Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
M onths pass. The messages I send Arkin remain unread. I still text him, though, because it feels good. Almost like he’s there on the other end of the line.
The good news is that the parole board denied his uncle’s request last month, so that fucker will get to spend a few more years in jail.
It’s the only thing that lets me sleep at night.
The wife is a different matter, though.
“Are you sure about this?” Ryan asks uncertainly beside me.
I park up beneath the streetlight. “This is the address.”
We study the ex-council house. It sits in a cul-de-sac, its brickwork dulled by years of rain and wind. A green wheelie bin leans against the wall, its lid slightly ajar, and a pair of old trainers sit abandoned by the front door.
“It’s not much to shout home about,” Ryan murmurs.
That’s true. The place is rundown as hell, with a small overgrown front yard, yellowed curtains in the windows and dead potted plants near the door. The place could do with some TLC.
A broken, rusty kid’s bike covered in faded Peppa Pig stickers is propped against the waist-high brick wall, its chain missing.
“What now?” Harrison asks.
“We wait,” I say.
“We might wait a while,” Harrison mutters in the backseat. He sits forward and pats me on the shoulder. “Promise you won’t do anything stupid.”
“We’ve gone over this. I just want to?—”
My words are cut off when the front door opens. The woman who exits looks worse than the photographs in the news articles I dug up from the trial. Her dirty blonde hair hasn’t been washed in days and her cracked lips are pursed around a cigarette that’s almost down to the filter.
Tightening her coat around her, she shuts the door, then sets off down the street.
I promised my friends we wouldn’t do anything stupid. Nothing that could get us into real trouble, at least. I wanted to see her. To put a face to the name. That’s all.
You know what they say—curiosity killed the cat. So yeah, within a few weeks, I’d found the address and talked my friends into making the hour-long drive.
She sets off down the street, and I narrow my eyes. This is the same woman who, alongside her husband, sexually assaulted Arkin and his siblings. The same woman who hurt him.
I’m out of the car in the next second, shutting the door. Harrison stumbles out behind me. “What are you doing, Zach?”
I’m not listening; confident strides carry me closer. “Hey, Jane Reeve,” I call out, and she slows. Then she turns, eyeing me up and down with a small, suspicious frown. “The name’s not Reeve anymore.” Another uneasy look. “Can I help you?”
Now that I’m here, I don’t know what to say to her. She’s the reason Arkin feels unsafe in the world—her and her pathetic excuse of a husband. But unlike him, I can’t resort to violence.
I want to, though.
I really fucking want to.
She’s smaller than I thought, standing no taller than 5’3, with dull gray eyes and smoke wrinkles around her mouth.
“Are you deaf or something?” she barks.
Harrison catches up to us and tries to drag me away. “She’s not worth a jail sentence, Zach. Let’s just go.”
Oh, but I think she is. A stint in jail doesn’t seem like such a bad idea if it means I get to avenge Arkin. Put this bitch in her place once and for all. Otherwise, what’s to stop her from hurting someone else?
“Why did you do it?” I ask tersely, inching closer.
She looks nervous now, flitting her gaze between Harrison and I. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Why did you do it?”
She gulps, then steps back. I follow. “Did you get off on touching a scared, underaged boy? Did you feel powerful?”
“Zach!” Harrison says, looking around nervously. “Let’s go.”
“Just wait in the fucking car if you’re uncomfortable,” I reply. “I’m not leaving until she’s answered the question.”
“Fuck,” Harrison mutters, but he stays where he is.
I cock my head at her. “Answer the question.”
“I’m not answering any of your fucking questions,” she snaps, looking uncomfortable, and I enjoy that.
I like that she’s trying to back away, her gaze darting around when I grab her bony wrist. “Careful,” I warn. “It would be a shame if you broke your parole conditions.”
She yanks free. “Are you threatening me?”
I’m full on stalking her now. “I would never do such a thing to a kind woman like you. I’m not a monster.”
Sweet, sweet sarcasm.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m a friend of Arkin’s.”
Her eyes widen, and for a second fear flickers in the gray, but then she turns around and runs.
“Oh, fuck no,” Harrison growls when I sprint after her.
I catch up around the corner, blocking her path, causing her to crash into my chest. She bounces back, but Harrison is there to stop any further escape attempts.
“There’s nowhere to run,” I point out.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to answer the question.”
She looks back at Harrison, then at me. “What question?”
“Did you get off on touching Arkin? Did you feel powerful?”
She makes a disgusted sound. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I step closer. “Answer. The. Question.”
Her nostrils flare. How she has the audacity to give me an attitude is beyond me. “Life with my husband wasn’t exactly easy,” she says.
“That’s not what I fucking asked, is it?”
“Zach…” Harrison warns. “Calm down, mate.”
“Fine. Yes. Happy now?” she asks. She pulls a packet of crumpled cigarettes from her pocket and lights another one up, puffing on it as though she needs the nicotine to ease her nerves. “What are you going to do? Hurt me?”
“We’re just here to talk,” I say.
She scoffs and then takes another drag.
What did I think I’d solve by coming here? A restless part of me wouldn’t let me sleep at night until I’d seen Arkin’s demons in the flesh. But now that I’m here watching this pathetic bitch suck on a cigarette as if it’ll somehow erase her sins, it seems stupid to think it would make me feel better.
I lean in close. “You’re lucky you don’t have a dick, or this would have ended differently.”
“Such a macho man,” she taunts, blowing a cloud of smoke in my face.
I don’t bother waving it away.
“I’m disappointed,” she says after a while, with an appraising look. “What was the point of coming here if you weren’t going to beat me up a little. You want to.” She leans closer, a smirk curving her thin lips. “I can see it in your eyes. What do you really want to do? Hit me? Throw me around. Be a real man.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Maybe. But you still want to make me bleed.” Another deep suck on that filter, gray eyes squinting in the curling smoke. “The boy might have been scared and shaking like a puppy, but he still got hard.”
What the fuck did she say?
Before I can lose my shit, Harrison grabs me and forces me back a step. “Okay, that’s enough.”
I point a finger at her as I’m led away. “You messed with the wrong person.”
“I’m shaking in my boots, pretty boy.”
I jerk free of Harrison’s grip on me. “Fucking bitch!”
“Just walk,” he grits out, gripping me firmly by the back of my neck. “Stick to the plan.”
When we return to the car, Ryan exits the porn he was watching on his phone, and the theatrical moans cut off abruptly. I slide into the passenger seat and slap the car keys into Harrison’s waiting palm. Thanks to the cunt back there, I’m too fucking angry to drive.
“Did it get done?”
Ryan chuckles. “Of course. It’s child’s play to pick a shitty lock like that, but I didn’t need to because the crazy loon left her door unlocked.”
The engine rumbles to life as Jane emerges from the corner. Twisting my body in the seat, I smirk at Ryan. “Report it.”
The beauty of parole and probation is that they come with very strict conditions. One thing we discovered is that Jane is not allowed to own weapons. So, what did we do? We made her a proud owner of one.
“Where did you stash it?” I ask Ryan as he puts the phone to his ear.
“Beneath the couch cushion.”
Sniggering, I face forward again, manspreading on the passenger seat. Harrison chuckles under his breath while Ryan places the call.
“You’re an evil genius, Zach,” he tells me when Ryan hangs up.
“Let’s just hope it’s enough for them to send her arse back to jail.”
It sucks that there’s a small possibility they might show leniency if it’s the first time she causes trouble. I want her to rot in jail where she belongs.
“Oh, they will,” Ryan pipes up.
Frowning, I turn in my seat. “What do you mean?”
“Well…” Ryan looks like the cat who caught the canary. “Ms. Reeve left her laptop out on the coffee table, and it just so happens that she doesn’t have a PIN code.”
“Are you kidding?” My face splits into a smile.
“What did you do?” Harrison asks, glancing at him in the rearview.
“I sent a few select text messages to Arkin.”
My eyes pop wide. “You did what?”
“Have you watched the Halloween movies? That franchise taught me not to take risks. The bitch isn’t dead until you chop off her head. With that analogy in mind, planting a weapon in her home is like skewering her chest with a machete like they did in Friday the 13 th .
At the mention of that movie, I groan long and hard, and face forward again. “Don’t mention that movie. It’s the one with Jared, right? The guy from that popular TV show where they hunt monsters? Fuck, Amy made me watch it so many times, I was ready to break up with her for that reason alone.”
Ryan just laughs. “Then you know Jason survives. Like aways. Think about it. The weapon under the couch cushion is the metaphorical machete to the chest. It could be enough, fuck it should be, but if Jane is anything like Jason, she’ll return in the final scene. We needed to go Queen of Hearts on her arse.”
“Has your mother ever told you that you watch too much TV?” Harrison asks.
“Once or twice.”
“What if Arkin reads the messages? Do you realize what that could do to him?” A sick feeling churns in my gut at the thought.
“You said yours remain undelivered, remember? Chances are Arkin doesn’t have his phone anymore. Besides, you want her back in prison, right?”
“I do,” I murmur, my thoughts racing. “I didn’t know you had Arkin’s number.”
“Of course I do. We both do,” he adds, gesturing between him and Harrison.
“Whatever,” I mutter distractedly.
Could Ryan be right? Does Arkin not have his phone anymore, and is that why he’s not receiving my messages? They’ve gone undelivered for months, so does that mean his phone is switched off?
“We killed Jason. That makes us geniuses,” Ryan says proudly, tearing me from my thoughts.
It has started to rain, so Harrison turns on the wipers, which swish across the windscreen as he drives away from the curb. “You need to get laid, Ryan.”