Chapter 21 Dax
DAX
The old saying the truth can set you free is utter bullshit.
Look at Reed. His eyes are glazed over and his face is ruddy. He’s learned the truth of who his father is, and he’s bound to a chair, questioning whether I’m going to kill him like his father seems to not give two shits about.
My dad was no saint. No good at all, really.
But as far as I know, he never wished me dead.
Except maybe right after I got sent to jail for the first time.
Even then, I’m sure he just wished I’d thought harder about my actions and how they would look for him and Mom.
Not that he ever would’ve said anything. He never even visited.
I throw the knife on the bed. I’ve been identified and outmaneuvered. I stop pacing enough to gather some semblance of words. Reed’s ghastly expression is what shocks me out of speechlessness.
“I know you have no reason to trust me,” I say as if this is any sort of consolation, “but I won’t do it.”
“Do what?” he asks in a numb monotone. He wiggles his jaw, clearly trying to relieve the muscles after all I’ve put him through.
I clear my throat and brush a hand over my beard. Shivers rush down my spine as I say, “Kill you.”
He huffs out a breath in response. I can’t say I blame him. I feel like an utter scumbag.
I’ve never outright confronted a hit before, but I’ve also never taken a hostage and manhandled him either, so I’m popping lots of unexpected cherries tonight. Though none of this tastes like sweet victory. The bitter sting of Wendell’s inhumane behavior grows rancid on my tongue.
Do it.
I’ve met a lot of hardened, messed-up people during my four-and-a-half decades of life.
Men who’ve killed, many more than once. But in most cases—not all, mind you—they did so out of desperation, self-defense, or because of some underlying psychosis.
It wasn’t a king promoting the execution of a beggar.
Especially when that beggar happens to be his own flesh and blood.
A new type of anger roils in my gut. My inner villain starts to sound more like a vigilante instead. A Batman instead of a Dr. Nebula.
“Have you ever done it before, Dax? Killed someone?” Reed’s voice reels me back to the room.
All I have left in my arsenal of weapons is honesty, so I say, “Not directly.”
“How do you kill someone indirectly?” he asks.
My record is public information. Reed could look it up now that he knows my real name. He might as well hear it from me. I’ve got nothing much left to lose. “Before my stay in Rawlins, I was roped into an organized burglary ring,” I tell him.
“Roped in? Did you mean to make such an awful pun?” he asks with a sneer not all that dissimilar from his father’s. He flexes his wrists against the knots. “‘Roped in.’ ‘What you need to do.’ You keep saying these things like they weren’t choices you made.”
My jaw locks. I’m aware that he isn’t exactly trying to anger me, but he’s accomplishing it anyway. “I don’t think you understand how few opportunities to make a living there are for those of us walking around with records. I do what I have to if I want to survive.”
And dammit, despite it all, I do. I want to survive. I want this messed-up heart of mine to keep on beating because it’s never known a moment’s rest in its goddamn adult life.
Wendell Blitz gave me a free pass to walk out of here before sunrise. Doesn’t mean he will stick to his word. Doesn’t mean there won’t be a firing squad standing guard at the perimeter of the property when I exit. Salvation is not assured, no matter what I do now.
I strip off my ski mask and run a hand down my damp face. Giving up the ghost of a chance that this could still go my way.
“Is giving your hookups a fake name something you had to do to survive?” Reed asks.
His attitude has grown dark, like a black cloud of smoke trying to swallow him up.
Doesn’t matter that I won’t swipe the knife across his long, pretty throat.
I get the sense he thinks his life is over, regardless.
Tonight sent him six feet underground. I hate to see the light plucked out of someone so young and promising.
“If you’d known about Rawlins, about this,” I say, shaking the ski mask toward him. “Would you have invited me to Buck Shot? Be honest.”
It’s clear he wants to say yes because he thinks that makes him a better person, but he shakes his head.
I appreciate his honesty. Nothing I hate more than bullshitters.
If I have to give Wendell any props, at least he didn’t fake fear or placation.
He was cold and calculating and right to the point.
Even if that point was complete assholery.
“Imagine an employer running a background check. Do you think they’re eager to hire an ex-con who’s been twice charged for aggravated burglary?
” I ask. I want Reed to understand, which feels pointless.
Getting him on my side seems impossible.
We’re diametrically opposed, despite being in the same terrible situation.
“Twice?” Reed asks, newly checked into the conversation.
“I was a minor the first time, but they charged me as an adult because I was so close to high school graduation. I was out here in Jackson. This is where I grew up,” I tell him.
“Really?” Reed asks.
“Do I not look like enough of a rich prick to be from here?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood, but that’s impossible.
“My parents moved us out here when I was a kid. By most standards, we were well-off, but by Jackson standards, compared to this.” I gesture at the artful room we’re in.
“Living in a rented apartment was like living on the street. The kids I went to school with made sure I knew that, so I did everything I could to fit in. I tried not to be too smart, too talkative, too strong. I needed to be just enough to be interesting, but not too much to draw unwanted attention. Finally, during my senior year, I fell in with a crowd that let me tag along. I thought they were my friends, until the senior prank.”
“What sort of senior prank gets a kid sent to jail and tried as an adult?” Reed asks.
“There was this mom-and-pop gas station we loved to loiter at. We’d drink beers, kick rocks, and make trouble for the folks coming and going.
Funny to me now that they all had these big houses with media rooms and inground pools and indoor saunas, and all they wanted to do was sit on curbs and talk shit about our teachers,” I say. “Typical teen stuff, I guess.”
I scratch my forehead like the memories themselves itch.
I leave out the part where the rich kids would always send me in to get the beers.
Sometimes, they even made me pay with what little money I had on me.
I was the biggest, and I had a full beard even at seventeen.
But something about none of them coughing up any cash to chip in still eats at me.
Like I should’ve known earlier that they were setting me up.
“The owners got fed up with us pretty quickly and called the cops on us a bunch, but law enforcement around here isn’t keen to get on the bad side of the kids of their richest donors, so it never amounted to more than a warning,” I say with a sigh.
“One night, we were out there doing our usual thing, and the owner just lost it. He came barging out, waving a rifle around. We ran like hell. The leader of our pack, Will Reznor, didn’t like that.
He got this idea in his head that, as a senior prank, we’d rob the place, and he wanted my help specifically. I think you see where this is going.”
Reed ruefully nods, darkness giving way to sympathy.
“We set a date, and we mapped out a plan, including getting Will’s dad’s gun and loading it with blanks. We got to business and distributed the jobs right down to the lookout and the getaway driver,” I say, recalling how alive I felt and, for the first time, how included.
“I wasn’t just good at planning out our job.
I was a natural. But when you’re seventeen, realizations like that don’t worry you because you’re invincible.
On the day of the hit, we drove over. Everyone was really quiet and focused, but I sensed something was off as soon as we turned onto the street. ”
My muscles tense as I recall the silence in the car.
Not even the radio was on. From the passenger’s seat, I’d glanced in the rearview mirror.
The three guys in the back—all variations on the same type of blond and preppy—kept exchanging sideways glances.
Two of them smirked. Frederick, the guy in the middle, squirmed with discomfort.
My ears burned as if the universe were whispering the truth to me, and I didn’t want to hear it.
I say, “Not even a minute into our hold up, I heard a bunch of sirens. There was a rat among us, and they’d tipped off the police. Most of the guys got away, but a few of us got cuffed and taken in. I was the only one charged.”
“How is that possible?” Reed asks in a voice that sounds like he really cares. Which breaks me a little bit, given how I’ve manhandled him all evening. Given how his own dad doesn’t care about him.
“Money protected the rest of them. My parents could barely afford a lawyer. I was tried and incarcerated on attempted burglary and possession of a stolen weapon,” I say.
“It wasn’t until my lawyer told me the DA was pushing for the second charge that I realized Will had been the one to tip off the police.
The mastermind was the one to throw us under the bus. ”
“Why would he do that? Go through all that trouble just to look like a wimp?” Reed asks.
“The prank was never to rob the gas station,” I say. “I was the prank.”
Reed shakes his head. Maybe before tonight, he wouldn’t have believed me. But after what went down with Wendell, he says, “People can be cruel.”