Gun Shy(51)

I know what you’re thinking. You’re disappointed in me, aren’t you? I was supposed to be different. I was supposed to get out and make something of myself.

Yeah, and Leo was supposed to, too, but look at how that turned out.

Look at what he went and did.

By the time summer of 2015 rolled around, I’d finally snapped to my senses. I’d seen my reflection in the window one afternoon, naked and panting, Damon behind me, and I had been horrified. It was like I was waking up for the first time since that night and really seeing what I was doing. What we were doing.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” I’d said to him. “This is wrong.” Mom was home by then, packed away in the den, her breathing machine hissing in the quiet of the night.

He’d just laughed. A sound that was pure reflex. A sound that contained no joy.

The same way my laugh sounds now.

“I mean it,” I’d said, my palms slick with sweat, my voice unsteady. “We can’t do this. Even without all the other fucked-up stuff, I don’t love you. I don’t even like you.”

He gave me this look, and it made me feel so fucking cold inside. The way snow looks upon a field of flowers every winter and says, ‘I will smother you from the sun’s rays until I destroy you.’

“You’ll learn,” he’d said, his voice far too calm for all that fury that raged in his eyes.

“To what? To love you?”

He chuckled bitterly. “No. You’ll learn that it doesn’t matter if you love somebody or not. They’ll still love you. I’ll still love you.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX





LEO





It isn’t until we bring Hannah home, three days later, that I tell Pike the truth.

It’s dark outside, and all I can think about is Jennifer. How they clearly think I had something to do with her disappearance. How, if I don’t act now, I may never get another chance at making things right.

Not that they could ever be right. Hannah will bear the scars of this for the rest of her life. She will live forever knowing that her child died and almost killed her. She will carry the trauma of being cut open and stitched shut by strangers.

We are in my room, Pike and I. I’ve told him to dress in black, and he doesn’t disappoint. We look like we’re about to go rob a bank.

In reality, we’re about to do something much worse.

“We’re going to make this right,” I say to my brother. “We’re going to fuck him up, and we can never talk about it again. Do you understand?”

Pike nods. “Now?”

I pick up the tire iron from the bed in one arm, Pike’s shotgun in the other. I hand him the gun, then fish a black ski mask out of my pocket for him. “No time like the present, right?”

“Right.”

Hal’s house is less than five minutes from ours. Pike parks down the block and we skulk down the empty sidewalk, two grim reapers armed with crude weapons. Once we’re positioned in front of Hal’s back door I look at my brother, his balaclava-clad face staring back at me, and I smile, baring my teeth. He grins back. I take his shotgun for him as he jimmies the door open with his lock pick and busts the fucker wide open.

Hal has his TV up so loud, he doesn’t even hear us. He’s eating a TV dinner, alone, the smell of fake mashed potatoes and string beans hanging on the warm recirculating air the heater is pumping out. I think about telling him why we’re here, why this is happening, but I figure he’ll realize soon enough. He doesn’t even have time to swallow his mouthful of food before I lay the first blow into the side of his skull.

The entire time I’m bludgeoning Hal Carter on his living room floor, I’m thinking of poor Hannah. Of her baby. Of Cass and Damon fucking in the window. Hal’s wife is at her weekly card game with the rest of the old bitches she calls friends, and that’s a good thing because the Chihuahuas go fucking mental in the laundry room as we smash their owner apart. Hal begs for his life as I beat his head in with the tire iron, and when I’m finally done, I hope to God that he’s dead.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN





CASSIE





Sleep is a thing that is my refuge in this life.

A solace.

If I could sleep forever, I would. It’s the only time when I can relax, loose-limbed and buzzing from whatever chemical stimulant is helping me to fall asleep, the artifice something I don’t worry about anymore. Whether it’s vodka or sleeping pills, I know all I need is something to nudge me along and give me some blessed relief from the cruel light of my winter days.

I do not wake up for anyone. Damon’s tried before on a few occasions when mom’s breathing machine flipped out and he needed me to help him set it straight. I slept through. She lived anyway. And then she died while I was at work. Funny how these things happen. But tonight, when a voice pierces my cotton-wool wrap of drugged sleep; I sit up in bed like I’m on fire.

I’m not; on fire, that is. I feel like I am, though. I’ve been bunched up in a thick duvet while the heat’s been blasting. I’m so hot my hair is damp from sweat, a thin sheen of moisture prickling on my forehead. There is movement above me, in the attic?

I know something sharp and loud woke me, but now that my eyes are open and I’m rubbing my face I can’t for the life of me remember what was so urgent that I snapped awake alone, in the dark.