Chapter Four – Royal
After the tour, Hawthorne retreats to his office, while Ezra goes to shower and sleep for a few hours, which means I’m on duty when it comes to Abby.
Abby. I still don’t know what to make of her. She’s acting so cavalier about this entire thing. Any normal person would be freaking out if they were told they couldn’t leave, let alone freak out when they watched Ezra and I take care of business with Brock.
But, other than some rambling, Abby seems… normal. Like it’s just another day to her. It’s so fucking strange to me, I really don’t know what to think of her.
After the tour, we end up on the couch in the living room. She sits two cushions away from me, her eyes roaming the large room, and she makes no moves to put the TV on across from us. She hugs a pillow to her lap, sitting with one leg tucked beneath her ass.
Her ass is very bubbly and round, in case you were wondering. I caught a few glimpses of it during the tour. Couldn’t help it. She’s cute.
“Can I ask you something?” Abby says, picking at the edge of the pillow on her lap.
“I guess.” I have the feeling she’d ask even if I said no. She doesn’t seem like the type who’s used to hearing the word no.
“What’s with the old hockey masks?”
Out of everything she could’ve asked, that wasn’t a particular question I’m prepared for. My brows furrow, and I look at her curiously. What’s even more funny is the way she asked, as if she was merely asking about the weather outside.
“I didn’t choose the hockey mask, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I tell her.
She thinks she knows everything, but there are still parts of D.D.K.
she’s clueless about. She might think Hawthorne is the brains, and to a certain extent, he is, but he’s not at the top of this totem pole.
Oh, no, there’s so much more to this than she could ever realize.
“Then who did? And why?”
“Believe it or not, being here doesn’t mean you’re going to learn all about our secrets. You already know too fucking much.”
Abby rolls her eyes and mutters, “You’re no fun. I was just wondering.”
“It’s just part of what we do,” I say, figuring I’m being vague enough.
She might think she knows about us, about D.D.K.
, but the book on D.D.K. is a lot bigger than she could ever know.
Hell, I’m pretty sure it’s bigger than I know.
Out of the three of us, Hawthorne is the one who knows the most, being one step higher than Ezra and me.
And you know what? I’m fine with that. I enjoy what I do. I wouldn’t want to have Hawthorne’s position. I’m a doer, not a thinker. It’s who I’ve always been. Ezra is more in the middle when it comes to doing and thinking.
“What we do,” she echoes me softly. “It’s so crazy to me that D.D.K. is a team-effort. Has it always been? I mean, did one of you guys start this whole thing first?” When I shoot her another hard look, she shrugs. “What? I’m curious. You can’t blame a girl for being curious.”
I’m not used to anyone asking questions like that, let alone simply knowing the truth, so it takes me a while to push away the thoughts that threaten to surface as a result of her line of questioning.
She doesn’t need to know why we do this, or how it all began.
Some things are better left in the past. All of us in this house have things we’d rather not dig up.
Some things? They’re better dead and buried. If you grab a shovel and dig ‘em up, you’ll only find fucking bones.
She turns toward me on the couch. “Okay, well, at least tell me this. That other guy—”
“Hawthorne,” I say.
“Hawthorne,” she corrects herself, “asked if I was one of Brock’s victims. How’d you guys know Brock had a thing for drugging and taking advantage of women?”
I don’t say a word, but I don’t need to. The expression on my face must say enough.
“That’s who D.D.K. kills, isn’t it? Guys like that.
” Abby leans her head back and stares at the ceiling for a few seconds.
I hesitate to describe her expression as awe, but that’s the closest thing to it.
“Why the hell doesn’t the news link the victims like that?
Anytime there’s a story about D.D.K., it’s always about the police scrambling to link them together. ”
I’ve never, ever heard anyone be so cavalier about these things, other than Ezra and Hawthorne.
I want to dislike this girl. She’s a complication none of us need.
Complications in our line of work could mean making mistakes and getting caught, which is bad.
Obviously. But, as much as I want to dislike this girl, as much as I want to be annoyed and hate her for intruding and being a thorn in our sides, I don’t.
No, more like I can’t.
Fuck, is it weird to say she’s a breath of fresh air? Is it wrong to want to know more about her? She didn’t act like Brock hurt her, which means… what, exactly? As much as she wants to know about us, I’d like to know more about her, too.
Eventually the truth will come out, how all the victims are similar.
See: they’re rapists and abusers. But not yet.
Maybe when it does, maybe when the entire country knows that there’s a serial killer out there targeting bad men, those same men will think differently before they act on their immoral impulses.
It’s not perfect, but it is something. Being a part of this makes me feel like I have some say in the world, in how it’s run. One by one, we line ‘em up and then we take them the fuck down. We have a never-ending supply of shitty men.
Since I don’t respond to her, we settle into silence for a while. I don’t know what she’s thinking about, but she’s definitely got my mind running.
A few minutes later, Abby breaks the silence of the room by asking, “Seriously, you can tell me the truth: what’s going to happen to me? There’s no way you guys want to keep me here forever as a captive. Sooner or later, you’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
I give her a hard look, and the moment I do, I try not to get lost in her gray eyes that are so metallic they’re practically silver. Such a unique, almost impossible stare. Combine those eyes with her hair and her nonchalant way of looking at tonight’s events, and she is a total enigma.
“We don’t kill women,” I whisper.
The smile that spreads on her face after that makes something in me twist, but not in a bad way.
More like a way I’m not used to. “A serial-killing team with a code? Not something you hear every day.” She hugs the pillow closer to her chest, still grinning at me.
“It might be kind of fun being here, assuming everything you said is true.”
“It is true. I might be a fucking killer, but I’m no liar.”
The smile she wears slowly fades as she starts asking more questions. I don’t give her any answers, though. Just grunts and frowns. She doesn’t seem to take the hint, though, because she keeps talking.
Her voice… is kind of nice.
It’s a few hours until Ezra comes to relieve me of my babysitting duties, and by that time, dawn is streaming through the windows. I leave Abby to him and head upstairs, where I hit the sack after pulling on the blackout curtains.
Funny thing is, normally I sleep like a baby after a kill.
Something about it, after the adrenaline leaves my system, just makes me pass out.
Today, though, everything is different. I can’t shake the image of the beanie-wearing stranger who fell out of the closet, nor can I shake off the way her smile made me feel so warm.
Fuck.
One thing about being D.D.K.? We aren’t supposed to have distractions.
We’re supposed to be ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice, drop everything and go do a kill.
We are not supposed to have girlfriends or even hook up with strangers.
No one night stands. Nothing like that. It would only invite mistakes, or real feelings to develop.
People like us? People like Ezra, Hawthorne, and me, we don’t get happy endings. We’re basically vigilantes. Life isn’t a movie. The antiheroes don’t get everything they’ve always wanted.
But with Abby here? With Abby, I have the feeling things are going to change.