“Get the fuck in.” I shove her toward the door, and she scrambles in. She sits herself down in the passenger seat in her party dress, but she can’t quite bring herself to shut the door. Because it’s a little like closing her own coffin lid.
People can sense that shit.
I go, thinking to close it for her, but then I pause because I like the way she looks, sitting there in her perfect dress with the perfect blood and grime, torn and tattered. I did that to her.
“Is he dead?”
“Take a wild guess.”
She swallows. And then I do something that shocks even me—I grab the seatbelt and stretch it across her body and buckle her in. The seatbelt makes that loud click only seatbelts make. It feels good to belt her in. As though I’m protecting her with that belt but also keeping her in there, like she’s mine.
She swallows visibly. “What do you want?”
I tuck another strand back behind her ear. She’s warm and so damn soft. What I want is this exact moment in time, with her there and me here. “Doesn’t matter what I want.”
I say that a little bit for me. I don’t want to kill her, but she’s seen too much.
She stares at me with those brown eyes. Her hair is the color of tea. The tops of her tits are smooth like eggs. This girl herself is like an egg, I think. Perfect and unbroken.
I back away and shut the door. I get in my side and peel the fuck out of there, taking the main road south, toward the highway.
I can tell by her eyes, and by the quality of her silence, that she’s plotting her escape. I flick the locks on the doors. Another satisfying sound.
She turns to me, stunned.
“Gotta love these service vans,” I say, but my heart isn’t really into taunting her. I tell myself not to look at her anymore. It’ll make it too hard to kill her.
I wasn’t even that into killing Madsen, and he deserved to die for what he did ten times over. He’s not only part of the group that stole our childhoods—he’s also one of the guys who helped frame my brother Grayson for murdering a cop last month.
He’s sitting in lockup. Awaiting trial.
If they’d set bail we would’ve paid it. Even a million bucks, we’d get it and pay it no problem, and then we’d hide Grayson where they’d never touch him. Guess our enemies were a little too smart to let that happen.
It’s not too late, though. Our lawyer says we just need enough evidence for reasonable doubt to get him off.
Just.
Madsen knew he was dead either way, so he gave us nothing. But I won’t quit digging. Grayson needs me. There are other guys out there to question. And if he ends up being convicted, we’ll find a way to overturn it. Or maybe just break him out.
Whatever it takes.
Grayson isn’t my blood brother—our bond runs deeper than that. He’s a brother from the fiery hell that was our childhood. A kid I swore to protect.
So no, I didn’t get a name, but Madsen had to die. Now he’s dead. Madsen’s death fulfills a promise I made to another brother of ours—Cruz.
Madsen put all of us through a lot of hell, but mostly he focused on Cruz back when they kept us all in that basement. And one night I looked Cruz right in the eye and I swore to him that I’d bring him Madsen’s ring. The ring would mean that Madsen was dead, that he had paid for what he did to us.
It’s important for guys like Cruz to see me keeping my promises. To see that they have a leader they can count on. And Cruz seeing that Madsen’s really dead, that’s important, too, because when a guy fucked you up that much, you can’t just be told he’s dead—it’s not the same thing. You need evidence.
She’s twisting the torn, bloody fabric of her dress—twisting and twisting. “I can give you money.”
“I don’t need your money,” I say.
“There must be something.”
“Nothing you can give me.”
There’s a silence. And then a whisper. “It’s my birthday.”
I make the mistake of looking over at her again. This pure, perfect girl dropped into the middle of my hell, trapped and strapped, under the total and utter control of a predator. Yeah, I know how it feels.
I force my eyes back onto the dark highway, lights blurring by. “So Madsen was some kind of friend of yours?”
“Who’s Madsen?” she asks.
“The guy you tried to save.”
Her pretty lips are a round O.
“He deserved to die,” I say.
“I don’t know him. I think I met him…he looks familiar…maybe a friend of my parents’…”
“He was at your fucking birthday party.”
“Three hundred people were at my birthday party.”
“What? You invite your parents and their friends to your party? I thought kids were supposed to rebel or something by your age.”
I sense her staring at me now. “It’s sweet sixteen. It’s not really my party. It’s…a social event. He probably works with my dad, or he’s in the industry or the city.”
“What the fuck,” I say. “Maybe next time you should invite two friends and get drunk by the river or something instead of hanging out with a scumbag like that.”
There’s a silence. “Will there be one?”
“What?”
“Another time?” Her voice is quieter. “Another birthday?”
I don’t want to think about birthdays. “We’ll see,” I say.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’ll see.” What it means is that there’s always a chance the van could get hit by lightning or a bus, and I die and she survives. It’s a cheat of an answer, but I don’t want her to fall apart before we get wherever we’re going. I’m thinking about drowning her in Big Moosehorn River. It’s a good way to go. Fast. Clean.
She lets out this ragged sigh.
Her dress looks like it’s from another country, or maybe another time—I don’t know shit about dresses. What I do know is that, from this angle, there’s something dried on the mound of her tit—dried tears, I think. I imagine licking that little spot off.
I won’t do it, of course. I’ll kill her, but I won’t break her like that. I look again. She seems pale, almost green. “You going to be sick again?”
She shakes her head.
“You sure?”
“Don’t worry.”
“Come on. You look a little…I don’t know…”
“Well, you don’t have to worry, because I’ve eaten exactly two strawberries. So it’s not as if—” She waves her hand.
“What the fuck is that? Two strawberries?”
She shakes her head like it’s too hard to explain to me.
“You need something to eat. That’s your problem.”
She gives me this incredulous look. “That’s my problem? Really?”
“It sucks to be hungry. That’s all I’m saying.”
“It does,” she says.
“You should eat.”
“Got any fries?” And then she laughs. It’s the way you laugh when things are fucked up beyond belief.
There’s this buzzing in my head. I’m staring at her like an idiot because she’s beautiful when she laughs. Her laugh, her smile, it all gets me by the throat. And the exit to Big Moosehorn River is up ahead, but I pass it by.