Chapter 37
Jayce
I may have gone off the rails. Just a tiny bit. The thing is, Mike had become a problem. A big one. I think we’ve learned what happens to problems.
He must’ve known he was in trouble because he was hiding out. I’d pulled a knife on him and he’d seen the crazed look in my eyes. He would have been an idiot if he went home.
Generally I wouldn’t involve anyone else in my less than legal activities, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I couldn’t leave him to his own devices. He could go for Alana again and I couldn’t always be around to protect her. It was pure luck that I’d been keeping an eye on her earlier. She told me I couldn’t come shopping with her because she had to buy my gift. What I heard was that I couldn’t go shopping with her, but I sure as shit could be around. What can I say? I was a little bit obsessed.
I thought the overt obsession would fade somewhat when we finally got together, but I felt more possessive than before. Every day, I was terrified of losing her. It seemed like the sort of bullshit the universe would pull- I’d finally have the woman of my dreams and something out of my control would take her away from me. Not fucking happening.
It was a good thing Mike wasn’t very clever. It was after midnight, but he finally came home. He looked in every direction before he hurried to the front door. If he thought a lock would save him, he was mistaken. I’d already been inside to set up. All he’d done was walk right into my trap.
With my mask and a pair of gloves on, I got out of my truck and walked casually to the door. It only took a minute for me to get it open. After locking it behind me, my gaze moved to the kitchen where a light was on. I leaned against the wall and waited.
Mike turned the corner with a beer in his hand. He stopped abruptly when he saw me standing there. It was dark, so he squinted as if trying to figure out if his eyes were deceiving him. Reaching up, I turned on the mask’s neon lights.
“Jesus,” he exclaimed, stepping back.
“I’ll give you one more guess.”
When I started toward him, he dropped the beer. The glass shattered, skittering across the linoleum. He turned around, aiming for the sliding door. I grabbed him by the back of the neck and hauled him toward the living room. He cried out when he stepped on the glass. By the time I had him where I wanted him, blood had begun to seep through his socks.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“I told you to guess.”
“Y-you’re Jayce, aren’t you?”
“You can call me Erebus. Right now, I’m not the good guy.”
“What does that mean?” he blubbered.
I grabbed his face with one hand, forcing him to look at me. His eyes were wide with fear and shone with the realization that he was at my mercy. When a tear slipped free, I felt a thrilling sense of satisfaction.
“It means you’ve caught the attention of a monster, Mr. Everhart. And I’m dying to draw blood. That’s not my intent, though.”
He let out a relieved breath. I shook my head with a small laugh.
“There are plenty of terrible things you can endure without losing a single drop of blood. Well, aside from your feet, but that was your fault.”
His face paled. I picked up the rope I’d left near the wall. He tried to back away from me, but unless he planned to crawl up the chimney, he had nowhere to go. I held the noose out to him and he shook his head.
“You don’t have a choice,” I pointed out. “If you don’t do it, I’ll just kill you. Work with me and I’ll give you a chance to… Well, not to redeem yourself because we know that’s hopeless. This is a chance to save your worthless ass.”
His hand shook as he took the noose from me. I tapped my neck and he whimpered as he put it over his head. I grabbed the rope and yanked on it, making him stumble backward. When it was taut, I pulled harder. His feet kicked out as he scrambled for a foothold.
I looked up at the metal beam I’d put in place. It was secured to studs on parallel walls, giving me the perfect spot to hang the bastard. The ceiling fan wasn’t reliable enough, which meant I had to get creative. The police might question it, but people would do weird shit when they felt like offing themselves.
Not yet, though, so I put a small stool beneath his feet and tugged so that the rope slid over the beam, tightening around him. Grabbing my own chair, I stood on it and started securing the rope to the beam. He grunted when he had to stand on his toes and almost lost his balance, but he managed to stay on top of it enough not to die, so lucky him, I guess.
“Do you like Saw?” I asked.
“Saw?” he rasped. His fingers were trying to get between the rope and his neck, but it was too tight with the tension.
“Yeah. Deadly, high-stakes games. You can save yourself, but it’s gonna suck in one way or another.”
“W-why?”
“A test of character, maybe. See, you’ve proven to be more than an asshole. You want to use people to dig yourself out of a hole. Tell me, Mike. Did you kill your wife?”
His eyes widened. “Of course not! She was in a car accident.”
I nodded slowly. “Fair enough. What about Jake? She left him everything and you were angry. That sounds like motive, Mike.”
“You’re insane. I didn’t do anything.”
“Do you think everyone will believe that? I mean, he had everything Hailey owned, Alicia’s estate, and he was trying to get custody. I can see how the guilt for setting that fire would drive you to kill yourself.”
Mike looked up at the beam, realization setting in. “Please, don’t.”
“Relax. I told you I’d give you a chance.”
“Anything. I’ll do anything.”
Turning around, I opened the garage door. When I grabbed my motivator, she screamed. It was muffled by the cover over her head, but it still made me wince. Dragging her into the living room, I forced her onto her knees.
“You wanted to put yourself above Alana, to trick and manipulate her. You would’ve fucked her, wouldn’t you?”
He stared at us in horror as her shoulders heaved with her sobs. “What is this? What are you doing?”
“This is your chance. I want you to choose.”
“Choose what?” he cried.
“Whose life is more important.”
“No, no, no.” He shook his head frantically. “You can’t do that. You wouldn’t do that.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“You love her.”
I cocked my head. “I was obsessed. It’s different. She pissed me off and I found myself free of it. Killing her sounds better than loving her, actually. I mean, I did everything for Alana and all she’s done is deny her feelings. She wanted nothing to do with me after you ran off earlier.”
“You can’t do this!”
“She’s a pain in my ass,” I continued. Pulling a knife from my pocket, I poised it at her throat. “Maybe I’ll just do it anyway.”
“No!” he shouted.
“You’ll die for her?”
His mouth snapped shut and he averted his gaze. When it was clear he wouldn’t answer, I returned to the garage.
“Let’s sweeten the pot.”
It was easier to drag the smaller girl into the room. She fell to the ground and covered her head.
“Oh my god,” Mike gasped. “Is that…”
“The one and only. Hearing a kid scream for their life might haunt me, but my soul has been irreparably damaged anyway. It’s funny how the more you kill, the better it feels.”
“Please, Jayce. Don’t do this. I’ll leave Alana alone. I’ll leave all of you alone.”
“Too late, Mike. Either I kill them both and you live or I kill you and they both live.”
“You can’t make me choose.”
I held the blade to the girl’s throat. Mike became frantic, but he nearly tumbled off of the stool, so he forced himself to stay still. The look that passed over his face told me everything.
“Wow.” I breathed a laugh. “Tell me something. Is it because she’s not yours? When did you find out?”
Tears streamed down Mike’s cheeks. “Not until Hailey died and Jake showed up at my door.”
I whistled. “That’s rough. If she was yours, would your decision be different?”
He turned his head, trying to hide. It didn’t really matter. He was a piece of shit and this experiment told me everything that I needed to know. He’d put himself above everyone else, which made him too dangerous to keep alive.
“Don’t make me watch,” he whispered.
Rolling my eyes, I pulled the hoods off of the two hostages. Mike paled as he looked between them.
“This is Mary,” I said, gesturing to the woman. “And her daughter, Sammy.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“They’ve been living underneath a bridge down the road from my house. A couple thousand and a month in a hotel while they get back on their feet is a great motivator. Maybe they should go into acting. Don’t you think?”
I turned to Mary, who was looking at Mike with disgust. Really, no sane person would pity him after what they just witnessed.
“You guys can get in the truck,” I said. “I’ll bring you to the hotel.”
Mary’s eyes watered and she hugged me quickly before she took Sammy’s hand. The kid smiled at me, looking more nervous than her mom. Maybe this was a bad thing to put a kid in the middle of, but she’d be fine. Maybe it would teach her a good lesson about being careful who she trusted. Besides, they’d been unhoused for almost two years, according to Mary. She’d seen and been through her fair share of shit that was worse than this.
“I wish I would’ve met them before this,” I drawled as I circled Mike. “I would’ve made sure they were taken care of, but it did present a perfect opportunity in the end.”
“Y-you tricked me.”
“You can’t honestly think I’d hurt my girlfriend or my niece. I’m not you.”
“Please just let me go. Nobody has to know about this.”
“I might’ve let you go if you proved yourself not to be a complete waste of space. Probably not, but I would’ve at least considered it.”
“Fuck you,” he growled.
I stopped behind him and ran my fingers over the rope at the back of his neck. Leaning close to his ear, I let the mask touch his cheek.
“You’re a little bitch, Mike. I should’ve killed you the moment you touched Alana on that porch. Live and learn.”
I kicked the stool out from under his feet. He thrashed and kicked his feet as if that would save him. The sounds of his struggle seeped into my fucking soul- every gurgle, the clack of his teeth together as he fought for air, and the keening that came from his compressed throat.
When he stopped moving, I let out a breath. Coming around to his front, I looked at his bloodshot eyes. After committing the image to memory, I picked up the hoods and did a once-over to make sure there was no evidence of anyone else being here.
I would’ve preferred to draw out Mike’s death, maybe even tortured him, but this one had to be a suicide. It was the safest option. The note he left on his nightstand would inform the police of his fragile state of mind. He’d been a drinker and an abuser, which would line up with what happened the day I took Alicia. The death of his wife and the loss of his daughter, combined with the debts he was drowning in, were just too much for him.
From the interactions I’d had with Alicia, she didn’t seem to feel much of a connection with Mike, so I didn’t even feel bad about that part. She fit right in with our family and I had no doubt she’d be ecstatic to be a part of it. Something about that kid told me she was tough enough to handle anything. Hell, a man in a creepy mask was in her room and she’d been pretty chill about it.
Yeah, she’d be fine. We all would. I just had to figure out this shit with Alana so that we could march straight into our happily ever after.