Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
M y head hurts.
My head really, really hurts. Before I even open my eyes I groan, shuddering at the lingering tingles in my body from what was definitely a fucking taser.
“You literally tased me,” I moan, opening my eyes to see the ceiling of the living room. Tilting my head down, I find Reagan sitting on the couch in front of me, but when I try to move, I find I can’t. “And you tied me to a chair.” Letting my head fall back I scoff. “You’re insane, Reagan.”
“Sorry about your head.” Reagan is apparently ignoring my insults, and when she shifts and stands up, I flinch away from her. “No, I-I’m not going to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you.” She presses an ice pack against my temple, making me hiss and draw back in surprise.
“You have a funny way of showing it. I’m assuming it was you in the slaughterhouse with the knife, yeah?” I’ve used up all of my surprise for the night, so my words are dull and flat. Still I twist my wrists against the chair, realizing she’s zip-tied me.
Like a psycho.
Reagan’s huff of frustration is followed by her shoving the ice pack harder against my face, pulling a hiss of pain from my lips. “I wasn’t going to do anything else, I just wanted to scare you a bit. I was mad. All he had to do was waltz back into town and you were all over him. You couldn’t see anything else once he came back. Why?” She crowds closer to me, reaching out to grip my hair and yank my face to her, forcing me to meet her eyes.
“ Why ?” she demands. “He almost killed you. He’s insane, Winnie! You shouldn’t have given him the time of day, and instead of doing the smart thing, you fucked him!”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I have most certainly fucked him a few times.” I can’t help wanting to have the last word, even right now. “And I hate to tell you this, but you’re calling him insane?! As if you’re one to talk, right now?”
She jerks back as if I’ve burned her, eyes wide. “I’m not insane. I’m not ,” she tells me, dropping the ice pack into my lap. I frown at it, wondering what she expects me to do when my arms and legs are zip-tied to the uncomfortable kitchen chair.
“So what, then?” I try to keep the fear out of my voice, and I watch as Reagan stands beside the couch, picking at its worn fabric. “Are we going to have a heart-to-heart with me tied to a chair? Are you going to yell at me for apparently not giving you the BFF treatment?—”
“Stop it.” Her voice is colder than I expect it to be, and she doesn’t look at me. “You’re really frustrating me. I get that you can’t see how I’m doing this for you. But can’t you at least pretend?”
That makes me snort. “Yeah, Reagan. How about you let me get up, and I’ll pretend all you want.”
Slowly she shakes her head back and forth once, then again. “Like I said, this is the only way I can think of to get him here. I sent him the address, and a picture of you passed out. I told him not to call the cops. Not that he would.” Her smile is unfriendly and cruel. “What police officer would respond to a call from him ?”
Definitely not the unfriendly detective. But my heart races when I finally connect the dots, and I flex my hands in their bindings. “You want to kill Cass.” It isn’t a question. I don’t need to ask, especially when I see her gaze brighten.
“For you,” she’s quick to add. “I…I understand that you can’t see why right now. But it’s okay, I’m not mad.” She lifts her hands placatingly, surveying my face. “You don’t really love him, you know. How could you? If you can love anyone, you might as well love me.”
Suddenly Cass’s quip about her being in love with me doesn’t seem so far-fetched, and I wonder how in the world things got this far without me noticing. I always thought Reagan and I were just friends. Just…friends of circumstance, since I’d been her babysitter for a few years.
“What if I do love him, though? If I love him, and you kill him, then I’ll certainly never love you.” Rationally, I figure Cass can take care of himself, even if he is coming. But the idea of her actually killing him, of managing to stun him and knock him out before he knows what’s going on, has my insides doing unpleasant twists and turns.
It was the wrong thing to say, judging by her rapidly darkening expression. “Don’t say stupid shit like that,” Reagan whispers, striding closer to me. “Don’t be ungrateful, Winnie.” She reaches out and I flinch away from her, but this time she only grips my face with one hand, the other fumbling at her belt. “I don’t want to be mean to you,” she promises, ignoring my sharp intake of breath when my eyes catch on the dull shine of the knife in her hand.
Fuck.
Fuck, I have no idea what to do. My mouth opens and closes, and I cringe back when she presses the flat of the blade to my cheek. “Just don’t say things like that, okay?” She sounds like she’s begging me for a different answer, like she can threaten me into loving her.
“Reagan, come on.” Even though I’m fully aware that pleading with her won’t do any good, I do it anyway. “This is crazy. Just put the knife down and let me go.” Belatedly, I wonder where Sophie is, and the thought makes my stomach clench painfully. God, I hope Reagan hasn’t hurt her. A pang of guilt goes through me at the idea of her laying dead or dying somewhere in the house.
“I can’t. I can’t , don’t you see? Because I need him to come here so I can get rid of him for you.” Her eyes are bright and feverish, and she leans back just enough so she can meet my eyes, with the tip of the knife against my lower lip. “You understand, right?”
I really don’t. Swallowing, I part my lips just enough to feel the blade press into my flesh, but I’m determined to have the last word, and I refuse to let this go.
“I do.”
The words don’t come from me, and both of us freeze, not breathing, as we stare at each other. It’s only when Reagan straightens and turns, stepping to the side, that I’m able to look past her into the hallway.
Cass leans against the doorframe, his blue eyes bleak and hard as ice. He isn’t looking at me, but rather his gaze is fixed on Reagan standing beside me.
“She has a taser,” I groan, blinking past the ache in my temple. “And a knife?—”
“Don’t talk to him.” Reagan rounds on me, her eyes suddenly wide and furious. “Don’t fucking talk to him, Winnie! God, I don’t get why you can’t see how fucked up it is that you want anything to do with him!”
“Yeah, I’m the one who can’t see straight. Absolutely.” My words only seem to piss her off more, though, and Reagan reaches out to jerk me back by my hair, my neck aching sharply from the motion and pulling a yelp from my mouth.
“Maybe this really isn’t the time to have the last word, hmm princess?” Cass’s voice holds a warning, and he steps into the room with his hands shoved in his pockets. “I wondered if it was you,” he goes on, his attention all on Reagan. “A few times I thought about saying something to her, but then I brushed it off. I figured she knew you well enough that if she could trust you, then you weren’t a threat.”
“You don’t know anything about me.” Reagan lets go of me, spinning to face him with the knife in her hand. Her fingers are trembling, knuckles white as she takes a step toward him.
Cassian rolls his shoulders in a shrug as I continue to fight the zip ties, my heart racing. He doesn’t seem nervous or afraid of her in the least, but she has a knife. If she manages to hurt him, to kill him?—
I force that thought to freeze in its tracks, instead trying to find some way to get free.
“It was you who called the cops on me that night in her house, wasn’t it?” Cassian takes a step back, and Reagan follows him toward the hallway into the kitchen. “You’ve been spying on her quite a bit lately, and you saw me go in. Let’s see…” He gazes up at the ceiling, thinking, and obviously dismissing any threat Reagan might represent. “You killed Lacey that night, of course. That’s how you showed up at Lou’s door so fast.”
Reagan glances at me and I just give her a blank look in return. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” she snaps, running her free hand through her long hair. “I’m helping her, you know. You’ll hurt her again. You ruined her life before, and that’s all you know how to do.”
Cass’s brows lift, though he doesn’t reply. It’s amazing to me that he just seems so…nonchalant. Like this is just a typical weekend for him.
Maybe it is.
“If you say so. Anyway…” He digs into his pocket, revealing his phone. “I’m going to call the cops now. Your kind of crazy is way above my pay grade. You don’t mind waiting, right Winnie?” He finally looks at me, and for a brief moment I swear his eyes flash past me, toward the stairs opposite from the hallway he’s in.
Unfortunately, whatever he’s trying to tell me goes right over my head.
“Don’t walk away from me!” But Reagan is too late, and Cass slips out of sight, his steps taking him toward the kitchen. Reagan doesn’t even look at me. Instead, she yanks the taser out of her pocket and follows him, more threats loud on her lips.
“Cass—!” A hand covers my mouth just as I start to yell, and I jerk back with a surprised yelp to look up at the unfamiliar face above me.
“Don’t scream.” The dark-haired man waits for a few seconds, then drops his hand from my mouth. “My name’s Virgil. I’m a friend of Cassian’s. Though I’ll admit, if I’m going to have to climb up drain pipes on my nights off on a regular basis, I might be rethinking that friendship.”
“You…climbed the drain pipe?” I ask belatedly, watching as he checks the zip ties on my wrists and ankles. “You should go help him. She has a taser, a knife and?—”
“And he would not thank me for it. Your boyfriend is a problem, you know. If anyone needs help, it’s her.” From his pocket, Virgil pulls out a small utility knife that he flips open to saw through the plastic.
While he does, I look around, barely managing to sit still. “There’s a little girl that lives here,” I murmur, hoping she managed to get away. “I haven’t seen her since Reagan tased me, and I’m afraid?—”
“Sophie is just fine.” Virgil sounds three different kinds of exasperated as he says it, and frees my ankles from the chair just as a crash sounds from the kitchen. I jerk in my seat, terrified for Cass, but Virgil just glances at the hallway. “She’s up in her room with the door locked. Now, please don’t get up yet.” He slices through the last of the zip ties, and shoves me back down when I spring to my feet again, rolling his eyes at me in irritation.
“No, it’s fine…don’t listen to a word I say.” His voice is full of sarcasm as he leans over me, his dark eyes unamused. “My girlfriend made me go to first aid classes with her,” he adds, reaching out to push my hair back from my face and surveying my sore temple. “You probably need to get checked out in the hospital for this. It’s already bruising, and if you die in your sleep from an invisible brain bleed, he’s going to go on some fucked up spree that will end up with him in another psych ward.”
When he steps back I get to my feet, blinking a few times from dizziness and pain. “You seem very cavalier about this,” I point out, reaching out to grab the chair as a crutch to steady myself. Virgil just shrugs, watching me.
Finally I’m able to walk, and I take off quickly toward the kitchen at the sound of Reagan’s scream, rubbing my sore and rubbed-raw wrists. “Cass?!” I call, terrified of what I’ll find when I round the corner.
He could be dying.
He could be dead.
My heart takes offense to that and I slam to a stop in the doorway, my fingers curled around the frame as I try to brace myself for the worst possible outcome. I open my mouth to say his name again, ready to beg Reagan not to hurt him. But when I finally realize what I’m seeing, the words die in my throat.
“Stop!” I finally manage to gasp, lurching into the room. The table is on its side, the chairs scattered, and in the middle of the room Reagan is on her back. She’s yowling and scratching at Cassian like some crazed feline while he holds her down with his hands wrapped around her throat.
“Cassian!” Dropping to my knees beside him, I reach out, trying to get him to let go as I hear Reagan start to choke and gasp from the lack of oxygen. Distantly, I hear the sound of sirens, and I briefly wonder who actually called the cops.
“She wants to kill me.” Cassian’s voice is flat and empty. Colder than I’ve ever heard it. “You know she would if she had the chance. Why shouldn’t I do the same to her?”
“Cass, look at me .” There’s no way to break his grip, not when it’s like iron around her neck. But slowly he gazes up at me, and I fight not to recoil from the frigid detached look in his eyes. “If you do this, you’ll go to prison. Halloween will suck again, and I am not going to be your prison pen pal for the next fifty years. Plus, I’m pretty sure conjugal visits aren’t everything they’re cracked up to be.”
A small smirk flickers over his mouth, and his hands relax just enough for Reagan to take a breath. “I’d claim self defense,” he points out, the sirens growing louder as blue and red lights flash through the windows.
“Yeah, no one would believe you.”
“She’s right,” Virgil says and sighs from somewhere beside me. “Especially here. Stop strangling little miss insanity down there if you don’t want to end up in handcuffs tonight.” He doesn’t move or physically try to pull Cass off of her, and I can’t help but wonder why, if they’re friends like he says.
Cass slowly sits up, then surges to his feet and yanks Reagan up as well. “Here.” He shoves her at Virgil, who has her in his grip before she can do more than wail her protests. “You take her, then. If I’m the one holding her, someone might get a little trigger happy.”
I can hear voices now, but Cass doesn’t seem to care about them, or the following pounding on the door. “You okay?” he asks, reaching out to brush my hair back from my face.
“You know,” I say, grinning wryly as the front door slams open. “Not my worst Halloween so far.”