Chapter Forty-Four
Zach
At the top of the stairs, the hallway splits east to west. Rube and Cass head west, so Apollo and I take the east wing.
“Stay close,” I murmur to Apollo. “And be quiet.”
“You’re the one talking,” he whispers back.
I open the first door and we peek inside.
Crib.
Mobile with stuffed animals.
Gender-neutral geese dancing over the walls.
I start opening the closet doors to make sure no one’s hiding inside one waiting to leap out at us. But the closets are empty. As in, there’s not even a single diaper in sight.
This place creeps me the fuck out. It feels staged, like the owners moved out ages ago and the real estate agent set it up for an open house.
Who lived here? Where are they now?
“Next room,” I murmur, backing up with my weapon still pointed, just in case someone appears out of thin air.
A gunshot sounds.
I spin around and face a locked door.
Apollo’s not inside with me. Then I hear a key turning in the lock and my hair stands on end.
What the fuck?
“Apollo?” I run up and try the door handle.
Locked.
Christ. “Apollo!”
I know it wasn’t him that locked me inside, but now I’m shitting myself wondering what happened to him. I bang on the door a few times, but that’s not helping. I could shoot at the lock, but what are the chances of the bullet ricocheting and hitting me somewhere vital?
I start kicking the door, but it’s sturdy as fuck.
“Apollo! What’s the address?”
Rube.
“Reuben!” I yell. “Reuben, open up!”
But there’s no response. What the fuck is going on out there?
Screw this. I step back, raise my gun—
“Rube! Zach! Help!”
I pause. That’s Cass. But wasn’t he just with Rube? What the—
Thud.
Thud.
The sound’s coming from down the hall. Like someone’s banging on something. I turn on my heel, scan the room. My eyes latch onto the window.
With every distant thud, my heart climbs another inch up my throat.
I shove my gun into my belt and hurry over.
I don’t stop to think. I don’t even allow myself to give the ground more than a passing glance.
My sight is fixed on a nearby tree. From what I saw before I looked away, there’s a good yard of thin air between me and the closest bough.
But there’s a gunfight going on, and my brothers are involved. I don’t know who’s on the winning side, or if there even is a winning side.
I bundle myself up tight, and then push away from the window as hard as I can.
My stomach slams into the bough. A stray branch scratches my face. I fumble, manage to get an arm slung over the bough, and hold on until I have my bearings.
I work my way to the main trunk and climb down. I drop down the last few feet, already running for the patio doors.
Something deep and dark and rectangular draws my eye.
A grave.
A grave?
I race upstairs, my legs almost giving out when I see Rube on the floor. I fall down beside him, and start panting as I hike up his shirt with a shaking hand.
Gutshot. Surprisingly little blood. Does that mean the bullet’s still in there?
There’s a crash from inside the room, but Rube needs me more right now.
Except…I don’t have a fucking clue what to do.
A hand lands on my shoulder, trembling slightly. I look up into Apollo’s face.
“Cass needs you,” he says.
“But—”
“Go.” He falls to his knees beside Reuben and starts ripping off a piece of his shirt. I stand on unsteady legs and half walk, half stumble into the room.
It’s the one from the video.
But there’s blood here now.
And three dead bodies.
Four if you count—
“No! Trinity!” I rush forward, but then Cass is in front of me, driving me back. “No!” I try and shove him, but he somehow manages to herd me away from the bed. My back slams into a wall.
The sound of police sirens and ambulances want my attention, but I don’t give it to them.
Cass clasps my head in his hands, wiping my face, forcing me to look at him. “Hey, bud. Hey. Over here.”
We lock eyes.
“I did everything I could, okay? I tried to save her, but she’s gone. She’s gone. You read me?”
My heart stops beating. “CPR,” I croak.
“Got no blood left,” Cass says. He’s grinning, but it’s the kind of smile you see on a corpse where the fleshy bits of the face have been picked clean by scavengers. “It just kept oozing out. Can’t put it back in, can I? So that’s that. But listen, buddy, listen to me, okay?”
There’s a heavy drone in my ears, which makes complying difficult, but I nod anyway. My eyes dart to the side as I try to look past him, but he tightens his grip on my face and sinks his fingertips into my scalp.
“Look, the police are going to be here in like…fucking seconds. All right? Now we need to do something very important. And we gonna have to do it really fast.”
He steps back. Points.
A dark-haired man lays sprawled on the carpet. There’s a gun near his right hand.
“We got to take this motherfucker downstairs. There’s this big hole outside—”
“The grave.”
Talking is good. Not looking at the bed, that’s good too. Doing something that gets me out of this room? Even better.
“Yeah, the grave.” Cass pats my chest. “Good. So, you grab his legs, yeah?”
Cass backs up, still grinning like a fucking Jack-O-Lantern, and grabs the guy’s wrists.
“Come on, Zach. Stay with me.”
I keep my eyes down. When my vision blurs, I blink them clear.
“We can do this.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. But as soon as Cass breaks eye contact, my gaze flies to the bed.
She looks so serene.
So pale.
So fucking dead.
I blink again. My chest feels like it’s caving in. Tighter and tighter and tighter. I try and breathe, try to clamp my mouth shut, but then another set of hot tears races down my cheeks. The salt in my mouth triggers a sob.
“No, n-no,” Cass says, voice wobbling. “Fuck you, Zachary. You’re grabbing his fucking legs, and we’re putting him in that fucking grave!”
I choke, wipe my face on my shoulder, and lift the guy’s feet.
He groans.
Maybe a normal guy would have dropped him. I don’t. I hold on even fucking tighter. Because he undoubtedly had something to do with the dead girl on the bed, and that means I owe him a world of hurt.
A spasm goes through the guy’s body, and then he lifts his head. He looks at me, dazed, unfocused.
There’s something wrong with his eye.
Outside, in the hall, someone starts sobbing. Big, heavy, ragged sobs.
It takes me a few seconds to work it out.
Time where I’m holding back the ephemeral agony gouging out my lungs and stomach. Time where I’m moving back, dragging the guy’s stomach over the pale blue carpet. Time where I’m staring at that fucked up eye so I won’t look up again and see Trinity on the bed and lose my shit.