Chapter 15
Scarletta
The fucking asshole.
Caleb MacLeay is a controlling, motherfucking asshole.
Two hours of switchbacks and my knuckles are white, my nerves are frazzled, and cursing Caleb MacLeay's name and damning him to hell is the only way I know to process this fucking drive.
I am not cut out for this. There's a reason I stay on my side of the fucking Tetons! They're sketchy, and twisty, and fucking elk and moose are trying to throw themselves in front of my Jeep at every switchback.
And what's waiting for me at the end of my Teton Pass struggle session?
Who the fuck knows? A dead body? Some crazy torture session? Nothing, because he's not even here?
Could be any of those.
Torture… I picture how he killed that Russian man on the island.
Oh god. My foot presses down on the accelerator, speeding up on the dirt road, when the navigation says, "Turn left now."
What? I slam on the brakes, twist the wheel to the left, and Tokyo Drift my way under a ranch archway marked with a skull and crossbones.
I'm here.
I accelerate again as I climb the steep driveway. Towering pines thick enough to get lost in blur by, all caution for elk and moose out the window.
Caleb's log mansion materializes through the trees. A tower of timber and glass, it's perched on the mountainside like some psychopath's wet dream of isolation and control.
I slam on the brakes again, this time kicking up a cloud of gravel and dust between the house and the barn.
"You have arrived at your destination."
I take a deep breath. Yeah. I sure the fuck have.
I get out of the car and immediately, I'm confronted with the sound of something exploding. For a moment, I'm just stunned, processing. Frozen.
Then I hear grunting, and panting, and… what the fuck is happening?
"Who sent you? Who the fuck sent you!" The yell echos through the trees.
"Ryan?" I scream. Then I'm running. This stupidity of this doesn't hit me until I'm at the threshold to the barn. Why am I running towards this? What the hell is wrong with me?
Because there they are! On the ground. Fighting. Ryan is naked and covered in—I have no idea. Blood. Splotches of it cover his whole body, smudging his bird tattoos as he and Caleb twist and grapple on the concrete.
This is when I see the shotgun at my feet. It's very short. Very illegal. Very much a signal that whatever is happening here is bad, bad, bad.
That's what that noise was. Not an explosion, a shotgun.
My fingers wrap around the stock before my brain catches up to my body.
What am I doing? What the fuck am I doing?
But I'm already lifting it. Already feeling the weight of it—heavier than I expected, the metal still warm from being fired. The smell hits me next. Gunpowder. Sharp, and acrid, and real in a way that makes my stomach lurch.
I've written this. I've written this exact moment a dozen times. The heroine finds the weapon. The heroine takes control.
But I'm not a heroine. I'm a fucking mess in yoga pants who drove two hours to confront a murderer and now there's two men covered in blood and I don't know which one is the monster anymore.
Rack it. You have to rack it.
The thought comes from somewhere outside myself. From every action movie I've ever watched. From the scene in Captive Hearts where Lydia disarms her kidnapper. From muscle memory that doesn't belong to me—that belongs to characters I invented, women who were braver than I'll ever be.
My hands move.
Chk-chk.
The sound is obscene. Mechanical. Final.
Both men freeze.
The fighting stops like someone hit pause on a video. Ryan's arm is locked around Caleb's throat. Caleb's face is red, his eyes bulging, but now they're both staring at me.
At the gun in my shaking hands.
Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god.
I'm pointing it at them. At both of them. The barrel swings from Caleb to Ryan and back again because I don't know—I don't fucking know—
"Don't move." My voice comes out wrong. Too high. Cracking on the second word like a teenager's. "Don't fucking move."
Ryan's grip on Caleb loosens slightly. His eyes—they're calculating. Reading me. Seeing exactly how terrified I am.
He knows I don't know what I'm doing.
"Either of you." I force the words out louder. Swing the barrel back toward Caleb, then Ryan, then somewhere in between. "Don't. Fucking. Move."
My arms are trembling. The gun is too heavy. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips, in my throat, behind my eyes.
I'm going to throw up.
I'm going to drop this gun.
I'm going to get us all killed.
You're not in your stories anymore, Scarletta. This is real. This is fucking real.
Ryan starts first. "Do you know this guy?"
And as he says this, Caleb gets free, he's on his feet, reaching for Ryan—
The shotgun goes off.
The sound is enormous—a physical thing that slaps me across the face, makes my ears ring, rattles my teeth in my skull. The recoil slams into my stomach hard enough that I stagger back a step, almost drop the damn thing.
Splinters of wood rain down from above.
Oh god. Oh shit. Oh fuck.
I didn't mean to—or did I? My finger pulled the trigger. The gun fired. There's a hole in the roof now, a ragged circle of daylight punching through the shadows, dust motes swirling in the sudden beam of summer sun.
Both men freeze.
Caleb's hand is still reaching for Ryan. Ryan's mouth is open mid-word. They're both staring at me with identical expressions—shock, maybe fear, definitely a recalculation of how dangerous I actually am.
Good.
"I SAID—" My voice cracks again but I push through it, louder, shriller, channeling every ounce of hysteria clawing up my throat. "DON'T. FUCKING. MOVE!"
I rack the shotgun again.
The sound is satisfying in a way I don't have time to examine—that heavy ka-CHUNK of metal sliding, a shell ejecting, another one chambering. Both men's hands shoot up immediately. Palms out. Fingers spread. Universal gesture of surrender.
They're listening now.
My stomach throbs where the stock hit it. My ears are still ringing. The gun is too heavy, my arms are shaking worse than before, and I think I bit my tongue because I can taste blood.
But they're not moving.
They're not fucking moving.
Ryan continues. "He kidnapped me! Fucking kidnapped me!" He sounds scared. But he should be. He's naked, covered in what I can now determine to be… bug bites? And he understands, somehow, what Caleb is about to do to him.
Was.
Until I showed up.
"Scarletta…" Caleb is cool. One-hundred percent in control. "You have no idea who he is. Ask him what he had planned for you at five am this morning. Ask him."
Ryan looks at Caleb like… like he's… I don't even understand that look.
But I feel it. "How did you know I was meeting him at five am?"
"Ask him, Scarletta," Caleb repeats. Then he spits on the ground. Blood. "Ask him what his real business is. Not the gym, Scar. The real business. Ask him who the fuck Posie Little is."
Ryan's whole face goes white.
I don't know what this is about, but whatever it is, Caleb should not have this information. Because that look on Ryan's face is… panic.
Caleb laughs. Rips off his long-sleeve black henley. And there they are. All those tattoos. All those psycho tattoos of me being fucked, and dominated, and humiliated by him. My face, all over his body.
"What the fuck is this?" Ryan asks. But he's unsure now. Past angry, past confused. He looks at me. Looks back at Caleb. Then me again. "Is that your face?"
I don't have time to answer because Caleb's already talking.
"Posie Little did this tattoo for me." He points to the one over his sternum where he's throat-fucking me.
He looks at Ryan. "Just the one. Because unlike you, I'm not stupid enough to use the same artist twice.
How does it feel, Ryan, to know that it was those fucking birds on your body that signed your death certificate? "
"What are you talking about?" I'm breathless. Barely able to take in air. Something big is happening right now, I just don't understand what it is.
All I know is… it's bad.
"Posie did all those bird tattoos on GymBro here," Caleb says. "Died under suspicious circumstances a while back." His voice is eerily calm. A complete disconnect with what I'm feeling.
"Scarletta," Ryan says, his voice filled with building panic. "Don't listen to him. He has no idea what he's talking about."
I'm so confused. I don't understand what a tattoo artist has to do with anything.
"Don't I?" Caleb asks. "Don't I, Ryan? Let's fill in some blanks, shall we? Iron River Fitness has crazy security. You know my set up, Scar. You've seen it. You know I understand surveillance."
I nod, blankly. Just because he's right. This is something I've seen first hand.
"I wasn't even looking for Ryan here when I hacked into the Bonneville County IT system. Just the coroner report for Posie. Just curious, that's all. Posie's autopsy report was suspiciously brief. The tox screen didn't match her clean history. Unexplained bruising, vocal cords shredded."
I'm looking at his tattoo when he says this. The one where he's throat fucking me. The one Posie did.
"But it wasn't just Posie," Caleb continues. "Many young women dead over the past three years. All ruled accidental or OD. Cases were all closed fast. And the coroner's financials don't match his salary. He's got a new truck. A new boat. Cash deposits weekly.
"Scarletta," Ryan interjects again. "Whatever this is about, he's lying."
Caleb doesn't bother replying to him. Just continues. "They run Windows 7 on a shared network. Sheriff, coroner, county clerk. They're all connected. I had an AI agent do a simple search for me and guess what I found?"
"Lies," Ryan snarls. "This is all lies."
But I don't think it is. And Caleb is looking me dead in the eyes right now. "You were going to meet him at five AM?"
I'm nodding out a yes, as Ryan continues to protest. But I'm not even listening to Ryan. I'm watching Caleb's face go sad.
Not angry.
Sad.