serious,” he tells me. “They will kill everybody you love and burn down your entire world.”
“I’m familiar with how the Lords of Chaos operate,” I say coldly.
He clears his throat, looking abashed. “Right. Sorry.”
I look out to the street that runs in front of the school, watching the cars go by. My mind is swirling. Everything is confused and nothing makes sense to me right now. The only thing I know for sure is that a kid was murdered last night. Yeah, he was part of Blaze’s crew and was into the same bad shit but he didn’t deserve to be murdered and tossed into the bottom of a rock quarry. Somebody needs to pay for that. Somebody needs to be held accountable.
Not only that, but Blaze, Alec, and yes, even Evan, have been victimizing girls around here for a while. They’ve been using them and blackmailing them into doing what they want for a long time. And that needs to stop. No girl should ever be shamed into doing something against her will. And until Blaze and his crew are held accountable, that’s going to continue. I can’t let that happen. Not if I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror anyway.
There’s a piece of me holding out hope that Evan will step up and do the right thing but as I look into his eyes, as terrified as he is, I can see that he won’t be the one to step up. I can tell he simply wants this all to go away so he and Blaze can continue doing what they’ve been doing. As I look deeply into his eyes – I mean really look this time – what I see chills me to the core.
For the first time since I met Evan, I see him for who he is – who he really is. He puts on a good front and plays the part of the nice guy really well. But once you pull back that mask and see beneath it, Evan Turner is a very different person. He’s every bit as callous and cruel as Blaze – he just does a far better job of hiding it.
That realization hits me like a lead weight to the gut and nearly drives the breath from my lungs. I taste the bile in my throat and have to fight off the waves of nausea. But on the bright side of things, it at least finally cured me of my crush.
“You don’t want me to destroy the video to keep me safe,” I start. “You want me to destroy it because it’s the only thing linking you to the murder at all.”
“Harlow, that’s not true –”
“You’re not here trying to protect me at all,” I continue. “You’re here trying to protect yourself. You wanted to know how much I saw.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not –”
“Don’t fucking lie to me,” I snap. “You have no desire to hold anybody accountable. You want to keep living this life and doing what you’re doing.”
He shrugs as a predatory smile touches his lips. All the fear he’d had in his eyes before vanishes and he looks smug. Arrogant. It’s only then I realize it had all been an act. A very convincing act. He’s not afraid of the bikers – he’s bound tighter to them than I thought. He’d done a good job of fooling me this whole time.
“It’s not such a bad life. It’s actually pretty fucking fun. And truth be told, Patton was a liability. He needed to be dealt with,” he grins. “
The Lords of Chaos did me a favor.”
“You’re an evil son of a bitch, Evan,” I whisper. “You’re disgusting.”
“Yeah, but you still fucked me. And you liked it.”
My hand lashes out before I even stop to think about it. Evan’s head rocks to the side as I connect, delivering a hard slap to his cheek. He grins, completely unfazed by the blow. But when he looks at me, his eyes narrow and his face grows hard.
“Give me your phone,” he commands. “I’m going to destroy the video.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Bullshit,” he growls. “I’m not going to tell you again. Give me your fucking phone, Harlow.”
I stand tall and glare at him. “I told you. I don’t have my phone.”
His jaw flexing and clenching, he roughly grabs my purse from me. I don’t say a word as he rifles through it. He mutters to himself as he digs through my bag, his movements growing frantic. Finally, he looks up at me, an expression of stunned disbelief on his face.
“Where’s your phone?”
As I look at him, I feel the slow smile spreading across my lips. A look of confusion spreads across his face which makes my smile grow even wider.
“By now, I’m pretty sure it’s in the hands of the police,” I tell him.
Epilogue
“How are you holding up?”
I shrug. “About as well as you’d expect.”
“I know you have misgivings –”
“I don’t,” I cut her off. “None at all. I’m just scared is all.”
Jenna and I are sitting at the coffee house on the corner of Main Street on a cloudy, cool Saturday afternoon. It’s been a month now since the police rounded up Blaze, Evan, Alec, and some of their friends – as well as the member of the Lords of Chaos who were on the video. Their cases are all making their way through the courts and the prosecutors are all telling me I’ll have nothing to worry about for the rest of my life. That by the time anybody in that video gets out of prison, we’ll all be old and gray.
I don’t know why it is but the more they try to reassure me, the more worried I become. I’m smart and realistic enough to know that not everything is as bright and rosy at it seems. No court case goes off without a hitch and deals are cut all the time.
“Get out of your head,” Jenna orders me. “You did the right thing.”
“I know I did the right thing,” I sigh. “I just – I’m just worried.”
“We’ll get through it all, Harlow. We’ll get through it all together.”
I give her a smile. That’s been her mantra ever since we turned the video over to the cops. It’s almost like she keeps repeating it to reassure herself as much as to reassure me. Maybe she is. If so, I can’t really blame her. Our lives and the world around us are so fragile and uncertain right now and in my mind, danger still lurks around every corner.
The one spot of relief – unexpected as it is – I’ve found is actually school. Ever since Blaze and his minions were scooped up by the police, it’s like a dark, oppressive cloud has lifted. People are friendlier and more open. Yeah, there are still hard looks and back-biting whispers. Blaze, Evan, and Alec still have their cult of personality who hate me for what I’ve done. But they’re far fewer than the people who seem – relieved – by not having those three strutting around campus anymore.
“Still thinking about going to college back east?”
I take a drink of my latte and nod absently. “I think getting the hell out of here would be the most prudent thing.”
“Maybe. But maybe not,” she shrugs. “You might be just as safe at Stanford as you would be at Harvard.”
I laugh. “Right. Like I have the grades to get into either of those places.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Well, let me rephrase,” she grins. “You’d be just as safe at a junior college in San Francisco as you would be at a junior college in Boston.”
I laugh and slap her hand. “You’re such a bitch.”
“That I am.”
We sit and chat for a while but as a light mist begins to fall, we both get to our feet. A sound like thunder reaches my ears but it only takes me a moment to realize it’s not thunder. It’s the deep rumbling of motorcycles. A lot of them.
“We should go,” I say, fear making my heart thunder as loud as the bikes.
As the first of them turn the corner and come straight down Main Street, piercing the heart of Sapphire Bay, Jenna takes my hand. She squeezes it tight as dozens of bikers riding in two lines, slow down as they pass us. The blood runs cold through my veins and my heart sputters as if it’s about to stop dead in its tracks.
As the Lords of Chaos pass us slowly, each of them turn and look straight at me, malevolent and hateful looks on all of their faces.
“Jesus,” Jenna gasps. “What in the hell are they doing?”
It’s a show of force aimed right at me. I’m the reason their guys are going to prison and they want to intimidate me – which they’re doing an outstanding job of.
Even though I know my immediate danger has passed – Blaze, Evan, Alec, and the bikers from the quarry are all in jail and none of them can touch me – I still haven’t felt safe. More than that, I’ve worried about the ongoing threat to my loved ones.
And as I watch this procession pass us by, the dark, angry looks on the faces of the bikers, I realize that doing the right thing isn’t necessarily doing the smart thing. I may have put a lot more people in danger.
“It’s going to be okay,” Jenna whispers to me. “We’re going to get through this.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “I really hope so.”
The End
