Gun Shy(80)

Sure thing, Cassie. Whatever you want, babe. Whatever the fuck you want.

I help Cassie dress — yoga pants and a sports bra — and then we head downstairs. She has to stop halfway as another contraction rips through her, and holy shit I thought it would happen more slowly than this. Isn’t it supposed to be a gradual thing at first? Maybe my super sperm burst her cervix open last night when she climbed on top of me and went to town. Who fucking knows. I help her down to the sofa, sit her down, and take a spot across from her.

“You should start timing my contractions,” she says.

I nod. “In a minute. I need to talk to you about something.”

She raises her eyebrows, pissed. “I’m in labor.”

I glimpse the key dangling around her neck, the one I’ve since learned is a rip-off of those keys you buy that are engraved with taglines. You know, chicks wear these keys that say LOVE or TRUST or STRENGTH as some kind of fucking totem to remind themselves of. I always thought Cassie’s said Nomad. I’d tease her for it - you can’t be a nomad if you’ve never been anywhere - and she’d laugh.

But I guess the joke’s on me.

Because Nomad spelled backward is Damon.





THE BOY IN THE BOX





CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT





DAMON





That fucking bitch.

That’s the first thing I thought when I woke up in here, my head pounding and the room still spinning from whatever it was she put in my goddamn coffee.

Just when I thought she was starting to come around. I mean yeah, I know, she tried to kill herself, but that was because of Ray. Fucking Ray. I always knew I’d have to kill Ray one day. I just didn’t expect it to go down like that.

I certainly didn’t expect to have to seal him up in a barrel of acid and dump him into an abandoned mine shaft three hours away.

The first thing I saw when I woke up in that attic? Wood. Pine. I’m in the box. Fuck. I’m in the box. That cunt fed me poison and kicked me in the face and now I’m locked in a coffin.

I don’t know how long I’m in here for, but I bide the time patiently. I could rage and kick and scream, but I know she’ll be back. My little bird wants answers. And answers she shall get. Besides, I need to conserve my strength for when I beat her to fucking death for pulling this stunt.

She eventually comes back, the lid to my box opening with a thunk. She’s found the key to the padlock, and it shines in the overhead light against her skin.

“Have a nice nap?” she asks.

“Delightful,” I reply. “What’d you give me?”

She shrugs. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that. A cocktail. To be honest, I wasn’t sure you’d wake up at all.”

That makes me mad. I’ve spent the hours after I woke up studying my situation. Cassie’s smart — she’s cuffed my hands behind my back, so I can’t reach out and grab her when she leans her smug fucking face over the side of the box. My legs are shackled, too. I can feel thick chains around my ankles. Maybe this is my karma for putting Jennifer in here.

Then again, I don’t believe in karma. I believe we make our own fate. Cassie’s fate is going to be full of punishment once I break out of this fucking box.

“How’d you do it?” she asks tonelessly.

I laugh. “How’d I do what?”

She rears her fist back and punches me in the face so hard, her knuckles start to bleed. The force rings in my ears, and I can feel new blood on my cheek. Baby girl’s angry. She’s so pretty when she’s angry.

She’s stupid, too. Because she climbs into the box and straddles me, her knees draped across my hips. “Careful, sweetheart,” I say, forcing my hips up suddenly. “I might get the wrong idea.”

She hits me again, in the mouth this time. She smashes her fist hard enough into my head that I hear a tooth crack in the back of my jaw. “You’re gonna break a finger,” I mutter around a mouthful of blood. “And you’ll have to be more specific. How’d I do what?”

She watches, mesmerized, as I turn my head to the side and spit a bloody molar onto the box’s wooden floor.

I settle back, giving her my full attention. Somehow, I’m betting she thought this would go differently. She probably thought I’d be begging for my life.

“If you’re trying to scare me, sweetheart, you’d better try harder than this.” I rattle the chain that loops around my ankles for effect.

She blinks heavily. Once. Twice. This is not going as she planned.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” she hisses. “I want to know what you did.”

I roll my eyes. “Okay, Cassie. Where do you want me to start?”

“At the beginning.”

“Which beginning? There are so many.”

“Did you kill Karen?”

Wow, straight to the point. I look at the ceiling, the time for joking over. Karen left a bad taste in my mouth, almost as bad as the taste she left in Leo Bentley’s mouth when he drank the dirty creek water that she rotted in until he found her. “No,” I say quietly.

“Bullshit.”

“I tried to cut contact with Ray when I moved to Gun Creek. He killed Karen to send me a message.”