Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
Zachary
I'm bad company tonight and everyone at the bar knows it.
It's been five days. Five measly days since she walked out of our lives.
Five days since she decided that life without us was easier than with us.
Five days since I've eaten anything more than a handful of pretzels or half a protein bar Marcus keeps shoving in my face.
Five days since I've slept properly, shaved, or thought about anything except the fact that nothing's ever going to be the same.
“You right, boss?” Priya asks, sliding past with a rack of glasses, not quite looking at me directly, like I might bite.
“Good as I'll ever be,” I mumble, mostly to myself.
She just gives me a pitying look that makes me want to hide in my office, except my office is full of little notes Alexia left me the last time she was here, so I'd have something to keep me company on the long nights.
“That's too bad,” someone says, right behind me, a voice I don't recognise.
Then a bag comes down over my head and the whole world goes black.
Whoever's behind this doesn't bother being gentle about it.
Hands under my arms haul me backward off my feet before I can get a word out.
Bundled into what I'm fairly sure is a van — door slam, diesel smell, seatbelt yanked tight enough across my chest to bruise.
Nobody answers a single question I ask, and I'm hoarse by the time the car stops and I'm told to climb some steep stairs.
Metal underfoot. Then I'm inside, pushed into a chair, hands still bound.
There's a chorus of other voices. Voices I know better than I know my own.
“You're going to fucking pay for this!” Marcus. And judging by the edge in his voice, he's already contemplating exactly what he's going to do to pay them back. Count me in.
“I suggest you move your hands from my body, or it will literally be the last thing you do before I mail them to your loved ones.”
Oh, good. Rhys is here.
“Guys, are you okay?!” I shout.
“Z! Yeah, I'm okay, but these wankdickasses are about to be very not okay!”
And then we feel it.
Moving.
And not just moving.
Moving... upwards.
Fuck.
No.
Not a plane. Can't be a plane. I feel around with my hands. Leather seats. Leather seats I actually know pretty damn well — the ones I sat in when Elliot Monroe took us all on a guys' trip a few months back.
“Guys? Are we in Elliot's plane?” Marcus says, confirming my suspicions.
Rhys curses under his breath. “Yeah, I think we are.”
I let out a slow breath. It can't be all bad if we're on Elliot's plane, right? At least it's someone we know.
By the time I feel the drop in my stomach that means a plane's finished its climb and levelled out, my heart rate has returned somewhat to normal.
“Are you sure there are enough parachutes on this thing?” Marcus's voice calls out, somewhere to my left. He sounds much more relaxed as well.
“Anyone know where we're going?” I ask, hoping someone actually has an answer.
“Nope,” Marcus answers. “Got nabbed at a site.”
Someone shifts, feet stretching out and kicking mine. A waft of cologne washes over me. Rhys. Benefit or disadvantage of living with someone, you know what they smell like at all times of day. Lucky for me, my housemates actually bathe and use deodorant regularly.
“You smell nice, man,” Marcus says, presumably to Rhys.
“Thanks,” Rhys replies, sounding anything but thankful. “Could you get your hand off my thigh, though?”
I snort despite the situation. “Sorry. Thought you were the other one,” Marcus says, sounding about as contrite as Rhys sounded thankful.
“Which other one?” I say. “Am I 'the other one'? I have a name.”
Rhys groans. “Is someone going to tell me what the fuck is going on?” His already negligible patience is running thin.
“In answer to your questions,” Leon's voice cuts in, and I'm genuinely surprised.
Of all people, I did not expect him to be part of this.
He'd returned home a few days ago but had stayed mostly confined to his room, all communication coming through his nurse or one-word messages in the group chat.
“You'll find out where we're going when we get there.
And no, there aren't enough parachutes. So the first person who really pisses me off today isn't getting one.”
Nobody says anything for a beat.
“Good. Just for that, you can all take your blindfolds off now.”
I feel someone tug at my bindings, and I shake my hands out before pushing up the scarf around my eyes.
Leon's sitting in a plane seat across the aisle, wheelchair locked down beside him, looking entirely too pleased with himself for a man a week out of surgery and possibly five minutes from being pushed out of a plane.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Rhys, rubbing at his eyes, voice gone hard. “Are you going to tell us where we're going, or am I going to have to beat it out of you? Because in your current condition it wouldn't take much more than a thumb wrestle.”
“You'd be amazed how well a wheelchair steers when the driver's properly motivated.” Leon leans back. “Also, if we crash, and you want your own parachute instead of tandeming with one of these two idiots, I'd watch the threats.”
“Where are we going?” I ask again, not wanting to think too hard about the phrase if we crash.
“I'd rather not say. That way if I do end up dumping your bodies somewhere, I'll have time to establish an alibi.” He says it with a grin, but the edge in his eyes tells me he's not completely joking.
“Honestly, though, I think all I'd have to tell a jury is that my three best mates since primary school have been sleeping with my little sister, and they wouldn't just acquit me. They'd give me a key to the city.”
He settles back in his seat.
“Enjoy the view for the next twenty minutes, boys. Might be the last thing you ever see.”
Nobody says anything for the rest of the flight.
Elliot's ranch sits in the middle of nowhere, just like he likes it.
Red dirt, distant hills, a homestead built for every creature comfort imaginable, and not another soul in screaming distance.
So remote that if any of us don't survive whatever Leon has planned, nobody's finding the bodies in a hurry.
Marcus starts a fight over bedrooms before we've even got our bags out of the car.
“I called the one with the jacuzzi from the plane,” he says, already jogging for the door.
“You cannot call a room from a plane. It's the whole shotgun conversation all over again,” I mutter, and get a look from Rhys.
Got it. We're not talking about her.
“Not my fault you were too slow,” Marcus calls over his shoulder.
“I'm bunking with Rhys, then, and we're going to stay up all night talking about you,” I say, and the look on Marcus's face, genuine, wounded betrayal, like I've just told him Christmas is cancelled, is worth every second of being bagged and thrown in a van.
“You are not. I wanna have a sleepover too.”
“Too late. We're going to watch the first season of The Sopranos too.”
Marcus actually gasps.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Rhys says, already halfway out the door towards the verandah, not even turning around. “I only share a bed with one person, and it's not either of you animals.”
Well, so much for not bringing up Alexia.
Marcus opens his mouth to argue, then runs out of steam. For a second none of us say anything, we all know what's coming, and bickering won't put it off much longer.
Leon wheels himself into the middle of the living room and parks dead centre, like he's chairing a board meeting, and looks at the three of us with an expression I haven't seen on him since we were teenagers and he found out we'd cut class and gone to McDonald's without him.
“Alright.” He folds his hands in his lap. “Who wants to start.”
No one says anything. So he starts for us.
“Fine, let's do this the hard way. How, and when, did all three of you fuckers decide my little sister was someone you should be involved with.”
No one rushes to answer.
Finally, I step forward. “I can only speak for myself, but I can't tell you exactly when it started.”
“When she moved in with us.” Leon says it like a statement, not a question.
I wince. “No.” I make myself hold his eyes. “Before that.”
He frowns. “How much before? She wasn't even in Adelaide.”
“Before she left.”
Was it really six years ago?
“Are you talking about my twenty-fourth birthday?” Leon's face has gone very still. “I asked if I walked in on something and you said no...”
“I lied. And honestly, it was probably before even that.” I have to look at the floor to get the rest out, throat gone tight. “I'd never done anything about it. But my control slipped that night. We almost—I almost kissed her. If you hadn't interrupted us, I would've.”
Leon swears, low and vicious, at the ceiling.
“We did kiss.” Marcus's voice is quieter than I've ever heard it in fifteen years. He's not looking at any of us, staring instead at a spot on the floorboards. “Three months after your birthday. We ran into each other at a party.”
Leon pins him with a withering look. “Is that all you did?”
“Yes, but...” His jaw works. He drags a hand down his face. “But I did something afterward that's haunted me ever since. I went back inside. And when I knew she was about to walk in and see, I let her catch me kissing someone else.”
Nobody moves. But I almost hear Leon's muscles holding him back from punching Marcus. And I don't blame him. Bloody hell.
Rhys finally breaks the silence, voice gone flat and resigned, both hands braced on his knees like he needs somewhere to put the weight of what's coming.
“We spent a night together.”
“What?” Leon bellows. “You slept with her? When?”
“Not... um, technically. Without giving too many details you don't need to know, we were... intimate, but not... completely.” He's not looking at any of us. “And then I woke up at five. And I left.”
“What do you mean, you left?” Leon's voice is suddenly very quiet. Deathly so.
“Exactly what it sounds like. I left without telling her. Without a note. Without anything.”