Chapter 4
FOUR
KAI
I could kill him.
“Real brilliant move there, dickhead,” I roar after Kingston as he slams his way out of the place and into the cold.
He ignores me, just keeps stalking down the long, sloping driveway. Two steps in, he glances left and right, like Moroslav’s going to jump him from behind a hedgerow.
“Long gone, idiot,” I half-mutter, half-shout.
“Kai, come on,” Lanz mutters, jerking his head down toward the car. “We can’t be—”
“Cram it,” I tell him. “That’s your big white knight plan?
” I call after Kingston. “Stand there like a fucking sack of potatoes and then run away like a big boy? Oh, no, sorry. Forgot the crucial step where you fucking…fucking assault someone, assault Alexei Kostukovich Moroslav, of all people, and in a high-security insane asylum, no less—”
Lanz winces. “It’s not an—”
“Fuck you it’s not!” I spin around and all but spit the words at him. “It is, and we all know it.”
I hate every piece of this place. The fake, Monticello-ass aesthetic with all the white columns and brick walls.
The grounds with their inspirational-words rock garden and hedge-maze meditation labyrinth.
The bars on the fucking windows. How the exterior’s like a goddamn dream house McMansion and the interior looks like it never sees sunlight and the girls inside—
My throat tightens.
Dumbass.
I’m not some silver-spoon baby like Kingston or Lanz.
I’ve seen people all kinds of bad ways—Cops bad; TLC documentary bad; scary, embarrassing bad.
Dopesick, DTs, meth comedowns, manic episodes, you name it: I’ve witnessed a whole fuckin’ bingo board of problems, and that was just my immediate bio family.
So I thought I was ready. Figured I was hard enough to handle whatever we found.
But then I saw her.
And she—
My stomach heaves. I barely make it to one of the hedges before I retch out its contents.
When I’m done, I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and spit onto the driveway.
Awful. She looks awful. Like death. Like nothing. Too skinny. Too pale.
Like she’s done.
Fuck it. I was going to lord this over Kingston’s head forever, hold the real culprit of the fire ransom so that maybe, just maybe, he’d cop to being Gwenna’s alibi and stop acting all holier-than-thou and actually admit when he fucked up for once, but no.
I dig into my jacket pocket and pull out the small plastic baggie I've been carrying around for weeks.
“You what this is, asshole?”
That gets his attention. He turns.
Inside the bag: a half-burnt cigarette.
“Of course you don’t,” I say. “It’s a Belomorkanal. Russian brand. No filter on it, just a cardboard tube, see?” I flick the bag with my hand for emphasis. “And you know the only person ever to grace the Caliburn campus who’s gonna be smoking these? No points for guessing.”
Lanz takes a step closer, squinting at the bag. "How do you even know what kind of—"
“Tried to bum one off of Moroslav once,” I snap.
“Outside the friendly, back in the fall.” I glare at Kingston.
"He torched that archive to get back at us. At you. Probably figured framing her was just a bonus. But somehow he found out she got locked up, and now he feels all bad about it, and comes here and his little puppy dog routine with fucking tea cakes or whatever to clear his consc—”
"You don't know that," Kingston interrupts, but his voice has lost its edge. “You don’t know any of that.”
He can’t be serious. “It was his cheap-ass Soviet cigarette in the ashes of a fire that happened right after he not only lost to you, but acted like a psychotic asshole about it, and called Gwenna a whore?” I blink. “What exactly am I missing here?"
Silence.
“Yeah, though so.” My voice rises again. "You fucked this up. You really—”
Kingston spins around.
“Get in the car,” he snarls. “Now.”
I have to laugh. “Are you serious? This is it?” I spread my arms, looking around as Lanz and Callahan trudge the remaining few steps down to street-level. “This is what we’re doing? Leaving?”
Leaving her here?
“We’re not going to be able to do anything if they call the cops,” Lanz says. Twerp.
“Exactly.” Kingston’s huff is visible in the cold air. “So just—”
I ignore whatever else he’s going to say and spring forward, arm out, ready to slam his head against that—
“Hey, hey, hey!” Callahan jams himself between the two of us, skidding a little on the steep ice of the driveway. “Kai, stop.”
I try to wrestle past him. “Make me.”
Callahan shoulder-checks me to the ground, sending me ass-first into a puddle.
“Cool it,” he says.
By way of response, I spit at his feet.
“Listen.” Lanz’s voice is strained, like he’s really trying to play diplomat even though we’re long past that. “Let’s all just get back in the car—”
“You get back in the car,” I retort, getting to my feet. “I’ll fucking walk back to Caliburn before I—”
“Can you all calm the fuck down?”
The driver’s-side window rolls away to reveal Morgan’s smug little face.
“This isn’t a dick-measuring contest,” she goes on. “It’s a rescue mission.”
Through the window, she tosses the keys at Callahan, then swings open the door and pads to the ground.
“Morgan.” Kingston’s voice has an edge of warning to it.
“Zip it.” She pulls a finger over her lips. “Moroslav’s gone, by the way. Getaway car sped out of here before you’d even left.” She digs in the pocket of her poofy white vest, pulls out a spray bottle, and begins spritzing herself, eyes closed.
Callahan is perplexed. “Is that…perfume?”
“No questions.” She pushes him aside with a firm two-fingered shove to the chest. “I’ll be back in ten.”
“Morgan,” Kingston repeats. “Where are you going?”
Morgan doesn’t answer, or even turn back. And I have to say, I’m wondering the same thing.
Because whatever she’s about to do, it’s guaranteed to be stupid.
Then again, at least she’s headed in the right direction.
Which is more than any of these idiots can say.
“Morgan—”
Now she spins around.
“Let me handle this,” she says. “Okay?”
I’m sure as hell not going to object.
“Keep the car running,” she goes on. “Like I said. Back in ten.”