No Perfect Hero(102)

Her, waxy and pale and broken. Lifeless. Nothing left of the person I knew, all her brightness gone.

“Warren?” Grandma asks, worry rising in her voice. “Are you there?”

Blake pipes up before I can answer. “Hey, uh, War, you don’t look so good. What’s wrong?”

“I have to go,” I tell her quickly. “But I’ll be back soon. Call me if Haley shows up. Immediately. Please.”

“I will. Would you like me to call the garage and talk to–”

“No. Don’t do it. Things might not be right there. I can’t explain, but I have to go.”

“Of course, dear,” Grandma says crisply.

She’s always been one to read a room, and she actually hangs up before I do, sensing that I don’t have time for pleasantries. I lift my head to find Blake and Doc watching me intently.

“I take it there's news?” Doc asks.

“Haley’s missing,” I say, my pulse pounding hard against my throat. “And she was last seen going to find her niece at Stew’s garage. And now she’s not answering her phone. It’s hardly damning, but fuck.”

“Then let's be more safe than sorry,” Doc says. “We’ll worry about your potential inquiry with the police later.”

As we tear down the highway, though, my phone rings again, vibrating in my hand.

Some wicked premonition makes it feel like it vibrates even harder than normal, jacking power up my arm, into my brain. Especially when I see the number on the caller ID.

Stew.

The beginning and the end of all this.

Yet there must be some part of me that’s damn na?ve. Because I still want to believe my friend – the man who consoled me through my grief, who made me have faith he'd told me what really happened to my sister – only has good intentions.

Even if all the signs point toward him.

The instinct, the unease, the fact that he was the only other one there and the autopsy showed Jenna was shot between the eyes with an Army-issued carbine, the bullet slug a match...

It’s all wrong. Paranoia. The frustration of Bress slipping out of my hands and into the arms of death just when I nearly had him. My brain is rabbiting, looking for any correlation. Stew can’t be dangerous.

He can’t be.

Please.

I can’t lose any more.

But I damn sure can’t lose Hay.

I snap my thumb over the screen and lift the phone to my ear. “Stewart? Is Haley with you?”

He clucks his tongue. “Of course she's with me.” His voice sounds strange, oily, cold. Knowing.

That sense of wrongness shrills up the back of my neck.

Then he speaks again, and I don't know who the hell I'm talking to. This is a different man.

“You knew. Why'd you wait, Warren? Why didn’t you play your hand?”

My next breath just stops. I don’t know what I’m feeling.

Fear. Rage. Disgust. Horror. It’s all crushed up inside me into one hard knot that weighs a thousand pounds. “Because I trusted you, asshole! Because I thought...I wanted to believe...fuck. You killed Bress, didn’t you?”

Stewart sighs deeply. “I wish you hadn’t said that out loud. Now you’re not giving me any choice.”

“Choice in what?” I demand. He doesn’t answer. “Any choice in what?”

Still no answer – until I hear a muffled feminine gasp, a ripping sound.

“Stop!” Haley yelps. “You vicious asshole—”

“It’s just a little duct tape, girl. I didn’t even take off any skin,” Stewart snaps. “Not yet.”

“Haley!” I roar, heart clenching.

“Warren?” she calls. “Warren! You have to be careful. Stewart framed Bress, he’s been blackmailing him and—”

A sick smack of flesh crashing against flesh cuts her off.

I see red, slamming my fist against the dashboard, ignoring Doc’s startled look. “Don’t you fucking touch her!”

“I take it,” Doc says calmly, “that I need to drive faster.”

I can’t answer him.

All my focus is on Stewart, that fucking traitor, as he speaks calmly into the phone. “I won’t do anything to her,” he says. “As long as you comply. This doesn’t have to end badly, War. We can all walk away. You just have to learn to let go, but you’ve never been good at that. Why, if you’d just let Jenna go, it never would've had to come to this.”

“Bullshit,” I growl. “Liar.”

It hurts. It burns all over again like the day I found out Jenna died, crushing down on me, only now the weight is three times as heavy when I know he could hurt Haley, too.

“Why? Why'd you kill her? Jenna was your friend. You cared for her!”

“And she got too nosy. This is what happens when you get nosy with me. You should've learned from Jenna’s lesson.” It’s sneering, cruel, emotionless. I can’t believe I ever thought that smiling, friendly face was real. “Now. Do you want to make arrangements, or shall I start with the little girl's precious pigtails before I slit your girlfriend’s throat?”

“Fuck you,” I bite off but force myself to rein it in. I’m miles out of town.