Chapter 33
Ryan
S ay what? Come again? Both phrases I would have been saying if I wasn't dry heaving on the cinder block steps outside the container door. What the hell did he need help for? He was the professional, not us.
"Ha ha. Very funny. You know, I didn't know you had a sense of humor." Eric guffawed from beside me while I searched Tyler's eyes for a sign that he really was joking.
It would have to be a joke. This was not our specialty. I was a photographer, Eric was...had been a free-loving surf instructor and vlogger, Ethan was the lucky billionaire, and Matt was the trust fund millionaire, carefree backpacker.
And Tyler, well, he was the murderer. It didn't get any simpler than that.
For the last decade of our lives, we'd been drifting by, enjoying the expensive simplicities of life without a care in the world. We were only, almost, three decades old. The first decade we were victims of our circumstances, toward the end of the second decade we decided to take charge of the reality we wanted to live in, and within the past decade, we'd had freedom. We were just starting to live, discover love and commitment, and we were in the stage of learning to build a life with someone.
Now we'd not only had to face death as an idea, but here we were faced with the option to play a part in death as a reality. It wasn't something we could detach from and store someplace else in our minds, or on a canvas, in a vlog, on an adventure, or in a hotel room with strangers. Forget it at the bottom of Hennessy or champagne. This involved getting our hands dirty. Staining them forever. Being scarred from the memory of it for the rest of our lives. Changing our identities. Becoming killers.
No way, this was not how I imagined spending the next decade of my life.
The next several decades.
This wasn't something we could come back from.
Hate to say I told you so, that level-headed voice, the one that takes the moral high ground, returned again. But it was right. I shouldn't have gotten involved with Tyler. Where was that voice when I was on the plane?
Please be bluffing..." I begged Tyler, inside my head. "...because I can taste bile and I'm pretty sure that's blood. If I throw up again, I'll expel my guts and bowels through my mouth.
"Well, I can't exactly have you all leaving here, knowing I was the one responsible, can I? You might do something stupid and run to the cops," Tyler said.
Okay, he wasn't bluffing. And he was looking at me while he said that. I turned to glare at Eric and Matt, and Ethan. Why didn't any of them shut me up?!
"That wasn't part of the plan." Ethan stepped up. He and Tyler were the same height. Nose to nose. Similar build. But I doubted very much that, despite underlying anger issues, Ethan would be able to take him on.
"Yeah, well plans change, don't they? Especially when you have wishy-washy people like him hanging around." He turned to give me another look and, you know, I wished I was flexible enough to kick myself in my big ass mouth.
I could beat the shit out of myself right now.
Ooh, I was so mad.
"Why would you even care if we did? You're a former mob boss. Couldn't you get away with it or something?" Matt asked, his voice varying in pitch, thanks to panic.
You're not alone there, brother.
"Once upon a time, sure. But when I left that life behind, I left my allies behind as well. I'm on my own here. Can't risk it. I have too much to lose." I turned to see him shrugging and donning his gloves.
Another wave of sickness threatened me when I spotted the black leather fingerprint protectors. He let the guys get their hands dirty and leave their DNA all over the scene, while ensuring that he left as little of himself here as possible.
"You're trying to frame us." I gasped in tandem with the heaving which sent me into a choking fit.
"What? Don't be ridiculous. I just want reassurance. You know? Help me sleep at night." He smirked, but my mind was going W-I-L-D with repetitive thoughts, shrieking alarm bells and warnings.
"Look at your hands." I gestured toward Eric and Ethan when I was able to stand again. My skull splintered from the excessive force of...thinking. "He let you do that! Without stopping you."
My voice was a screaming siren. Tyler's? Still, annoyingly matter-of-fact.
"Oh, yeah. That was a really dumb idea. Didn't you know that you bring gloves to these things?" He gave them a patronizing look.
What the fuck? I'm sorry, Mr. Unflappable. We don't do this sort of thing every fucking weekend.
He let out a soft chuckle at my expression, which I guessed must have been hilariously shell-shocked, like an electrocuted deer. Don't ask me to make sense right now. It wasn't going to happen.
"Don't worry." He waved off my ever so trivial concern. "The bodies will be dumped in the lake. They'll be discovered when the time is right. By then, their bodies will be washed clean of any of your DNA, I'll ditch the car and scrub this place clean. Come on, let's get cracking. We'll have to get back to the ladies soon." He was like a surgeon, flipping out his knife and moving toward the men as if he was about to perform the same type of surgery he'd been performing his whole career. "So, who's going first?"
He exchanged glances with each of us.
"Yeah, I've never heard of lake water washing off DNA." I protested.
"Well, have you ever heard of anyone being charged for bodies found in lakes?" he asked.
Well, no. I didn't think so. Actually, it took me a moment, but yeah I had. Before I could say so, he clucked his tongue at us. "Tick tock."
Tick tock, what? This ain't no hickory dickory duck. What was he expecting? For me to break out in a fucking viral dance move or something?
He whipped out his switchblade, flipping it open and shut, before sighing. I caught a cramp in the back of my leg, or was that my heart? I couldn't tell, I was tight all over, throbbing in agony.
"Okay, fine. I hate it when they make me pick." Tyler muttered to himself before waving the pointed end of his knife at me. What?
No.
Call on somebody else please.
"Come on up. You're the first contestant, competing for..." He pondered on his way over to grab me by the collar and drag me over. "If you win." His lightbulb clicked inside his head and he smiled. "You get to live. How about that?"
Tyler shoved the knife in my hand, open blade and all, and I began to tremble, blowing out a breath when there wasn't a hole in my hand with the blade and blood hanging out the side of it. Where I grew up, this sort of thing happened all the time. Gangs fighting with other gangs, and the kids getting mixed up in the in between. But I had managed to make it out of that environment. I chose better for myself and created a rich life, full of meaningful accomplishments.
Looking at Lily's father, I scowled. I supposed, in a way, I was here, faced with decisions that would break down everything I'd worked to achieve, because of him. All the battles I overcame, perishing because of him. Because he chose to arrange Lily's kidnapping, and because he had an idiot 'yes mongrel' who was ready and willing to go along with a deranged plan.
I wouldn't have joined an alliance with a mob boss, (I think we can drop the whole 'former' part of it) if it wasn't for these assholes threatening Lily's life and health.
Yes, I had had thrilling thoughts of them falling off the face of the earth. But, I didn't want to be the one to kill them. Not really. In my fantasies, maybe. Never in real life.
"Come on. We don't have all day. It's just like slicing into butter. You don't even have to cut deep. Stick it in somewhere and forget it. That's what she said, huh, guys?" Tyler threw over his shoulder to an unreceptive audience while he laughed.
I shuddered, turning to my best friends who had all turned paler than usual, begging them with my eyes to save me from this. But we were all facing the same fate.
"Okay, listen. If you don't do it, I'll cut off one of your fingers, how about that?" Tyler's tone turned cold. Okay. Cold-er.
But I wasn't budging. I'd faced up to some tough guys back in the day, and walked away with my life. "Yeah, right. And how would you explain that to the ladies?"
Really, Ryan? That's the best you can come up with? One of those voices said.
"Neither of them know we left together." He shrugged.
"They saw us talking together." I began to sweat as I failed to recall whether they did or not.
I'm embarrassed for you. Yup, that's one of the devils. Shut up! I fired back an internal retort. Great, let's get in an argument inside my head and escape my reality, because that's going to save me.
"So, doesn't mean we left together." He argued back in a childish, taunting kind of way.
"Still not doing it." I slammed the knife back into his palm and turned to walk away.
Okay? Brave. Look at you. I ain't mad at it.
The little fiend on my shoulder crossed its arms and feet, and smirked. The fucking bastard.
The world spun and before I knew it, I was on my knees. Tyler had whacked the shit out of the back of my neck and knocked me off balance. The floaters before my eyes didn't get a chance to clear as he pressed the sharp blade against my neck.
"If you want to see Lily again, you will do this. Don't think I'm bluffing. You have five seconds to make up your mind." He started counting down.
My best friends rushed forward. Ethan's cheeks were sunken, like there was a vacuum behind the skin sucking it in. His jawbone tried to split his flesh and his eyes were frozen open. He huffed, giving Tyler the stare of death, but I'm sorry to say, that was all he had. A stare, the only threat. Eric's lips were pressed together, his fists clenched, his feet set to pounce. Matt, bless him, began to tremble a little, looking between me and Tyler, before rolling his shoulders and stepping up.
"Woah, there." Tyler chortled, like he was out for a ride on his dear old horse on a bright sunny day, in a verdant field. The horse had had a misstep, and he was trying to steady him with a pat on the back and a tug on his harness. Pure glee in his exclamation. The man was a case. "Don't try anything funny. My hand might slip," he told them.
Everyone went silent. Even the two kidnappers behind me. I had to admit, a special wave of lava poured through my blood at the thought of the two fuckers gaining any satisfaction in watching me be killed along with them. Me and them, we weren't the same. We shouldn't die the same.
"One!" Tyler announced as the blade drew blood.
Lily in that hospital bed flashed before my eyes. The scream she released as she ran toward the rescuers, it was a scream I didn't ever want to hear again. Blood-curdling, heart-stopping, traumatic.
"Two!" The blade pressed the tiniest bit deeper, but the difference was noticeable, despite the adrenaline.
The pads of my fingers itched, recalling the rough stitches in the back of Lily's head, the side of her face that was swollen the first night we brought her home, her losing consciousness last night, hell, even the few weeks ago when we failed to see the extent of danger lurking behind Terry Thornbread's eyes as he 'accepted defeat' and left. Fuck, even Mrs. Thornbread's frozen face of fear provided a haunting image.
"Three!" The blade moved and I gulped, catching the horror on my best friends' faces. Imagining the two men behind me getting one last laugh on their way out.
"F—" Tyler started.
"Okay! Okay! I'll do it! I'll do it!" I shouted, the 'F' sound disorienting me as I went back and forth over whether or not he was already at five. Tears spurted from my eyes when I opened them and I was still breathing.
He pulled the knife from my neck and handed it to me again. This time his face was tough and unyielding. A trembling leaf had nothing on me as I tottered forward, raising the knife, hoping for a stroke of fate to intervene and stop this madness. There was none. And I plunged. With my eyes shut, I didn't know where I hit, but there was a yelp from Terry and I dry heaved.
"Ooh. Nice shot. Right in..." Tyler started.
"Shut up. Please." I forced the words through my teeth; my spit drenched my face.
Thank shit he didn't take offense to my outburst, nor did he continue with the description.
"Alright, let's move over here to...sorry, man. I didn't get your name." He turned his charisma on Kidnapper number two who was breathing hard, but his cries were silenced.
Instead, he had the nerve to threaten Tyler.
"You're a dead man," he spat.
Gotta hand it to him, he had balls.
Tyler laughed. "Aw, that's cute. Ain't that cute?" He turned his rhetorical question on the rest of us. "I'll forgive your delusion, but I'm not the one tied to a chair, outnumbered by very dangerous men, am I?" His words danced.
As he said that, I was inclined to agree with Terry, which was something I didn't expect myself to say. But he was right. We were pussies. Four men against one. None of us could take him down. Why not? He wasn't invincible.
With my hands already dirty, what was some more dirt? I was still refusing to look at Terry. I wasn't even looking at my arm where splatters of his blood rested like a weight. I didn't want him to be right, the fucker. I contemplated whether or not he was while I hovered over Carter Colombine. I'd learned the bastard's name.
"All of you are dead," he spat. Now, I was inclined to prove him wrong.
Here's the thing. Yes, my knees were wobbling like I was at a wedding, dancing to that V.I.C song. Yes, my stomach was in turmoil. Yes, I'd rather run out of here and let someone else do the dirty work.
So, why haven't I?
Because Tyler threatened us, and we're pussies.
And Terry's right? Or was I still here, because despite being capable of teaming together to take Tyler down, I didn't want to, because then what? Someone would have to get rid of these doofuses. What if they escaped or maneuvered their way out of the system? Got off with a light sentence.
I was here because I wanted to be. That was a terrifying truth to accept. But sometimes, we have to face the fact that we're a part of the problem, and take accountability for our actions. As I sank the knife into Carter Colombine's neck, I did it because I didn't want to give this man the opportunity to come after Lily again. And that made me the same kind of scum that Tyler is. That these men are.
The knife clattered to the grimy metal floor of the container and I stepped away, shaking, aware of what I'd just done, and knowing there was no coming back from this.
I didn't need to see or hear what happened next. My legs took me away from the scene and I followed them to the parked car.