Chapter 11
Kitt
The guest room is so nice, it’s almost a shame that I won’t be spending a single night in that bed. The white-walled room is spotless, like the rest of his gorgeous house. How can an unruly gang member have such a lovely home?
Pink pillows and a matching blanket brighten up the simple room. Fiona would be in heaven with these pink accessories. Were they the touch of a woman here before me? Someone soft and feminine like Fiona? I try to picture him having a woman here, someone soft-spoken, always offering to “put the kettle on.”
Can’t picture it. But there’s no way he bought those for me. Maybe he has a sister.
My suitcase has been delivered. It sits on a fold-out guest cot made just for unpacking. Which I do, carefully, making it look like my intention is to stay. “Bless those girls.” Fiona and Carol Ann have folded each one of my belongings, carefully settling them into my suitcase.
They even managed to sneak a note. Stay strong, Kitt! You’ll be back at the lodge safe and sound before you know it. They’ve both signed the little white slip of paper, drawing hearts along the bottom.
Knowing my friends know where I’m at and where to send the police to dig up my dead body should it come to that, gives me a sense of peace.
Will I come back safe and sound? I think of his harsh response to my threat to slap him. Is he all talk?
“I’m not so sure I will, girls.” Filled with a sudden, deep desire for the lodge and my friends, I tuck the note carefully into the zippered pocket of the suitcase, grab my makeup bag, and head for the small ensuite bathroom. “But I’m going to try.”
I have to get out tonight. He all but admitted he did kill his girlfriend, not even bothering to deny it when I brought it up to him. I think of the locked front door. His always watchful eyes. The way he laughed when I’d asked for free rein of the house.
The stern look he’s mastered, the commanding tone of his deep voice. His svelte physique, sure to outrun and overpower me. The punishing leather belt he wears around his waist.
I swallow back my nerves, pressing my thighs together, confused by the warmth there.
It’s crazy, trying to plan to get out of here.
But it’d be crazier not to try and escape the clutches of a cold-blooded Scottish mafia murderer. Especially one that makes my blood run hot for some absolutely shameful reason. There’s something that doesn’t quite add up about him. He’s hard, yes; demanding of respect, yes; takes what he wants even if it doesn’t belong to him; yes.
But there’s something else there, underlying all that. Desire to protect his family from me at all costs, yet still giving me a beautiful place to stay. Almost as if he’s torn about me.
I think of the way his face lit up, so typical of a man, when he took that first bite of pasta I’d cooked him. He didn’t give off the energy of someone who could kill a woman who loved him, someone who took care of him, cooked for him. I can’t imagine him killing a woman in his life.
I’m a woman, not a man like him born into a legacy of loyalty to family, and yet I risked it all just to protect a friend I love. A little voice in the back of my head tugs at a memory, telling me—some might consider you a murderer, Miss “Pure” Catherine. Or at least an accessory. You knew what happened and you kept your mouth shut. To protect my friend, I tell myself.
To protect yourself, I shoot back.
My mom’s face comes into my mind’s eye and I’m reliving the day before I applied for the internship.
I can smell the metallic scent of blood that’s spattered on my clothes and shoes. Sweat dampening my hair from running the five blocks it took to get home. I thought it would be faster than the Uber I typically call.
When the most terrible thing I’d ever witnessed happened, I ran to my mom for help, the one person I could trust, thinking she’d call the police and I’d have her support when I had to go through the scary process of explaining what happened to the men in uniform, their flashing lights filling the streets.
Instead, she gave me other advice.
“You’re hurting me, Mom.” Her fingernails dug into my arms as she held me tight, pulling me toward her till our noses were almost touching.
Her eyes lit into my dark ones, burning into mine. “Don’t ever tell anyone what you just told me, Kitty.” Hearing her revert back to my childhood nickname made a shiver run down my spine.
“But shouldn’t we call the police?” My voice sounded high and shrill, manic even.
“Police? After you ran home, leaving the scene of the crime?”
“But I didn’t do anything, Mom!”
Lilly had dragged me into the side yard where her boyfriend, Teddy, short for Theodore Taylor, quarterback of the team, was laid out on the grass, his eyes open, him unresponsive, Lilly at my side sobbing and dry heaving, begging me to help. Me feeling for a pulse, pumping my hands against his chest to the tune of Staying Alive by the Bee Gees, trying to keep the beat as I gave him CPR.
Lilly gone. Me not knowing what to do. Running for my mom’s house, thinking it would be faster than calling a car.
“Everything you worked for will be taken from you.” Mom shook her head. “Not to mention Lilly. She’ll be in jail for how long? Because she gave a boy drugs he asked her to buy for him? You knew he was using her. You told me so last week. Remember? How you thought he was taking advantage of her to do things he didn’t want to do himself.”
It was true. I was terrified of her getting into trouble for Teddy, but she wouldn’t listen, and it caused a fracture in our friendship, long before the night of the party. “Yes.”
“It’s already done. He’s gone. Why lose her future as well? The man had no pulse.” She looks at me like I’m crazy to even be considering the idea of talking to the cops.
My mom is my opposite, thinking with her brain whereas I follow my heart. She’s one to make a plan and stick with it, whereas I take my time, going through all the possible scenarios before making a decision.
“But shouldn’t we call them, just in case…” I grabbed at my hair, fingernails raking my scalp as I thought out loud. “I don’t know… what if I was wrong?”
Her nails dug harder into my arms. Tears sprang to my eyes. She shook me.
Her eyes were filled with fierce determination. “Was the body cold to the touch?”
“What?” My mind felt fuzzy, and I remember her voice sounding far away.
“Was. He. Cold.”
I nod. “Yes.” I remember when I first felt for a pulse, pulling back, his skin cold, then later, almost going into shock when I pressed my warm lips against his cool ones to give him the CPR breaths.
“Then it’s done. It’s over. We move on. No matter what you say, what you do, your name would be tarnished for running,” she said.
A stoic look etched in her determined face, Mom methodically burned everything I was wearing in a barrel in the backyard.
After showering the smoky smell from our hair, I made us two cups of cocoa while we gathered around her small kitchen island, my mind numb with shock, hers vibrantly concocting a plan to get me out of California.
“You had only made it to the front door of the house when Lilly came to get you. Were there cameras?” She stares at me hard, willing me to remember every detail.
I think of the two-story white house where the party was. It was in a smaller neighborhood, next to an apartment complex. No camera on the doorbell.
I shake my head. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Fine. Then you were here with me all night. That’s your alibi. If no one comes forward, it will take them a few weeks to put you at the scene, to even think to question you.”
“Lilly left me,” I said, staring off into space. “She just left me there.”
“If she ran off, she’s hardly likely to go to the police. She’s scared. She won’t talk if you don’t.” Mom bites her lip, thinking. “I’ll go to her myself. I’ll take care of it.”
“Do I just go back to school till this all blows over?”
A light filled her eyes, like a thought had come to her. “For now. But what if… it’s so close to summer, what if you took an internship? Somewhere far from here where no one would want to look for you anyway?”
My mom and I scoured the internet, trying to find a safe place for me to go as far from California as possible. I applied for the internship in Scotland and when I got it, she took me shopping to celebrate.
She told me to stay offline. Not to contact anyone from my friend group. She met with Lilly in person, made sure she was on the same page. Mom told me to limit my texts and calls, even with her.
Basically, to disappear.
After I left, Mom packed up herself, moving to Northern California, practically a world away from LA. She went there to be with a boyfriend, Joe, a man she’d been talking to online. I messaged her several times after I arrived but haven’t heard back.
Day five in Scotland, I stopped trying to contact her.
The only reason my mom’s crazy plan has even worked up to this point is that no one saw me at the party. As Mom said when she laid out her plan, I’d only just arrived and was on the porch when Lilly came out to get me.
And… Lilly isn’t talking. She can’t. The guilt was too much for her to bear.
She took her own life.
Two lives… gone.
My own guilt and unanswered questions swirl through my mind daily. What I read in the news should have eased my mind. The police determined the boy died from drugs he’d gotten on his own, but it turns out whatever Lilly gave him, whatever drugs she’d bought from a friend of a friend this boy had sent her to, were laced with something terrible, causing a heart attack. There was nothing I could have done.
When it comes down to it, I still feel I made the wrong decision, especially leaving Lilly at a time when she needed me. My mom forced me to end contact, but to be honest, Lilly had already started to pull away. Still, I think my mom buying all those clothes was some kind of goodbye to me.
Why hasn’t she returned my calls?
A tear falls down my cheek and I brush it away. “How can it be that I ran so far away from trouble, only to find myself at the wrong place at the wrong time, again?”
Dragging myself out of the technicolor memories of my past, I look around my new white-walled prison. I get up, going around the room to pull down the room-darkening blinds to keep out the Simmer Dim. We don’t have these at the lodge and it’s hard to sleep with the constant light. It’s pleasant here. Would it be so bad to stay? After all, the reason I came to Scotland was to lay low.
Then I remember who I’m living with. A murderous man who has openly stated he’s not sure what he’s going to do with me.
I leave tonight.
Taking deep breaths, I force myself to remain calm. I go about my evening, prepping for bed just as I always do. Dressed in loose-fitting pajamas, I crawl under the soft, fluffy duvet and try to close my eyes.
He’s locked the door, a skeleton key in an old-fashioned lock.
But I’ve already checked the windows. They are perfectly normal, unlocking and opening from the inside. I’m on the first floor. It should be easy to get away.
“A little too easy?” I ask myself.
Maybe he planned it this way.
Part of his games.
A moment later, there’s a knock on my door. His booming voice carries through the wood. “Did you say something?”
“No. Nope. I just—stubbed my toe?” I’ve seriously got to stop talking to myself out loud.
I can feel him still outside the door, hovering. Probably trying to decide what threats to leave me with for the evening. Finally, his gruff voice returns. “Uh—do you need anything?”
“Do I need anything?” The request baffles me.
A momentary pause. “Yeah. Food? Drink? You warm enough in there? It can be a bit drafty at night.”
I glance around the perfectly snug room. An unopened water bottle left on my nightstand. He’s thought of everything.
Is he… worried about me?
Half of me wants to tell him to come in here and finish what he started over the hood of that truck. Shame fills me at the thought. I’ve never done anything like that—telling a boy what I want him to do to me. The most I’ve had is a few fumbled make out sessions as a teen.
No boys really piqued my interest in school, and I wasn’t just going to give my virginity away to someone not worthy of receiving it. I would have had to really like the boy.
Deep in thought, I haven’t answered him yet and the gruff voice, so deep in its timbre, comes back, asking me again if I need anything. The sound makes me think maybe the reason for my sexual inexperience is because I was messing around with boys.
And never found a man.
I need to get him away from my door before I do something truly stupid. “No. Thank you. I’m alright.”
“Alright.”
Finally, the sound of heavy footsteps move down the hall. I should wait here, then slip out from under the covers, get dressed, put on my coat and boots, and sneak out that window.
I’m so drained, the memories from my past, the lack of contact from my mom, the scene over the truck, missing my friends. The bed is so comfy. The mattress is soft, the sheets cool, the comforter ridiculously fluffy.
I sit up, open the bottle, and take a sip of the cool water. Seeing the chenille blanket at the foot of the bed, I grab it. Going for a more neutral color palette, I’m not typically a pink girl like Fiona is, but the touch, well, it’s a nice touch, to choose this for me, because after seeing the rest of the masculine house, I’m beginning to think that he picked this out just for me. Dropping back down onto my piles of pillows, I bring the blanket up higher, tucking it under my chin for a cuddle.
I turn out the light. A peaceful darkness fills the room. I can hear the waves of the ocean lapping the shore even through the closed window.
I’ll make my plan and I’ll get out of here, but right now, this bed is too cozy, the blanket too soft where it rests against my cheek. I may not escape tonight but I’ll have fun playing games with my captor until the perfect moment arises.
Why should he be the only one to have fun?