eighteen
Mabel Darling
“What’s that?” I ask, peering over Baron’s shoulder at the derelict little ranch-style on his laptop screen. I set down a glass of sweet tea beside him on the picnic table, one of the four sitting out back around the ancient oak sprawling over the back porch and a swath of the yard.
“This is Jane’s house,” he says.
My heart flips, and I resist the urge to reach for Seeley, who’s twining between my feet. “You found her?”
“No, over on Mill Street,” he says. “Where she lived before I picked her up.”
“She’s from Faulkner?”
“Yeah,” he says, not looking up. “Her mom still lives there, though she doesn’t seem to do much except run up credit card debt shopping online and apply for government aid. I can’t find any evidence that they’ve been in contact at all.”
I can’t breathe. I grab one of the glasses of iced tea and carry it to Duke, who’s lying in the hammock nearby, swaying gently in the hot summer breeze.
I’m grateful to have an excuse to walk away for a minute, glad that Baron has such singular focus when he’s working that he misses everything else around him unless it’s spoken aloud.
While I’m occupied, I examine the new information, turning it over in my mind, studying it like a crime scene fiber under a microscope.
He took Jane from here. Maybe he even had her when they still lived here.
I shouldn’t be upset. I know they were with lots of women while I was away. But something about it bothers me.
I get the feeling I’m missing a piece of evidence that’s right in front of me. That must be the missing friend of Harper’s, the one Duke said was dead. The one he agreed to find, in exchange for being allowed to return to Faulkner. Like he was doing her a favor, one he had no connection to.
I shiver and hand Duke the sweating glass.
“Thanks, Duchess,” he says, smiling up at me. “Can I get a kiss too?”
I lean down and plant a chaste kiss on his lips. “Any time, Duke.”
He hasn’t gotten dressed, and he’s in athletic shorts and nothing else. With the DOLL scar on his chest and his glasses on his nose, he looks so much like Baron it’s disconcerting. Only the sleepy smile and the warmth in his dark eyes gives away his identity.
That, and the fact that Seeley is rubbing against Baron’s legs under the picnic table.
I return to them and slide in on the opposite bench. “If you think about it, you never really fulfilled your end of the bargain.”
“Not this again,” Baron says, sounding annoyed. “I got rid of Jane, like you asked.”
“How do I really know that?” I ask. “You could have taken her into the woods and let her go for all I know.”
“This isn’t one of your childhood fairytales.
” He sighs and closes his laptop, and for the first time, I notice how tired he looks.
He and Duke both have trouble sleeping, though I think it’s for very different reasons.
Behind his glasses, his eyes have dark circles, and I wonder if he’s been up more nights than I know.
I sleep pretty well, aside from the nightmares that wake me screaming in the dark, clutching for a way out.
“How did you prove what you’d do for me if she’s still alive?” I ask. “I’ve been at your mercy for a year, and I got nothing out of it.”
Baron glances around, but there’s a reason I chose this location for the conversation, a reason I waited until his laptop was closed.
“I just got rid of your grandpa for you,” he points out.
“I know,” I say. “That was really special. But it wasn’t a sacrifice for you. You already hated him. You would have done that for yourself. I only got you access to him.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at me.
“What are you willing to do?” I counter.
He watches me a second, his dark eyes inscrutable. “To make you happy?” he asks. “Almost anything, little monster.”
“If someone hurt me,” I say, watching Seeley pounce on something in the grass. “Would you avenge me?”
“I think I’ve proven to you what I’d do already.”
“Who hurt you?” Duke asks, sitting up in the hammock to look at us.
“Mr. Harris.”
“The science teacher?”
“Yes.”
When Baron doesn’t say anything, I peek up at him.
“How do you want us to avenge you?” he asks carefully, pushing up his glasses.
“You know how.”
“You want me to kill him.”
“What did he do to you?” Duke asks.
“You know what.”
I look away from them both, up at the canopy of glossy oak leaves shading us, not able to bear their eyes on me when I know what they’re thinking. They know what sort of thing he did to me.
“I think every man I set up deserved it,” I say. “I don’t regret a single one of them. But I know he deserves it, and he’s still walking around free.”
Baron makes a noncommittal noise, looking thoughtful. “And how would we go about that?”
“It was easy enough with my grandfather.”
“That was an accident,” Duke says.
I open my mouth to correct him, but Baron frowns at me, and I close it again. Duke needs to believe that the same way he needs to believe that if he can make my body respond, then I want it.
“I told you, we can’t just leave dead bodies all over town,” Baron says.
“People will notice it happened when we came back, and the FBI will have a solid case when they realize that people also died in Tennessee when you were there, and a guy disappeared in Maine, even if they never found a body. His wife reported him missing.”
“And Jane,” Duke says.
“She’s a variable too,” Baron says, nodding. “Though there’s no police reports that match the description of what we did to her, and no Jane Doe has been found in the area.”
“So, Jane disappeared from here, but she wasn’t reported missing, so that doesn’t count,” I say slowly. “And one old man died of a fall. I don’t think it’s enough for the town to get suspicious yet. I think we can afford one murder.”
“One murder can put you away for life,” Baron points out.
“Maybe we don’t have to do the killing,” I say. “Maybe the Black Widow Killer will do it for us.”
“He’s still following you?” Duke asks.
I shrug. “Only one way to find out.”
Baron watches, eyes intense behind the lenses of his glasses. At last, he nods. “We can set up a trap. It should be easy enough, using your old methods. If they’re still watching you, they’ll see what you’re doing and follow your teacher like they did your other victims.”
“They weren’t victims,” I say. “They were predators.”
Neither of them argue. They don’t say, “We’re predators too.” They don’t think of themselves that way. They don’t consider that I’ve taken them off the streets as much as the other men. The only difference is, they’re alive. But as long as they keep their promise to me, they won’t harm anyone else.
Baron opens his laptop, and we set up my new profile.
I’ve always simply gone into a male space and dangled myself like bait, and the creeps swarmed.
This time, we’re hunting with purpose. As if he can sense the shift, Seeley Boots comes trotting back across the lawn and hops up into my lap.
I pet him while I watch Baron cast a line.
To my surprise, he slides the laptop in front of me.
“You want me to lure him in?” I ask.
“You’re the expert,” he says, and I can tell by the way he’s looking at me that he’s impressed by my skill. He’s probably the only man alive who would like to know his girlfriend possesses that ability, but that only makes me glow brighter than his praise did.
I take the laptop and start working while Baron watches with a mixture of curiosity and pride.
Duke swings one foot back and forth lazily until Seeley takes notice and stalks over.
He crouches low, watching the enticing motion.
At last, he launches himself, pouncing on the moving object.
Duke yelps when the cat sinks his teeth and claws in, scrabbling for purchase as Duke howls and tries to shake him loose.
I can’t help but laugh.
Duke dumps out of the hammock, and Seeley shoots off across the yard while his victim hops around on one foots, cursing and casting me grievous glances.
“That cat’s a menace,” he says, stomping past us and through the back door. “It ought to be put down.”
“One could say the same about you,” I say lightly, still grinning as I type in all the things I know Mr. Harris will love to hear.
It was my senior year, after Dixies posted the video on her blog, after they’d started to torment me, that he got involved.
I was in the library one day at lunch, avoiding them and checking over the presentation I had to give in my next class a final time, when Duke’s grinning face appeared around the end of one of the shelves.
“Found you,” he said, leering at me.
I stood to bolt, but when I turned, Baron was behind me. “You can run, but you can’t hide,” he taunted.
Still, I tried. I ducked between the shelves, but Duke darted around the end and dragged me back.
I thought about screaming. Even the deaf, grandmotherly librarian who had been there since the dawn of time could hear one of my screams. But when I thought of her heaving herself out of her chair and toddling through the stacks to where we were hidden at the back tables, when I thought of the look on her face if she saw us, I swallowed it down.
I would endure in silence, just as I always had. I wouldn’t scream. I wouldn’t tell.
Duke shoved me into Baron’s arms, and he bent me over the table, dragged up my khaki skirt, and ripped off my underwear.
He shoved into me like it was his right, with no preparation, no words.
Baron wasn’t rough. He knew he was big enough to cause pain without it, especially when he went in dry.
He fucked silently, methodically, at an unhurried pace. Each thrust was a new punishment.