Chapter 46
Jayce
A groan behind me made my lips curve. “Well, it’s about damn fucking time.”
“Where?” he croaked.
I turned around and took in his groggy and terrified expression. He moved his hands, then looked down at them with wide eyes when he realized they were cuffed to the sides of the bed. As if there was any hope for him, he yanked on them harder.
“Do you remember me?” I asked.
His brow furrowed. “No.”
“Hm.” I moved closer, trailing my fingers over the bedrails. He was breathing heavily as I approached. I imagined that with every step, his mind was clearing further. “We go way back, Officer Burkley.”
“Look, if I arrested your dad or something, I get that you’re mad. This is gonna get you in major trouble, though.”
“My dad? Nah, he’s just fine. Right now, he’s on vacation with my moms and their friends. Yeah, they met some people while they were on the west coast and now, they take annual trips to Switzerland. Cool, huh?”
He shook his head. “Who are you?”
“You’re so impatient. I’ll give you a hint.” Shifting my t-shirt to show him my shoulder, I tapped on the scar. “Still don’t remember? I guess the people you kill don’t stick with you. Do they not matter, Burkley?”
After blinking a few times, he looked around the basement. When his eyes landed on the fake door, which was currently open, his lips parted.
“You… The girl with the gun.”
The back of my hand connected with his cheek hard enough for his head to whip to the side. “Girl with the gun. That’s a massive simplification. The gun wasn’t loaded. She would never hurt anybody. She was going to give me the fucking thing, but you shot her.”
“She moved too quickly,” he stammered. “It looked like she was going to aim it at us.”
“You’re a scared little bitch. Want to know where your true mistake lies? Your bullet hit me, but it killed her. Leaving me alive will cost you everything because I’m the one who’s dangerous, not her. I’m the fucking monster in this story.”
“Sir, I… Please.”
I flicked my wrist to open the knife at my side. His eyes landed on it briefly before he looked up at the ceiling. Maybe he was accepting his fate. Or he was praying. Acceptance and prayer wouldn’t help what he was going to experience.
Leaning my elbows on the bedrail, I trailed the tip of the blade up his naked chest. “My niece has been learning about composting. That’s a healthy hobby, right? Good for the planet, even. You’re going to help.”
“How?”
“Well, I took care of the other three officers who were here. Spaced them out by two years each so I wouldn’t get caught or draw suspicion. Were you aware they all died?’
He swallowed hard. “Just one of them. Officer Vanderbilt.”
“Yeah, he was the first. The other two worked for different departments when I got to them. Miami and Bakersville. It was a pain in the ass to get them. Lots of travel and whatnot. Six years, Burkley. Six fucking years I’ve been waiting to fuck you up for ripping my soul from me.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“And I appreciate that, of course. Doesn’t change anything, though.”
Footsteps on the stairs made me glance over my shoulder. His gaze followed mine, then he sat forward.
“Please. Help me. He’s gonna hurt me.”
A light laugh came from behind me. “How sad.”
“You… I don’t… Oh my god. You’re the kid.”
“ Was the kid. I’m sixteen. Almost seventeen, thank you very much.”
“You’re both crazy. You’re sick.”
Alicia mocked him, then came up beside me. “That’s so cliché, dude. What, are we supposed to let you go because you think we have issues?” She looked at me and cocked her head. “Do we have issues?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. You have my genes, so I’d venture to say that’s the issue.”
“Ooh,” she said, drawing out the word. “Maybe it’s, like, one of those things where it was inside of me the whole time and all the shit I went through as a kid activated it or something.”
“Hm. You should go into psychology.”
“Maybe I will.”
“The girl who died,” Burkley blurted. His voice had reached a higher pitch with his growing desperation. “She wouldn’t want this, right? You said she wouldn’t hurt anybody. She’d hate to see you do this.”
I raised a brow. “That’s a stretch. Don’t act like you know her. You killed her, so in the end, it doesn’t really matter.”
Alicia tried to take the knife from me, but I pulled it back with a frown. “You know better.”
“Oh, come on.”
I pointed it at her. “Not until you’re an adult. I have to hold onto some boundaries, you know.”
When she pouted, I laughed and turned back to Burkley. “My niece had an idea and I think it’s the most ridiculous thing ever, but hey, who am I to tell her she can’t explore her creative side?”
Alicia held up a jar of peanut butter with a wicked glint in her eyes. Not for the first time, I questioned my decisions. Agreeing to teach her about composting was one thing. I waited until she was fifteen to let her do it on her own, after I killed the third officer. I should’ve taken into account that fucked up desires tended to grow and morph into worse things. She hadn’t taken a life, but she was very interested and continued to lean into the darkness. There was really no fixing that; I knew that firsthand. All I could do was make her wait and, hopefully, teach her how to avoid prison.
Maybe Alana would be angry about it. Like I said, though, it didn’t really matter. The plan was always to join her in death after I killed Burkley. I still hated my existence without her, but I also knew that Alicia wasn’t ready for me to be gone. She loved her grandparents and fit right in but that dark, wretched piece of her soul was her dirty little secret. And mine. I’d woken it up, so I needed to make sure it didn’t fuck her up completely.
“What are you gonna do with that?” Burkley asked.
Alicia didn’t respond as she unscrewed the lid and scooped some out with a spoon. When she squeezed his cheeks to force his mouth open, he turned and tried to bite her. She shoved the heaping spoonful into his mouth and he grunted. She did one more so that it was completely full, then slapped a piece of duct tape over his lips.
I crossed my arms over my chest as I watched him struggle. “What’s the point?”
“Maybe he’ll suffocate,” she replied. “He can’t open his mouth to help him get all that shit down. It might get stuck in his throat.”
“And where’d you get this idea?”
She smiled. “I was eating a PB&J in the cafeteria and choked on it. I had to guzzle some water and it did that thing where food is stuck and it’s super painful to get it down. I saw my life flash before my eyes.”
I snorted a laugh. “Right. Glad you didn’t die right there in the cafeteria.”
“It’d be horrible. Imagine haunting a high school forever. Being known as the peanut butter gobbler would not be cool.”
A fearful hum came from Burkley’s throat. He looked at us with desperation in his eyes. He gagged, then struggled to catch his breath. Maybe she was onto something. Death by peanut butter.
To make it more interesting, I positioned my knife behind his knee and made a deep slice. He tried to scream, but it only made things worse for him. I watched his throat bob multiple times as he tried to swallow.
I pointed with my knife toward the opposite wall. There were three jars on a shelf, each one filled with fertilizer. Three bottles of wine were stationed behind them.
“Those are your buddies. In a few months, you’ll join them up there. How nurturing do you think your body will be? None will be as good as her, that’s for sure.”
He stared at another shelf with a picture of Alana and a similar jar, but hers was nicer. There were a few bottles left because I couldn’t bring myself to drink them. I had one every couple of years. Jake’s last bottle was beside hers and one day, mine would be there too. It would be Jake, Jayce, and Alana. Just like it’d been since we were fourteen. She would like that.