Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
I’m moving down the hall, alarm in my step as I head toward the main section of the clubhouse. My lungs tighten with the need for a cigarette and as I curl into the room, stopping at the edge, I raise my chin and find Chase, his back toward me.
He’s resting against an old pool table and by the way his shoulder muscles are corded beneath his top I can tell his arms are crossed.
A bottle of beer rests at the felt surface behind him, it’s the same for Harlen, who is next to him, and Rusty too, who is on the opposite side, his hands curled around the lipped ledge.
They’re talking to someone sitting on the old peeling red leather couch in front of them. I can’t see who though, and the four of them haven’t noticed me.
It made me feel invisible, like an apparition listening to a conversation I wasn’t supposed to hear, whispered quietly beneath solemn breaths.
“...neck snapped, doused and scrubbed with bleach…” A pause, then, “Like your sister. But this time, he didn’t use the tunnel.”
I curl my fists into the fabric of my dirty clothes, swallowing the lump in my throat at the mention of Jade and her neck and the snap that still echoes.
And the bleach, the scrubbing, a detail I was yet to learn. That what this monster had done to Jade, the state in which he’d disposed of her, was a mirror act of my grandfather’s murders.
“That’s why you saw a cruiser and other cars congregating at the entrance of the trailer park.”
Whoever this guy was, he was obviously talking to Chase, and must have thought more of the scene at the entry of the trailer park than I had.
My palms begin to shake.
Chase tells them, “Yeah, pushed back into the trees there was some kind of tent—”
Rusty clarifies, “A privacy tent.”
I didn’t notice that.
The guy in front of them clears his throat, spits phlegm at his side.
“Yep. It seems the sick fuck bypassed the tunnel and thought it was a good idea to drop her off beneath the park's sign.” He pauses, only to pop a knuckle.
“Tied her broken neck to the steel pole with some flimsy-ass pink and red ribbon.”
My vision telescopes.
A numbness washes over my body.
I squeeze my eyes closed, not realizing my shoulders have caught the brick wall behind me. It acts as a support, keeping me to my feet.
Ribbon.
Pink and red gingham.
I see it, in my hair, in Jade’s hair, and Chase must see it too.
“The ribbon, what did it look like?” he asks.
“I think it’s called ging-jam, or however the fuck you say it.”
“Motherfuck—” Chase starts.
“What is it?” Rusty speaks over him, head flicking between all three of them.
Chase’s chest heaves, and my pulse ticks to the same cadence. I watch his knuckles blanch around the edge of the pool table. He looks like he wants to tear the felt from its bones.
“Jade and Laiken, they both were wearing a pink and red ribbon in their hair that night.” Chase’s voice sounded like it had caught fire. “Gingham.”
“How do you even remember that?” Harlen asks, bewildered.
Silence presses, then Chase answers, “Because they never wore ribbons.”
Truth.
A tear rolls down my cheek.
Even he knew.
I press my palm to my mouth hoping to push down the bile that rushes up the back of my throat.
Rusty steers them back on track, holding onto Chase’s shoulder.
“So, he didn’t use the tunnel,” he tells them in a tone that makes him sound like he’s deep in his own thoughts, trying to piece together a puzzle with no distinct edges. “Why? Why deviate?”
And when no one speaks, silence that wasn’t really silence at all biting its way in, Chase clears his throat.
“He’s getting closer…” Chase’s voice now eerily cold.
And Harlen finishes, “To her.”
Me.
They were speaking about me.
I chew on the inside of my cheek.
Bones tightening.
Stomach knotting.
Because they were right.
This is what I have spent the last three years living in debilitating fear of.
Our time is coming, Laiken.
The five words my best friend’s murderer and rapist had vilely spat at me before he snapped her neck.
The five words I hadn’t shared with Chase, or Harlen, or Wynston, or the detective on our case.
The five words I hadn’t shared with anyone because it was a promise I had tried to forget.
“Street cameras, Skinner?” Rusty asks.
And I shiver at the name.
Skinner says, “Down for maintenance.”
I watch Harlen reach for his beer bottle, his hand squeezing the neck so tight his knuckles turning bone-white. “Of course they were.”
There’s a rough exhale.
It comes in a whoosh from all four of them.
Skinner speaks low, a growl, “The fucking freak knocked out her teeth, overheard the coroner say he’d sodomized her fucking face.”
Harlen says, “He didn’t do that to Jade.”
A clap of a door snaps the spoken violence in the room.
A woman's voice follows behind the sound.
“Ah…boys…”
It was a warning, from Kali, the woman I’d met on the way inside for my shower. The same one that got me a fresh towel and soap. The one that taught me how to navigate the faucet to reach the perfect showering temperature.
She stands at the door, her dark curls twirling in front of her eyes, catching between her long spidery eyelashes, holding a clear container filled with what looks like baked chocolate chip cookies.
But the warning had come too late. I’d heard everything I’d needed to hear.
My stomach rolls over itself and the bile that had begun creeping up my throat explodes on my tongue.
Curling over, I retch into the bin at my side, falling to my knees.
My throat burns, my chest burns, everything fucking burns, and the numbness I felt no less than five minutes ago has vanished.
I’m caught on a live wire, and I think I might die.
A shattering sound hits my ears, then, “Fuck!” And I know it’s Chase. It’s always Chase. His temper had always been a mixture of fire and ice.
I spit the sickness from my tongue, throwing my dirty clothes on top of my mess when a soft and gentle palm presses to my back.
Turning over my shoulder, I catch Kali’s bright green eyes and smattering of freckles, her thin brows turned in with worry.
Wrapping her hand around my bicep, she helps me to my feet, and I begin stumbling toward the door.
Each step feels like I’m walking through molasses.
When my vision cuts in and out, gray shutters blinking in front of my eyes, a set of arms wrap around me.
I recognize them, know the tenderness of them, because they were the set he’d let me find safety in years ago, when my father took his life, but not when Jade had been murdered, not when I’d needed them most.
And today, I shove them away.
Tears prick the back of my eyes, and I work so hard to keep them from welling to the surface, though one slips through and drips down my face. I palm it away at my throat, and step back further.
Chase doesn’t move, and I don’t meet his eye.
I can’t look at him.
“Just…just…leave me alone, okay?” I whisper, my voice barely audible, my vision cutting in and out again as I lay my shoulder against the metal door, seeing myself out.