He forced himself to focus on Dimitri’s lips as he spoke, “You’ve been forced to lie for people who hurt you your whole life. I just need you to tell a few more so I can save you. Please?”
Arlo’s heart literally skipped a beat. How did his brain think this was romantic? Maybe it was just the warmth of Dimitri’s skin. Maybe it was the crush Arlo had had on Dimitri since they were playing with matchbox cars in the sandbox together.
Dimitri leaned in and brushed their lips together. “Please?” he whispered again.
If he was manipulating Arlo, he was doing a great job. He swallowed audibly, clenching his eyes shut before nodding. “Yeah, okay. I can do that,” he said more confidently.
“Good boy,” Calliope said.
“But what about your head?” Arlo asked, earning another wide-eyed look of exasperation from Dimitri. “What? It’s a valid question. You can ask about my fat lip, but I can’t talk about your possible concussion? That hardly seems fair.”
“Concussion?” Calliope asked, her voice taking on an edge that made Arlo uncomfortable.
Dimitri gave an audible sigh as Arlo said, “Yeah. Holden hit Dimitri in the back of the head with a baseball bat.”
“With a bat?” Calliope cried.
“I’m fine, Mom. It’s not even bleeding,” Dimitri lied.
Lying came so easily to Dimitri. Too easily, it seemed, because his mother said, “Dimitri Adonis Castellanos, don’t you dare lie to me.”
Arlo couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. “Your middle name is Adonis?”
Dimitri gave him an affronted look, which only made Arlo grin harder, especially when he said, “I didn’t choose it.”
Arlo collapsed into a fit of giggles, falling back onto the gravel beneath him, staring at the clear night sky overhead as he laughed hard enough to hold his stomach. Adonis. It was actually perfect for Dimitri. In class, a professor had once described Adonis as ‘a youth of remarkable beauty’ and Dimitri was. He really was.
None of this mattered. None of it. Arlo was officially losing it. The stress had broken him. Years of abuse and excuses and pain and it was Dimitri’s middle name that had sent him careening over the edge into full-blown insanity. He covered his mouth with his hand, but still the laughter broke through.
“It’s a family name,” Calliope said with a delicate sniff, adding to Dimitri, “You should be proud of your name.”
Dimitri had the barest hint of a smile on his face, that almost-smirk that made Arlo breathless and…well, horny. When he finally pulled himself together, he sniffled, wiping at his face and pulling himself back up into a sitting position.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “This is all just…a lot.”
That was an understatement. He was Alice falling down a rabbit hole of murder and cover-ups. None of this seemed real. It was like he was watching it all from afar. Except, he was sitting with a dead body close enough for Arlo to smell the blood and see the ragged hole the brick had left in the base of his skull. A brick Arlo had held. A brick still sitting right beside him covered in God knew what. A shudder racked his body. He could feel his dinner trying to claw its way up his throat, but he forced it back down.
They didn’t have time for his weak stomach.
Holden was a horrible person. He had done awful things to Arlo, had hurt him—on purpose—a million times. He’d enjoyed it. Had told Arlo he deserved it. He’d called him ugly, scrawny, unlovable, needy. So fucking needy. He’d made a game of humiliating him during sex until Arlo had just laid there, letting Holden do whatever he wanted.
“Nobody will ever want you.”
But Dimitri did. Dimitri had never stopped wanting him, had tried to kill for him once, and would go to prison for him if necessary. Holden hadn’t even been willing to tell the world Arlo existed.
Now, Holden didn’t exist. Just his shell. Was his ghostly apparition watching the two of them plotting to get away with murder? Some mean part of Arlo hoped so.
“I’ll need Arlo’s phone and his ex-boyfriend’s,” Calliope said.
“Can we just call him Holden?” Arlo asked quietly.
“Sure, sweetie. I’m sorry,” she said, sounding like she meant it.
Dimitri pulled Arlo’s phone from his pocket and pointed it at his face to unlock it. Once inside, he followed Calliope’s terse instructions on how to create a mock GPS trail.
“Doesn’t she need to do yours?” Arlo asked, voice dull.
“Please, my mom could take over my phone since I was ten. I promise you the software is already in there.”
“He’s right,” Calliope chirped. “Phones are easy. Spoofing his car’s GPS is going to be harder. What kind of car does this asshole drive?”
Dimitri looked at Arlo, whose brain froze for a solid thirty seconds before he remembered the sleek black sedan still in his line of sight. “A Mercedes. He drives a Mercedes,” he reiterated.
There was a sound like bones cracking and then of nails flying over the keyboard as Calliope said, “Okay, I can work with that. What’s Holden’s last name?”
“Abernathy.”
The typing stopped. “Joel Abernathy’s son?”
“Yeah,” Arlo answered, miserable.
“I know him,” she said, a sneer in her words as she resumed typing. “Guess the shit-covered apple doesn’t fall far from the shit tree.”
A bemused smile formed on Arlo’s face. Dimitri’s mom was kind of crazy but in the best possible way. “How do you spoof a car’s GPS?”
“By knowing how GPS signals work and giving it something better to latch onto. Don’t you worry about that, my pretties. Mama’s got that handled. I just need you boys to get him wrapped up and in his trunk. Clean up any evidence. If there’s a murder weapon, wipe it down and put it in the bag with him. I’m going to send you a location. One of you takes his car to said location, the other needs to take Dimitri’s and follow behind. Don’t break any laws. Don’t drive too slow. And, for God’s sake, make sure all the headlights and taillights work before you leave.”
Calliope was still talking. “I already have Dimitri’s car set up to feed false data on his location. Once you park Holden’s Mercedes, I need you both to go somewhere visible. Take pictures, post them, make a scene, do something memorable. If you can sneak into an event and make it look like you’ve been there a while, even better. Shoot me the location and I can fudge the data. Oh. If you’ve got a smart watch, leave it at work. Say you left it in your locker or your apron, whatever works for you. Cops are getting smarter every day.”
Arlo didn’t have a smart watch. Arlo could barely afford his phone. Unlike Dimitri, he didn’t work at the coffee shop for spending money or experience; he worked there because it was the only way he ate or paid rent. His meager scholarship only went so far.
“So, that’s it? We drop his body off and go…what? Party?” Arlo asked.
There had to be more to getting away with murder than that, right?”
“Oh, no. Sweetheart, your night is only beginning. This is just buying us some time to make sure you have an alibi while I figure out how to dispose of this fuck-wit.”