Chapter 7 #2
Noah tossed the phone onto the couch and walked to Ziggy's window.
The cedar stood tall. The gray strip of Sound was just visible between the rooftops.
It was that little sliver she'd bought this house for.
He stood there and let the room stay quiet because the silence was the only honest thing available right now.
Ziggy came and stood next to him. He felt the need to step away.
It was an old reflex, the thing he did when his father got too close, even from a prison phone.
It was how Noah had been managing distance since he was fourteen.
But he stood still and let her into her space.
Let her hand move up and down his back. The comfort of it sat in him in a way he couldn't have named, somewhere between relief and the ache of something that had been sore so long it had stopped announcing itself.
"My father has always been a charmer." He heard his own voice come out flat and noted it for what it was—a container for the past. It had always been hard for him to completely separate the person he'd created from the person he used to be.
“He’s charismatic. People like him. The last time I went to see him, I walked in expecting the way people treated him to reflect what he'd done.
" Noah stared at the cedar outside, strong and sturdy.
He tried so hard to be solid and not allow the emotions that went with being the son of a serial killer seep into his bones.
It wasn't easy. "Guards. Other inmates. They treated him like someone worth knowing.
Like a man you'd want in your corner." He paused for a moment, letting an old memory of his dad cheering for him float across his mind. “As his son, I could understand. But if all you knew of him was that he was a killer? Well, that I don’t get.”
Ziggy inched closer, wrapping her arm fully around his waist, and he found himself leaning into her, drawing on the one thing he’d never allowed himself to fully have—love from other people. He’d let his father take that from him.
"My father is up to something," Noah said.
"That's not a revelation," Troy said quietly.
Keeping Ziggy close, Noah turned from the window and faced the others, thinking about the architecture of that call.
The order of it. The things his father had said and the ones he hadn't. “My father’s playing a game. He loves them.” Noah rubbed the back of his neck.
"Every woman he killed, he played games with first. Toyed with them.
Did everything for a specific reason. His reasons weren't good or valid or sane, but in his mind, they made sense.
" He made his way across the room and picked up his cell.
“The card. The puck. The flowers. The reporter.
An interview that he claims he didn't agree to.
A phone call. Those aren't the point. They're the setup. "
“For what?” Jag asked. “Because it seems like all he wants is to get on your show.”
“And maybe expose that you're his son,” Troy added.
“Probably. But there are a million ways to do that.” Noah stuffed his phone in his pocket.
“He could do the interview with Hugh. Publicly embarrass me. He could do it with anyone. He could’ve done that years ago.
But he hasn’t. Not because he loves me. He’s a psychopath.
He wants to love me, but he only knows how to mimic those emotions.
He does have an attachment to me, though.
And like I said, Matias likes a good game.
He likes his victims to squirm. To be freaking out before he comes in for the kill. ”
“Are you saying you’re now a victim?” Troy asked.
“Or that maybe my sister could be?” Jag’s voice dropped a few octaves.
“He’s definitely coming for me. And whatever he has planned, he wants to do it publicly.
And he wants me involved. But something in how he sees me has shifted.
” Noah tapped the paper in Ziggy’s hand.
“All the women he killed, he believed they’d done something wrong to someone he cared about.
Or to him.” Noah pinched the bridge of his nose.
He hated going back to the days in the courtroom.
He tried like hell not to remember, but they were ingrained in his brain, and sometimes, late at night, if he didn’t have something to focus on, they played out like a bad movie.
“During the trial, reporters would ask me questions, and I would just walk by them, eyes focused forward, stiff as a board. Those same reporters would make comments that maybe I was just like my dad because I showed no emotion. Others wondered if I was in shock—badly traumatized by what my father had done.”
He dropped his hand and let out a long breath.
“Everything my father did before he raped and murdered those women was a game. And exacting his punishment was how he won. He got off on it. It was like a drug. And I’d sit there and listen to what happened and think about how he punished me.
And it was so different. It had been swift.
Quick. No games. No fanfare. He just told me what he was taking away, for how long, and that I'd better not do whatever again. The only games he played with me were the normal kid games.”
“Those are two very different things,” Jag said.
“Trust me, I get that.” Noah squared his shoulders.
“But you have to understand, for Matias, he believed he was doing a good deed.” Noah held up his hand when Troy opened his mouth.
“My father also had a code. And formed family attachments. He had a wife, and he never played any kind of weird games with my mom. Nor his sisters. Nor any of my cousins. It’s something that fucked with my head for a long time.
Obviously, it still does, but my point is, he’s turned the game on me.
But he’s behind bars, so the endgame is different, and I don’t think it’s just about exposure.
That’s too easy. We need to find out what he believes I did wrong, and that might help us see where this is headed.
“You’re not seriously thinking about going to visit him, are you?” Ziggy asked.
“I have to.” Noah’s chest tightened. It wasn't the idea of a prison visit that made him feel like someone was squeezing the life out of him. It wasn't facing his father. It wasn't even what his father might say when they were in the same room with no recording devices or other people between them.
It was the fact that no matter how long he’d been Noah Chase, there were still pieces of Angel Salazar living inside him. And that person still didn’t know how to separate the man he’d loved as a father and the man who killed twelve young women.