Chapter 27 Shane #3
Lying to him will get me beaten to a pulp, but telling the truth will probably end the same way.
“Here’s some advice since you obviously suck at breaking into people’s rooms to snoop around,” he continues, his tone conversational. “Always clear the area before you start the searching part of the plan.”
My chest is so tight it feels like I’m being squeezed in a vise. I want to run, but my entire body is glitching out, and I couldn’t move if someone lit my shoes on fire.
“Also, never touch a weapon if you don’t know how to safely handle it. That’s more of a general tip, but I’d say it applies here, no?” He tilts his head to the side like he’s studying me.
The silence between us stretches, and I swallow hard to try and wet my arid throat.
“I…” I croak.
“You?” he prompts, rolling one hand in a “go on” motion.
“I was…”
“You were?” His tone is darker now, and the warning in it is unmistakable.
I swallow hard and shake my head. There’s nothing I can say that will make this situation any better for me.
Jace’s entire demeanor changes in an instant, and it’s like he becomes a different person. All emotion is gone from his face, and his entire body is tense and taut, like a jungle cat on the prowl, as he stalks toward me.
I stumble back, tripping over my feet as my brain tries to catch up with what’s happening.
His strides are long and unhurried, and I let out a surprised gasp when I backpedal right into the wall.
Jace stalks right up to me and stops when we’re toe-to-toe. We’re close to the window, and the moonlight streaming through the ornate stained-glass bathes him in warm swirls of colors, giving him an ethereal and unearthly glow.
He’s beautiful, but it’s like he’s not even Jace anymore.
He’s just a shell of the guy I thought I knew. His eyes are empty. There’s nothing in them. No intelligence, no chaotic energy. It’s like all the life is gone from them. Like they’re dead.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asks in a deadly calm voice that’s completely devoid of emotion or even inflection.
Instead of trying to speak again, I shake my head.
His hand closes around my throat. He’s not squeezing hard enough to cut off my air, but the threat that he could if he wanted to is clear.
“You have exactly ten seconds to say something that will convince me to keep asking questions.” He tightens his grip the slightest bit.
“Otherwise I’m going to get bored.” He presses against my windpipe, using just enough force that my next breath comes out as a gurgle.
“And trust me when I say you don’t want me to get bored. ”
The world is going a bit hazy, and it feels like the room is spinning around me as I’m hit with another memory fragment.
“You’ve killed people?”
“Yup.”
“How many?”
“How many people have I killed? Don’t know. Never bothered to keep count.”
“Now.” He releases a bit of the pressure on my throat. “Do you have anything you want to say to me?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, but it comes out barely louder than a whisper.
An eerie grin slides over his lips, but his eyes are still completely expressionless, so the effect is no less scary than when his face was completely blank. “Are you sorry that you betrayed my trust? Or are you sorry that you got caught?”
“Both,” I whisper.
“Yet you still decided to steal my card and break into my room so you could snoop through my stuff.” He leans closer, and my entire body clenches with fear. “And do you know why you were able to do all of that?”
I shake my head, or at least try to, under the weight of his hand still around my neck.
“Because I let you,” he whispers. Something dark and primal flares in his eyes, and his smile widens. “And do you know why I let you?”
“No,” I rasp.
“Because you either have a death wish or you want me to punish you.”
I let out a surprised cry as he yanks me off the wall and throws me onto the floor.
The breath rushes from my lungs as I land on the hard wooden planks, and I blink into the darkness as pain radiates through my side from the impact.
“So.” He plants one foot on my shoulder and gives it a hard shove, forcing me to roll onto my back.
“Do you have a death wish?” He stands over me, one foot on either side of my arms. “Or,” He reaches into his pocket and pulls something long and thin out of it.
“Do you want me to punish you?” He flips the object around in his hand, then slides a straight razor out of the handle.
“I’m going to have a great time either way, so choose carefully. ”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Everyone’s always sorry when they get caught.
” He crouches over me and holds the razor out so the moonlight gleams off the mirror-like surface, showing off how sharp it is.
“But not sorry enough to not do it in the first place.” He spins the blade around his fingers like it’s not a deadly weapon.
“And here I thought you were different.” He stops spinning the razor and holds it up in the light again.
“But you still thought it would be a good idea to betray my trust.” He lowers the blade of the razor to my neck but stops before it touches my skin.
I freeze, instinctively holding my breath as the blade hovers over my throat. I have no idea how deep a neck wound has to be in order to be fatal, and I’m not in any hurry to find out.
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t show you exactly what happens to people who betray me,” he says in that deadly calm voice. “And you only have one chance, so think carefully before you speak, because they could be your last words.”
My mind goes blank with fear as I stare up at him, but a flicker of something in his eyes makes me pause. It’s not anger or rage or even that calculating look he gets when he’s plotting something.
It almost looks like regret.
A weird sense of calm falls over me. I might not fully understand why Jace is the way he is, but I know what he’s capable of, and he would have already done it if he really wanted to kill me.
The fact that he’s hesitating means there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to do this, and that’s the only reason I’m still breathing.
“You’ve got exactly ten seconds,” he warns.
Instead of trying to think of something I can say that will get me out of this mess, my brain ping-pongs back to the conversation I just had with Dan.
“I think I know who the mole is,” I blurt out.
His eyes narrow. “Are you saying that to save your own ass? Because I’d recommend against lying to me right now.”
“No, I swear.”
He snaps the blade back into its holder. “Talk.”
“I think it’s Dan.”
“Why?”
He’s still pissed, but he’s listening. That has to mean something.
“He stopped me before I came up here to tell me some stuff. I didn’t put it together when he did because I was distracted with my plan, but I think it’s him.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if there’s anything going on between us because he saw you leave my room the morning after you brought me home from The Crypt. But as far as I know, Paxton is the only person who knows about that, and there’s no way he’d tell Dan.”
“What else?”
“He also said he saw you leave my room right after it was broken into—”
“Someone broke into your room?”
I nod. “I didn’t tell anyone it happened, but he was really specific about the timing, and right after that, he said he overheard you tell Jax that it was easy for you to get me to let you fuck me, and that I made it easy for you to get the thumb drive.
” I swallow. “But it just occurred to me that you don’t call them that. You call them flash drives.”
“I do call them that.” He slips the knife in his pocket but doesn’t move off me. “Is that it?”
“He told me about something that happened with my brother.” I swallow around the lump in my throat.
“He said KJ was being blackmailed after he was caught with a guy right before he died, and it looked like you were going to do the same thing to me. But how would he know KJ was being blackmailed? His older brother is the same age as KJ, but they weren’t close.
KJ would never have told his brother about that.
And there’s no way he could connect us fucking and a random thumb drive to blackmail unless he already knew what was going on and knew what was on the drive.
And he acted like everyone knew about KJ and it was a big deal and that he got outed, but not a single person has mentioned it to me ever, and my brother being outed isn’t exactly something that would stay quiet, even after all these years. ”
The last of the dead look fades from Jace’s eyes, and he climbs off me.
I slowly sit up.
“I didn’t break into your room,” he says bluntly. “And if I did, you’d never know it.”
“Yeah, I’m realizing that now.”
“But you still thought it was me?” he asks coldly.
“I didn’t know what to think, but the place was ransacked, and I found your knife, or at least what I thought was your knife.”
He gives me a hard look. “You really thought that I’d be dumb enough to ransack your room and leave my knife behind when you know what I can do? Does that sound like it would be my MO?”
“No, and I should have seen that someone was trying to frame you,” I say softly.
“But I was messed up about the fire and got in my head about it and then I told my mom about you and started thinking that maybe you might feel something for me when I know that’s impossible, and then I saw the knife and…
” I shake my head. “I thought the worst of you because I didn’t want to admit that I don’t hate you, and that I kinda really like you. That I might even love you.”
He blinks at me.
“I’m not saying that to manipulate you,” I say quickly.
“I didn’t even mean to say that, but I’m babbling, and it just came out.
I’m done lying to myself, and I know it’s crazy and you can’t feel anything for me, but I panicked because I’ve never felt like this about anyone, and the thought that you were just using me didn’t just hurt…
It fucking destroyed me, and I got pissed and decided I was going to find proof that you broke into my room and you’re the one who locked me in with the fire—”
“You think I locked you in with the fire?” His voice is dark again, but that dead look hasn’t returned his eyes.
“No, not anymore. And really, not even then if I’m being honest. I just needed a reason to hate you again, and my dumb brain ran with it.”
“Why did you think it was me? You were at the meeting, you heard what the report said.”
“Like they’ve never lied to us.” I huff out a wry laugh. “But you’re the only person I know who has a dummy card, and I just latched onto that, and it seemed like the only explanation for what happened. I’m so sorry. I fucked up so bad.”
“You did.” He stands, but instead of pulling out his knife, he reaches one hand out to me. “But it sounds like someone made sure that you’d fuck up. And if that is Dan, then him being the mole is the least of his worries.”