Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
The entire ride to the bay is silent. Before I left, I could see Esme fighting herself, feeling like she should offer to go with me out of a misplaced sense of duty, but I never gave her the chance.
This isn’t for her, after all.
This is for me.
This is what I want to do.
My hands don’t shake on the steering wheel, but the trip blurs by as possibilities roll through my head like a speeding train; one after another after another.
I don’t have to do this, some small part of me whispers. I can back out now, lie, and make up something about how he walked off down the trail to do whatever the hell it is Alan did when he was pissed.
But that thought shrinks as soon as it flits through my head, becoming completely undesirable even before it’s fully formed. That isn’t what I want.
My breath catches after I park, and for a few tense seconds, I worry Flanagan hadn’t actually followed me like I thought he did. The last leg of the trip was mostly back roads, with only a few cars on the path, but there was definitely someone following me at a distance.
I think.
I can hear the tires crunch over the rocks, and a car pulls up beside me in the otherwise empty, semi-gravel area.
Before he’s even turned off the engine, I’m out of my car to lean against the door, with the cool night air brisk and refreshing on my cheeks as I tilt my head back to stare up at the full moon.
In my head, I swear I can hear the crash of waves, though we aren’t close enough to the water for that to be real.
I haven’t felt this clear in weeks. Months.
Years, if I’m being honest with myself. Excitement hums through my veins, and I’m acutely aware of the box cutter in my pocket.
His car door closes and footsteps sound on the gravel, before becoming light rustles in the grass that’s overtaken most of the parking lot after years of failed upkeep.
I glance to the side to see Flanagan glancing around, derision on his face.
“This is where you dropped him off?” he asks in a tone of disbelief. “Seriously?”
“There are trails here,” I murmur. “I stuck around until I couldn’t see him anymore, but what was I supposed to do?
” Pinning him with my gaze in the moonlight, I can see the slight discomfort in the way he shifts and looks into the trees.
“Come on.” Without giving him an option to refuse, I walk past him to the mouth of the trail we’d taken when he had Alan’s body held between us.
Has it really only been two weeks?
Somehow, it feels both shorter and longer than that. It’s been two weeks since Larkin found me, and just under that since he contacted me for the first time.
Two weeks that I’ve known him, and already I can’t imagine going back to my life before Larkin.
The clarity was missing, I realize. But not just clarity.
There’s something disingenuous about how I’ve been living for the past few years post-mental hospital.
Though I couldn’t see it, I was sinking further and further into a life and a self that isn’t mine.
That’s over now, though. Alan’s death and Larkin’s insinuation into my life ripped away the fog and the complacency that had grown over my bones like ivy. Now, I simply have to finish that transition back to the girl I maybe always was.
Was Larkin right?
I haven’t thought much about his words from that night in the cabin.
His insinuation that I was born this way had made me feel things that make me uncomfortable and confused.
His words had shaken something in me, and it’s been easier to just push them away to worry about another time.
Preferably never, if I’m being honest. But here in the cold moonlight, while leading another man to his death like some kind of siren come to life from myth, I can’t help but wonder if he was right all along.
If he’s seen it in me since the moment we met.
“Hmm?” I realize belatedly that Flanagan is speaking, though his words aren’t particularly important to me. Still, I’m trying to play nice, and I glance back at him through the darkness of the trail, because the moon above is hidden enough that we’re mostly in darkness.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up as he replies, and this time when I look around, my eyes narrow at the feeling of being watched.
There shouldn’t be anyone else here, though. This place is an old trail, pretty deserted in the winter, and ours were the only cars in the lot. Shrugging it off, I focus back on Flanagan’s words, determined to at least make him think I care.
“He really came this way?” When Flanagan trips over a root, I stop to watch him recover, listening to his soft, snarled curses under his breath. “You sure about that?”
“Pretty sure. From the lot he went down this trail, and it’s not connected to any others.
He seemed really upset, though. He was…frantic.
” I sigh the word and start walking again, hands clasped behind my back.
“You know, Alan wasn’t very nice.” My words are musing, and I find myself loosening up, drunk on feelings of excitement and anticipation.
“He was cruel to Esme. I told her to break up with him…a lot, actually.”
I snort ruefully, the trail beginning to open up to the cliffs where the water of the bay crashes against the rocks.
When I turn to glance at him, I’m happy to see that Flanagan is still half-distracted as he fights for his life on unfamiliar footing.
It’s adorably pathetic, and my smile widens slightly.
“But he wouldn’t let her. That night? When he came to our apartment?
He stood there, banging on our fucking door.
He was demanding Esme let him in, since apparently they had another fight at work and she finally decided to leave him.
How fucked up is that, Mr. Flanagan?” In the open space and with the open air of the ocean behind me, I stop walking, my hands behind my back as I watch him trip the rest of the way out of the trees.
“How fucked up can a guy be to just not take a hint? She finally had to let him in because he turned on me when I came home, and Es was afraid for me. She’s always afraid for me,” I add with a rueful chuckle.
“It’s very nice of her. Though I don’t usually need it.
She wanted him gone and kept trying to tell him that after he got into the apartment.
You know how men rant and rave, saying women should just tell them no instead of playing games? ”
Flanagan looks at me with confused suspicion on his face.
“Well, Esme did all that. She told him no in every single way imaginable, but he didn’t listen.
He put his dirty fucking hands around her throat and I honestly believe he would’ve killed her, Mr. Flanagan.
So…” I tilt my head to the side, my gaze fixed on his expression.
“What would you have done? If it were your wife, or your best friend? Would you have stood there and just let that happen?”
Realization dawns across his face, and a rush of excitement goes through me. But like any overconfident man who can’t fathom the idea that a woman could be dangerous, he takes a few steps toward me with a bewildered look on his pockmarked face. “You killed him. You didn’t drive him here—”
“No, we definitely did,” I assure him. “He just didn’t get to appreciate the drive.
We drove him here and carried him along the same trail that you and I just walked.
” Every step closer that he takes, something else lights up inside me.
I nod my head towards the water and sidestep to give him access.
“This was the last place anyone saw him, Mr. Flanagan,” I promise the private investigator with a smile. “I made sure of that when I wrapped him in garbage bags, filled them with rocks, and rolled him over the edge that night.”
He turns to me, but the horror is tempered with suspicious disbelief as he searches my face for any sign of a bluff. Flanagan looks toward the cliff, then back at me, and I can tell he’s trying to decide if I’m full of shit or actually telling the truth.
I let him work through it, enjoying the conflicting emotions on his face. It’s a bit disappointing he doesn’t believe I’m capable of it straight off, but that’s okay. I don’t mind proving it to him, and that’s my goal for tonight, anyway.
He’ll believe me.
Even if it only sinks in once I’ve opened a hole in his throat and let him bleed all over the ground before shoving him off the cliff as well.
“Why?” he asks finally, when he’s stared at the ocean for a few long minutes. I don’t answer right away, however. Yet again I’m distracted by the feeling of being watched, and I’m tempted to search around the clearing to see if I’m missing something.
Who would be here?
Esme sure as hell wouldn’t follow me. She’s probably shaking herself apart by now. And if it’s not here, then the only other option is—
My eyes find Larkin in the dark just as the realization hits me. He doesn’t move when I notice him, and he’s barely visible leaning against the broad trunk of a pine at the end of the trail. Still, I can feel his gaze, and I can sense his small smile, even in the dark.
Instead of fear, excitement floods me, pushing the cold of my murderous intent deeper through my bones. Somehow, the idea of doing this while he watches, of putting on some kind of fucked-up show for my new, psychotic lover, puts this on another level in my brain.
“Why, what?” I finally sigh. “I explained it already, Mike. He was going to kill Esme—”
“But you could’ve called someone,” he argues. “You could’ve called the police. You didn’t have to hide the body or do any of this. Why go to all this trouble when none of it was necessary?”
The question catches me off guard, and I finally turn to give him my full attention. “The same reason I’m going to do this,” I admit, pulling the box cutter out of my pocket. “Because I really, absolutely, fucking want to.”
The fear in his eyes is everything I’ve hoped for, and it cements the fact that Larkin is right.
I’m a monster.
“I wish I could say sorry.” I test the box cutter’s blade against my thumb. “Sort of. Actually, I almost did this before. But you, uh, got saved by circumstances.” I watch him look between my face and the box cutter, before glancing back toward the trail.
“Look…” He raises his hands and edges backward, but I’m already expecting it.
I circle him, similar to how Larkin circled me, and end up so my back is to the trail and the only easy path he has to go is right off the cliff.
“I don’t know if this is about my investigation, or if you’re just trying to protect your roommate.
But I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, Miss Tova.
” The polite edge to his words like he used on his first visit to our apartment is back, rather than the menace from earlier tonight.
“Did we? Because you came to our apartment tonight to threaten Es. I was sort of there.” I take a step forward, thrilled when he takes a reflexive step back. Then suddenly his muscles bunch and he runs at me, shoving into my shoulder and knocking me to the side on his way to the trail.
Shit.
Whirling around, I know I’ll be too slow, but at that moment, Larkin makes himself known. He lunges smoothly forward, seemingly unsurprised by Flanagan’s escape attempt as he grabs his flailing arms and drags him back to the clearing above the cliffs.
“W-who are you?” Flanagan gasps, writhing in his grip. “Let go of me! She’s fucking crazy! She’s—”
“She’s a very silly girl with not very well thought out plans,” Larkin chuckles.
He kicks Flanagan’s legs out from under him, forcing him to his knees in front of me.
“I did some research on you,” he remarks casually, still holding his arms behind his back and not letting Flanagan get up.
“Your ex-wife isn’t very fond of you, is she?
I bet after tonight, her life will be a lot easier.
Now she can use that money she’s been saving up to get herself and the kids away from you for” —he shrugs—“well, anything else.”
Something in me unclenches. Some tension I didn’t realize I was holding in my shoulders eases at the knowledge of Flanagan not exactly being a blessing to the world.
I don’t think it would’ve mattered to me in the long run.
But it makes it a lot easier to drag his head back until he’s looking up at me, his chest heaving.
“All you had to do was leave this the fuck alone,” I tell him sweetly.
I can feel the coldness sinking into me.
The familiar malice that always hits before I’m going to do something awful.
The worst part is that the feeling is a welcome one.
I enjoy feeling this way, and I’m starting to crave it. “But you just had to keep pushing.”
“No, I didn’t—I’ll stop,” Flanagan pants. “I won’t tell anyone about this. I’ll—” His words end in a gasp when I simply plunge the box cutter into the side of his throat. His eyes widen, his mouth falls open, and he releases a soft, almost whimper of pain as his eyes bulge in their sockets.
“No, you wouldn’t,” I sigh. “You’d push and push.
You’d go to the cops and Esme would end up in jail for something she didn’t do.
” Casually, I rip the blade from his neck then shove it back in, earning another whine from him.
Blood sprays from his neck, spattering the ground, and distantly I’m glad it’s supposed to rain in the morning.
There won’t be any evidence of this once the storm is done.
Flanagan’s mouth moves, though all that passes his lips are a few bloody bubbles as he chokes on his own life leaving him. He gurgles and his eyes glaze over. Then when Larkin lets go of him, his body sags to the ground on its side.
He thrashes weakly once, then again, while the two of us watch, and my fingers curl more tightly around the weapon in my hand.
“You know,” I muse, still looking at him. “I feel like as far as a weapon of choice goes…?” I finally look up at Larkin who lifts his brows, waiting for the rest.
“Mine really sucks.”