Atlas
That’s the dry text I left unsent for hours. It’s not enough of an apology, and I don’t know what words could be, but a simple sorry won’t cut it. I’m just trying to downplay this morning.
Summer didn’t text or call either. She cried in my arms last night at the realization that she’s no longer alone, only to wake up this morning to an empty bed. Her silence is not indifference. It’s hurt. Or anger. Both?
In the early afternoon, I finally do what I should’ve done hours ago—press send. Hell, what I should’ve done is not sneak out on her this morning.
Minutes pass with no reply. Would she answer at all when my text doesn’t feel like a real apology?
When the ping finally comes, it’s clear she woke up and chose war.
Summer
It’s okay. I’m sure you had no idea how being left like that feels. I bet you say goodbye even to your hookups.
She knows how to hurt me as well as I hurt her.
Gripping my phone hard enough to break it, I type out another attempt at damage control.
Don’t go there! I said I’m sorry.
Summer
Shove that sorry up your ass, along with the EpiPens. Both of them.
Hell, no!
Mad or not, she can’t talk to me like that.
I hammer out a reply and send it before I’ve even read it.
7 p.m.! I’ll shove them up yours if you’re not there. Both of them.
Fuck! I shouldn’t have done this.
But why did she have to twist the knife where it hurts the most?
Summer
After everything you have done to me, this is the first time I wish I’d never met you.
You don’t mean that and you know it.
She leaves me on read.
I can’t be sliding into the total jerk zone again when I just got out of it. I have to fix this.
Grabbing my blazer, I bolt out the door.
Exactly ten minutes away from Summer’s place, my phone rings, and there’s a wave of disappointment when it’s not her name that pops up on the screen.
“There’s a problem at Warehouse 4. I’m watching the surveillance footage,” Link says when I pick up.
That fucker Jacob! I knew he was going to hit today.
“I’m going there now. You and Connor, with me. Dean and Carter can handle the event until we get there.”
I make a swift turn, already pushing thoughts of Summer aside, wondering what my cousin figured out this time to mess with me.
I’m at the warehouse in under four minutes, immediately spotting smoke coming out of the place. Why the fuck hasn’t the gas suppression system turned on?
Rushing inside the lobby, it’s swallowed by a choking fog, making my eyes sting. I pull my sleeve over my mouth and push further in, searching for the two guards who were on shift. Five steps in, I stumble over Mitchell, the older guard. He coughs. Alive.
I haul him up, and Connor is there in a second, helping me out. Once Mitchell is on his feet, Connor takes the guard’s full weight, jerking his head to the left.
“There’s someone there. Get ’im!”
I nod, coughing.
Reaching the body on the ground, I expect Kyle, the younger guard, but it isn’t him.
The guy’s unconscious and bleeding from the head, but there’s a wrench still clenched in his hand.
Hauling him up, I sling his arm over my shoulder and drag him outside to leave him on the sidewalk.
Link is already there, calling 911 while checking on Mitchell’s condition.
Connor and I head to check the security’s small backroom, which we’d used a few times, but no sign of Kyle there. Grabbing a water bottle from the table, I stop Connor on his way out and tear a strip from my suit. I wet it, pass it to him to tie over his nose and mouth, then do the same for myself.
We head for the storage rooms, and I can instantly pinpoint where the flames are coming from.
The room where we used to keep most of our paintings—the ones up for sale.
A metal rod blocks the door from being opened.
I shout Kyle’s name in case he’s in one of the other smaller storage rooms, but there’s no response.
Heat radiates from the room before me as a warning.
Yet, in a desperate attempt to get that rod out of the way and open the door, I grab it with my bare hands.
It burns instantly. I pull away, hissing, while another deep cough reminds me the smoke is getting to us, and I don’t know how much more time we have. Connor’s coughing harder than I am.
“Get outside! I’ll take care of this!” I shout, but he shakes his head, and I already know he won’t comply.
“No way I’m leaving you here!”
“Give me your jacket,” I demand, but instead, Connor takes it off and uses it to pull the rod from the door.
When he opens it, the intense heat licks my skin. But that’s not nearly as unbearable as the stench assaulting all my senses. It’s familiar and unmistakable. The nidor of burning flesh, hair, and blood settles into your brain and never leaves.
And that’s exactly what the open door reveals—Kyle’s lifeless body, burned almost beyond recognition, slumped against the wall a few steps from the door.
He was a twenty-five-year-old troublemaker whom I offered a job a year ago, when no one else would take him. Kyle turned his life upside down for good so fast that two weeks ago, he told us he and his girlfriend were expecting.
What the fuck have I done? He wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight. I doubled the security for nothing and got him killed.
My guilt suffocates me worse than the smoke does, clouding my mind enough for me to barely realize Connor is dragging me outside.
Mitchell is unconscious, and the ambulance and the firefighters are still not here, but I can place the picture of what happened in my head clearly enough to know the guy we dragged outside is not going to wait for help to come.
“Take him to Hollow Bend!” I turn to Connor.
We bought a small house a while back—middle of nowhere, the kind of place where the road doesn’t even show up on maps. Looks like it’s finally going to earn its keep tonight.
Connor takes the piece of shit from the ground and starts dragging him to his trunk.
He can’t throw him in there when there are a few people around.
I shake my head at him when he opens the trunk, and thankfully, he gets my warning and proceeds to drag the nameless man to the backseat right when the firefighters and the ambulance arrive.
We’ll have to stay and cooperate with the authorities until Mitchell is okay.
While the firefighters move in, Link logs into the surveillance system, transfers the footage to his own server, then wipes the rest. The police will have only Mitchell’s statement about an intruder, and he doesn’t remember what happened after that.
With no video, they won’t have much to go on.
A dead body triggers an investigation. An insurance claim draws a lot more attention. We won’t file. We need every trace covered, because we’re handling this piece of shit ourselves. The cops could give him a slap on the wrist or let him walk, and we can’t have that.
It’s three hours later, after we’ve given testimony, before we can join Connor. I have no doubt Dean and Carter are doing fine without us at the gallery, so we only text them where we’re headed.
First trimester. That’s what Kyle told us his girlfriend was in when he shared the news.
He was planning on starting as a bartender since he needed extra income for when the baby came.
I’ll make sure his girlfriend has enough money not to struggle as a single parent.
I can’t bring back dead people, but financially, I can make sure the child is taken care of.
Those thoughts ride with me to Hollow Bend, while Link pulls up the surveillance footage.
It confirms what we already knew, and judging by Link’s taut jaw, I’m not the only one out for blood.
But how did that man know to open the main valve, effectively sabotaging the gas fire-suppression system? Did Jacob provide that information?
As soon as we’re inside the house and at the threshold of the designated torture room, I can hear the guy’s screams. I guess we didn’t do a good enough job of soundproofing.
Opening the door, I’m met by the sight of Connor with wire flush cutters and blood dripping from the tied-to-the-chair man’s hand. When the piece of shit sees Link and me, he starts laughing.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” I ask Connor, and he pulls to the side to give me a full view of the man there.
“Check out his pupils. He’s high.”
This guy’s pupils are consuming his irises.
“Can it be from the hit on the head? He was bleeding,” Link asks.
“Negative! If it were a concussion, they would’ve been uneven in size or at least lagging in response to light. It’s drugs.”
That prick’s laughter cuts off when I punch him in the face.
“That’s better,” I note. “What are you on?” My question is for the man with six fingers. That’s how many Connor left him with until we got to him. I would’ve expected him to have gone through all ten fingers by now. He’s shown restraint.
“Got some blow in ma back pocket if ya want.” There’s a notable lisp in his speech. I think he’s missing teeth. Yep. A lot.
“He was hired by a tall blond guy to ruin as many paintings as he could,” Connor cuts in.
“Blond? That’s not Jacob,” Link comments.
“It’s the asshole he hangs with,” I note. “Did he tell you to set the place on fire?” A kick to the prick in front of me snaps his attention down from the ceiling.
“Nooo. He said no one should be there when . . . the security switches for five minutes. But there were guards . . . and I . . . needed the money.”
Connor hits the still nameless guy in the guts, pulling out a sharp, breathless scream. He doesn’t need a name to judge him, and neither do I.
“How much do you remember from what you did tonight?” I ask, waiting for a response that doesn’t come.
Snatching the cutters from Connor, I bury them deep into the junkie’s hand. A scream, spit, and blood shoot out of his mouth.
But he glares?
This is not his first time being tortured.
“When I ask a question, you answer! You got that?” I snarl, and I’m on the verge of taking those cutters out of his hand, only to keep on cutting fingers for the sheer pleasure of punishing him.
“He squealed like a pig! What do ya care? Your rich ass can hire a new guard.”
My foot slams into his chest full-force, the kick pitching him backward, chair and all, as he hits the concrete hard. It splinters on impact, the arms snapping clean off, his wrists still bound to jagged pieces of wood. It takes me two steps to reach him and drop to a knee.
I seize his head by the hair, pin it, and drive my fist down.
The first hit is . . . addictive. For one sharp second, hurting him for what he did makes my own guilt feel quieter.
Then I hit him again. Something in his face gives with a sickening crack, and when his mocking words replay in my mind, I lose whatever control I had left.
I keep swinging, one punch after another, until there’s nothing left of him to recognize, and my knuckles are slick, aching. But I’m still not stopping.
He’s dead. But I can’t make myself quit.
Link and Connor finally do it for me, dragging me off him with both hands and all their strength.
“He’s dead!” Link notes what my rage refuses to register. “He’s dead.”
“It was too quick,” Connor says, while I’m staring at my own fists covered in blood.
He’s right. That man deserved to suffer more than what he got.
Link pulls me to the side, offering me a towel to clean up my hands, and for the next two hours, I watch him and Connor take care of the body.
Link burns all the belongings while digging up information about the still nameless man whose expiration date I set.
Across the room, Connor dismembers the body to dissolve it in lye, all the while singing and dancing to the upbeat tune of “Can’t Stop the Feeling!
” by Justin Timberlake, using the bloody electric saw as a microphone.
Eventually, Dean and Carter join us. Dean’s talking to me, but I can’t make out what he’s saying; my brain’s a million miles away from this place.
I hear Carter, however, saying how I did the right thing.
Which part was right?
The wrong schedule?
The doubled security meant to protect nothing?
Calling on Kyle when he wasn’t supposed to be there?
Or killing too quickly the man who left him to burn?
All I see is a series of wrong decisions that are my doing.
“You wanna go home? We’ll take care of everything here,” Dean asks, and a single word stands out from the rest—home.
It’s past one in the morning when I check my phone for the first time all night and find two texts waiting.
Summer
Really?
Then another one from 8:20 p.m.
Summer
You fooled me into thinking you care for me. This is your payback now, isn’t it? Congratulations! You win.
Grabbing Dean’s blazer that’s hanging from a chair to cover the bloodstains on my white shirt, I leave the house in a hurry.
I have to get to Summer. She’s my home.