The man reappears above us with the gun back in hand.
“Nice try, kid, but no dice. Get the fuck up.” He kicks Chasm as hard as he can in the stomach, preventing him from rising to his feet. Instead, he lies there on his side, clutching his belly and coughing hard. Fear spikes through me as I push to my feet, hands raised, doing my best to distract the man from Chas.
“Look, we didn’t come here to hurt anyone,” I say slowly, studying the man in front of me. He’s fairly indistinct, white, middle-aged, balding. There isn’t much to him, nothing that might make him stand out in a crowd. The only distinct feature he has are his eyes, this pale blue color that only helps to enhance the disturbing nature of his stare.
It’s like he’s undressing me with his eyes, and I hate it. I feel helpless. Just like I did on the hike.
The hike.
This guy is the hiker. I know it. I know it as sure as I know the sun will rise tomorrow.
“You’re the hiker,” I say, and the assertion seems to surprise him. “You were there; you hit Maxx with a walking stick.”
“Fuck me,” the guy murmurs, and for some reason, my statement seems to make him nervous. “That’s why you’re here then? He sent you.” The guy curses some more as Chasm struggles to sit up, but I very carefully put my foot on his side, telling him as quietly as I can to stay down and be quiet.
“You’re the ATV driver, too,” I suggest, although I’m much less sure of this part. “You hit us on purpose.”
The man scratches the side of his head with the barrel of the gun, not like it itches. More like he’s starting to panic and isn’t sure what to do with himself.
“Get in the bedroom,” he tells me, gesturing down the short hallway with the revolver. “Now.” He points at Chasm with the gun and meets my stare with a pair of soulless eyes. There’s a sense of wrongness around this man, an instinctual residue of perversion that makes me physically ill. He’s looking at me like so much meat, like I’m not even a person.
I’d rather die than go into the bedroom.
“No.” Just that one word. I stand firm, holding his gaze. Based on his behavior, I feel like he knows who I am. The Slayer’s Daughter. If he hurts me, he might end up like the girl in the box. We both seem to be aware of that. There’s always a chance he’ll refocus his aggression on Chas, but then, he has no idea who Chasm is. For all he knows, we’re both off-limits.
“You think you have a choice, bitch?” he spits at me, dropping the weapon down so that it’s pointing at my leg. “You think I won’t shoot your ass and then just take what I want?”
I smile. Maybe not a great choice, in retrospect, but I feel like my hunch is right. This guy can’t hurt me without drawing the wrath of Parrish’s kidnapper. Whether he’s the Slayer or Justin Prior or not is irrelevant: he’s dangerous either way.
“I really don’t think you will,” is my response, even as Chasm grabs onto my ankle in warning.
“I said now!” the man screams, and then a gunshot goes off, startling me. It’s like a car backfiring inside the walls of the house; the sound is deafening. I clamp my hands over my ears, squeezing my eyes shut tight.
After a moment, I risk opening them to find … It takes me several tries to piece together what I’m looking at. My hands drop by my sides as Chasm finally finds his feet, standing up beside me and staring down at the man. He’s slumped against the wall in front of us, holding his leg and howling. It takes me almost a minute to register that, what with my ears ringing and all.
“You fool,” a voice says, just before a man walks out of a nearby bedroom holding a gun. “You animal.”
I stare at the newcomer because it’s just occurred to me where I heard the kidnapper’s voice before.
In class. At school. Sixth period. Mr. Volli.
“What the fuck?” Chasm chokes out as Mr. Volli pauses beside us, reaching up to adjust his glasses. He’s not looking at us though. Instead, he’s staring at the bleeding man on the carpet, looking at him the way one might inspect a roach they’ve just squashed.
Is … Mr. Volli my dad?
Alarm bells go off in my bed. That can’t be right. It’s too obvious. Think harder, Dakota.
Regardless, whether Mr. Volli is my bio dad or not, he’s the one who was wearing the mask in the video call, that’s for damn sure.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” the man on the floor screams, clutching at his leg and rocking back and forth with the pain. “I knew I never should’ve gotten involved in this shit.”
“No, you never should have raped and killed that maid. You’re a pervert, no worse than an animal. I don’t like people who can’t control themselves.” And then Mr. Volli pulls the trigger again and Chasm yanks me against him, holding me in his arms like he can use his own body to protect mine.
When I look back, I see that the bullet wasn’t aimed for me or Chasm. Instead, it’s gone right through the skull of the blue-eyed man.
He’s dead.
Mr. Volli, my sixth period teacher, has just killed someone in front of me.
The smell is … god, it’s horrible. Gunpowder and iron, that’s what it smells like. I press my face into Chasm’s uniform, inhaling his dark chocolate mint scent and wishing I were anywhere but here.
“Where’s Parrish?” Chas demands, but his voice sounds like it’s underwater. I wouldn’t be surprised if we both had permanent hearing damage from the gunshots. I push back from him just enough that I can turn and see Mr. Volli standing there, dressed all in black like he was during the video call.
“You know the rules regarding Parrish,” he explains, like that was a silly question. “Now.” Mr. Volli moves toward us, holding out the gun. “Take this and fire two or three shots into Mr. Fosser’s body.”
“The fuck?” Chasm blurts out as I press my back against his front, seeking comfort in his warmth. I can’t stop staring at the dead guy, at the spatters on the wall behind him, at his sightless eyes, his bloodied leg. I’d never seen a dead body before today; now I’ve seen two. Now I’ve seen someone murdered right in front of me.
“It’ll leave fingerprints on the gun and gunpowder residue on your hands to keep you accountable,” the computer science teacher explains, still holding out the weapon like he’s certain neither of us will use it on him instead. “Just a precaution. I’m sure you’d rather see Parrish alive than shoot me, but you never know.” He gestures with the gun yet again as my stomach churns and my mind rebels against what I’m hearing.
He wants us to … shoot a dead body. So that we look guilty. So that we can’t tell the authorities.
“Don’t mind him. He was a rapist who couldn’t control his urges. Less than a dog. If you think about it, he wasn’t even really human anyway.” I mean, Mr. Volli has a point. Rapists aren’t human; they’re trash. But still … that doesn’t mean I want to hold a gun or shoot a corpse or be involved in any of this.
I look Mr. Volli straight in the face, into brown eyes that are too pale to be reminiscent of mine. But then, I know where I got my eye color from. My eyes are Tess’ eyes. But are there parts of me that came from this man?