30. DMW
DMW
Hazel
“He’s a bastard. A murdering bastard,” Wright declares.
In this edition of best friend’s lying through their teeth as they shit-talk your ex…
I look down from where I’m balanced on my bedside table, waving Livi’s scanner over the corner of the ceiling. “You liked him.”
Wright shrugs. “Yeah, well if you’d have told me he planted cameras all over your house, I might have liked him a little less.”
Olivia, who’s sat cross-legged on my bed, looks up from her laptop and signs, “He also bought her a top-of-the-line alarm system.”
Wright crosses her arms. “Rule number one Livi—we hate the ex-boyfriend.”
That’s the thing though, I don’t hate Flynn, not even a little bit.
I step down off the bedside table and drop Livi’s scanner on the bed. It lands next to Teddy Bundy. A deep pain buries itself just under my ribs and I pick up the teddy. Wright continues talking with Livi, but I walk out of the room, my feet taking me on autopilot to my old bedroom.
I climb onto my twin bed and curl up on my side, burying the serial killer teddy against my chest. He smells of Flynn and the sob roils up from my stomach.
Wright appears at the door and comes to kneel in front of me, running her hand through my hair.
“It hurts,” I cry.
“I know, honey. I know.”
The crying comes in full force then, my chest wracked with sobs as tears and snot clog my face. Wright climbs onto the bed and spoons me, holding me together as I fall apart.
Eventually my sobs quieten and I turn in the bed to face Wright.
She brushes my hair back where it’s stuck to my face, and I wipe my nose on my sleeve.
Dear Miss Halloway, we’d like to feature you on the cover of Vogue.
“At risk of increasing the snot avalanche, what exactly happened between you two?” Wright asks.
I stare at the silver ring in Wright’s lip. “He’s going to kill the senator.”
Wright waits but I don’t say anything else. “Okay…”
My gaze flicks up to meet hers. “Okay? It’s not okay, Wright. He’s going to kill someone.”
Her brow furrows. “Yeah, but…you knew that. You knew from the very beginning that he was a killer. It didn’t stop you from falling for him.”
My stomach churns. “It should have.”
“But it didn’t.” Wright settles her hand on my wrist. “He’s never hurt you, right? Or made you feel uncomfortable?”
I shake my head. Even when he climbed through my bedroom window, I was never that scared. He was too nice. And funny. And gentle.
Wright sighs, her breath brushing my damp cheeks. “My logical brain wants me to tell you that you’re right, that the whole stalking thing is low key—okay high key—a red flag.”
The pit in my stomach deepens, leaving me feeling hollow at the thought of never seeing Flynn again. “What does your non-logical brain want to tell me?”
A dimple appears in Wright’s cheek as she smiles sadly. “That I’ve never seen you happier than you’ve been this past month and you already knew about the stalking.” She pokes a finger into my shoulder, and I grimace because I know I’m going to get shit for not telling her about the cameras sooner.
“What if it’s like with Tommy?” I whisper, feeling bad even voicing the question. “I didn’t realize with him until it was too late, what if this is the same?”
Wright cups my cheek. “Oh honey. It’s not the same.”
“He’s a murderer,” I argue. “How can I be with someone who kills when that’s what happened to my—” I break off, hiccupping on a cry.
Understanding washes over Wright’s face as she figures out what this is really about. “Your parents were innocent. The people Flynn kills are not.”
“And that’s supposed to make it okay?” I argue. I’m a 911 operator, I’m supposed to care about justice. “He’s going to kill the senator,” I say again.
“And?”
“And what?”
“He’s a convicted serial killer, Hazel. You knew that. So why is this different?”
Wright’s gaze is too inquisitive, too knowing. I break eye contact and stare at the fishnet overlay on her black top. “Because this time I could stop him,” I whisper. “I could call the police and tell them where he is, what he’s planning.”
“And let a serial rapist go free.” Wright’s words make my stomach hollow, the impossibility of the choice tearing me in two. Wright is the last person on earth who would want a rapist to get off scot-free but it’s not that simple.
“I can’t stand by and watch him kill someone.” The gun shots from yesterday echo in my mind and I see the bodies dropping to the ground. Lachlan’s hand around the gun. “I just can’t, Wright. I can’t be that person.”
I risk peering up at her and she presses her lips together, her brow pinched. “Are you going to turn Flynn in?”
I open my mouth only to close it again. I may not be able to stand by and watch as he commits another murder but the thought of turning Flynn in is incomprehensible. My hand would stop listening to my mind before I even picked up the phone. I dig my fist into the pain in my gut and shake my head.
“Then you already are that person, Hazel.”
A sob chokes out of my chest and Wright grabs my face, raking her fingers through my hair before holding me steady. “It’s not a bad thing. It doesn’t make you a bad person, and it doesn’t make you any different than you’ve always been. We call them DMW’s, Haze. Dead Men Walking.”
I nod in her hold, trying to come to terms with the reality that I’m happy to let someone die even after what happened to my parents.
Wright’s blue eyes pierce into mine. “You know as well as I do the law doesn’t always get it right.
Justice isn’t always served.” A darkness flickers in Wright’s gaze, a reminder of the battle she fights every day because of what was done to her.
She and I are living, breathing examples of justice never being served and if Flynn was able to kill the man that hurt Wright, or the person who murdered my parents, I would want him to do it in a heartbeat.
I would stand there and watch without blinking an eye.
Maybe that makes me a bad person. But maybe it just makes me human.
“I want him,” I whisper, the confession ripping through my chest. “Despite everything he’s done. Despite everything he plans to do. I want him.”
Wright pulls my hand away from my stomach and twines her fingers with mine. “Maybe you should tell him that then.”
I nod.
Wright looks over my shoulder and I roll onto my back to see Livi standing in the door with a handful of tiny cameras. “I found them all,” she signs with one hand. “Is it ice cream time?”
“Fuck, yes,” Wright groans, and I laugh a little through the tears.
I tumble off the bed and follow Wright past Livi and out of my old room.
Olivia stops me though, her hand feathering against my shoulder to get my attention.
“Hazel, please be careful.” She holds up the cameras.
“Anyone who goes to these lengths to keep an eye on you isn’t just going to let you go. ”