Never Have I Ever(80)

But where would she keep such a thing? I scrubbed at my eyes. They felt sandy with exhaustion. She must have a safe-deposit box, or she had simply outthought me. She’d said I was like her, but I couldn’t guess her hiding place. Well, I was new at this, and she’d been playing her games for years. Her whole life was nothing but games. Other people were nothing more than playing pieces.

As soon as I thought it, I knew.

I knew exactly where I would find what I needed. I knew it as sure as if Roux herself had leaned in close and whispered it into my ear.

I got up and went to the shelves by the fireplace. A few books rested there, grocery-store bodice rippers and thrillers, the covers tattered from many hands. Perfect vacation reading, they were standard fare for rental houses. Two shelves under that, on the very bottom, another rental-house staple: a stack of board games.

I knelt down beside them.

The fat, square Yahtzee box sat on top of longer, narrow boxes that held Scrabble and Clue and Monopoly. And there, between them, the one I wanted. The game that had to be Roux’s favorite. Risk.

I lifted Yahtzee with one hand to slide Risk out, but it felt way too heavy. I set Risk aside and pulled the Yahtzee box into my lap. A weighty object slid and thunked as I shifted it.

I opened it, and my heart stuttered. No dice cups, no score pads. The only thing in the box was a snub-nosed revolver, thick, black, oiled to a dull sheen. The name Ruger ran vertically down its short barrel. A box of bullets snuggled in beside it; it wasn’t just for show.

I reached for it, wanting to see if it was loaded, then pulled my hand back. I shouldn’t touch it. I had no idea how or even if Roux had ever used it, but I didn’t want any trace of me—a fingerprint, a cell, a hair—clinging to it.

And anyway, I already knew that the chambers would be full. I felt it as an instinct. She would keep it locked and loaded, oiled and ready. Roux played for keeps.

It was a simple machine, and it had no safety that I could see. I vaguely remembered knowing that most revolvers didn’t have them. That was like her, too, though it seemed insane to put nothing but a flimsy cardboard box between a sixteen-year-old boy and a gun.

Jesus, but I wanted out of here. I wanted to go home, scrub and scrub my hands, peel my sweater off and burn it, and stand under a boiling shower. Then I would abdicate. I was in over my head. Roux had a gun.

She must have a reason. That reason might be stashed in another of these boxes. I didn’t want to know, and yet I had to know. I had to know to win Roux’s game, and I wanted to win now for more than me. For Panda, who was still caught in it, and for every other person she was twisting and wringing. I wanted to win all the way. To keep my secrets, keep my money, make her crawl away. I couldn’t leave with that Risk box right there in front of me.

I opened the lid.

The first thing I saw was the money. Two neat, thick bundles of twenty-dollar bills in bands. More bands littered the box, broken. If this was all her cash reserve, she was running close to empty.

The other half of the box’s contents was both more jumbled and more eclectic. I saw a stack of passports and grabbed the first one, flipped it open. Roux smiled out at me from the picture. The name was Ange Renault, just as she’d told Tig. Was that her real name? I checked the birth date, did quick math. If this was her actual ID, then Roux was thirty-seven. I flipped the next one open, and there was a red-haired, unsmiling Roux with the name Angela Lawry. This was the least romantic of all her names, but I knew it wasn’t real because the birth date made her twenty-eight. I heard myself whispering out loud, “Bitch, please.”

There were still two more, and these both looked brand-spanking-new. I flipped them open and found a blond Roux with the name Angelica Roux, thirty-four, and a matching one for Luca. In this shot he was blond, too. The dye job or the wig washed him out and made him look somehow younger, like a sad, pale rabbit.

I got my phone out and quickly took pictures of the box itself, the money and multiple passports, and then one of each passport open to the first page. I would Google the names and birth dates and addresses later.

I turned my attention to a dark green box, the hinged kind with a velvet outside. Inside, a fat diamond tennis bracelet jingled against engagement rings, at least four of them, and a pair of sapphire earrings. I took a picture of these things, too.

Finally there was a big manila envelope, stuffed full of papers and photos.

I dumped it out and sifted through it, taking pictures with my phone as I went. There were two birth certificates on top, both issued from Terre Haute, Indiana, that matched the Roux passports. I shuffled past them and found more birth certificates, matched to her other passports. There was a stack of driver’s licenses, too, all from different states. Indiana, Maryland, Texas.

There was a handwritten letter. It was nearly illegible, but I pieced the first few sentences together. They were so racy that they made me blush. Sentimental value? The mystery husband? Perhaps she loved him. Or did she keep it because it was devoted to talking about how beautiful her body was? Perhaps the author was married and this was simple leverage. I flipped it over, but it wasn’t signed.

Next I emptied out a smaller envelope and found a little stack of Polaroids. I flinched, involuntarily. The top one showed me Roux, but not a Roux I’d ever seen. Both her eyes were blackened, swollen, the left one near shut. More bruises ran down her perfect cheekbone to her jaw on that side, and violet handprints ringed her neck. Her lips were split at one corner, crusted in blood. Looking at these pictures changed the context of the gun somehow.