Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
Liam
“Isn’t there a rule that you don’t have to answer calls from annoying humans on Christmas?” I ask.
“Huh, let me check the Christmas manual,” Gabriel says sarcastically as he pulls away from where we’ve been cuddling on the couch while watching the most ridiculous Christmas movies. There’s no violence. No blood. No gore.
What kind of holiday cheer is this festive bullshit?
Oh, but Gabriel loves them.
“Hello?” Gabriel answers before quickly putting it on speaker.
“I need you two over here now. I just got home and… fuck. Now, please,” Jesse says.
“So needy. Are you being murdered? Blink twice if you’re being murdered,” I mutter.
“This isn’t a video call! You can’t see my fucking face!”
“Obviously, Santa delivered him coal,” I grumble as I follow Gabriel out the door.
Honestly, I’d rather watch this festive bullshit than run out to deal with Jesse’s drama… although his drama has been rather… murdery lately.
We hurry out to the car and drive to his house in record time. When we get out of the car, Jesse hops out of his own car that’s parked along the road.
“What’s going on?” Gabriel asks.
“Whitaker was here,” I announce. I feel like I do a very good delivery of it.
“How did you know?” Jesse asks.
“What else would freak you out like this? What did he leave you? Is it a body?”
“No, he just… apparently wanted me to know he’d been in here,” Jesse says before he pushes the front door open and we step inside to where I’m almost immediately greeted by a TV that’s playing a rather interesting video.
It shows the foyer we’re standing in and then the kitchen that’s to the right.
Then whoever is recording it goes upstairs and slowly walks down the hallway, making not even a single sound as they walk.
They stop when they reach the second door on the right before they point the camera through the cracked door where they zoom in on Jesse’s sleeping face, watching him while the man remains completely unaware of who is in his house.
Then they turn around and simply leave.
“He fucking… watched me sleep. He was in my house while I was sleeping.” Jesse is nearly hysterical at this point. He’s panicking. He’s become vulnerable and has realized how weak he is in the face of a ruthless psychopath.
But I’m fascinated.
Whitaker doesn’t want to kill Jesse.
No, he had the perfect opportunity to when this video was created and he chose not to. Or was the video made by someone else?
Still, he wants Jesse alive… but why? Why do all of this, then? What is his plan?
I head for the bedroom, following the same path Whitaker or his pawn had followed.
“Did he leave anything for you?” I ask.
“Like what?”
“Anything.”
“You think he was playing Santa Claus and left me a present? I don’t want a fucking present from him.”
“What about a way to contact him?” I ask.
“What do you mean a way to contact him? There’s no fucking way he could possibly think that I would go back to him.”
I envision myself as the person standing in the doorway watching Jesse sleep.
The video was made to unsettle him… but that can’t be all.
How lackluster would that be? Whitaker wants to pull Jesse back into his life.
This man gets his kicks not from killing people, but from manipulating them.
I wonder if he only kills them once he’s bored of them.
And he’s proven that he’s not bored of Jesse.
I hurry down the stairs and look around before my eyes settle on the small Christmas tree with a few presents underneath it.
“Who are these for?”
“Lacey and her brother. We’re planning to meet tonight for dinner. I know what you’re thinking, but I wrapped those. That’s my handwriting.”
I kneel down to examine the presents. “Yes, and someone unwrapped one of them,” I say as I use a book to slowly pull the present to me. It looks quite well done, but I can see where the tape has been lifted and reapplied. Is this a present just for Lacey? Or is it for Jesse?
“I don’t want to open it,” Jesse says. “Fuck.”
“Liam, careful, what if it’s a bomb?” Gabriel asks.
I shake my head, positive it isn’t. “I don’t believe it is.
Even after all these years, he’s interested in Jesse.
” I watch the man, wondering what Jesse’s done that he hasn’t told us.
Whitaker sees potential in him… he must have in order to open up to him back when Jesse was a teenager.
Whitaker shared his darkest secrets with Jesse, but what did Jesse do to earn that trust?
Of course Jesse’s not going to tell us it all.
He catches me watching him, his eyes locking onto mine, and I see so much turmoil raging in them before he quickly looks away.
What stories are you not telling us, Jesse?
It’s something big enough that he’s willing to risk it all to hide from his past. He doesn’t report any of this to the police; no, he calls us. He wants me to find this man for him in secret.
But then what’s he going to do when I do?
Kill Whitaker himself?
“Did you kill for him, Jesse?” I ask.
Jesse’s body turns completely still. “No! Of course not. Like I said, he had me collect the people. I fucked up. I was… I thought they were bad people. I can’t lose my job. My whole life will be ruined if anyone finds out what I did.”
Does Jesse know what it feels like to kill? Does he desire the hunt like I do?
Can he be like me?
“Liam,” Gabriel says as he sets a hand on my shoulder. “Stop.”
Jesse seems to think Gabriel is telling me to stop pestering him, but I know Gabriel is telling me to stop fixating on these darker thoughts. What does he think I’m going to do if I find out Jesse was secretly killing humans? Off him myself?
Nah, I wouldn’t take away Gabriel’s precious friend just like that.
A phone starts ringing, tearing me away from those thoughts when my eyes drop down to the box where the ringing is coming from. Just as I thought, he wants to make contact with Jesse.
“Do you have a sharp knife?” I ask while Jesse stands, fixated on that box.
He’s so fixated on it that he doesn’t even hear me.
“Jesse!”
His attention snaps over to me. “Yes,” he replies before hurrying deeper into the house.
“You’re not opening that box. You don’t know what’s in it,” Gabriel says, sounding concerned.
“Think about it logically. If he wanted to kill Jesse, he—or whoever was here—would have killed him while he slept. Whitaker doesn’t want to kill him. He wants to manipulate him. He wants to prove that Jesse is like him.”
Gabriel looks toward the kitchen where Jesse had disappeared. “You think Jesse killed for him?” he whispers.
“I think he killed someone. I don’t know that he killed more than one,” I say quietly. “He’s not telling us everything.”
“Do you think Whitaker has something on him? Is that why he’s so adamant about keeping this between us?”
“I do,” I respond as Jesse rushes up just in time for the phone to stop ringing. I’m not concerned; it’ll begin ringing again soon.
“I’ll do it,” Jesse says, pulling on some gloves before shoving some at us. “This is my fucking mess.”
“Avoid the tape. Cut right down the middle and we’ll peel the paper off.”
Jesse glances at me. “You think they touched this without gloves on?”
“Imagine trying to peel up tape without tearing wrapping paper while wearing gloves. They were meticulous, trying to make the present appear as normal as it could. They wanted it to look normal enough that you’d think nothing of it as you took it to Lacey.”
“Why would he call, then? It would give it all away.”
“Because he’s watching us,” Gabriel says as he begins looking around. “And knows we found it. Why else would it start ringing the second we noticed the box?”
Jesse whirls around, a look of rage on his face. “Why the fuck does he think he can control me? Why does he think he can tear his way into my life? I will never fucking go with him.”
“Shut down your Wi-Fi,” Gabriel orders. “If he was able to connect it to your Wi-Fi, simply shutting it down will stop him from being able to see us.”
Jesse quickly does so, but when he returns from unplugging the router, he looks close to crying. Gabriel pulls him in and gives him a squeeze, trying to comfort him as his world spirals out of control.
I can’t comfort him, but I don’t need to if I destroy the root of his problem. I run the knife along the top of the box, carefully cutting the paper away from it before handing it to Gabriel for safekeeping. Then I cut the box open and look in at two glassy eyes staring back at me.
The head sits on a bed of red and green tissue paper. In the man’s mouth is a cell phone that sticks out just enough that I could pull it out if I’d like.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Jesse whispers.
“Do you know him?” Gabriel asks, voice quiet.
“Yeah… that’s Lacey’s boyfriend. Fuck.” Jesse seems nearly hysterical. I wonder if Whitaker is still watching and loving everything he’s putting Jesse through.
The phone starts ringing again so I reach for it, but Jesse’s hand stills mine. “I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to hear his voice.”
“Then leave the room,” I say as I pull the phone out and stare at Jesse, giving him enough time to flee, but he doesn’t. I accept the call and put it on speaker, not wanting to put the bloody phone anywhere near my face.
“Oh, Jesse,” he says, his voice sweet and calm. I can already feel the manipulation dripping off it from here. He sounds just like I’d imagined—calm, calculating, and gentle.
I’ll do my best to rile him up and destroy that fakeness oozing from his words.
“Jesse left the room the moment he realized you were calling,” I respond, wanting to test whether he can still see us or not.
“He wouldn’t leave,” he says, telling me that Gabriel is right. The camera has been lost with the Wi-Fi turned off. “Jesse is far too curious of a person. Aren’t you, Jesse?”
“If you’re just going to rattle on about your love for Jesse, I’m going to hang up.”